Cheryl Holt Read Free

twenty-three. How could she not have known what now seemed to be so vital? Did men regularly fondle women’s bodily parts? Was this a typical behavior?
    The fevered queries raced by, and she suffered a feeling of unreality, as if she’d been thrust into a foreign country where she didn’t comprehend the language or the rules by which to conduct herself.
    His motions on the courtesan’s nipple became more seductive, more tantalizing, and her embarrassment spiraled. She slapped his hand away, rammed the chair backward, and stood. As she’d suspected, he was a gentleman, and he stepped away, granting her space in which to collect herself, though scant composure could be located.
    From the moment he’d entered the room, the meeting had disintegrated. Likely, he deemed her to be a harlot, or worse—though she was too inexperienced to know if there
was
something worse than a harlot. Numerous horrid scenarios careened through her mind, the mainone being that she might sustain the calamity of bumping into him the next day while in the earl’s company.
    The recipe for disaster was fomenting and about to boil out of the pot.
    She had to provide him with a viable explanation for her presence, then she had to depart with some amount of aplomb.
    “You’ve mistaken my intent,” she declared. “I had selected this book because I’d supposed it contained recreations of Rembrandt’s paintings. I was stunned by its genuine content. Stunned, I tell you!”
    He smirked. “Yes, I watched how
stunned
you were after you’d studied it for ten or fifteen minutes.”
    “I did not!” Wild horses could drag her to her death, and she wouldn’t admit to doing any such a thing. “I was aghast—simply aghast!—and I was just about to put it away when you barged in.”
    Shrewdly, he scrutinized her, recognizing her prevarication. After a lengthy pause, he gallantly replied, “Have it your way, milady. But in case you’re curious, Edward has an extensive assortment of erotica. I’d be more than happy to show you the rest of it.”
    “The earl has more?” She gulped, dozens of turbulent considerations swamping her. The first was that Edward could only be the Earl of Salisbury, her potential betrothed, which meant this villain knew the nobleman well enough to refer to him by his given name.
    The second was that the man she might wed hoarded a collection of the risqué. Why would he? What did it forebode?
    The implications terrified her, and as she peered down the extensive shelves of the earl’s library, her stomach churned. Through the flicker of her candle, she estimated that there were hundreds of books, perhaps thousands, neatly grouped in rows from floor to ceiling.
    What secrets were hidden in the dusty multitude? How many were licentious? What kind of person owned such lurid albums? What did that say about his morals and preferences?
    The various titles appeared so innocent, so benign, but then so had the tome she’d retrieved. It had been deceptively placed with the others, and she’d assumed it would be in the same vein, a boring, uninspired series of replications that would hastily have her nodding off.
    Well, she’d never get to sleep now. Not after this discovery!
    “I’m not
curious
in the slightest,” she fibbed. “You needn’t indicate any more. In fact, I don’t need any reading material. I’m off to my bed. If you’ll excuse me . . .”
    She started toward the door, but unfortunately, the path to freedom was past the wretch who was wedged between the table and the wall. She couldn’t walk by without brushing up against him; her conundrum amused him, and he didn’t budge.
    As if daring her, he tried—with the force of his attention—to compel her to peek at him, but she wouldn’t.
    Scowling, she advanced, determined to plow through, and just as she would have slipped by, he clasped her wrist. The gesture wasn’t threatening, but unexpected, intimate. She halted.
    Their sides were merged. Arms, hips,