The Secrets of a Courtesan Read Free Page A

bought
    her. And yet from the first he had thought that there was more to the transaction than that. It had
    not been solely his money for her body. She had given him life and light and warmth, wrapping
    him around with her generosity of spirit, her very presence lightening the load of the
    responsibilities he carried. In return he had shared everything with her. Not simply his money but
    his concerns and his cares, his deepest, darkest fears and his hopes for the future. Even though he
    was a mature man of one and thirty he had fallen for her like a love-struck youth. He had wanted
    to marry her. It had been perfect. Or so he had thought until she had left him, run away, denting
    his pride, making him an utter laughingstock—the foolish duke who had wanted to marry his
    venal mistress—and breaking a heart that until he had met her he had cynically believed could
    never be touched.
    He had been a fool. That much was clear. The thing that angered him most was that he had loved
    her and believed his feelings were returned when in fact she had merely been using him for
    money and advancement. He had been wealthy enough but nowhere near as rich as some of the
    peers who sought Eve’s favor now that she was the toast of the demimonde . It had been madness
    to think that he could hold her if another man offered more. When he had been a mere ten years
    old he had seen his mother do precisely the same thing, betray his father, running off abroad to
    be with her wealthy lover. There had been the most appalling crim con divorce case that had
    dragged through the House of Lords and made his father look like a naive, impotent fool. And
    Rowarth, who savagely told himself that he should have known better, had almost made the
    same mistake as his luckless father. He knew he should be grateful that he had not committed the
    ultimate folly of marrying Eve as he had wanted to.
    After Eve’s defection he had gone abroad for several years—he had business concerns in India
    that had occupied him most successfully until the pleas of his estate managers had brought him
    back to England to face those responsibilities he had neglected. He had believed that he had put
    aside thoughts of Eva Night until he had come back to London and found himself searching for
    her face in a crowd or listening for news of her. He had learned that no one had heard of her
    since she had run away from him. It had been the on dit at the time but Eve was now long gone,
    her star extinguished, the brief time when they had been the glittering couple of the demimonde
    all but forgotten. Rowarth had tried to forget it, too, but every so often the memory of Eve would
    stab him like a wound that had not completely healed.
    Then Lord Hawkesbury’s letter had arrived out of the blue, asking for his help. Yes, he would go
    to Yorkshire and confront his beautiful, treacherous former mistress. Yes, he would ascertain if
    she were a member of a dangerous criminal fraternity, as Hawkesbury’s intelligence suggested.
    And in doing so he would prove once and for all that he was free of the hold she had once
    exerted over him.
    Criminal she might be. Beautifully, wantonly seductive she most certainly was. Eve’s face still
    had the vivid animation that Rowarth remembered: her creamy complexion was still dusted with
    amber freckles, her hair was still a fiery red, and the quick, expressive movements of her body
    were as ridiculously, dangerously appealing to him as ever. Not even her fearsomely respectable
    worsted gown and dark blue spencer could hide the lush curves of a figure he had known
    intimately and already ached to explore again in exquisite detail, unable to subdue the desires of
    his body even while he deplored her and the hold she still had over him.
    He had not expected to want her.
    He had thought those feelings dead and gone. They should have been—they should have been
    annihilated, destroyed by her betrayal. He was furious that they were not. Yet he was forced