[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.Alexander had taken opera dancers and royalty and streetwalkers to his bed; he’d dabbled in a world of bondage and pain for pleasure, and he was still bored.He’d ordered Miss Sophie as one might order a sack of flour, just for the convenience of it, and instead of taking care of his physical urges, it was starting to become an obsession.She was starting to become an obsession.He’d played games before—women seemed to like them—though never with a hired partner.Some women couldn’t achieve their peak without being spanked, or pretending to be a captive princess or some such bollocks.That was the advantage of whores—one didn’t have to go through all that rigmarole.You snapped your fingers and they were there.It was up to them to do all the work to entertain, not him.Though in fact, Sophie was doing just that.He couldn’t remember wanting a woman more in his life, not even when he was young and foolishly, desperately in love with Jessamine.Mrs.Lefton’s delicious morsel was a positive genius in building his desire to a dangerously explosive point, and he knew that when he had her, while he doubted it could be as gratifying as this pent-up frustration suggested, it would still be quite.satisfactory.She was going to cost him a pretty penny, and she was worth every bit of it.She’d managed to distract him from his younger brother’s death, and his own, unthinkable guilt, guilt that came from relief that.no, he wasn’t going to let those thoughts in.When she was around he could think of nothing but her—the taste of her, the feel of her, the sheer, saucy effrontery of her.This whole cooking business was a charade, he thought as he reached for the lemon torte.He was going to have to find someone to take her place once this game was played out.He certainly had no intention of arranging his desires around the demands of the kitchen, and there were at least two suitable houses on the estate that would do for her.He took a bite, and let the mélange of flavors dance against his tongue, and he closed his eyes and savored it.Well, perhaps he’d still allow her to bake.Only for him, of course.He finished the piece of cake, then reached for the apple tart with hard sauce.He was naturally lean, but a few months of Sophie’s fell hand and he’d become as roly-poly as a judge.He laughed at the thought, finished most of the tart, and set the plate back down on the tray, half-tempted to have the footman order her back once more.Her behavior amused him, though he supposed the letter Dickens had brought him accounted for some of his sanguine mood.There was a good chance Rufus might have survived.He should have viewed that possibility with unadulterated joy.But there was nothing simple about his relationship with Rufus, nothing straightforward about his younger brother, and never had been.Rufus had always been the charming one, the naughty one, the occasionally devious one, and Alexander had learned long ago not to underestimate him.Indeed, he’d worried about him for the last few years, when he’d disappear for months at a time and return in the middle of the night, with odd injuries like burns on his hands or a broken leg.And the money had been a concern as well.Soon after Alexander had unexpectedly come into the title and the debts that came with it, Rufus had somehow managed to unearth a huge amount of money.He’d been evasive, insisting it was simply part of the inheritance that had gotten overlooked, and in the end Alexander had taken the money and made a great deal more, enough that he could easily return the original money to Rufus and not even notice its loss.If Rufus was truly dead then Alexander wouldn’t be able to return the money, nor would he ever have an answer as to where it had come from.Much as he hated to distrust his brother, there was no avoiding the fact that Rufus’s sense of honor was extremely elastic.It was entirely possible he’d stolen that money, and Alexander was duty-bound to return it, if he only knew the source [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]