Improper Advances Read Online Free Page A

looked up, and touched his wide brim in perfunctory acknowledgment of her cheery greeting. A night’s repose hadn’t seemed to improve his mood, for he failed to return her smile.

Chapter 2
    She smelled like a garden of rare and exotic flowers. Dare, trapped in the fragrant cloud of her perfume, tried to identify it. Lilies, lilacs, roses? He couldn’t guess what it was; he only knew it was damnably intoxicating.
    “I had little faith that you would come, Sir Darius.”
    “I’m a man of my word,” he declared.
    Her head tipped back, exposing a slender column of a neck and the elegant curve of her jaw. As she eyed the low, heavy clouds scudding across the sky, she said, “It’s not a promising day for a drive.”
    He let out a humorless chuckle. “If you’re so easily deterred by damp, you won’t like living on this island. Be thankful for a civilized mist—you might’ve had the more typical torrent of spring rain.” He guided the pony around the largest puddles, to avoid splashing mud on his passenger’s deep green skirt.
    “Have you ever lived in the country, Mrs. Julian?”

    “Till now, I never wished to.”
    Dare imagined her being driven around Hyde Park in a fashionable phaeton, smiling and nodding to her acquaintances, or sweeping through London’s lamplit streets in a closed carriage. “What made you change your mind?”
    “A gentleman.”
    This disclosure deepened Dare’s suspicions and, contradictorily, sharpened his interest. “He commanded you to leave London?”
    “No, I went voluntarily. Extremely inconvenient, but very necessary.”
    He had to wonder if she made hasty departure in order to conceal the evidence of an indiscretion. But if that were so, she’d want to hide on the island for nine full months instead of just one.
    “How far is Glen Auldyn from Ramsey?” she asked.
    “Two miles. The whole island is thirty miles top to bottom, so there are no great distances.” Fedjag, who regularly trod this stretch of the Sulby Road, slowed even before Dare tugged the left-hand rein.
    After negotiating the sharp bend, he said, “Here we enter the glen, which extends four miles southward.
    That field is called Magher y Trodden—the site of an ancient cemetery haunted by restless spirits.”
    “Trying to frighten me away, Sir Darius?”
    He wished he could, but last night she’d demonstrated her tenacity. She turned her face away from him and gazed at the mountain on their right. Fog veiled the view but couldn’t obliterate its beauty.
    “You must favor hills and tors,” she commented. “I’m told you have property in Derbyshire.”
    She had been asking questions about him, the little schemer. Affronted by this proof of her prying, he was determined to deflect further inquiries. “The locals identify Skyhill as the site of a fairy city. It’s also a famous battleground—on that summit an army of Norsemen conquered the native Manx.”
    Her fascination killed his impulse to drive her away with a lecture on history—perhaps he should try geology. A soliloquy on the predominant characteristics of Manx slate would cause those pretty hazel eyes to glaze from boredom. By comparing and contrasting the Plutonian theory of the earth’s origin—which he strongly supported—with the less worthy Neptunian example, he could force Mrs. Julian to leap out of the gig and run back to Ramsey.
    The pervasive, garlicky odor of the ramsoms, pale flowers shooting up in shadowy places, would surely dissuade her from settling here. To his dismay, she complimented the precocious bluebells bobbing beneath the green canopy of tree branches, and admired the river, swollen by spring rains, as it splashed and foamed over the rocks.
    To make certain she noticed that the glen was sparsely populated, he said, “There are very few crofters here.”
    “How do they support themselves?” she asked.
    “You would regard their agricultural methods as primitive, but they manage to feed themselves and supply