Read Online The Runaway Countess by Leigh LaValle - Free Book Online Page B

anger and incredulity were etched in his face for all to witness. She looked instead at his bare forearms—corded with muscle and dusted with dark hair. She felt flushed and giddy, and not from fear.
    Mazie bit her lip but could not bring herself to look away. She was utterly confused, lost in this tangle of passion and lies. How could she detest Trent so much and yet feel so attracted to him at the same time?
    He crossed his arms in front of him, making his chest appear thick with muscle under his linen shirt. “I knew your manners were too fine. I knew you had some kind of education. But I never suspected you were a lady. A peer of my sister.”
    “Of course you didn’t suspect it. I didn’t want it to be known.” How had a bookish Londoner come by such an athletic form? Boxing perhaps, or fencing.
    “Interesting that.” Trent cocked his head to the side and the stray lock of his mussed hair fell over his forehead. Only the hard set of his jaw and the red scratch on his cheek kept him from looking charming. “Why are you hiding such information? What are you protecting?”
    She pressed her lips closed and refused to speak until she had her thoughts under control.
    “There must be something there. What if I put you on trial as a Chetwyn? The papers would love that. The unwed daughter of an earl fallen to such dramatic ruin. You would be a warning to young ladies for generations.”
    Mazie shrugged and tore her eyes away from all that masculine beauty before her. She picked up a glass swan and pretended to inspect it. “I am little concerned with gossip.”
    He scoffed. “No one is immune to scandal.”
    “I have lived through it before, I can again. The opinions of others no longer hold sway with me, my lord.”
    “And what of your cousin, the current earl? He would not want such a thing to occur.”
    A sharp laugh cracked through her. “Eliot would have a fit, and all the better I say.” She put the swan down.
    “You’ve no concern for your family?”
    Her family ? “The man threw me out with nary a penny.”
    “I thought he had restored the Chetwyn fortune?”
    “He has.” Trent already knew too much about her. It was unsettling. If he dug too deep, pulled too hard at the random strings of information, everything would unravel.
    “Perhaps you are hiding from someone?” He tapped his hand against his leg. “A former victim?”
    She made herself face him. “I am not hiding.” Not precisely anyway. Hiding had such connotations of powerlessness. She was not languishing behind the name Mazie Bell, not buried in some dark hole.
    His eyes narrowed, scrutinized her as if it were his mission to uncover all her secrets. “There must be some cause.”
    There were many reasons she did not want her heritage to be known. Some related to Roane, and some did not. But all her motives were difficult and personal and not things she wished to share with her enemies. “I am not a trunk, my lord. My past is not something to be rummaged through like so much baggage.”
    Again, the raised brow. “I would not want to dirty my hands with your past, my lady . But you must understand my need to know. Perhaps you would prefer to tell me how you met the Midnight Rider?”
    Mazie huffed and sharply smoothed her skirts. He would not leave her until she gave him some sort of answer. “I simply have no place for Lady Margaret Chetwyn in my future.”
    “So you chose to become Mazie Bell.”
    “Yes.”
    “So you think to make yourself someone new. To escape your past.”
    “Yes. No. I am not escaping, my lord. I am simply creating a new life for myself.”
    “Ah, I see. You feel the life that was created for you is not satisfactory.”
    Her toes curled in her shoes. Must he always be so irritating? “I can improve upon it, yes.”
    “You can improve upon the life that the heavenly Father created for you?”
    She shrugged. What had been created for her, thus far, was a disaster. Before she had reached her nineteenth