Amanda Scott Read Online Free Page A

me get her,” Lord Michael said firmly. “Come here, cat.”
    Ignoring Anne’s gasp of indignation and rigid embarrassment, he reached right into her bodice and grasped the kitten. For the second time that day, she felt his warm hands on her bare skin. To her astonishment, the little cat allowed him to remove it without another murmur.
    “Juliette doesn’t really like strangers,” she said stiffly, taking the kitten from him and settling it in her lap. “I feared they would send her out to live in the stables if I did not take her away, so I hope you are not vexed.”
    “Good Lord, of course I’m not. She’s a little beauty.” He tickled Juliette under the chin, on the spot where the only white hairs on the cat’s body formed a lopsided triangle. The pointed chin went up obligingly, and Juliette began to purr. “She will come to me on her own, you know,” he said confidently, moving his finger along one side of the furry jaw toward an ear.
    Doubting him, Anne watched, fascinated, as the kitten, ignoring the thunder now, pressed its head hard against the stroking finger, purring, clearly enjoying the attention. When Lord Michael stopped, Juliette looked at him in indignation.
    He wiggled the finger enticingly on his knee, then stopped. Juliette watched alertly. When he wiggled it again, the kitten put out a paw, halting it in midair when his finger again stopped wiggling. When the finger moved, the paw jabbed, and when the finger disappeared suddenly between his legs, Juliette leapt from Anne’s lap to Lord Michael’s knee, reaching between his legs to attack. The two played for some time before, chuckling, Lord Michael gathered the kitten up in one large hand and began to stroke it with the other. Purring, apparently perfectly at home, it tucked its front paws neatly beneath its pointed chin, and a moment later, when he lifted it to his shoulder, near Anne, the kitten blinked twice at her, then curled into a ball and settled down, purring contentedly until it went to sleep.
    Watching Lord Michael with Juliette, Anne began to revise her first impression of him. He might not be a talkative man, but he was not made of stone. When he turned suddenly and smiled at her, clearly delighted by the kitten’s acceptance of his friendship, she smiled back and, aware of the strange tingling again, decided that marriage to him might prove to be a good deal more interesting than she had expected.

Two
    T HE THREATENING STORM STILL had not broken when the carriage left the public road and the west front of Upminster Priory came into view. Built in the Ionic style, the enormous house stood on the east bank of the River Derwent near the bottom of a steep, rocky, thickly wooded hill. Black clouds, now laced with frequent flashes of lightning, and still grumbling and crashing with thunder, rose ominously above the Peaks to the north and roiled over the hilltop beyond the house. Slanting rays from the setting sun, now about to slip from view behind the great English Apennines bordering the valley to the west and north, lit the stone walls of the house, turning them to glittering gold.
    The carriage rattled over an elegant triple-arched stone bridge, passed through a high arched gateway in the stone wall that surrounded the grounds, rolled past the low stone lodge, and continued at a smart pace through a wooded park and up a tree-lined drive, slowing only when it entered the gravel carriage sweep moments before Lord Michael’s postillions drew their horses to a halt before the splendid entryway.
    Engaged Ionic columns supported the pediment over the entry, approached by wide, sweeping white marble steps. The effect was stately, but Anne had eyes only for the gardens surrounding the house. The formal patterns of the low hedged borders were visible to her experienced gaze, and she could see a lake, at least one folly, and even a ragged maze. Clearly the gardens had once been splendid, but now her fingers twitched to pull the weeds