Free Carnal Deceptions by Scottie Barrett

resources, you could have easily cleared her father’s debts and kept her safe from Fleet. Admit it, you whoreson, you scared her into hiding and then absconded with the scant remainder of her inheritance.”
    Tess wobbled unsteadily on the step above the landing. And here she’d thought her life had sunk to the bottom. Apparently she had farther to fall. Beadle shot Lord Marcliffe a vicious look and moved forward, taking her hands in his. “Do not worry, my dear

    Hortensia, you will come home with me. I will take care of you.” He moved closer, his voice dropping to a hoarse whisper. “I cannot promise marriage, of course, as I’d hoped.”
    Life with Beadle. Wouldn’t that be a splendid end to an already wretched situation? “Mr. Beadle, I don’t understand how my father ever came to trust you. Your craving for gambling obviously trumps your honor.”
    “Damn it, Beadle,” Lord Marcliffe said, and hauled him away by the scruff of his neck.
    Beadle’s sudden release of her hands unbalanced her. She keeled forward. How Lord Marcliffe managed it, she had no idea, but he insinuated himself between them, and she toppled neatly into his arms. Her face pressed against his chest. There was something so warm and comforting about being in his embrace that the tears came in a torrent, soaking his lapels.
    When she pulled her face away, she noticed that she’d left the pale dusting that hid her lashes on the brushed velvet of his lapels. She swiped ineffectively at his coat and gasped. The powder was not the only thing she’d left behind. One brow stuck to him like a caterpillar. She plucked it off, but he took it from her and looked quizzically at it. She snatched it from his fingers only to have him grab it back.
    “Enough,” he said after they’d transferred the thing back and forth a few times. “What the devil?” He stared at her face and without any warning ripped off the other brow.
    “Ouch.” She rubbed her stinging forehead. “My eyebrows are rather stingy looking, poorly shaped. I thought to enhance them.”
    He ran his thumb over the length of one of them. “They look exactly as they should to me. Suddenly, you have lashes, too. You no longer look like a white rabbit.”
    “Take off the cap,” he commanded in a voice that no doubt had sent his military subordinates running to do his bidding.
    When she didn’t immediately comply, he yanked the cap from her head. Her golden-red hair slinked down past her waist like a silken shawl.
    “Christ almighty.”
    He set her onto her unsteady feet. Tess sat down hard on the bottom step. “Beadle, you must have something to do with this charade.”

    Beadle’s ashen face crumpled. Before he could stammer an answer, Lord Marcliffe helped him roughly to the door. “Our business is at an end.” He tossed the man unceremoniously into the night.
    Lord Marcliffe turned and stalked toward her. “Who the hell are you?” He hadn’t raised his voice, but the tone was chilling.
    Tess glanced up at him, but his face was out of focus. She looked down at her ludicrous layers of clothing and sobbed. “Truth is, I have no idea who I am at this point. I would stay and figure it out for you, but I fear that if I do not return to my bedroom immediately, I will fall face first onto the hard floor.”
    She rose then zigzagged up the stairs toward her room. Blinded by tears, she yanked off her dress and flannel shift and sprawled atop the bed. Her life was unraveling disastrously.
    Tess prayed Lord Marcliffe would allow her one more night under this roof.

    *

    Lord Marcliffe rubbed his thumb and forefinger together, still trying to rid himself of the feel of that bizarre furry thing she’d had plastered to her brow. She’d exposed perfectly shaped brows of a dark golden hue, brows he wanted to trace with his finger.
    He did not bother announcing himself. The woman owed him an explanation, and, by God, he would have it. A pile of clothes stopped the progress of the door.