Read Loretta Chase - The Devil's Delilah for Free Online

hesitation asked, "Miss Desmond, are you… flirting with me?"
    "Yes," she answered in some surprise. "I believe I am."
    "Then I am obliged to tell you that is a prodigious waste of time."
    "You are impervious to my charms, of course," she said, as he steered her back to the rose garden.
    His face instantly became shuttered. "You must be well aware no man can be that, so long as he is breathing."
    "Then perhaps you do not approve of flirtation," she persisted, intrigued. "You consider it indecorous."
    "I am only a book-worm, Miss Desmond, not, I hope, a prig. I make an excellent book-worm, I'm told, but a most disappointing flirt."
    "Now who told you that, I wonder?"
    "No one had to tell me. It's perfectly obvious."
    Her pique gave way to curiosity. He meant what he said. What an odd man he was.
    "Not to me, Mr. Langdon," she answered, "and I assure you I am an excellent judge. Ah, now I have shocked you at last."
    She found that steady, studying look upon her again and once more felt rather short of breath.
    "Miss Desmond, only your beauty shocks me," he said as though the words were wrung from him. "A man could look upon your face for the next one hundred years and never grow tired of it. But you would soon grow tired of that, I think," he added more briskly, "when he could not simultaneously amuse you with witty gallantries. Nor, surely, could you amuse yourself by fencing with an unarmed man."
    "Unarmed?" she repeated, bemused.
    A voice called out then, and Delilah turned to see Lord Berne, his golden hair in damp ringlets about his head, sauntering up the pathway toward them. She simultaneously felt her companion gently disengage her hand from his arm. When the viscount drew near, Mr. Langdon, with some vague remark about "letters to write," excused himself and quickly strode away.

    Mr. Langdon must have had a great many letters to write — or perhaps only one very long and difficult one — because he did not emerge from the library again until it was time to dress for dinner.
    He was there the next day as well, with even less prospect of completing his task, for he spent most of his time wandering aimlessly about the room or staring out the windows. At the moment, he was engaged in the latter occupation, and it was not an especially agreeable one.
    Really, the situation was absurd, he thought. He could hardly dash out and haul Tony away from the shrubbery. If that's where the reckless fool wanted to take Miss Desmond, that was the fool's problem.
    All the same, Mr. Langdon continued to watch. Just as the pair approached the perilous pathway, he saw Lady Streetham shoot out of the house like a rocket and draw Miss Desmond back to the terrace. Jack smiled. Now the countess would send Tony off on one of her errands, as she had been doing practically from the moment the Desmonds arrived.
    That was not at all surprising. Lady Streetham had been snatching her son out of the jaws of romantic disaster for years, and entanglement with the penniless daughter of the notorious Devil Desmond was obviously in that category.
    Mr. Langdon left the window and reseated himself at the writing desk. Miss Desmond ought to have known better, he told himself, especially after he dropped his hint about the perils of the hedgerows to her yesterday. If she was so set on learning decorum, she really oughtn't encourage Tony. Surely by now she must have recognised what a rakehell he was. Or at least her father might have warned her. But no. In a mere twenty-four hours she had developed all the usual symptoms. True, Tony had needed to add a few coals to the blaze of his charm, but Miss Desmond appeared ready enough now to be consumed.
    Jack threw down his pen and went in search of a book sufficiently taxing to occupy his brain more profitably. His fingers flicked over volumes of Euripides, Aristophanes, Aristotle, and Herodotus, but each was rejected as too familiar, even in Greek. Then he found a large, moroccan-bound, heavily gilded volume whose