Engaged in Sin by Sharon Page

after he had inherited their home. Brutes used it in London stews to make women terrified and obedient. Madame Sin’s bodyguard, Mick Taylor, a former pugilist, had used it to keep Madame’s whores in line.
    But now, when she saw how grim and pained the duke looked, Anne ached with compassion. He had simply thrown on trousers and a shirt—the tails of the wrinkled white linen trailed over his taut buttocks. His dark hair reached his shoulders. The thick stubble covering his jaw yesterday seemed to have grown more overnight. It looked like an unkempt beard this morning.
    She remembered the beautiful gentleman with the dazzling violet eyes who had given her two gold sovereigns to spare her from selling her body. How different this man looked. The careless grin was gone. He looked so … ravaged.
    Anne knew what she’d felt when she’d lost her mother, in that moment when she’d realized she had finally lost everything and everyone she’d ever loved. Anger. Horror. Despair. A pain so deep she had sat on the floor of their filthy room for two days, unwilling to move. Had the duke felt that kind of grief when he’d opened his eyes on a battlefield to sudden blindness?
    She wanted to go to him. She wanted to slide her arms around his waist, press her lips to his wrinkled linen shirt, and trail kisses over his broad chest. If there was ever a man who looked as though he needed a woman’s loving embrace, it was the Duke of March.
    She crossed the room, rounding a long table and a row of straight-back chairs. But when she reached the other end of the mantelpiece, a mere six feet from him, she stopped. It was mad. Yesterday she had touched his naked body intimately; now she stood awkwardly with her hands fisted. She yearned to touch him, but would it be welcomed? Softly, she said, “I don’t believe you truly care so little for your house and your belongings.”
    He didn’t turn toward her. His thick lashes shielded his eyes. “Sorry, love.”
    “I saw you collide with the table. It must have hurt you considerably. It frustrated you and you lashed out.” She suspected she sounded as her mother used to, when they had lived at Longsworth. Firm, sensible, very matter-of-fact. “I assure you I can nimbly get out of your way if necessary.”
    His dark brow quirked. This time he cocked his head toward her. “You’ve seen me at my worst—I leapt upon you, I grabbed you by your wrists, and now you’ve witnessedthe way I throw furniture across the room. This is why you cannot stay here, love. It’s impossible. I told you I would decide what to do with you and I have. I won’t be responsible for harming you.”
    “I don’t understand why you are so certain you will.”
    “Angel, I know what I’m capable of. I know what I’ve done. You cannot stay. My carriage will take you as far as you want to go. If you want, I’ll pay for your services and you can use that money to go wherever you want.”
    How much would he give her for a few tuppings? For one moment she considered it … then rejected it. It wouldn’t be enough. She would have the chance to eventually escape only if she could coerce him to give her the kind of allowance and gifts a mistress received.
    “I wish …” She wished there was some way to help him. To stop his nightmares. To help him cope with his blindness. When Grandpapa had lost his sight, it had been gradual, over years. Even then, he had been delighted when she would walk with him and describe the gardens and grounds of—of her home. And Grandpapa had loved to have her read to him.
    Of course, her grandfather had not been tortured by horrible dreams or prone to fits of rage. He had been an elderly gentleman who loved country life, not a young duke in the prime of his life who had been a notoriously wild rake in London.
    She gnawed at her finger. She hadn’t wanted to think of the past, and she’d thought it had nothing to do with her now. But perhaps it did. Would the duke like the same