Free With This Ring by Celeste Bradley Page A

right.There was a heated portion of his anatomy that had not given him this sort of problem in years.
    Out of a male instinct as old as man, he reached for a bit of coverlet to pull over his lap even while still nearly asleep.
    The cover was unpleasantly damp in his hand.This shocked him enough to open his eyes.
    Good God, what a beauty.
    Miss Elektra Worthington, detestable madwoman and scofflaw extraordinaire, stood before the window in a shaft of golden light, her face uplifted and her hands clasped before her bosom.Her eyes were closed.
    She took his breath away.Even filthy and rumpled, with her tangled braid come half undone—and dressed like a boy for pity’s sake!—there was no hiding the vulnerable yet powerful arch of her neck, or the achingly perfect parallel lines of her cheekbones and jaw that he could happily gaze upon for the rest of his life.
    Unfortunately, the rest of his life was not available.After the first shock of her perfection wore off, he considered that this girl was no better than he had once been, spoiled and thoughtless, ruining people’s lives as a game.A game he had no intention of playing.
    Aaron cast through possible opening lines and settled upon mockery.Hastings was very good at mockery.
    “Prayin’ for mercy?”he drawled.“Be ye askin’ the good Lord for forgiveness for kidnapping a poor workin’ man and puttin’ him in an icy damp hole all night long?”
    “I’m asking God to strike you dead,” she responded tartly, without so much as opening her eyes.“I’ve put in a request for a nice bolt of lightning, since it would leave less messy cleanup, but fire, flood, or famine will do in a pinch.”
    She turned her head, opening her eyes to glare at him.If he was not mistaken, she was as grateful to caustically mask the awkwardness of their night together as he was.
    Her green-blue eyes were uncanny in the golden light of day, large and wide-set in her ivory face.She was a bit too thin, he noticed.It only encouraged the impression that she was some sort of fairy creature hiding in this strange unearthly ruin.
    He looked around him, realizing at last the full and hideous extent of the devastation.The room had apparently been some sort of drawing room once.Odd bits of charred or broken furniture still stood, placed purposely about the space in some mad mockery of graciousness.
    Though the corners still dripped from last night’s weather, the sun poured through the gaping holes that were once lovely arched windows, as if determined to illuminate every moss-tinged element of the shattered gentility of the past.
    It was a horror that struck Aaron like a cold fist to his gut.This had once been a pretty place, even somewhat grand place.
    Like Arbodean.
    Now look at the state of it!Like his worst nightmare come to merciless light, the story it told of a gracious home, ruined by fate—and then, because it could not be restored, left to rot away under a coating of rubble and green mold.
    This might be his own future, staring him down.Arbodean was vast and elegant—and expensive.He was the last of his line; there could be no denying him the title and the estate, no matter his disgrace.
    The fortune, on the other hand, belonged to his grandfather, the current Earl of Arbodean, alone.Without that inheritance, Aaron could never maintain the gracious estate of his ancestors.
    Worthington Manor was an apt illustration of that worst of possible scenarios—and precisely what he would end up with if his grandfather ever learned of his night with Miss Elektra Worthington!
    How had this happened?How could he prevent such a thing from happening to Arbodean?
    “This place is—Was there a battle?Was it cannon-fire?”Or an earthquake, with a touch of pestilence and a dash of volcanic eruption?
    “No,” she replied absently.She dropped something down the front of her man’s shirt and then dusted her hands.“Just an ordinary fire.Five brothers, you know.”
    “You say that a lot.Brothers