Read Online For the Earl's Pleasure by Anne Mallory - Free Book Online Page B

require a shine.”
    “Amusing.”
    “I like to think so.” He spread his arms. “It is why everyone loves me.”
    “I think not.”
    “Oh, Smart, you have been dying for my regard for decades.”
    “Seeing as I only possess two, I think you overestimate.”
    “Never.” He rose and began poking around her room. “Now, what shall we do until I wake? I will even be pleasant to you for once.”
    “Lovely.” She tapped an annoyed finger and walked to the bed. “Do what you wish. I’m going to sleep.”
    “You aren’t going to try and convince me that I’m really dead?”
    “You are really dead.”
    “Smart, you aren’t very entertaining tonight. If I’m dead, then what happened to my body, oh all-knowing one?”
    “It’s lying somewhere,” she said, as she tucked her feet under the covers. “Probably in some brothel.”
    “I take back the comment on the quality of your entertainment.”
    But then…why wouldn’t he be haunting the brothel?
    Unease sifted through her. That she could be forever stuck with an imprint of Rainewood unnerved her—especially since if it were true, some of his true being would soon fade away.
    “What ails you, Smart?”
    “Nothing.” But she said it too quickly.
    “Tell me.”
    Those that lingered left an indelible imprint, even if it turned into a false one with time. She shoved the thought away.
    “Nothing. Your memories will slip away soon. They will just be a bothersome reminder.”
    He turned suddenly and pinned her with his eyes. “How did you know my memories were being affected?”
    Her breath caught. “They are?”
    He stared at her a moment more, then shook his head. “A dream. Of course you would know more than you should.”
    She pulled the covers into place. “Even dead, you tax my patience.”
    His eyes narrowed. “Just wait until I discover how to make this dream bend to me, Smart. I will have you unclothed and begging on the floor in front of me.”
    She thought that he just might be trying to accomplish such a thing too with the way he was concentrating. The image of her on her knees in front of him brought forth scalding cheeks.
    “I hardly think you will be thinking of me, Raine wood.” She put her chin up. “Soon you will get to enjoy all that you want to remember best. Those memories will arrange themselves to you. Allow you to relive your favorite things.” She waved a hand, trying to project ambivalence. “Taunting people, wenching, making others miserable.”
    “Oh, believe me, Smart.” He smiled slowly and slid into a chair, propping up his feet. “If there is one person that I’d haunt after death, it would be you.”

Chapter 5

    V alerian tapped a soundless finger against the four-poster pole behind his head and stretched his legs on the bed. He watched her sleep—even breaths lifting her chest, then softly falling.
    He had never encountered a nightmare that had lasted this long. Or at least, upon waking his dreams had never seemed quite this lengthy or detailed or painful. And there were just too many things that were normal—that weren’t out of the ordinary. Why would his brain have conjured up this state?
    And whatever cursed state he was in, why were parts of it so dreadfully dull ? He had been simply sitting, tapping, and watching her sleep for hours .
    Well, perhaps parts of it hadn’t been dull, but he was unused to being idle.
    Needing no sleep would have been far more useful before being hit in the head and losing two entire days of life. He grasped the thought before it could sieve away into the dreamscape. He had been attacked. By whom? He gripped and tried to keep hold of the slippery tendril of thought.
    Abigail’s presence seemed to make his memories stick, but as soon as she left him or he left her, his thoughts would slowly start to shift and fall like sand sifting through a disengaged lump in the throat of an hourglass.
    He had walked around her house for a while after she had fallen asleep, but the need to