Read Online Never Romance a Rake by Liz Carlyle - Free Book Online

him, her eyes glinting. “Why did you gamble with Valigny?” she demanded. “Tell me. If not the money, why?”
    His frustration finally exploded. He caught her by the elbow, and dragged her against him. “Because I want you, damn it,” he snarled down at her. “Why else? I’m no better than Enders. I think I should like you under my thumb, mademoiselle . In my bed. Beneath me. I should dearly love to make you eat a few of your prideful words, and do my every bidding. Perhaps that is why .”
    Satisfaction glinted in her eyes. “ Très bien ,” she murmured, stepping back as he released her. “At least I know what I am dealing with.”
    Rothewell forced down his anger. He was a liar—and he felt suddenly weary and ashamed. “Oh, you have no idea, Mademoiselle Marchand,” he said, his voice dropping to a whisper. “For all your avant-garde upbringing, you cannot possibly know what you are dealing with . You have no business with a man like me. I release you, my dear, from this foolish, Faustian bargain of your father’s. You are not his to barter—no matter what he might imagine when he is in his cups and desperate.”
    Mademoiselle Marchand had resumed her solitary vigil by the window and no longer faced him. Her delicate, thin shoulders had rolled inward with fatigue now, and much of the hauteur had left her frame. He had never seen another human being look so desperately alone.
    Slowly, she turned and let her gaze take him in again, but this time it was his face which she studied. “No,” she said quietly. “No, Lord Rothewell, I think shall stand by my father’s bargain.”
    Rothewell gave a sharp laugh. “I don’t think you understand, mademoiselle, ” he answered. “I have no need of a wife.”
    For a long, expectant moment, she hesitated, her mind toying with the knife’s edge of something he could not fathom. She was weighing him. Judging him again with her all-seeing eyes. And it made him acutely uncomfortable.
    She crossed the room to face him again and dropped her voice to a throaty whisper. “If you want me, Lord Rothewell,” she said, “then have me.”
    â€œI beg your pardon?”
    Mademoiselle Marchand leaned into him, set her hands on his lapels, and dropped her sweeping black lashes. “Have me.” He watched her lush lips form each word, mesmerized. “Give me your oath—your pledge as a gentleman that we shall marry and share equally in my inheritance—then have me. Tonight. Now.”
    â€œYou must be mad,” he managed. But he was drawing in the scent of her—that warm, spicy mélange that smelled of orchids and seductive feminine heat—and his traitorous body was eager.
    Her breasts were pressed against him now. Her mouth—and that dark-as-midnight voice—were hot against his ear. “ Beneath you ,” she whispered. “ Under your thumb. Doing your every bidding . That is your fantasy, n’est-ce pas ?”
    Rothewell dredged up what little restraint he possessed and set his hand to the back of her head. “Were I to have you, mademoiselle, ” he whispered against her ear, “and act out even the most fainthearted of my fantasies, everyone from here to High Holborn Street would have to listen to the racket, because I’d have my hand laid to your bare backside.”
    She drew back, her eyes wide.
    â€œNo,” he said, sneering. “I did not think that was what you had in mind. But if you insist on acting like a foolish child, then that is how I’ll treat you, Mademoiselle Marchand. Do not toy with me. You will rue the day.”
    She dropped her gaze, and to his undying agony, backed away. “ Très bien, my lord,” she murmured, her voice amazingly cool. “You make your point. Is Lord Enders still in my father’s parlor?”
    Rothewell shrugged. “I daresay. What of