The Count From Wisconsin Read Online Free Page A

attacked me."
    "Attacked you!" he said in mock astonishment, his midnight eyes gleaming. "My dear Duchess, I haven't touched you since the minute you indicated my advances weren't welcome."
    "You have me backed against the wall and you're looming over me like some damned great mountain," she accused, her belligerence holding a degree of desperation.
    "Six two is hardly a mountain and you backed against the wall without my help ... I thought perhaps you had a plaster fetish, but I wasn't going to mention it," he added with a wicked grin. "I merely wanted to feed you. Is that a crime?"
    She studied him for a moment, weakening against her will as the force of his smile warmed her. "How do I know what you intend? For all I know you could be planning to take me to the dungeon ..."
    Kate ruined the dramatic accusation by giggling. She couldn't help it. No matter how serious the situation, her sense of humor eventually got the better of her. She struggled to control it, to maintain her dignity, but it was no use. With her dignity taking its usual backseat, she looked up at him through her sooty, temporary eyelashes and let her offbeat sense of humor have free rein.
    "... and there," she continued with relish, moving away to punctuate her speech with enthusiastic gestures, "inflamed by my startling beauty, abuse my childlike innocence with your ravening appetites, afterward disposing of my broken body by mailing little bits and pieces of me to small, uninteresting places all over the world."
    She glanced over her shoulder to find him whistling under his breath as he stared up at the sky. After a moment, he lowered his gaze to her. "Are you through?"
    She nodded, smothering a laugh as she took in his long-suffering expression.
    "You're sure?" he added, solicitously. When she nodded again, he said, "If I promise not to chop you up and send you C.O.D., will that reassure you?"
    "And the part about abusing my childlike innocence?" she prompted inquisitively.
    "We'll negotiate on my ravening appetites," he hedged, then, when her expression changed, he reassured her lazily, "Just teasing, Duchess."
    Kate stared intently at the smiling man, then at the ground, nibbling on the tip of a pink nail as she considered the problem. Despite the warning signals going off in her head, she was seriously tempted to go with this stranger. Common sense and a deeply ingrained streak of self-preservation warned against it, but she was woman enough to be intrigued by this man who stirred so many different emotions in her.
    She raised confused eyes to the object of her thoughts, catching his face in an unguarded moment. There was a strangely wistful quality about the look in his eyes. The vulnerability she saw there was her undoing. It didn't fit her impression of him at all and shook her in a way she didn't understand.
    She opened her mouth to tell him to lead on, but before she could speak, he straightened and snapped his fingers.
    "Of course! You're waiting for a formal introduction, aren't you? Very wise of you," he added, nodding sagely, then he opened the side door. "Don't move from this spot. Duchess. I'll be right back."
    She didn't have long to wait, but before he returned, the memory of her weakness as they danced rose up to plague her and she began to question the wisdom of her decision. She had taken one step away when the door opened again and he stood there with a thin, blond man who was obviously a servant.
    The nervous young man stepped forward after a nod of encouragement from Kate's dark stranger. Even though they were standing in the dark, there was enough moonlight reflected by the white wall for her to recognize the painful blush on the younger man's face.
    "Mademoiselle," he said shyly, "may I present the monsieur. He is very respectable. He is ... ah . . . gainfully employed." He said the words as if reading a list. "He has never been in jail. . . . But, Monsieur," he said, turning to the other man, "what about the time—"
    "That