Heiress in Regency Society. Helen Dickson
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Название: Heiress in Regency Society
Автор: Helen Dickson
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Исторические любовные романы
Серия: Mills & Boon M&B
isbn: 9781474006484
isbn:
‘Please—don’t do this,’ she whispered, her heart thundering in her ears.
‘Why? Don’t fight me, Angel. What are you afraid of?’
You, her mind screamed. You, and what you might do to me.
‘You are as much a victim of the overwhelming forces at work between us as I,’ he murmured, his lips continuing their tender assault on her neck, the scent and living heat of her invading all his senses. ‘You and I are one. The simple truth can no longer be denied.’
Lowering her head, a small knot in the wood of the door became the focal point of Angelina’s concentration, a misshapen image tugging at the heart of her memory, conjuring indistinct, cloudy visions in her mind and blending them with a confused jumble of events that took her back to another time, another place, when other hands had touched her, when she had wanted to flee, but had been unable to escape the filthy, groping fingers. She fought a welter of unwelcome emotions that threatened to drag her down to a new depth of despair.
But she was not immune to Alex standing behind her, of the hard rack of his chest pressed against her back, making her feel things she had never felt before, things that were alien to her that she didn’t want to feel. An alarming, treacherous warmth was creeping through her body, a melting sensation unlike anything she had known. She wanted to relax back against him, to feel his arms close around her, but because she could still feel those powerful emotions that seemed to have been drawn into her heart and soul from that night when she thought her life had ended, she could not bring herself to make that move.
With desire crashing over him in tidal waves, Alex looked down at Angelina’s bent head, his lips brushing her shining hair. Slipping an arm about her waist he drew her tight against him, feeling a shimmering tremor in her slender body.
For a moment Angelina leaned into him, let his arm hold her, let him prevail in his hunger, his desire—but she didn’t want it. Her confusion, her passion and her pain rose to a pinnacle as she stood trembling against him. To be this close to him felt like suffocating. She didn’t think she could survive it. Terrified of making an overestimation of her ability to carry out the course she had chosen for herself, somehow she managed to place her trembling fingers on the doorknob and turn it.
‘This is mistake,’ she whispered, knowing that if she allowed some tenderness now between them she would be lost. ‘I told you on the day we met that I do not want to be close to any man in the way you imply—and that includes you.’
Twisting herself out of his embrace, she opened the door and then she was gone, her feet driven by panic away from the east wing. Let him rant and rail, let him insult and chastise her to his heart’s content—anything. Just let him never look at her as he had just then, or touch her with such tender intimacy. She would not let herself be at the mercy of a man like Alex Montgomery, who radiated sensual hunger in every glance, every move and every touch, but she could not deny that something had passed between them that would change their relationship for ever.
On reaching her room, she was struck by a desperate, impelling urge to get out of the house. In an act of rebellion and to bring some semblance of order back to her confused and troubled mind, she strode into the closet and rummaged in her trunk, finally finding what she was looking for—her old breeches and shirt. Removing her dress, she pulled them on, tucking the trouser legs inside her new pair of dark brown leather riding boots and lacing them up—incongruous against her shabby garb. After hastily plaiting her hair, she left the house by a back entrance without seeing a soul until she reached the stables.
When Angelina had left him, Alex stood in the centre of his room in deep reflection. Angrily he attacked his sentimental thoughts until they cowered in meek submission, but they refused to lie down. His attraction to Angelina was disquieting—in fact, it was damned annoying. If he wanted an affair or diversion of any kind, he had a string of some of the most beautiful women in the country to choose from—so why should he feel this insanely wild attraction for an eighteen-year-old girl who had hardly left the schoolroom?
He tried to put her from his mind, but failed miserably in his effort. The sweet fragrance of her perfume lingered everywhere, drifting through his senses, and the throbbing hunger began anew. He cursed with silent frustration, seized by a strong desire to go after her and cauterise his need by holding her close and clamping his lips on hers.
Instead he went into his study and attempted immersing himself in his work. Sitting at his desk, he set himself the task of going over the household accounts, subtracting and multiplying and adding long columns of figures. Under normal circumstances this was a simple matter for his keen, mathematical mind, but, slowly, a face with a pert, dimpled chin, a lovely and expressive mouth with soft, full lips, cheeks as flushed as a ripe peach, and thickly fringed amethyst, velvety eyes crept unbidden into his mind—teasing him, tantalising him, laughing, beckoning him—fearing him.
At this thought Alex leaned his head back against the chair and set down his quill, giving in to his reluctant musings. Fear! Having marked Angelina’s unexpected vulnerability when she’d cowered beneath the water, he now realised that that was what he’d seen in her eyes, but failed to recognize, when he’d threatened to join her in her bath. Then he remembered the words she had spoken before she’d left him and the pain in her voice—that she did not want to be close to any man, including him.
Why? He was both puzzled and curious. What had happened to her? Did it all stem from the time the Indians had attacked her home? Had they attacked her? Was the cause of her determination to close her heart and mind on marriage, on men, something to do with the relationship that had existed between her parents—or something else of an entirely different nature that she dared not reveal to anyone?
He directed his gaze to the window and his eye was caught by a mounted rider galloping across the park at breakneck pace. Frowning, he stood up, straining his eyes through the slightly distorted diamond panes better to recognise the person—which he did. Immediately. He was unable to believe his own eyes, as his gaze became impaled on the figure on the horse.
It was Angelina.
In the space of a heartbeat, fury had replaced Alex’s calm composure. He was furious that Angelina worried him with her recklessness, furious that she was able to evoke any kind of emotion in him at all. Clenching his fists, he stood and watched her. Crouched low over her horse’s neck with her face almost buried in the dancing mane, she rode as no lady should, in breeches and astride. There was simplicity and confidence as she soared over a hedge, at one with her mount, its tail floating behind like a bright defiant banner.
Her mount!
Alex’s face was almost comical in its expression of disbelief when his eyes shifted from the breeches-clad girl to the horse. It was Forest Shadow, a high-spirited, excitable sorrel stallion he’d purchased two months ago at Newmarket to introduce into his hunters. Forest Shadow presented a challenge to even the most accomplished rider, who would be hard pressed to keep the high-stepping animal under control. White with rage, he felt his body go rigid.
‘Of all the brazen, outrageous females,’ he said in a savage underbreath. When she had shot the rabbit, he would have sworn he was incapable of feeling more furious than he had then, but the rage that exploded inside him at that moment surmounted even that.
Turning quickly, he strode to the door, jerking it open, the stallion bearing its young rider already a diminishing speck in the distance. How dare she ride out of the park alone after he’d forbidden her not to, and how dare she take that horse out of the stable when there wasn’t a lad employed by him who was СКАЧАТЬ