Read Online Noble Destiny by Katie MacAlister - Free Book Online Page A

receive discreet assistance with regards to her codpiece problem, and none would be the wiser.
    He was mentally forming the excuse he would use to make his escape when he entered the room. “My apologies for being delayed, Lady—mmrph!”
    Dare didn’t have time to do more than catch a glimpse of heated blue eyes before he was pulled into an intimate embrace.
    With Henry VIII. A very well-padded, bearded, codpieced Henry VIII.
    He unwound the arms clasped behind his neck in order to dis-attach his lips from the mouthful of scratchy red-orange wool that covered Charlotte’s lower face. “I never thought the opportunity to voice this opinion would arise, but there is much to be said for women who shave.”
    Charlotte, dismay filling her eyes for a moment at his rejection of her advances, smiled instead. “I beg your pardon, I forgot about the beard. One moment, I’ll remove it, then we may continue with the ravishing.”
    Dare shook his head in hopes of clearing away whatever it was that was keeping him from hearing her correctly. He knew Charlotte’s verbal acrobatics were sometimes filled with leaps in logic that even a learned man would be hard put to follow, but the one she had just made was surely beyond even her fertile mind.
    â€œAbout the problem with your costume—”
    â€œThat’s been remedied,” she replied, frowning as she tugged on the side of the woolly beard. “’Twas just a leaf, not a family of dormice as I had suspected. Drat this thing. Crouch must have used extra glue on it. I can’t seem to peel it off, and I ask you, how on earth am I ever going to attend to the ravishing in time if I’m wearing a beard!”
    An ugly suspicion flared to life in Dare’s mind. “Exactly whom do you expect will be ravishing you?”
    Charlotte frowned as she muttered something about needing glue remover. “Pheasant feathers! You’ll just have to keep your lips clear, is all. As for your question, no one will be ravishing me , Alasdair. I shall ravish you .”
    â€œ You what? ” Dare couldn’t believe that even Charlotte, outspoken and uninhibited as she was, would suggest such a thing. A moment of honesty had him amending the thought to a disbelief that she would plan his ravishment in someone else’s home, certainly not anywhere they could be easily…he sucked in his breath at the horrible realization that she had set a very clever snare for him, and he, a man who had prided himself daily on avoiding just such entrapment, had blindly walked right into her clutches.
    â€œYou needn’t worry, I shall take care of everything. You won’t have to lift a finger,” Charlotte promised.
    He stared at her, dumbfounded. Having removed the black-and-gold velvet doublet, she was spinning in a frustrated circle as she attempted to reach behind herself to untie the tapes holding a large pillow bound over a linen shirt. “Pooh! I can’t reach the dratted thing. If you could just unbind me, my lord, I will be happy to begin the proceedings. I don’t imagine we have much time, and although my experience with ravishing gentlemen is limited, I assume it will take more than a minute or two.”
    Dare stared in continued disbelief, his emotions tangled and confused as anger and outrage battled with a very unwelcome desire to laugh. He should leave that exact moment. He should walk out of the room and leave Charlotte to whatever horribly convoluted plan she had hatched in that Gordian knot of a mind. He should turn his back on her and never see her again, never again feel the velvet brush of her voice, never experience the brilliant, brief surge of joy that swelled within him when he caught sight of her, and certainly he should never, ever hold her in his arms again.
    It just was not sane.
    â€œSo be it. I’m mad,” Dare growled to himself as he leaned against the door and crossed his arms over