“I have already told you, I have no intention of marrying you,” she told him. “You cannot force me.”
“Force will not be necessary, princess.” He was still grinning, the fiend. “Your protestation grows tiresome.”
“As does being your prisoner,” she returned, her voice sharp.
“Need I remind you that you brought this on yourself?” he inquired mildly as he donned his trousers.
She pinned him with a glare. “I did nothing to deserve being abducted by a depraved villain.”
His smile faded. He shrugged on his shirt. “You fired the first volley in this war of ours, my dear. If you had not done your damnedest to make certain you ground my reputation into the mud, I never would have even noticed you. Right now, I would be happily between Miss Mary Vandenberg’s thighs.”
He was such a boorish devil.
“You are coarse and horrid.” And she was burning, her cheeks aflame at his wickedness.
“They call me Sin for a reason, princess.” He gave her a grim smile, working on the buttons of his shirt and hiding his chest from her view.
The moment was strangely intimate. Wildly inappropriate. It was, she imagined, what husbands and wives did, rising together, dressing in each other’s presences. Only, in her mind, a husband and wife ought to love each other, the way she and Simon had.
She forced herself to look away from the Earl of Sinclair, to search instead for her own garments. And that was when she recalled that her gown had been savaged by his blade.
How could he expect her to go about wearing yesterday’s gown, with a sawed-off sleeve?
“Do you need my assistance in helping you to dress?” he queried, disrupting the tense silence that had fallen between them.
His abrupt change of subject took her by surprise, as did his offer. “Of course I do not require your help.”
“As you wish.” He stalked to the door. “I will wait for you to dress. Do not try anything foolish, princess.”
She watched him go, determined to find a means of escape.
Chapter Six
You may find yourself wondering, dear reader, whether I ever thought about the lives I had so ruthlessly ended. The answer may well shock you, for I did not.
~fromConfessions of a Sinful Earl
Sin’s first indicationthat something was amiss came in the form of Lady Calliope Manning’s grumbled curses.
The woman had a filthy mouth.
But of course, he already knew that, having read the drivel she had attempted to pin on him. The bit about the orgy had been most riveting, but now was not the time to reminisce.
The second indication arrived in the form of her squeal and the sound of rending fabric.
Bloody fucking hell.
What was the maddening creature doing now? He did not bother to knock. He threw open the door and was instantly greeted by the sight of the she-devil’s rump framed by the window casement. Her gown was torn, having been hooked on the hinges, and she looked as if she were about to jump.
He was not about to have her death upon his conscience. If the fool jumped, she would break her damned neck.
“What the hell are you doing?” he demanded, crossing the chamber to where she dangled herself from the window.
“Getting away from you by the only means possible,” she retorted, but her voice was tense.
He did not miss the fear.
She was terrified.
