Read Online A Woman Scorned by Liz Carlyle - Free Book Online Page B

young men who were no doubt ripe with the promise of youth.
    But the circumstances which had brought him here were far from normal. He was not wanted. Lady Mercer had made that plain. She did not trust him, believing him to be loyal to his uncle, whom she clearly considered her adversary. Obviously, the idea that Cole might actually have come out of a sense of duty, that he might feel some sympathy for the plight of her fatherless children, had never crossed her egotistical mind. At first glance, she seemed everything the world accused her of being—arrogant, cold, conniving . . . and hauntingly beautiful, of course.
    Good God, how the woman had flirted with him. Even Cole, in his self-confessed ignorance, could hardly have missed that fact. It had been her intent to unsettle him, to toy with him, like a cat with its prey. She had strolled languidly across the room, coming so close that Cole had been able to see every silken eyelash as she had swept them down across her ivory cheeks. She had stood so near that he had been able to inhale the exotic, spicy, almost masculine scent she wore. Deliberately, she had lifted her stormy blue eyes to his, then touched the tip of her tongue to that tiny, almost invisible mole at the corner of her mouth, her every move calculated to torture him.
    Cole was very sure of her purpose because, to his undying shame, it had worked. Despite his contempt and mistrust, he had felt a stab of desire for her, and Cole reminded himself that it was not the first time the lady had had such a disquieting effect on his senses. But this time he believed her behavior had been willful, almost malicious. Jonet Rowland had deliberately challenged his every masculine instinct. And his traitorous body had reacted, just as she had probably known it would.
    Gentlemanly deportment be damned. He had found himself shaking inside with a rage which was wholly unfamiliar to him. The woman had so incensed him that he had resorted to insulting her, more or less to save his own sanity. It had been all that he could do not to jerk her violently into his embrace and kiss her insolent mouth until she was weak in the knees. Ah, yes—that was what he had burned to do, but could he have accomplished it? It might take a great deal to weaken such a strong woman.
    Cole was no angel, and he knew that some women found him attractive. Yet his monkish existence and military life left him so rarely in the company of females—and never one so dangerous—that he had scarce known what to do, while Lady Mercer knew precisely what she was about. It seemed to Cole that the woman raised sexual frustration to a form of torture that even the Spaniards would have admired.
    Merely at the memory of it, his groin tightened and stirred, annoying him to no end, and making him ache with need. Clearly, he had now ventured well beyond his narrow range of social skills. Perhaps now that he was on military leave, he had no business in town. Perhaps it would have been better, after all, to have forced himself to return to Elmwood.
    Lost in such thoughts, Cole walked to the window and pulled away the under-drapes to stare into the street below. It was quite late in the afternoon now, and those few carts and drays whose business brought them into the exalted environs of Mayfair had now slowed to a trickle. Suddenly, the door flew open, and Cole spun about to see an explosion of boys and dogs burst into the room.
    The dogs, border collies by the look of them, seemed as large as the boys, and moved almost as quickly, their claws clacking back and forth on the wood floor like hail spattering a windowsill. In the doorway behind, Nanna stood, looking grim. Cole was beginning to believe her hands were permanently affixed to her hips.
    The smaller of the two boys managed to squeeze between the prancing dogs and the table to stand just in front of Cole. He narrowed his eyes and studied Cole’s regimentals. “Are you a Dragoon?” he boldly demanded. “I said you