Free Unmasked by Nicola Cornick

clench his fists in disgust. For a moment Henry bent close to her ear and made some remark that had the color searing Mari’s face. No one else had seen his actions—Nick realized that Henry had made very sure of that. His opinion of Charles’s cousin fell several notches from an already low starting point.
    Nick found that he had already taken a couple of steps forward, with every intention of intervening, when he saw Mari dig the spokes of her fan into Henry’s ribs with a force that had him almost doubling up in pain. Henry reeled out of the dance, coughing and spluttering and Mari raised her brows, a look of most perfect concern on her face. Nick relaxed a little and smothered a grin. Henry Cole had got what he deserved and clearly Mari Osborne could take care of herself. Of course she could. She did not need his protection. For a moment he had almost forgotten that she might be a criminal and even a murderer, blinded as always by the complicated mixture of raw desire and deeper need that she seemed to evoke in him.
    As a soldier, Nick had honed a fine instinct for danger, when to attack, when to withdraw and bide his time, to trust his gut feeling, to listen to that intuition which other men sometimes derided. It had led him to make judgments and decisions that on more than one occasion seemed to fly in the face of practicality and sense and yet they had proved correct in the long run. His instinct had kept him and his men alive. And now his instinct was telling him that Mari Osborne was Glory, the harlot from the tavern, and he wanted her. Lusting after Mari Osborne, the clever, devious, disreputable widow ran counter to everything that he had always believed in about himself and what he had thought he wanted from a woman. She could not have been more different from Anna. And yet his hunger for her was intense, burning him up.
    He shifted, uncomfortable with both his thoughts and the physical effect that they had on him. He had found crossing swords with Mari intensely stimulating. He had admired the coolness with which she had countered his attack and the manner in which she had weighed the odds and decided which matters to concede and where to fight him. She was a clever strategist and he relished the game between them. And since they possessed such a powerful mutual awareness, he would use that attraction to bring her down. He would get close to her. He would seduce the truth from her. And he would not forget for a moment that this was all in the line of duty. In playing the game he would be able to slake his desire for her and then the white-hot passion that seared him would burn itself out.
    “She turned you down then,” Charles Cole said in his ear, with a certain satisfaction.
    Nick straightened up. “She did. In no uncertain terms.”
    Charles laughed. “I did warn you,” he said. “She’s as cold as the driven snow. Always has been.”
    Nick raised his brows. “Does she have many disappointed suitors then?”
    “Plenty of men are interested in her fortune,” Charles said, “even if she is a little gray mouse of a woman.”
    Nick looked at him. Charles was a man, albeit an apparently happily married one. Could he not see how alluring Marina Osborne was if one looked beneath the dowdiness of her attire? But perhaps he could not. Charles skated across the surface of life, seldom seeking deep meaning. He had been like that for as long as Nick had known him. Perhaps he could not see the rich curves and tempting lines of Mari Osborne’s body and perhaps it was a good thing, too, for Nick had a powerful feeling that he would want to take any man who looked covetously on Marina Osborne and pull his neck cloth so tight it choked him.
    With a palpable effort he forced himself to relax. His feelings were becoming too involved and it was clouding his judgment. This was precisely what had happened to him at the Hen and Vulture when Mari’s warmth, the touch and the taste of her, had invaded his senses and