Rexanne Becnel Read Online Free

long, assessing moment. She folded her gloved hands neatly at her waist. “I don’t believe we’ve been properly introduced, sir.”
    His grin increased. Then he removed his hat and made a short, neat bow. “I am Marshall MacDougal, at your service, Miss…Miss…”
    Her smile increased also, just a fraction. “You are not British, are you, Mr. MacDougal?”
    “I’m American,” he conceded. “Is it my accent that gives me away?”
    Primly she pursed her lips. “No. Your manners.” She affected a scandalized expression, but one she knew he would not believe. “In our society a gentleman does not introduce himself to a lady.”
    “Oh?” He replaced his hat on his head. “Then how do women and men ever meet?”
    Sarah could feel Agnes’s disapproving stare, and the coachman’s nervous one. But that only egged her on. “They meet through proper channels, of course. Family. Friends.”
    He shook his head. “That’s too bad. I fear I am in for a lonely time of it, then, for I am newly arrived here after a short jaunt in London. And unfortunately I have neither friends nor family in Scotland to recommend me.”
    For a moment longer their gazes clung, and Sarah felt clearly the crackling tension between them. It was scary and exhilarating, and she knew one thing without a doubt. This was not a man who would ever want for company, especially female company. There was something in his eyes, some spark caused not solely by the spring sunshine. She felt a little thrill shoot through her every time he looked at her.
    No, not merely a little thrill. She’d felt a little thrill when Harlan Bramwell had looked at her. She’d felt a little thrill when Ralph Liverett had taken her hand. And Lord Penley, the cad.
    What she felt now, however, was quite different from those little thrills of conquest. This was hot and tickling, trembling its way right through her body, making her heart race and her stomach clutch.
    Fortunately, caution raised its head in the nick of time.
    This impulsive surrender to her emotions was what had gotten her into trouble in the past, this reckless attraction to everything she ought to avoid. And one thing she knew instinctively: This man was someone she ought definitely to avoid.
    So she schooled her face into a more serious expression and banished any flirtatious tone from her voice. “I suspect you will get the hang of things, Mr. MacDougal. Good day.” And without further ado—or his assistance—she stepped lightly into the hired coach.
    Agnes followed, slamming the door behind them, and in a moment they pulled out of the inn yard. As the coach rocked down the dusty roadway, Sarah congratulated herself that she’d behaved precisely as she ought: polite, but not friendly. Certainly she had not encouraged him, at least not toward the end.
    But as she removed her hat and gloves and positioned a small pillow behind her back, she allowed herself the luxury of imagining just who this American was, and why he’d come all the way across the wide ocean to Scotland. Marshall MacDougal was his name, a Scottish name for an American man. Dark chestnut hair that glinted red in the sunlight. Black eyes that glinted blue.
    Again she felt that traitorous little tremble in her belly, and she sighed at her own perversity. If the smooth and charming Lord Penley had been wrong for her, a forthright American like Mr. MacDougal would be disastrous. She had already learned, the hard way, that she was an exceedingly poor judge of men. She must work now to remember that fact.
    But it was going to be hard, she acknowledged, closing her eyes. It was going to be so hard.
     
    Marshall trailed a quarter mile behind the lumbering coach. The incident with the pretty young woman at the posting house had been instructive. If Boston’s society was bound by intricate rules after less than two hundred years, English society was mired in them. He’d bought his way into Boston’s elite. After all, in America, money was the