Free The Many Sins of Lord Cameron by Jennifer Ashley Page B

opened the next one, which was much the same. “You— read —this?”
    “Of course I do. I collect it.”
    “It’s in French.”
    “Don’t you read books in French? Isabella told me you went with her to her fine ladies’ academy.”
    “I learned it, yes, but I doubt any of these words were in our primer.”
    Cameron stopped trying to contain his laughter and let it burst out. It felt good.
    “I would finish much more quickly if you helped me,” she said.
    Cameron leaned on the bedpost again. “But it’s much more entertaining to watch you.”
    Ainsley made an exasperated noise, shoved the book back into the bookcase, and untied and opened a folio. She studied the first drawing. “I know I’m unworldly, Lord Cameron, but I’m not certain that what they’re doing is quite possible.”
    Cameron leaned over her shoulder to look at the sensual sketch by Romano, drawn three centuries before. Admittedly the people depicted were in an awkward pose. “I buy it for the beauty of it, not for instruction.”
    “Well, that’s a mercy, or you’d never have had a son.”
    Cam let out another laugh, the power of true mirth filling his body.
    Could anything be more sensual than watching a lovely young woman leaf through page after page of his erotic pictures?
    There was nothing of the prude about Ainsley, nor did she send him suggestive glances, using the drawings as seduction. She looked through each folio carefully, her cheeks sweetly pink, her breasts rising against her décolletage.
    When she laid the last folio back on its shelf, Ainsley turned to him. “They’re not here,” she said, disappointed.
    Cameron took another sip of whiskey. “There’s my study next door.”
    “Is that a possibility?”
    “Aye, it is.”
    He didn’t miss Ainsley’s flush as she speculated why Cameron might take a mistress to his private study. “Very well, let us search the study.”
    The room didn’t connect to his bedroom. Cameron led her down the hall a few steps to the next door, which he unlocked. Normally he didn’t lock his doors when he stayed at Kilmorgan—no need—but with all the comings and goings up here, he’d done it today.
    Ainsley took on a look of dismay when she viewed the clutter of the study. This was Cameron’s private room, his retreat from the overstated social life that he sometimes had to lead as Hart’s brother and heir to the title.
    Racing newspapers lay everywhere, as did books on all things equine. Cameron had contributed chapters or essays to a few of them, publishers begging for his opinion on the subject.
    Cam’s prized paintings hung here as well: pictures of the horses he’d grown up with, of his best racers, of the ones he simply loved. Mac had painted most of them, although Degas had done a sketch for him of a horse in motion, all rippling muscles and tossing mane.
    Angelo was the only one allowed to touch this room, and the man knew better than to disturb anything. It all got a bit dusty, but the whiskey decanter and the humidor were always replenished, the ashtrays emptied and cleaned, and any stray pieces of clothing, boots, or riding equipment restored to their proper places.
    Cameron took a clean glass from the tray holding the whiskey and held it up. “Drink? It will be thirsty work.”
    Ainsley eyed the glass in some trepidation. Cameron expected her to remind him that ladies didn’t drink spirits, but she gave him a nod. “Yes, why not? I prefer it with soda. Do you have any?”
    Cameron lifted the cut glass stopper from the decanter. “This is Mackenzie single malt. Hart would die of apoplexy if anyone cut it with soda. It’s neat or nothing.”
    Ainsley began lifting papers from his desk. “Very well. My brothers taught me to enjoy it with soda, but then we never could afford Mackenzie blend. I can hear Steven’s sighs of envy now.”
    By the time Cameron poured the glass and brought it to her, Ainsley had seated herself on the floor, her skirts a swath of satin