Seduced by the Scoundrel Read Online Free Page A

Seduced by the Scoundrel
Book: Seduced by the Scoundrel Read Online Free
Author: Louise Allen
Pages:
Go to
are not about to have hysterics.’
    It might be worth it to see how he reacted, but he would probably simply slap her or throw cold water in her face—the man had no sensibility. ‘I have been practising managing the train on a court presentation gown,’ she explained, as she reached for the fork and imagined plunging it into his hard heart. ‘This seems an unlikely place to put that into practice.’
    The stew consisted of large lumps of meat, roughly hewn vegetables and a gravy that owed a great deal to alcohol. She demolished it and mopped up the gravy with a hunk of bread, beyond good manners. Luke pushed a tumbler towards her. ‘Water. There’s a good clean well.’
    ‘How are you so well provisioned?’ she asked and tore another piece off the loaf. ‘There are how many of you? Ten? And you aren’t here legitimately, are you?’
    ‘I am,’ Luke said. He returned to his position by thehearth. ‘Mr Dornay—so far as the Governor is concerned—is a poet in search of solitude and inspiration for an epic work. I told him that I am nervous of being isolated from the inhabited islands by storms or fog, so I keep my stock of provisions high, even if that means stockpiling far more than one man could possibly need. And there are thirteen of us and we are most certainly here in secret.’
    She stowed away the surname. When it came to a court of law, when she testified against the men who had imprisoned and assaulted her, she would remember every name, every face. If he left her alive. She swallowed the fear until it lay like a cold stone in her stomach. ‘A poet?
You?’
He smiled, that cold, unamused smile, but did not answer. ‘When are you going to let me go?’
    ‘When we are done here.’ Luke pushed himself upright and went to the door. ‘I will leave you before the men eat all of my dinner. I’ll see you at supper time.’
    His hand was on the latch when Averil realised she couldn’t deal with the uncertainty any longer. ‘Are you going to kill me?’
    Luke turned. ‘If I wanted you dead all I had to do was throw you back or leave you here to die. I don’t kill women.’
    ‘You rape them, though. You are going to make me share your bed tonight, aren’t you?’ she flung back and then quailed at the anger that showed in every taut line of his face, his clenched fist as it rested on the door jamb.
He is going to hit me.
    ‘You have shared my bed for three nights. Rest,’ he said, his even tone at variance with his expression. ‘And stop panicking.’ The door slammed behind him.
    * * * 
    Luc stalked back to the fire. He wouldn’t be on this damn island with this crew of criminal rabble in the first place if it was not for the attempted rape of a woman. Averil Heydon was frightened and that showed sense: she’d had every reason to be terrified until he took her away from the men. He could admire the fierce way she had stood up to him, but it only made her more of a damn nuisance and a dangerous liability. Thank God he no longer had to nurse her; intimacy with her body was disturbing and he had felt himself becoming interested in her more than was safe or comfortable. Now she was no longer sick and needing him, that weakness would vanish. He did not want to care for anyone ever again.
    The crew looked up with wary interest from their food as he approached. Luc dropped down on to the flat rock they had accepted as the captain’s chair and took a platter from the cook’s hand. ‘Good stew, Potts. You all bored?’ They looked it: bored and dangerous. On a ship he would exercise them too hard for them to even think about getting into trouble: gun drill, small arms drill, repairs, sail drill—anything to tire them out. Here they could do nothing that would make a noise and nothing that could be seen from the south or east.
    Luc lifted his face to the breeze. ‘Still blowing from the nor’west. That was a rich East Indiaman by all accounts—it’ll be worth beachcombing.’ They watched him
Go to

Readers choose

Dan Kolbet

Marya Hornbacher

Jon Land

Margaret Blake

Catherine Stovall, Cecilia Clark, Amanda Gatton, Robert Craven, Samantha Ketteman, Emma Michaels, Faith Marlow, Nina Stevens, Andrea Staum, Zoe Adams, S.J. Davis, D. Dalton

John Norman