Heiress in Regency Society. Helen Dickson

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      Having concluded his business in St Albans sooner than he had expected, Alex and Hawkins returned to Arlington Hall, sodden after their long ride. With no sign of his valet and in a hurry to get out of his damp clothes, Alex stripped the garments from the upper part of his body and unfastened the top buttons of his trousers before crossing to the bathing chamber, picking up a towel as he went. Something about the towel made him pause and look at it in puzzlement. Pink? All his towels were either green or gold. Unable to work out what a pink towel was doing in his room, he shrugged and began to rub his wet hair.

      On opening the door a wave of moist, perfumed air hit him in the face. He stopped short, unable to believe the sight that met his eyes. An enormous cloud of fragrant steam was rising from the bath, and emerging from the steam was a head, a woman’s head, crowned with a glorious wealth of chestnut-and copper-coloured curls. Stray tresses fell about her ears and clung to her nape in a saturated tangle, the rest of this adorable creature immersed in a mass of froth.

      At first he was sorely tempted to ask her what the hell she thought she was doing in his tub, but it would have deprived him of the pleasure of watching her from his vantage point by the door. Until that moment he had never thought so much pleasure could be derived in simply watching a woman who was oblivious to being watched. The mere sight of her, with the soapy water lapping those twin orbs of femininity with infuriating, tantalising familiarity, was, for Alex, such a pleasurable experience that it made him ache.

      It was the faint draught of cool air on her bare shoulders that alerted Angelina to the open door. With a gasp her head whipped round, and like a flame the powerful awareness of Alex’s physical presence scorched through her. His unheralded appearance startled her to a sitting position, and Alex watched the soapy water sluicing off her satiny skin. The heat of his appreciative gaze ranged with deliberate slowness over her hair and face and down to her slender shoulders, pausing at length on the exposed, creamy swell of her breasts, leaving the frothy water to provide modest cover for the rest of her.

      Alex’s bold scrutiny caused Angelina’s modesty to chafe. With her heart thumping in her breast and fighting to quell the shriek of panic that was rising in her throat, she cast a surreptitious glance about her. Her clothes lay in an untidy heap on the floor like a fallen barricade, and Alex was holding her towel.

      Casually Alex relinquished his stance and, closing the door, moved further inside the room. Watching him, uncertain and silent, it was this action that caused panic and fear to course through Angelina. Suddenly she felt intimidated, vulnerable and alone. Memories she was unable to stifle paraded across her mind, and there was a haunting vision of her cowering, quivering and terrified beneath other eyes, with hysterical pleas tumbling from her trembling lips.

      Having no concept of her thoughts, Alex crossed towards the bath where she cowered low in the water.

      ‘Well, well,’ he said, his voice low and mocking, his eyes burning into hers, the atmosphere inside the bathing chamber hot and sultry. ‘Not content with poaching in my woods and threatening me at gunpoint, you now have to add trespassing in my private rooms to your crimes. It’s a good thing I returned early—but—on second thoughts—perhaps I should have waited a while longer. Had I done so, your curiosity about my rooms might have extended to my bed.’

      Angelina felt the colour drain from her face. Alex loomed large and menacing, his awesome presence filling the bathing chamber. With his hair a cluster of shining black moist curls, all she could do was stare with a bemused intensity. Compulsively and with a will of their own, her eyes travelled over his broad chest spread with a dark mat of hair, down over the hard leanness of his flat stomach, the pink of her cheeks returning when she saw a trail of black hair start beneath his navel and disappear into his trousers, where a bulge strained against the material.

      Alex was watching her closely; her continued regard of that most private part of his anatomy increased the heat in his loins and he felt his tumescence grow. Good Lord, he thought. To his horror he realised his body was reacting to her without the least encouragement on her part.

      With a jolt of mortification Angelina tore her eyes away when she realized that she was staring. She looked up at him in desperate appeal, terrified that her blatant intrusion into his private rooms and audacity to make use of his bath would have aroused his wrath to such a degree that it would bring some terrible dark vengeance down on her. She watched him with the terrified eye of a mouse watching a stalking cat.

      ‘I—I didn’t hear you come in,’ she whispered, disturbed by the scorching heat of his perusal, and quite put out that he had been silently watching her and had made no effort to alert her to his presence. ‘You should have made your presence known to me.’

      ‘What! And deprive myself of the pleasure of watching you?’ he murmured softly, desperately wanting her to look at him as she had a moment ago. ‘If you don’t get out this instant, you cannot depend on my ability to exercise restraint.’

      ‘Why—what will you do?’

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