The Love Affair of an English Lord Read Online Free

dealt her an infuriatingly dismissive look. “In future, I would advise you not to wander onto my property.”
    â€œI hardly did so on purpose,” Chloe retorted. “You see, I’ve just arrived from London—”
    â€œSo I’ve heard.”
    She stepped away as he turned his lean figure back to the horse. “About me?” she asked in astonishment. Under ordinary circumstances Chloe might have been a little flattered that a man she had never met had taken pains to investigate her.
    He turned slowly, looking her up and down as if he had been resisting the urge to do so all along. His face was lean, the masculine features overshadowed by a tension that Chloe could almost feel. In fact, she caught her breath at the suppressed intensity, the male interest that he had not allowed to show before. Had she wondered whether he’d noticed her as a woman? Well, she would wonder no more. Never in her life had a man’s gaze left her feeling more seduced and desirable than his brief heated glance. Only when his gray eyes met hers did the faintest flicker of humor appear.
    â€œYes,” he said. “I’ve heard quite a few things about you, in fact.”
    â€œWhy should I be of interest to you?” she asked in an undertone.
    He hesitated. They were standing in the shadows of the white willow trees that bordered the manor house. Chloe could hear the rain pattering on the silvery leaves, dripping, enclosing them in humid darkness. She sensed he was on the verge of telling her something, a secret, perhaps even the reason why he seemed so preoccupied and impolite. Those soulful gray eyes of his quite softened her heart. Was he sad, stricken perhaps with a terminal illness?
    She edged a little closer, hoping to inspire confidence. She had always been drawn to lost animals, to lost people. But there was something else drawing her to him now, a dangerous curiosity, a magnetic heat. If he had been cool toward her before, he seemed to be a veritable hotbed of dark emotion now.
    â€œWhy?” she asked again.
    She should have been surprised when he drew her into his arms and kissed her. What surprised her more was that she did not melt into the rain, her body suddenly boneless, drugged with the heady sweetness of brandy on his breath. There was power and arrogance and almost desperation in the way his lips took possession of hers. A decade from now she would remember the thrill of that kiss. She struggled for breath. He allowed her but the merest gasp before his tongue drove more deeply into the soft recesses of her mouth.
    â€œWhy?” he whispered, holding her as if she were a lifeline, a link to sanity.
    And Chloe’s own sanity was suddenly in question as his hands drifted down her back, caressing the arch of her spine through her cloak, the contours of her bottom. In her past flirtations she had always felt in control, mistress of her fate. Now her control went up in flames. The dangerous hardness of his body supported and weakened her at once.
    She heard him groan into the hollow of her throat. She had not been kissed like this before. She had not been touched like this. Even through her clothing his hands knew where to linger, how to arouse. A raindrop fell on her cheek and slid down against her neck. He licked it, the curl of his tongue sending a deep shiver through her body.
    â€œYou shouldn’t go out alone,” he said, and kissed her again, his mouth wet, his big arms tightening around her.
    The sensual rasp of his voice almost brought her to her knees. Her heart was pounding in her throat, her ears. “Why not?” she whispered, taunting him back, not wanting to show how she struggled with herself to stop this from going any further.
    He drew away from her with a smile. “This is a small village.” His voice was detached again. She might have imagined the heat between them. Before she could even move, he had remounted and wheeled his horse in the