Free Kasey Michaels by Indiscreet Page B

young again. Miss Waverley is happy to have found a project that will elevate her already fine opinion of herself and further ingratiate her into your affections. In their own way, they’re both quite delicious. I do no harm, Your Grace. I just see what is needed, and I do it; find a lack, and fill it. Which makes it easier for me to be happy, for my life to be easier. Does sincerity—or honesty, as you call it—matter all that much, when everyone is happy? And that’s why we’re here, isn’t it, Your Grace? To be happy? Certainly we aren’t here to be sad.”
    He opened his mouth to speak, raised his hands as if to gesture once more—and ended by saying nothing, doing nothing. He just stood there, staring at her for a very long time, his expression growing increasingly solemn. “You don’t like your fellow creatures very much, do you, Miss Winstead,” he pronounced at last.
    “What nonsense!” Sophie hopped down from her perch, avoiding the duke’s eyes. “It’s a good thing you didn’t drink that brandy, Your Grace. You’re already two parts drunk for you to think such a thing of me. Now we’d best go back to the drawing room, or else they’ll send someone after us,” she said, trying to brush past him and out the door before she exploded in rage and ruined everything she and Desiree had planned for so long.
    But he grabbed her arm just above the elbow and almost roughly turned her around to face him. She felt the tips of her breasts brush against the fabric of his coat, could feel his warm breath on her cheek. Confusion covered her anger, then the anger fought through once more. She attempted to move away, to protect herself from an enemy she could not recognize, because the enemy seemed to be inside her, a just-discovered part of her that was in danger of betraying her in some unknown way.
    “Now where have all your smiles so suddenly disappeared to, do you suppose? Your playful winks, your practiced shrugs? Your impossible-to-control wiles meant to drive a man out of his mind? What’s the matter, Miss Sophie Winstead? Have I stumbled onto the truth all that easily? Is it true? Do you really hate us, hate all of us men in particular?”
    Sophie took another moment to compose herself, to remember who she was, how she was raised, what she had observed, the lessons she had learned. And she decided to be honest with His Grace—just this one more time—so that she wouldn’t have to be honest again. She refused to listen to the small, niggling voice that whispered that she had not really chosen to do anything, that she had no choice, that the duke had left her no other choice.
    But he’d pay for what he’d done to her, the truth he was drawing from her. He’d pay dearly.
    Deliberately lifting a hand to Bramwell’s smooth cheek, then drawing her fingers lightly down to his chin, Sophie summoned her most winning smile, and said, “Since I’ve already warned you against me, out of my affection for Uncle Cesse, I suppose I owe you all of the truth, yes? Very well. You’re wrong, and you’re right. I am very fond of my fellow creatures, Your Grace. In my own way.”
    “In your own way? I dread thinking what that might mean, Miss Winstead,” Bramwell interrupted, and Sophie gave out a soft gurgle of laughter. He disapproved of her. That was obvious. But he did not step away from her, or ask her to remove her hand from his face. Of course he didn’t. She hadn’t expected him to. He was a man, wasn’t he? Her touch didn’t repel him. It fired something base and entirely male within him, as Desiree had explained, robbing him of everything but his own wants, his own needs. In fact, he stepped even closer to her now, their bodies touching even more intimately.
    He disgusted her. Her reaction to him disgusted her.
    “I find other women quite genuinely likable,” Sophie said, beginning her explanation. “But,” she continued quickly, sensing that he was in her power now, “I am fond of gentlemen