Read Online Never Resist a Rake by Mia Marlowe - Free Book Online

husband is not conducive to a man’s health.”
    â€œNever say you believe everything you hear about me.”
    â€œWell, let’s see.”
    He put the berry back in its box and began fiddling with one of the long, golden locks that draped alongside her neck and ended in a curl just below her bosom. Chloe’s French maid had advised her to leave a few strands dangling, in order to encourage this very behavior. When it came to matters sensual, the French were rarely wrong.
    â€œStop me if I say something that is untrue.” Blackwood began her litany of misfortune. “The first time you wed, the church where the ceremony was held burned to the ground within a week of your nuptials.”
    â€œBut I was nowhere near the church when—”
    â€œTrue or false?”
    Chloe huffed out a disgruntled breath. “True.”
    â€œThat unfortunate event was seen as a harbinger of things to come. At least that’s what the tongue-waggers claimed when your bridegroom failed to survive the honeymoon in Venice.”
    â€œLucius fell off a gondola.” Chloe crossed her arms under her breasts knowing full well the gesture only accentuated her charms. “You can hardly blame me if the man couldn’t swim.”
    True to form, Blackwood’s gaze dipped to her décolletage. Men were so very easy to predict.
    But Blackwood pressed gamely on, refusing to be distracted. “Your husband wasn’t helped to fall off the gondola, was he?”
    â€œOf course not,” she said in a properly scandalized tone. “Well, not unless one believes a bottle of amaretto could be guilty of such a crime. Poor Lucius did imbibe an overabundance of the liquor. I had no idea when I married him how fond he was of drink.”
    â€œAnd the gondolier couldn’t be bothered to fish him out of the canal?”
    â€œDespite what you hear about how romantic Venice is, the water is terribly dirty. The gondolier couldn’t see a thing in that murk.” She shrugged and then smiled. “Dear Giovanni. He was such a comfort.”
    â€œI’ll just bet he was. Especially since your dearly departed Lucius left you a bequest large enough to make you a considerable heiress.” Blackwood smiled unpleasantly, as if he knew more than he was saying and could somehow prove it. “Then there was your second husband.”
    â€œViscount Cavendish,” she supplied helpfully.
    â€œIf memory serves, he lasted a scant six months before you were forced to don widow’s weeds again. True?”
    â€œTrue,” she admitted. “But you must realize, Cavendish was rather elderly to begin with.”
    â€œForty years your senior, by all accounts.” This time Lord Blackwood’s gaze held grudging admiration. “You simply wore him out.”
    She giggled and returned his wicked smile. “That’s true. But believe me, he died a happy man.”
    â€œI’m sure, but he didn’t succumb amid the delights of your bed until after he’d redrafted his will, making you the sole heiress of his liquid assets,” Blackwood said. “I hear it left the son from his first marriage with a venerable title, a crumbling estate, and no funds with which to run it.”
    â€œCavendish was never good at thinking things through.”
    â€œBut you are, you delightful little hussy, you.”
    She wished he’d call her worse. A bit of the vulgar tongue was just what she needed sometimes. Cavendish used to say she was his “dirty doxy,” and it made her feel deliciously wicked. “Oh, Blackwood, you say the sweetest things.”
    â€œWhich brings us to husband number three.” Blackwood used the end of her long curl to tease along the edge of her bodice. “Your third husband was a lawyer, I believe,” Blackwood said.
    â€œHe was. Mr. Benedict Longbotham, Esquire.”
    â€œAnd the only one of your husbands to be without a