Julia London - [Scandalous 02] Read Online Free Page A

But then he’d been so bloody cheerful and had smiled so charmingly that she couldn’t help but believe that he’d agreed to it.
    Sir Charm continued to hold her arm as Carson and his enormous Highlander locked them in the room again. When she heard the bolt slide into the lock, Lizzie jerkedher arm up, intending to break free of the earl’s tight grip, but he startled her by suddenly wheeling about. In one swift movement, he pushed her up against the bed. Lizzie was so startled that she lost her footing and slipped, landing on the bed.
    Suddenly he was looming over her, forcing her onto her back and bracing himself with one knee and his hands. “If you do anything so foolish again, Lizzie Beal, I shall no’ hesitate to exact a proper punishment! I do no’ intend to hang!”
    The ominous sounding proper punishment notwithstanding, Lizzie snapped, “You obviously deserve to hang, you scoundrel, or you’d no’ be here, aye?”
    For some reason that made him smile roguishly, and honestly, he seemed almost an apparition with his handsome, chiseled face, his square chin, his black hair, and dove gray eyes. In fact, his smile was astonishingly captivating, and for a moment, one slender moment, Lizzie didn’t mind that he was holding her down on a bed.
    “I’ll no’ deny that I’m a scoundrel…but I’ve done nothing to deserve the likes of you .” His eyes wandered from hers, drifting lazily down to her lips, to the skin of her bosom, which was, Lizzie realized with horror, revealed to him, as her shawl had slipped. “Although I will freely admit that I had imagined someone far less comely.”
    “Let me up!” she cried, pushing against his chest.
    Lambourne caught her hand and held it tightly against his breast. “Let us no’ be so hasty, lass. First, I will have your word that you’ll no’ try something as foolish as leaping from windows.”
    “I’ll no’ promise anything!”
    “Then prepare for your punishment.”
    “All right, all right!” she cried.
    “All right, all right what ?”
    She took a breath, chiding herself to think. “I promise, ” she said testily as she slyly moved her free hand down her side, to her knee, where she gathered the fabric of her gown.
    He cocked his head and frowned. “As easy as that?” he asked suspiciously. His gaze was drawn to her bosom again, making Lizzie feel hot beneath his perusal. “I pray you are true, for I need you to be easy now.”
    Easy! Lizzie gasped and tried to shove him off her body, but Lambourne planted the hand he held high above her head and placed his other hand on her shoulder, holding her down. “Try to listen, will you, for there is more than one way to skin a cat,” he said, and Lizzie frantically gathered more of her gown until she could touch her bare knee. “It has been my experience that if one fights, the chains that bind will only tighten,” he said. “But if one is easy, the chains will slacken.”
    “I will never be easy for you!” Lizzie cried as she raised her leg and touched the polished handle of the small dirk she’d managed to put in her stocking before Carson’s men could drag her away from her home. “I will die before I am easy for you!”
    “ Ach, now, a stubborn, willful lass is bound only for trouble,” he added, and without as much as a glance at her free hand, he caught her wrist and twisted her arm. Lizzie cried out and dropped the dirk.
    The earl grabbed it off the bed and held it up between them. “This might have been handy to have when you demanded I undo the binding, aye?” he snapped angrily. “Why did you no’ tell me you had it? Because you intended to use it on me ?” He hurled the dirk across the room.
    “How dare —” Lizzie started, but he grabbed her arms and pulled her up at almost the same moment he twistedher about and tossed her facedown on the bed. Lizzie barely managed to get her hands beneath her before he crawled over her, his legs locking her in on either side, his body on