The Second Seduction of a Lady Read Free Page A

anything but the greatest esteem.” He sounded reasonable and earnest. The sincerity in his voice plucked at her heart.
    She’d be a fool, again, to believe him. “I was nothing but a game to you, a conquest to impress your friends.”
    “You were my love, the woman I wanted to marry.”
    She answered in precise, clipped syllables. “You wanted to marry me because you had no choice. I appreciated the honor you did me with your forced proposal, but declined to tie myself for life to such a man, for such a reason.”
    She would have stalked off, but he stayed her with a hand on her elbow. “You insult me, Eleanor, and you are wrong,” he said. “It’s true that I owed you marriage but I didn’t offer for you solely because I had to. You were not compromised, not publicly, as is proven by the fact that your reputation is intact.”
    Again she shook him off. “No thanks to you! I was the subject of a drunken wager. Do you deny it?”
    “I cannot, to my shame, though it was not I who made the bet. It was Ashdown. I wanted no part of it until I set eyes on you.”
    Far from placated, she spun around to confront him. “Am I supposed to be flattered by that?” she demanded, putting her hands on her hips and glaring at him. “Is it acceptable that you took part in a contest for my favors because you discovered that I wasn’t quite the dried-up spinster Sir George Ashdown had claimed?”
    “That is not how it was.” His voice had lost its soothing tone and she was glad of it. It was only fair that he should be as agitated as she.
    “But you took the money. You won the competition and collected your winnings. Will you deny it?”
    “You are willfully misunderstanding me. I’d have kissed you even if there wasn’t a penny in it for me.”
    Kiss! He’d done a great deal more than kiss! “I really don’t care,” she said with her nose in the air. “I was overcome by the proximity of a charming rogue on a summer night, not the first foolish woman to make such a mistake and doubtless not the last. Luckily no lasting harm was done.”
    Voices intruded, Robert’s and a young female’s. Max looked around as they came into view. From the state of their garments, it appeared both had suffered the same fate as he. The three of them were dripping wet, while Eleanor stood immaculate and dry, her clothing as unruffled as her heart. She could very well be the officious harridan who had been described to him before he set eyes on her.
    It had been at a dinner hosted by the Earl of Egremont for the officers of the Sussex militia.
    “You want to hear about pestilential females?” The question came from Sir George Ashdown, one of the local gentry summoned to Petworth Park for this all-male occasion. “There’s no woman who’s more of a nuisance than my wife’s cousin Eleanor.”
    There were some embarrassed protests from the officers. The topic of conversation had been women and the traps they set for unwitting men. Women, not ladies. It really wasn’t proper for a group of gentlemen, who’d left the dinner table to take the air, to discuss ladies .
    “Damn it, Ashdown.” The speaker was the major of the regiment who had invited Max down to Sussex for the weeklong race meeting. “I wouldn’t discuss any cousin of mine when my cock’s pissing in the wind.” The earl’s claret had been good and plentiful and the major’s words were slurred.
    So were Ashdown’s. “Button it up then. Complain all you want about your birds of paradise, but at least you can be rid of them. There’s no disposing of a wife.”
    “You’re talking about Lady Ashdown?” Another officer was confused as well as disapproving.
    “Lady Ashdown never gave me any trouble until Eleanor Hardwick came to stay with us. Now it’s nothing but nagging, all day long. No muddy boots in the house, no wet dogs in the drawing room, and she won’t let me bed her when I’m drunk.” Sir George arranged his breeches. “The haughty bitch Eleanor put