Read Online The English Witch by Loretta Chase - Free Book Online Page B

of him. Doubtless he was too busy with his dissipations.
    She was a fool to wait and brood like Miss Austen's painfully passionate Marianne, pining in vain for her faithless Willoughby. At any rate, there were far better things in store for Alexandra Ashmore. Tonight she would dine with the Deverells and meet a young gentleman who'd been invited especially on her account.
    "Randolph is all well and good, my dear," Lady Bertram had told her. "If you come to have a care for him, so much the better as you'll please yourself and your father all at once. But I'd rather you looked around a bit first. Marriage is usually a permanent arrangement, you know."
    Tonight it was proposed that Alexandra look at one William Farrington, Marquess of Arden, heir to the Duke of Thorne, and "as handsome a devil as you're like to meet," according to Aunt Clem.
    "He's all on pins and needles to meet you, my dear. He caught a glimpse of you the other afternoon as you left Madame Vernisse's and pestered Maria day and night for an introduction."
    Alexandra closed Miss Austen's book with a resigned thump. Well then, she'd look at him, and he'd look at her. It would be pleasant if he was handsome and even more pleasant if he was also relatively intelligent—though that might be too much to hope for. Her experience of idle, upper-class English gentlemen had led her to conclude that they were exemplars of the evils of inbreeding and, in short, not very bright.
    Mr. Trevelyan was bright, however. He did listen, too, and his answers were never patronising even if he did tease dreadfully. She missed his teasing, missed looking for the reality in his theatrical effusions and the bit of truth in his charming lies, just as much as she missed for once being treated by a man as an intellectual equal.
    There had even been those rare occasions when she'd startled him out of his formidable composure. She'd certainly surprised him that last night in Prevesa. Apparently, he'd taken her words to heart, for he'd been scrupulously well behaved through the whole voyage. She didn't like to admit it, but she wished he'd been a little less well behaved.
    That was the problem. She might have reasonably pleasant thoughts about him, except that the memory of his embrace kept intruding. Perhaps it wasn't terrible to enjoy being kissed—not when one was kissed so beautifully by so experienced a gentleman. With all that experience to inform it, perhaps a kiss should be enjoyable. Practise does make perfect after all. Still, the heat and breathlessness and sudden, frightening urgency of it—well, that wasn't proper. No, that part could not be proper.
    Which was, of course, why respectable young women did not go off alone with gentlemen and get themselves kissed.
    What started as a lovely kiss was bound to turn into something else, something that led to ruination.
    It was humiliating to admit even to herself that she'd been—at least at the moment—willing to risk such ruin. She flushed at the memory. Pride, not regard for her virtue, had stopped her. She was afraid they'd be caught and forced to wed. Yes, Mr. Trevelyan did make her think wicked thoughts, and yes, he was very attractive, and yes, his kisses were lovely. But as a husband—one who'd resent and hate her for entrapping him, who'd humiliate her with his mistresses—he was out of the question.
    How careless of him to begin it in the first place, to think only of amusing himself, and leave her to worry about the consequences. But why not? Hadn't she behaved like a common lightskirt? What was wrong with her anyhow? Was she wicked? Was she infatuated with him? Or was it only that he was so skilled a seducer?
    Yes, that must be it. She was the innocent victim of his wiles.
    While the innocent victim of Basil Trevelyan's wiles was staring obliviously at Miss Austen's book, Mr. Trevelyan himself had been having a highly agreeable conversation with Mr. Weston of Bond Street. Basil was just finishing