Twice the Temptation Read Free

look about. “This is not a bedchamber.”
     
      By now a crowd surrounded them. The lout was going to absolutely ruin her. “It is the middle of the street. If you don’t remove yourself from my person this instant, I will kick you so hard that Daisy, whoever she is, will never wish to set eyes on you again.”
     
      “Hm.” Setting his hands on the street at either side of her shoulders, he pushed himself up. Their gazes again caught for the briefest of seconds before he twisted off of her to sit up. “You are definitely not Daisy.”
     
      Evangeline climbed to her feet as gracefully as she could, leaving him sitting in the road. “It is after nine o’clock in the morning, sir,” she said, looking down at his upturned face with his black hair falling across one eye. “How can you possibly be this dissipated already?”
     
      “I am returning home, I think.” He frowned, the expression lowering his brows and making her notice his sensuous mouth again. “So for me it’s still the previous evening. And it’s lord; not sir. I am no knight.”
     
      “Clearly not. Knights are supposed to be chivalrous. They do not fall upon women in the streets.”
     
      “I wouldn’t be so certain of that.” With a groan he clasped the coach step and pulled himself to his feet. “Oh, good God.”
     
      She put her hands on her hips, having to look up to meet his gaze now, since he stood at least a foot taller than she did. “I will assume you are incapable of renderingany assistance,” she assessed. The statement on its face sounded odd, because physically he looked supremely capable—except for the drunken swaying, of course. “Kindly stay clear of the coaches.” With that she turned her back on him and stalked up to Maywing and the other driver. “Gentlemen!” she said loudly. “You, set your brake. Maywing, untangle the harnesses and back our coach up so we clear our wheels.”
     
      “Epping,” the low, masculine voice came from right behind her, “I don’t recall asking you to stop off anywhere. Clear the cattle and take me home.”
     
      The other driver immediately stopped his exuberant arguing. “But m’lord, it wasn’t my fault, and we’ve near lost a wheel. I—”
     
      “I don’t recall asking you for details, either,” he cut in. “Home. Now. Exchange information with this fellow, and go.”
     
      “Yes, m’lord.”
     
      Evangeline stifled a scowl. Very well, the fellow wasn’t completely useless. And considering that the object was to get away from the growing crowd without delay, she was glad for that. Many men, she supposed, returned home very late and very inebriated, and his falling on her had been an accident.
     
      A hand touched her shoulder, and she turned around. He did have very nice eyes, though she would have liked them better if they hadn’t been bloodshot and barely in focus. “Yes?”
     
      “I assume you are uninjured?”
     
      “I am.” No thanks to him. But she wasn’t about to admit to a bruised bottom.
     
      “You kiss very well.”
     
      Evangeline blinked. She’d been so certain he was goingto apologize for his crass behavior that for a second what hehad said made no sense. “That was your imagination,” she finally fumbled, her cheeks warming. “Pray do not insult me by relying on your faulty recollections of a…sodden and mistaken memory.”
     
      His mouth curved. “I know a pleasant kiss when I taste one. Tell me your name.”
     
      He was so inebriated he probably wouldn’t remember it. Now that she’d had a moment to gather her thoughts, she could see that he was indeed dressed in formal evening wear—though his cravat looked as though it had been retied, and poorly, and his waistcoat was buttoned wrong. And his hair was wild, pushed up on one side and tangled across his eyes like a thick black spider’s nest. He badly needed a shave, though she had to admit that the overall appearance of masculine