Christmas Betrothals. Sophia James

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      And then stopped!

      She tried to keep it going, tipping her mouth to his, but he pulled her head against his chest and held her there, against a heartbeat that sped in heavy rhythm.

      ‘This is not the place, Lilly …’

      Reality returned, the yellow salon once again around her, the sound of servants outside, the tea on the table with its small plume of steam waiting to be drunk.

      She pushed away, a new danger now in the room and much more potent than the one that had bothered her before.

      Before she had been worried about his actions and now she was worried about her own, for in that kiss something had been unleashed, some wild freedom that could now not be contained.

      Lucas Clairmont placed her letter on the table and gathered his hat. ‘Miss Davenport,’ he said and walked from the room.

      Lord, he thought on the journey between Pall Mall and his lodgings. He should not have kissed her, not allowed her confession of feeling ‘nothing’ with Wilcox-Rice to sway his resolve.

      And now where did it leave him? With a hankering for more and a woman who would hate him.

      He should have stayed, should have reassured her, should have at least had the decency to admit the whole thing as his fault before he had walked out.

      But she had captivated him with her pale elegance and honesty and with the fumbled bank notes pushed uncertainly at him.

      To even think that she would pay him?

      Absolute incredulity replaced irritation and that in turn was replaced by something … more akin to respect.

      She was the one all others aspired to be like, the pinnacle of manners and deportment and it could not have been easy for her to have even asked him what she did. Hell, she had a hundred times more to lose than he, with his passage to Virginia looming near and a reputation that no amount of bad behaviour could lower.

      Why on earth, then, had she picked him? She must have weighed up the odds as to what he could do with such information, the pressures of society here like a sledgehammer against any deviation from the strict codes of manners.

      Why had she risked it?

      The answer came easily. She did so because she was desperate, desperate to discover if what she felt for Wilcox-Rice was normal and hopeful that it was not.

      Well, he thought, with the first glimmer of humour coming back. At least she had found out that!

      Lillian threw herself on her bed and took the breath she had hardly taken since Lucas Clairmont had left the house.

      He had been angry, the notes she had tried to give him in her fist, a coarse message of intent and failure. She rolled over and peeled each one away from the other.

      Two hundred pounds! And if he had taken them it would have been worth every single penny. Turning, she looked at the ceiling, reliving each second of that kiss, her fingers reaching for the places his had been and then falling lower.

      What if he had not stopped? What if he had not pulled back when he did? Would she have come to her senses? Honesty forced her to admit she would not have and the admission cost her much.

      ‘If you aren’t careful you will be your mother all over again, Lillian.’ Her father’s voice from the past, a warning to her as her mother lay dying, the words uttered in a despair of melancholy and sorrow. She had been thirteen and the fashions of the day had begun to be appealing, the chance to experiment and change. She blinked.

      Had such advice altered the person she might have become? Was she changing back?

      She shook her head and lay still, closing her eyes against the light.

      The knock on the door woke her and for a second she could not work out quite where she was, for seldom did she doze in the afternoon.

      Her bedroom. Lucas Clairmont. The kiss. Reality surfaced and with it a rising dread.

      ‘You have some flowers, Miss.’

      A maid came in with a large unruly bunch of orange flowers and her breath was caught. ‘Is there a card?’

      ‘Indeed, miss, there is.’ The maid broke the envelope away from a string that kept it joined to the bouquet, speculation unhidden in the lines of her face.

      ‘That will be all, thank you,’ Lillian said, waiting until the door was shut before she slit open the card.

      I FELT SOMETHING

      The words were in bold capitals with no name attached.

      Without meaning to, Lillian began to cry—in those three words Luc Clairmont had given her back the one thing she had not thought it possible to regain.

      Her pride.

      Holding the flowers close to her breast, her tears fell freely across the fragrant orange petals.

       Chapter Seven

      ‘Mr Clairmont from America was at the club as a guest of Hawkhurst today.’ The tone in her father’s voice told her that he was not pleased. ‘The man is a scoundrel and a gambler. Why he even continues to receive invitation from people we know confounds me.’

      ‘And yet he seemed such a nice young man when he came to ask you to dance, Lillian, at the Cholmondely ball. How very misleading first impressions can be,’ her aunt said.

      ‘You have danced with this American?’ Her father’s heavy frown made her heart sink.

      Danced. Touched. Kissed.

      ‘I have, Father. He asked for my hand in a waltz.’

      ‘And you did not turn him down? Surely you could see what sort of a fellow he was.’

      ‘Men like him pounce quickly on the unsuspecting, Ernest. It is no point in chastising Lillian, for she is blameless in it all.’

       Blameless?

      The bunch of orange blooms still stood by her bed, carefully tended and watered daily, but she had not seen him again, not in the park, not at the parties, not in the streets as she walked each day.

      ‘St Auburn is a particular friend of Clairmont’s, is he not?’

      Jean shrugged her shoulders. ‘I do not know the man personally. Daniel could probably tell you much more about him.’

      Lillian looked more closely at her aunt, trying to ascertain whether she knew of the wayward pursuits of her son and deciding in the smile she returned her that she probably did not.

      ‘I ask the question,’ her father continued, ‘because an invitation came for you yesterday, Lillian, to attend a country party of the Earl and Lady St Auburn in Kent and I should not wish for you to go should the American be there.’ He sipped at his tea, fiddling with a pair of spectacles he held in his right hand.

      ‘When СКАЧАТЬ