Master of Love Read Online Free

forcibly repress the shiver of reaction that gripped her. The man was all leonine grace and seduction incarnate, smiling artlessly up at her from his bow as if daring her to make a fuss. He even had the audacity to add a wink—blast the man!
    â€œThe weather being so fine,” he said, continuing innocently, “I think we’ll take a turn about the gardens before luncheon, but I’ll send Danvers to fetch you to the drawing room for sherry when the rest of the guests arrive.”
    With a few more words all around, Lord Rexton gathered his guests and secretary, and the elegant company swept from the library.
    Callista sighed her relief.
    She’d survived her first meeting with Lord Rexton. Against her expectation, she admitted she found herself curious about this notorious “Lord Adonis.” Part of her almost looked forward to luncheon—although only almost, she thought with a shudder. Negotiating high-society table conversation with ladies plotting her ruin was definitely not among her talents.
    Who exactly was this viscount? The gentleman was not at all as she’d anticipated, although she was unsure whether it was his ludicrous blinding beauty or baffling apparent interest in books that threw her more for a loop.
    His lips came to mind, with their lush sinful curve—no man should look like that. While it wasn’t precisely his fault he was as handsome as a Greek god of antiquity, she quite loathed the visceral effect he triggered in her senses. Her core of honesty, however, forced up the thought that she perhaps more correctly feared this effect, as she’d never before encountered a man whose sheer physical presence so unsettled her.
    And then she recalled his eyes as he surveyed his collection. Had they shone with the same excitement she felt about every new volume that came into her hands? He was supposed to be a dissipated rake! Surely he couldn’t care about these books as she did?
    The man was a puzzle, but one that was none of her concern. No doubt someone with such a stunning face came to rely on a roué manner in all his interactions with women. Why, he probably couldn’t help but flirt! She’d simply have to make very clear that she was unmoved and uninterested in such interaction. Once she had made him accept that fact, surely they could deal well enough together. It was little different than house-training a new puppy: We’ll have none of that behavior in here, if you please. The more difficult challenge might be ensuring that her own control over her emotions and wayward senses never wavered.
    But the real puzzle was how in the world she was going to organize the scattered piles and open trunks of the eleven thousand books for which she was now responsible. The challenge both terrified her and, strangely, made her happier than she’d felt in a very long while.
    Unbidden, the thought arose that Lord Rexton might pose the same challenge to a woman.
    Goodness.
    The thought chased her all the way back to work.

Chapter 2
    L ord Rexton was bowing over some older lady’s hand when Mr. Danvers escorted Callista into the drawing room an hour later. Bowing and smiling that wicked, devastating smile, to the lady’s apparent besotted delight. He really does flirt all the time! Callista harrumphed to herself. Not that it’s any of my business, of course .
    She turned away briskly and scanned the room. About a dozen people milled about, all talking animatedly. A few ladies were present, but the guests were mainly older gentlemen: a little rumpled, rather portly, not at all at the forefront of fashion. One man with an untamed shock of gray hair spilled his sherry as he gesticulated grandly about a wonderful essay on the philosophy of love by an anonymous author known only as Amator Philosophiae, or the Lover of Philosophy, in the latest issue of Philosophers’ Quarterly . Another trod on the foot of his neighbor, apparently oblivious to all but