Rebellious Rake, Innocent Governess. Elizabeth Beacon

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      Ben lay back against the luxurious squabs, considering a curiously unsatisfactory evening. He’d gone to Lady Wintergreen’s ball to keep an eye on Miss Kate Alstone in his best friend’s absence and, with Miss Wells’s reluctant help, had successfully done so. Yet something crucial had been missing and he tried to reassure himself it wasn’t the lack of a dance with the disapproving dragon seated opposite.

      He wondered idly if she concealed an elegant little tail under the acres of grey crepe that she used to conceal her figure from the eyes of the world. There was no doubt she breathed fire, he decided ruefully, as he recalled some of the barbs she had shot at him tonight. Yet there was something about Miss Charlotte Wells that made him eager to know what lay under all that disapproval. Under her formidable exterior no doubt there was a formidable woman, but, whoever she was, she fascinated him, and he’d never been one to shirk a challenge. The question was, a challenge to what?

      He wasn’t rake enough to make a dead set at a lady in impoverished circumstances. He frowned as he contemplated the careless actions of such men, for hadn’t his father seduced his mother, then denied her and his bastard as if they were strangers he might pass in the street? Ben admired his late mother more than any woman he’d ever known, but he was certain her life would have been far better if he’d never been born. He could never inflict such suffering on a woman and he’d made sure no woman he was involved with risked carrying his child. So, if he didn’t intend to storm the stoutly defended Fortress Wells, why on earth had he been trying to flirt with her in the middle of Lady Wintergreen’s over crowded ball?

      Because trying was all he would ever manage, the uneasy answer occurred to him as he stared broodingly into the darkness. Had she just become a challenge he couldn’t quite resist? He shook his head and hoped not and his stern expression softened as he watched Kate asleep on her dragon’s shoulder, as if it was far more comfortable than it appeared. Then they passed a lamp-post and he saw Miss Wells’s face momentarily through the gloom and it looked curiously softened. She’d removed those ugly spectacles and the clear-cut lines of her finely made features were momentarily visible, both illuminated and shadowed by the soft glow.

      He recalled the first occasion he’d met the Alstone girls and their fearsome governess, almost two years ago now, and he’d keenly enjoyed the clash of arms between them on the rare occasions he’d met her since then. Kit Alstone had been his best friend ever since they could both walk, and Ben had agreed to escort the carriage from Bath to Derbyshire, despite the fact he had a hundred things to do and a dozen other places to do them in. He’d been a little impatient of the whole business, but knew his very presence riding by the Earl of Carnwood’s travelling carriage would stop most highwaymen in their tracks. After all, there was every reason to guard three unprotected females allied to his friend, when they’d made too many enemies for comfort in the rise to success.

      In a spirit of resignation, he’d set out to escort two no doubt timorous young girls and their superannuated governess and found the artlessly outgoing Misses Alstone and their young dragon instead. No doubt one glare from the formidable Miss Wells and the most enterprising villain would instantly have turned to stone, or hastily dropped his pistols and run home to his mother, but they’d met with no reckless challenges on that memorable journey. Ben just managed to hide a grin as lamplight now splayed over him instead of his own particular dragon. Ever since he laid eyes on the very correct Miss Wells, he’d struggled with the urge to kiss her until she was breathless and bemused, and finally giving the lie to her rigidly severe exterior. So far he’d stopped himself, just, but if she went on producing those comedy spectacles at every opportunity his self-restraint might not last.

      Yet in the two years since he had first set eyes on her, he’d managed to learn almost nothing about the elusive Miss Wells, which was a mystery in itself. He could usually discover whatever he needed to know about a person within two days of setting eyes on them, so either Miss Wells had lived a life of such tedious respectability that she had СКАЧАТЬ