Read Lady of Desire for Free Online Page B

Sprat! Actually, there was two—I mean three of them. They was big, too! Big as you, almost.”
    “Really,” he said lightly. “Eddie, I have brought someone to meet you. This is Miss, ahem, Smith.” He reached behind him, gently took her wrist, and pulled her into view.
    Eddie’s eyes widened. Jacinda gave the child an arch look.
    “Shite,” the boy uttered, spinning around to flee, but Blade grabbed him by the scruff of the neck, halting his exit.
    “A word with you, sir. Miss Smith, this way.”
    “Aw, Blade, leave off! I was only jokin‘!”
    Complaining all the way, Eddie trudged ahead of them on Blade’s orders, going up the steps to the door. Blade showed her into a broad workroom with a large table in the center, a battered secretaire in the corner, and a squat black coal stove on the wall to her right, which sat unlit. A few dusty shelves cluttered the dingy plaster walls, while a burrow of small filing boxes angled into the corner. He nodded toward the benches around the table.
    “If you’ll make yourself comfortable for a moment, I will see about your property.”
    “You’re going to return it to me?” she asked in surprise.
    “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.” He sent her a provoking half smile and shepherded Eddie into the small adjoining office. Leaving the door open a foot or two, he turned to the child. “Damn it, Eddie, are you trying to get strung up before your tenth bloody birthday? ”
    She half listened to him lecturing the little pickpocket, looking very stern, his hands braced on his waist. His stance drew back his short, black jacket a bit, revealing the bloodstain on his white shirt beneath, like the red carnation he had worn that day at Knight House. His indifference to his own wound disturbed her.
    She forced herself to look away, then noticed that each time the unkempt-looking thieves came back from the loading dock to carry out another crate, they wrinkled their noses in distaste when they passed her. She blanched with embarrassment to remember the stink that clung to her redingote. Undoing the belt and buttons, she shrugged out of the offending garment almost violently—and immediately regretted it. At once, all around her, the outlaws froze.
    They stopped and stared at her, some with the crates still in their arms. Jacinda glanced down nervously at herself, still dressed for Almack’s in a white silk ball gown with gold-thread embroidery, finery the likes of which they had probably never seen. As their coarse stares ran all over, she tried to tug her shoulder-baring décolleté up higher, but the thieves were already exchanging evil grins and putting their boxes down. One or two leered openly at her bosom, but most of them seemed to have homed in on her throat. Realization dawned, and she paled, slowly lifting her hand to the ornate diamond necklace she had totally forgotten she was wearing.
    It probably cost as much as the building. She gulped and began backing away as they started toward her, closing in like hungry wolves.
    “Ah, Blade?” she ventured, still edging away from them, but Eddie was whining loudly at him. “Blade? ” she called a bit more forcefully, but when the heavy table at her back blocked her retreat, she knew she was trapped. “
Blade
!”
    She looked over in alarm at the half-opened door. He had stopped midsentence in his lecture to Eddie and for a heartbeat just stared at her, his stunned gaze sweeping over her.
    If the sight of her had dazed him in that dark alley, at this moment, in the light, the sheer extravagance of her beauty positively clobbered him. His mind went blank; his voice strangled in his throat. She was a
goddess
. He could not scrape two thoughts together, wonder-struck by her flashing dark eyes, milky skin, and the golden fire of her hair cascading over her white shoulders. His stare ran over her sweet, lithe arms and stopped at her cleavage. Then he was in agony.
    The gold-trimmed neckline of her ball gown was cut low and