Free The Heart of a Scoundrel by Christi Caldwell Page B

what would you escape from?” The safe answer she wasn’t aware of was, in fact, him.
    Her brow creased. “That is a rather intimate question.” There was a faint hesitancy to those words that hinted at a logical, practical woman of some caution. She angled her head back, craning to look at him. “What if I were to say I’m not escaping but searching?” she asked, instead, proving she was not cautious enough, not when those unguarded words let him, a stranger, far more into her world than she should ever dare allow.
    “And what are you searching for?” For the span of a heartbeat that question was borne of a desire to know what would make a polished, English lady seek a life beyond the glittering world of their London Society. Why, when ladies were mercenary creatures, driven by greed and a lust for the material and their own pleasures?
    Her expression grew shuttered. “I…” She flicked her gaze about and then settled her stare on his cravat.
    He’d unnerved her. A triumphant sense of power filled him. It was entirely too easy.
    “Do you know what I am searching for, Phoebe?” Revenge. Domination. Control.
    She gave her head a little shake and again looked up at him.
    “The thrill of knowing more,” he said on a soft, gentle whisper he’d not believed himself capable of any longer.
    She folded her hands together and then stared down at the interlocked digits. “I understand that.” Those quietly spoken words barely reached his ears. “I believe we are kindred souls in that way, my lord.”
    “Edmund,” he automatically corrected. The lady was wrong in that regard as well—everyone knew the devil didn’t have a soul.
    “Edmund,” she whispered. Phoebe stole a glance about. Ah, so she had at least some sense to know they shouldn’t be viewed conversing, unchaperoned, in this public manner. She slipped by him and walked the length of the giant elephant, running her gloved fingertips over the ropes about the massive creature.
    He trailed after her, allowing her the freedom of the slight distance, and the sense of control she strove for—strove and failed.
    When she reached the back middle portion of the gray beast, she froze beside a tall column.
    Edmund stopped and stared at her expectantly.
    “Would you find me silly if I say I detest London?”
    He frowned as she confirmed his earlier suppositions. “I would say you are truthful and wise,” he said, giving her the first truthful words he’d spoken in either of their exchanges up to this point. He closed the remaining distance between them and then stopped when but the span of a hand separated them. “I also detest London.” And that was the second truthful piece he’d imparted. A sudden unease filtered through him at this sense of being exposed before her—when he never laid any part of himself bare before anyone.
    She clung to his words. “The insincerity, the glittering opulence, the cruel gossips, and unkind words and whispers. What person would prefer such a place?”
    In short, she spoke of a world Edmund had always been suited for. An increasingly familiar disquiet continued to roll through him; powerful and volatile and all the more terrifying for it. “If you could go anywhere, Phoebe,” he said, shifting the conversation to this woman who represented a means to an end of the one chapter in his life that had seen him defeated.
    A wistful smile played upon her lips and he stilled at the sincerity of that unabashed expression. Had he ever been so unrestrained? One time, yes. Before he’d confronted the vile depravity of his own parents, and then everyone else around him.
    “Wales.”
    Wales. When presented the possibility, even imagined, to go anywhere—the decadent halls of Paris, the crystalline waters of the Caribbean, the wonders of the Orient—she would choose Wales. It spoke to the lady’s imagination…or rather lack, thereof.
    Merriment danced in her eyes. “By your expression you find exception with my choice.”