Her Christmas Earl Read Free Page A

this point, unrepentant devil he was, he’d enjoyed himself. More, he hated to admit, than he had in years.
    But because of that barely concealed fear in her voice, he accepted that he must make some genuine attempt to break free. With a muffled sigh, he stepped back, braced himself, and plowed his shoulder into the solid oak door.
    Then bit back a decidedly unheroic groan.
    Hartley Manor had been built for a more warlike age. It was designed to withstand trebuchets and cannons. A mere human shoulder, no matter how enthusiastically applied, hardly rattled the latch. All Erskine got for his trouble was a bruised arm.
    Although Miss Sanders didn’t speak, he felt her desperate hope that he’d get them out. Only that made him apply himself twice more to battering at the door. With equally disappointing results.
    “It’s useless.” Miss Sanders paused, and for the first time, he heard a trace of warmth. “But thank you for trying. I can’t imagine this is your idea of the nicest way to spend Christmas Eve either.”
    She’d think he was mad if he told her that right now he couldn’t think of another person he’d rather have with him. Was he getting old? He was only twenty-eight, but this last year or so, the parade of decadent pleasures had begun to pall. As a younger man, he’d enjoyed kicking up his heels in London and shocking his straitlaced and tyrannical father back in Scotland. But since the old man’s death two years ago, Erskine had a grim feeling that his hell-raising smacked of going through the motions. Nothing in ages had compared to the piquant thrill of knowing that he and Philippa Sanders were alone together—and that at last he might discover what lurked beneath her serene shell.
    “Someone will come and get us.”
    Her laugh was hollow, but he admired her ability to squeeze amusement, however bleak, from their dilemma. He heard a faint bump as she slumped against the wall beside him. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”
    “Odds are that it will be my valet Mills. He’s the soul of discretion.” With a master of such rackety reputation, Mills had to be.
    “Does he wait up for you?” She sounded a little brighter. “Perhaps he’ll check soon.”
    Erskine slid to the carpeted floor and leaned his head against the recalcitrant door. He extended his legs until his feet bumped the opposite wall. Stupidly he hated to disappoint her. Absurd as it was, she awoke a faint chivalry in his black soul. “I gave him the night off.”
    “Oh.”
    More rustling. Then something soft dropped across his lap. “What’s this?”
    “A coat. It’s getting colder.”
    It was. And he wasn’t dressed for a winter night. He’d been in the process of preparing for bed when he’d caught his little burglar. It was yet another sign of his jaded mood that he’d forsaken the drunken buffoons in the dining room and come upstairs to sleep.
    “Very sporting of you, Miss Sanders.” He slipped the coat over his shoulders. The wool was scratchy, but he appreciated the immediate warmth. “Considering that my arrogance in trying to teach you a lesson got us into this trouble.”
    “You meant well.”
    He almost laughed. Her generous response surprised him and sparked a faint gratification. He couldn’t remember the last time anyone had said that to him. He couldn’t remember the last time those words had accurately described his motives. The irony was that Miss Sanders was right. He’d been horrified to discover her in his room. And doubly horrified at the salacious pictures invading his mind of how to take advantage of her presence. “You took an awful risk. What if you’d broken into the room of a man with no principles?”
    Another laugh, self-mocking. “I thought I had.”
    His lips flattened. “In that case, you should be scared out of your mind.”
    More rustling and she dropped to sit. The restricted space meant that she ventured dangerously close. “I don’t scare easily.”
    He didn’t bother pointing