Read Ruined by Moonlight for Free Online

into place, and once again they were imprisoned.
    Wonderful
.
    It had all happened so fast, he wasn’t sure whether to swear blasphemously or sit down and put his head in his hands. “Damnation,” he muttered, as much under his breath as possible, unclenching his fists, not even aware he’d made them.
    “He actually pointed a gun at you.” Lady Elena’s voice quivered, and when he glanced over, her face was ghostly pale.
    “I noticed.” He consciously loosened his jaw. He wasn’t just a privileged aristocrat—he’d served in the Peninsular War. That gave a man a sense of when the enemy was serious, and their jailor with the firearm had been very committed to his purpose, if he was to judge. “Our captoris quite lethally determined to hold us here, as far as I can tell.”
    “I am having difficulty making sense of all this,” Elena murmured, her eyes glimmering in the multicolored illumination. “Why would he possibly do that?”
    “I’m no more enlightened than you are.” His smile was crooked and he tried to make light of what happened. She was obviously shaken and he was a bit off balance too. “But he did have a point. At least there’s food and drink. Perhaps I am not happy over being dragooned, threatened, and made an unwilling captive, but we both need to eat, and I, for one, could use some wine. Can I pour you a glass?”
    Even as he refilled her crystal glass in a gentlemanly display of civility, Elena could sense the frustration in the man who then seated himself across from her at the small table.
    Not that she blamed him, since someone had leveled a gun at him. Though she’d been shocked, he merely seemed angry, settling into his chair in an impressive ripple of muscle, his dark eyes shadowed.
    “That was delicious.”
    “I agree.” His tone was sardonic. “I suppose we should send out our praise to the chef. It seems incredible to say it under these conditions, but the meal was superb.”
    It had been. Roast duck, cherries in a tart sauce, creamed potatoes, tiny peas in butter, and they’d found under one of the covers a pudding studded with dried fruit with a sweet vanilla glaze over the top. Between them they’d devoured almost every bite of each course.
    Elena contemplated her empty plate and then nodded,fingering the slender stem of her glass. “You are perfectly correct, my lord. It was a lovely meal.”
    Even to her ears it sounded ridiculously stilted. The sudden curve of his smile confirmed it in the first surfacing of that infamous charm. “I see we are in character,” Lord Andrews said, still clad only in his breeches, his dark hair boyishly tousled, faint dark stubble on his lean jaw giving him a rakish look. “Trying to be painfully polite despite our unusual circumstances. How very British of us.”
    “I suppose it is.” A small laugh escaped. It had been impossible to eat and at the same time keep the sheet clutched around her, so she’d settled for letting it slip down to cover her bare legs, trying to tell herself that ball gowns had low necklines so her shift was not so very different. And, as notorious for his lascivious pursuits as he might be, Lord Andrews had kept his gaze scrupulously on her face as they ate, the bared upper curves of her breasts apparently not of interest. She had to admit after a few moments it put her at ease, and she’d been hungry enough that it was a relief to just enjoy her food without worrying so much about her modesty.
    So far he was
not
living up to his wicked reputation.
    For which she was grateful, she assured herself, gazing at him over the rim of her glass as she took another sip of wine. And it was true: while the whispers about his affairs were frequent and it was common knowledge that he’d bedded numerous of the
ton
’s most dazzling beauties, his aversion to marriage was also common knowledge. Certainly that had been his first reaction to being locked in a room with
her
.
    It made Elena a bit curious as to why someone