The Scandalous Collection. Кейт Хьюит

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СКАЧАТЬ that excluded her, diminished the hope she had brought with her to tonight’s party.

      But he had helped her in the past, she reminded herself. And not just helped her. He had saved her from death—not just once but twice. As she needed him to save her again now from another kind of death. The death that came from being sacrificed in a marriage to a man she had never met but whose reputation told her that he was everything she could never want in a husband.

      Somehow she must find a way of breaking through the barriers between them, because without Ash’s understanding, without his aid, her plan simply could not succeed.

      And if he rejected her—again?

      She must not think of that. She must be honest with him. She must beg him for his help. Taking another deep breath, she began, ‘Ash, there’s something I want to ask you.’

      ‘If it’s which of your current string of young men you should take to your bed next then I’m afraid I don’t give that kind of advice. And anyway, you seem very skilled at picking the one that will gain you the most print inches and the largest photographs in the world’s celebrity press.’

      It was an emotionally brutal rebuttal and rejection, and that hurt. She knew she had her detractors but somehow she had not been prepared for Ash to be one of them. Because she wanted him to remember her as the innocent girl he had protected?

      What if she did? It was only because she needed him to remember that relationship. As for that sharp stinging pain his words had brought her, that was nothing. She was not going to allow it any power. Even so, she couldn’t stop herself from defending her actions. ‘So I go public with my … relationships and you keep yours private.’ She gave a small shrug, intending it to be dismissive.

      ‘Which of us, I wonder, would an unbiased bystander consider to be the more honest?’

      She had her own reasons for not just allowing but positively encouraging the world at large to think of her as a young woman who relished her hedonistically sexual lifestyle and who indeed revelled in it. After all, wasn’t the best way to disguise and protect something precious to camouflage it, to hide it from view in plain sight?

      Sophia daring to call his morals into question was something Ash’s pride could not tolerate, especially when … Especially when, what? Especially when he had once taken on the responsibility of protecting her from the consequences of her emerging sexual needs because of those morals? Or especially when he was already having to deal with the private fallout he was facing inside himself from his still-active, and very much unwanted, physical sexual reaction to her?

      His voice as hard and unforgiving as his expression, he told her curtly, ‘But I’m afraid that such discussions aren’t of any appeal to me, Sophia, no matter how much idle chatter and currency they might find amongst your friends. Now if you’ll excuse me, I must go and thank your parents for this evening, as I have to be back in Mumbai tomorrow morning, and I’m flying out just after midnight.’

      He was leaving so soon? That was something else she hadn’t expected or prepared herself for. The window of opportunity that was her planned escape was closing down by the minute. Panic had started to build up inside her, a panic that had her blurting out emotionally, ‘Ash, once you were different, kinder. Kind to me … my saviour … You saved my life.’ Only desperation could be making her behave like this, betray herself like this. ‘I know from the charities in which you are involved and the help you give to your people how philanthropic and good you are to those in need. Right now, Ash, I need …’ She stopped, her breath locking in her throat. ‘I’ve never been able to say to you how sorry I was about the death of your wife. I know how much she and your marriage meant to you.’

      He was withdrawing from her, she could sense it, almost feel it in the chilling of the air between them. She had learned young how to judge other people’s emotions and to be wary of antagonising them. She shouldn’t have mentioned his late wife. So why had she? No reason. She had just wanted …

      There was a flicker of something in those dark eyes, a tightening of the flesh that clung with such powerful sensuality to the bone structure of regal facial features with a lineage that went back across the centuries to a time when his warrior ancestors had roamed and ruled the desert plains of India. She knew she had angered him.

      He was angry with her. For what? Mentioning his wife? Sophia knew how much he had loved the Indian princess he had married but it was several years now since her death and she was sure his bed hadn’t remained empty during those years. Bedding someone was one thing, but as Sophia knew, loving them was another thing entirely.

      However, if he thought he was going to frighten her off with his forbidding manner towards her, he was wrong. He no doubt remembered her as the young girl who was very easily hurt by any hint that she might have offended the man she hero-worshipped so intensely, but she wasn’t that young girl any more, and when it came to being hurt and surviving that hurt … well, she could easily lay claim to having qualified for a master’s degree in that particular emotional journey.

      Ash could feel the tension invading his body. Sophia had dared to mention his marriage. He allowed no one to do that. It was a taboo subject.

      ‘I do not discuss either my late wife or our marriage with anyone.’

      The words delivered in a harsh blistering tone only confirmed what Sophia already felt she knew, and that was how much Ash still loved his dead wife.

      She must not think about that, though. She must think instead about her own need for his help.

      From the minute she had learned he was coming to the engagement party, she had seen him as her salvation and her only hope of rescue from a situation she simply could not bear. She must not falter now, no matter how vulnerable she felt inside.

      Sophia had gone silent. Ash turned to look at her. She was trying to appear confident but he could see the apprehension beneath. It was a protective device she had often employed as a child. A child who as the youngest of the family, and a girl, was often overlooked. Somehow against his will, he found his anger receding.

      Ash’s penetrating gaze was assessing her with hawklike scrutiny, Sophia recognised, and yet there was something in his expression that had softened, as though the bones of his face had subtly moved so that she could see again the Ash whose memory she cherished, beneath the harshness that time had overlaid on those bones—something that resurrected her desperate hope.

      There was no time to waste, she decided. She must be brave and strong, and trust in her own judgement, her own belief in him.

      ‘My father wants to marry me to off to some Spanish prince he’s found.’

      What was that sensation that uncurled inside him and attacked with the deadly speed of a poisonous snake, causing his heart to lurch inside his chest? Nothing. Nothing at all.

      ‘So your father wishes to arrange a dynastic and diplomatic marriage for you.’

      Ash shrugged dismissively, but Sophia stopped him. ‘It would be a forced marriage, and I would be the one forced into it.’

      Her words might have been those of the passionate, emotional, sensitive young girl he remembered. How fierce she had been then in her defence of people’s personal freedoms, her conviction that everyone had the right to dictate the pathway of their own lives. It was no real wonder given how often she and her father had clashed, as they were obviously doing now.

      ‘Don’t you think you’re being a tad dramatic?’ СКАЧАТЬ