Forbidden (Scandalous Sirens) Read Free

while and regroup his defenses now his father had shown no punches were to be pulled in the trial that lay ahead.
    Instead, he lowered himself into the chair opposite his father’s fiancée. “Thank you, I will have a brandy,” he told Rufus, answering the question a good host would have asked.
    Rufus’ upper lip curled and his eyes narrowed. He looked up at the manservant standing by the door of the dining room and jerked his head. Silently, the man glided to a buffet laid with decanters and crystal to pour the drink.
    Vaughn glanced at Elisa again.
    She delicately cut her meat into small pieces, lifted the fork and slid a piece into her mouth. A visible pulse beat at the base of the long column of her throat.
    The servant placed the brandy in front of Vaughn. Rufus began to eat again, attacking his plate with furious gusto. With every loaded forkful of food he would take a big mouthful of claret. The red liquid dribbled from the corners of his mouth as he chomped vigorously.
    Vaughn looked away, his disgust growing. Surely the man would try a bit harder in front of his intended? How could she contemplate marrying this gruesome imp? Or perhaps the money was worth it to her….
    He looked back to the silent beauty on the other side of the table. He still could not believe this was the same woman of whom he’d heard tell. The gossips had spared him no detail: a bride at seventeen, wed to an aging count. A mother at nineteen and a cuckolded wife the same year. Then, swiftly, she had set about giving her husband his own set of horns. The gossips had been firm in their approval of her husband’s reaction to her supposed whoring. He had taken the only honorable course of action an aggrieved husband could; he’d challenged her lover to a duel. No honor had been lost because he’d been killed. In fact, society had gathered about his grieving family and presented a solid, united front to anyone who dared to abuse the deceased lord’s memory.
    That had been years ago. In the aftermath, Elisa’s name had quickly disappeared into shamed obscurity. No good woman or honorable gentleman would speak of her aloud in polite company. It had only been the relaxed bawdy banter around a late night card table that had alerted Vaughn to the fact Elisa had re-emerged from her exile. His card companions that night had thought it a superb jest his own father had proposed to her. Vaughn had gone along with the joke at the time, thinking the pair deserved each other.
    The contradiction between her appearance and her past was indeed confusing.
    She was pushing at a piece of the meat on her plate with her fork and Vaughn wondered if she did so to avoid looking up and seeing him watching her. Was she aware of him? By her sweet looks, he would have judged her an innocent, but her reputation told him she probably knew and understood every hot thought running through his mind.
    Vaughn sipped at his brandy thoughtfully, alternatively watching Rufus eat and Elisa toy with her food. She really was a lovely creature, he realized. He was not at all surprised two men had fought to the death over her.
    She touched her mouth with her napkin, then lifted a fingertip to slide it across her lips a second time, without the linen. It was unconsciously graceful and sensuous. Vaughn’s body tightened with an old familiar ache, intensified beyond reason like a taut bow string stretched to the limits of endurance, vibrating with tension and packed with potential power to explode.
    The realization slammed into Vaughn with the shock of ice water.
    He wanted her.
    And the wanting was not a casual, passing impulse. It was burning in him, pushing aside thought, reason, caution.
    Vaughn stared at her, feeling his heart thump erratically and the beat echo in his temple. What was happening to him? Had he lost all good sense?
    His thoughts were scattered when Rufus’ hand thumped into his upper arm.
    “You’re silent, boy,” Rufus said, not bothering to hide his loathing