Regency Christmas Proposals. Кэрол Мортимер

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СКАЧАТЬ is blood upon the sleeve of your greatcoat!’ his ward gasped, her hand rising to her mouth in alarm, and a look of fascinated horror in those wide and incredulous blue eyes as she stared at his left arm.

      Gray glanced down uninterestedly at the blood-soaked sleeve. ‘That is what usually happens when one has been shot, Amelia.’

      Cheeks that were already smooth and pale as alabaster became even paler still as all the colour drained from his ward’s beautiful heart-shaped face. ‘I—You—Are you saying that I—that I aimed true …?’ Her breasts rapidly rose and fell as she breathed deeply and erratically.

      Gray’s mouth twisted ruefully as Amelia reached out blindly to rest a steadying hand upon the banister. ‘You did not shoot me through the heart, as you threatened to do, but I do believe I have received a flesh wound upon my left arm that may need some attention. I trust you are not about to swoon, Amelia?’ He frowned darkly as he noticed the way his ward had begun to sway on her slippered feet.

      Amelia was very much afraid she was about to do exactly that!

      Except …

      The look of impatient disgust she detected on Lord Grayson’s rakishly handsome face as he scowled down at her was enough to bring her back to her full senses.

      For Amelia to pinch herself at the realisation that Lord Gideon Grayson was actually here, at Steadley Manor, at last.

      Wonderful as her sense of freedom had been after Dotty’s departure, Amelia had recently begun to grow a little tired of languishing alone here in Bedfordshire. Now that Lord Grayson was here she certainly did not intend behaving like a complete ninny by fainting at his feet. Bad enough, surely, that after all the years of waiting for this moment she had actually shot Lord Grayson within minutes of first meeting him!

      ‘Certainly not, My Lord,’ Amelia assured him briskly. ‘I was merely overcome for a moment, that is all. We will go to my bedchamber—’

      ‘For what purpose, might I ask?’ He lowered dark and reproving brows.

      She gave him a frowning glance. ‘Only because there is a fire alight in there to warm you and to ensure that you do not suffer from shock as well as loss of blood.’

      The only shock that Gray was suffering was in finding that this seductive young woman—and she was most certainly a woman, and not a child!—was his ward. A woman he had held in his arms only minutes ago. Intimately.

      ‘The water remaining in the jug following my own ablutions should still be tepid, at least.’ She ignored Gray’s scowl as she moved to his side and placed his uninjured arm across her shoulders before picking up the candle to light their way.

      Amelia Ashford was definitely a plucky little thing, Gray acknowledged with reluctance. Not that it had ever been in any doubt, after the way she had faced him down with a pistol earlier—and actually succeeded in pinking his arm, too!

      Gray had been vaguely aware, following the retort of the pistol, of a little discomfort in his left arm, but as it had only been slight—like the stinging of an angry bee—he had as quickly dismissed it. It was, however, starting to hurt like the very devil now that he had been reminded of it!

      Damn it, if any of Gray’s male acquaintances in the ton—heaven forbid any of his friends amongst the St Claire family!—ever learnt that he had been shot and wounded by his delicate slip of a ward, he would never live it down. Would find himself the butt of their jokes for years to come.

      He attempted to extract his arm from about those slender shoulders. ‘I assure you it is only a flesh wound, Amelia—’

      ‘A flesh wound that needs to be bathed and bandaged.’ She continued to doggedly guide his progress along the shadowy hallway.

      ‘I am perfectly capable of walking unaided,’ Gray snapped in his irritation with the idea that Amelia seemed to have acquired that he in any way needed her questionable assistance.

      Damn it, he was only eight and twenty—in the prime of his life—not some decrepit old man incapable of walking simply because he had received a graze upon his arm from a pistol shot. Besides, he had received and as quickly recovered from wounds that had been much more serious than this one …

      ‘I am sure that you are, Lord Grayson,’ that honeyed voice soothed patronisingly. ‘I am merely endeavouring, as you do not know the way, to guide you to my bedchamber.’

      Good God, after holding her in his arms earlier, the last thing Gray wanted was to go to this young woman’s bedchamber! The marriage between her mother and Gray’s brother might have been of short duration, and the couple now both passed away, but Amelia had still been Perry’s stepdaughter. And, with no other relatives alive to care for her after her mother and stepfather had died, Gray had become—still was—her guardian.

      A guardian who was only too aware of her beauty and her powers of seduction!

      And Gray was only too aware now, as he attempted to distance himself, of the soft delicacy of her flesh beneath his arm and hand, the warmth of her body pressed so close alongside his own …!

      ‘This really will not do, Amelia—’

      ‘We have arrived now, My Lord.’ She raised no further protest as Gray at last managed to wrest his uninjured arm from across her supporting shoulders, and instead reached out to push open the door to her bedchamber.

      A room Gray could not resist glancing into as he found himself filled with a curiosity to know if Amelia’s bedchamber would be as feminine as the woman herself.

      It was.

      Curtains of golden velvet hung at the two long windows, the furniture was of a pale cream and delicate in design, and the matching four-poster bed was draped in white satin and lace, with half a dozen matching pillows plumped up at its head. Pillows which Gray instantly knew would be a perfect foil for the spread of Amelia’s loosened gold hair—

      Gray drew himself up sharply. ‘It is simply not done, Amelia, to invite a gentleman into your bedchamber!’

      Her eyes widened at his cold vehemence, before those long dark lashes once again lowered to conceal the expression in the depths of those blue eyes. ‘I have invited my guardian into my bedchamber,’ she corrected huskily. ‘And surely if that man is a gentleman, and intends behaving as such, then there can be nothing wrong in a woman inviting him into her bedchamber …?’

      Gray could not think of one gentleman of his acquaintance—several of them married!—who would be capable of behaving the gentleman if the lush and kissable Amelia were to invite them into her bedchamber!

      ‘Besides, My Lord, you are injured,’ she continued practically.

      Injured, yes. Incapable of feeling male desire, no!

      ‘Suffering from a wound that I inflicted,’ she added with a pained grimace.

      There was that, Gray accepted slowly, and he found himself unable to resist the appeal of those sea-blue eyes as she looked up at him so prettily. ‘Very well, Amelia.’ He sighed. ‘But I will remain only long enough for you to bathe and dress my wound.’

      ‘You are very forgiving, My Lord,’ she told him.

      Forgiving СКАЧАТЬ