LITMIR.BIZ

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for the sheer pleasure of his touch. And for the sake of that half-smile tilting his mouth. Tears sprang to her eyes. “Please stop.” She hardly recognized the choked voice. “For pity’s sake, please stop.”

      He frowned and lifted his hand. “Sidonie, I won’t take it further.”

      “You say that but you don’t mean it.” Hurriedly she shoved her skirt down. “And I fall for your tricks like the veriest moonling.”

      In helpless frustration, Jonas stared up at Sidonie from where he kneeled. Every second in her company stoked his arousal. He wasn’t fool enough to imagine the fascination one-sided. She might say no, but her cheeks flushed with excitement and he couldn’t forget how only hours ago she’d kissed him. Now that her backbone lost its forbidding rigidity, she reclined against the sofa like an odalisque. An odalisque in a superfine hacking jacket.

      She should look ludicrous. What she looked was irresistible.

      He gritted his teeth and struggled for self-control. The urge to trail his fingers up those slender legs to the treasure at their apex beat like a tattoo. But with every step she took toward surrender, her uncertainty grew. If he pushed her too far, she’d run. Roberta or no Roberta.

      The promise of the greater prize made him set her foot down. Immediately she lifted her legs and curled them under her, out of reach.

      “You know I mean to seduce you.”

      “I know,” she said in a raw voice, wiping her eyes with the backs of her hands. He tried to tell himself he was too old and cynical to find the childish gesture touching. “I’ve always rather despised people who allowed passion to lead them astray.”

      He shifted to lean against the sofa, his shoulders resting near her bent knees. “Now you find passion is a ruthless master.”

      Her delicate scent wafted out to torment him. He couldn’t sit this close without touching her. He twisted, leaning an elbow on the couch, and caught her hand. To his surprise, she didn’t jerk away.

      “Fit punishment for assuming myself immune.” Her voice lowered. “Every man I’ve known has been contemptible. My father was weak and greedy and unable to countenance a contrary opinion. He was incapable of kindness or affection. While he didn’t hit my mother, his tyranny turned her into a cypher until she just faded away and died when I was twelve.”

      “I’m sorry.” He was. The Forsythe women had appalling luck with the men in their lives. And it wasn’t as if Sidonie’s entanglement with Jonas Merrick would do her any good.

      “My father never ceased to blame my mother for only producing two useless girl children.”

      The picture of an unhappy family life that she painted was vivid, if heartbreaking. “Hardly your fault.”

      Sidonie shrugged with a carelessness Jonas didn’t believe. “The only time he ever expressed an instant of satisfaction with either of his children was when William offered for Roberta. A lord for mere Miss Forsythe? Even a shabby, slightly questionable lord counted as a triumph. Our family wasn’t influential and while Roberta’s portion was respectable, she was hardly an heiress.”

      “The uncertainty about my birth blighted William’s marital prospects.” Jonas didn’t hide his satisfaction. After all, William had blighted most of his prospects.

      “William courted Roberta as a last resort. His original ambitions were much higher. But no magnate would waste a daughter upon a man who might be disinherited any time.”

      “Not that he has been disinherited.”

      “No.”

      He waited for her to continue, but she remained quiet. Curious, Jonas glanced up. She stared down into her lap and her lush mouth twisted with unhappiness. He wondered why. Last night she’d been ready enough to call him a bastard to his face. This namby-pamby reaction to his scandalous origins seemed uncharacteristic. “No need to step carefully. I’m accustomed to being socially unacceptable. I’ve had years to come to terms with illegitimacy.”

      Did she guess he lied? Because of course he did. His bastardy was a wound that never healed. When she finally looked up, Sidonie’s brown eyes didn’t betray derision. Instead they were veiled as he’d never seen them.

      “It…it can’t have been easy when you were raised as the heir,” she said hesitantly, and to his surprise her grip on his hand tightened as if she extended comfort.

      “Ancient history, tesoro. What use raking up old ashes?” His gaze fastened on her lips, soft, so soft. “Are you sure you won’t let me kiss you?”

      “I must be wise.”

      “Wisdom is an overrated virtue, amore mio.”

      She cast him an unimpressed look. “You’re no expert on virtue.”

      “Virtue is my foe. I’ve devoted great study to it.”

      He watched her struggle to summon some crushing remark and decided to rescue her. “How did you sneak away from Barstowe Hall?”

      “Roberta’s help.”

      “Even so, surely some guardian must barricade the garden gate against swains vying to glimpse the fair Sidonie.”

      “William has been my guardian since my father died six years ago,” she said flatly.

      All desire to smile left Jonas. Instead, a sickening suspicion set his gut heaving. “Good God, don’t tell me the blackguard hits you, too?”

      “Jonas, you’re hurting my hand.”

      “I’m a clumsy dog,” he muttered, loosening his grip. “If he hit you, I’ll vivisect the worm.”

      “William has never hit me.” She stroked his cheek, the first time she’d willingly touched him. In her eyes, he saw a softness he couldn’t remember before, even when he’d kissed her.

      “Why should you be safe?” Yet as he stared into the beautiful face that conveyed strength as well as allure, he guessed why. Jonas was long past crediting his foul cousin with anything like shame. But under Sidonie’s clear gaze, perhaps even William retrieved some vestige of honor.

      “We mostly live apart.” She paused and her earlier inexplicable discomfort returned. “I run Barstowe Hall with the pittance he sends. And there’s always written work for a bluestocking like me. Lately, I’ve catalogued William’s library.” She spoke reluctantly, although Jonas couldn’t imagine why. The subject was hardly controversial. She was as jumpy talking about her life with William and Roberta as she was when Jonas touched her. Almost.

      “Anything interesting?”

      She avoided his eyes. “Your father took all the valuable books before his death, as you well know.”

      Her existence sounded like drudgery. And lonely. But he made himself smile. “So what prompted my cousin’s sudden bibliophilia?”

      “He’s selling what’s left, of course. Surely you know how close to the wind he’s sailing. The last of Roberta’s dowry went earlier this year in some scheme for South Seas emerald mining.”

      “My cousin never had the touch in business.”

      She cast him a disapproving look. “No need to sound so smug. You know he’s reckless to compete with you.”

      “If he’d cut his coat to fit his cloth when he inherited, he could have lived perfectly comfortably at Barstowe Hall.” Jonas was deliberately disingenuous. William was a heaving mass of jealousy, conceit, and bluster. He’d never accept life as a quiet country squire while his bastard cousin turned the world on its ear. “The man’s his own worst enemy.”

      “I’d feel no compunction gloating over William’s disasters if my sister and nephews weren’t plunged into penury with him.”

      “What about your penury? You’re damned quick

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