The Love Affair of an English Lord by Jillian Hunter Page A

The sensual power he had wielded had been all too real.
    â€œIs it really necessary to handle me in such a dramatic manner?” she demanded in a burst of anger.
    He stared down at her with considerably more self-composure than he had shown before. “As long as you disobey me, I’m afraid it is.”
    She tensed at the faint pressure in her midsection and looked slowly down in dread. It took her a few moments to realize that the sharp object poking her in the ribs was not a gun, but a pen. Her own
favorite
pen! The nerve of him to take her prisoner with a pen. She snatched it from his hand.
    â€œWhat were you doing in my desk?” she asked indignantly.
    He drew away from the door, pulling her firmly by her forearms into the center of the room. His gaze never leaving her face, he reached behind him to calmly throw the bolt. “I was looking for writing materials.”
    She stared at him in stark disbelief. Somewhere in her closet he must have found a comb to attend his thick black hair, and a clean bandage to cover—
    â€œIs that my pink Honiton lace petticoat you’re using on your wound?” she asked in a scandalized voice.
    He gave her a wry smile. “I apologize, but I really had little choice. It was that or another one of your intriguing corsets.” His gaze swept up and down her curvaceous form in amusement. “I didn’t think I’d fit.”
    His audacity stole her breath.
    She noticed that his gun had disappeared. At least she could not see it on him, and she supposed she could take a measure of comfort in that. But helping himself to her pen and petticoats. What would he demand of her next?
    He circled her. The dark was kind to him. Playing dead had not diminished his personal magnetism in the least. Aside from the wadded pink lace beneath his blood-stained shirt, he could almost pass for a gentleman.
    â€œWriting materials,” she said. Her brain was beginning to function again, coming to a rather nasty conclusion. “For a ransom note?”
    â€œA what?” he asked, as if he couldn’t believe his ears.
    She cleared her throat. “A ransom note.”
    He stopped directly behind her. He was rubbing absentmindedly at the pink lace stuffed under his shirt, and Chloe remembered how that petticoat had always given her an itchy rash on her behind. She could only hope he suffered as much.
    â€œAnd pray what would I write a ransom note for?” he inquired, his head bent close to hers.
    The dark, her state of undress, imparted an intimacy too distracting to ignore. She could feel her “ghost” smirking over her shoulder. Playing with her, he was, in a very ungentlemanly way.
    She straightened her spine and said, “You are aware that my brother is the Marquess of Sedgecroft, a man whose wealth is common knowledge. It is logical to assume he would pay well for his sister’s safe deliverance.”
    He stepped away, kicking the stool out from the dressing table. Contemplating her rigid form, he swung his tall body around and sat to regard her. His heavily lashed gray eyes moved over her like mist.
    â€œ
Is
it logical?” he asked in a low voice that seemed to verge on laughter.
    She glanced down in disdain at his shadowed form. “Despite your evil intentions, you ought to be warned that there is a good chance my brother would instruct you to keep me.”
    â€œTo keep you?” he repeated. “Now why on earth would the marquess do such a thing? Why would a brother not want a sister who gets herself in trouble every time he turns around?”
    Chloe frowned. If she managed to survive this ordeal with Stratfield, she was going to make Grayson very sorry for sending her to Chistlebury. “It is true that I have not pleased my brother lately,” she said reluctantly.
    His eyes gleamed in the darkness. “So I understand.”
    She glared down at him. He sat astride the stool like a prince who enjoyed torturing