Read Online Come Near Me by Kasey Michaels - Free Book Online Page A

drawing room was
deafening as Daventry sipped from his wineglass, looked at her over
the rim.
    She put down her own glass, aware that it was either
be rid of the thing or risk spilling lemonade all over her gown.
Did he have to look quite so intense? Half so handsome in his dark
blue evening dress? So very different from the laughing man who’d
just this afternoon sat rump-down in the stream, then used her
petticoat to wipe at a smudge on his cheek?
    “You’re frightened to death, aren’t you, Miss
Victor?” he said at last. “Why?”
    Another young woman might have laughed off his
question, or gone racing from the room, crying. Most every other
young woman would have dissembled, lied to him, told him he was
mistaken, that she wasn’t in the least frightened. Frightened? How
silly! Why on earth would she be frightened?
    “I’m terrified, actually,” Sherry answered honestly,
dredging up all of her courage so that she looked the marquess
straight in the eye. As to why, my lord, I should think that’s
obvious. I don’t have the slightest idea why I’m here, or what to
say. I may even use the wrong fork at dinner.” At this embarrassing
thought, she leaned forward slightly, anxiously, to add: “There
won’t be more than three, will there? Mrs. Forrest taught me what
to do with three, but beyond that, I’m afraid, I would totally
disgrace myself in front of your very proper servants.”
    The marquess nodded quite solemnly. “Yes, I see your
problem, Miss Victor. We can’t have that, can we? I know. I’ll have
the servants shot.”
    Sherry looked at him for a long moment, then burst
into laughter. “Idiot!” she exclaimed, forgetting all over again
that this was the important, powerful marquess of Daventry. “We
should only have them face the wall, as so not to witness my faux
pas. Shooting them is probably unnecessary, although I must thank
you for the offer.”
    “Ah, there we go,” Adam Dagenham said, his smile
filling her near to bursting with an emotion she found impossible
to name, although it was definitely a very nice emotion. “For a
moment I thought I’d dreamed our meeting earlier today. Call me a
gudgeon, Miss Victor, and I’ll be convinced it really did
happen.”
    She picked up the ends of the ribbons tied beneath
her bodice and wrapped them around her finger, avoiding his eyes.
“I can’t do that, my lord,” she said, her head bowed as she bit her
lip, refusing to giggle at his nonsense. “These surroundings and
your title forbid me.”
    She felt him move closer as he rose from the couch
and pulled a low footstool forward, sitting down beside her. “Then
I’ll burn down these forbidding surroundings,” he said, taking her
hands in his, rubbing his thumbs across the back of her fingers.
“I’ll renounce my title and fortune to Geoff over there, although
he’d run through every last penny within a fortnight. I’ll live
beside the stream, and you can come visit me every day, bringing me
your smile, your laughter. And perhaps a crust of bread,” he added,
chuckling, “as I’d probably be starving.”
    Sherry raised her gaze, unable to look at his hands
on hers any longer, unwilling to think how easy it would be to
raise their clasped hands, to lay her cheek against his tanned
skin. “I think you may be insane, my lord,” she said, whispering
the words.
    “Oh, Miss Victor, I’m convinced of that,” he
answered just as quietly. “It’s a sudden madness that settled on me
just today. Isn’t it wonderful?”
    Wonderful. A lovely description, if incomplete,
frighteningly wonderful was probably more exact, or at least that
was the conclusion Sherry reached during dinner. Her father, never
shy, dominated the conversation, as she picked at course after
course, until the entire parade of elegant foodstuffs was finished
and His Lordship suggested Lord Dagenham and her father go straight
to the kennels to inspect a new litter of hounds.
    “You could be a little more subtle,