The Seduction Read Online Free

humor, that had made her knees weaken for a moment.
    Her fury was not because the admiration of men
did not affect her, but because it did. She could not afford it. She had never
understood it. Now it was an intolerable burden, when her only future lay in concealment
and denial. Yet sometimes loneliness caught her unawares, like a little beggar
child suddenly grasping at her skirt, demanding her attention with
heartbreaking need. She knew no defense against that, except anger. The world
believed her a widow. Why couldn't men leave her alone?
    He lay where she'd left him, among the lazy
scents of summer.
    The sunlight was broken, marking him with dapples
where it sifted through the trees, creating one moderately cool spot in her hot
garden.
    He burned there like a fire.
    As she approached he opened eyes blackened into
midnight pools and grinned at her. It sent creases into his cheeks, disarming,
making her anger seem absurd. The lines of his face were almost severe - clean,
hard, shaped like a sculpture, easy to barricade against - but the smile made
him human again, even frivolous.
    Swallowing her uneasiness, Juliet slipped the
pillow under his neck. His hair was the color of the cowslips she used to make
wine. Silky under her fingers.
    "Give me your hand." She poured hot
water from the kettle onto her cloth and wrapped the compress over the
swelling. "Now lie still until you feel stronger. The pain and the
weakness will probably pass."
    "Ι can . . . stand them, ma'am."
His voice was almost strangled by his erratic breathing. "But if they do
not?"
    "Then no doubt your heart will stop beating,
sir." With relief she noticed there was no feminine tenderness at all in
her voice. "However, it would be a considerable inconvenience to me if you
were to die in my garden, so Ι pray you will concentrate on maintaining
life."
    She reached for the folds of his cravat and
pulled out the knots. She did not want to touch him, but his tight clothes were
a danger to a man in shock.
    Her fingers felt clumsy and heavy as she
unbuttoned the front of his waistcoat, then opened his shirt at the neck. The
strong skin of his throat gleamed smooth and white in the mottled light. She
noticed the perfect shape of his jaw at the strangely vulnerable junction where
it curved up into his ear and felt a small surge of discomfort, as if she were
a young farm girl winked at by a gentleman.
    How humiliating to mark such things! So the man
was handsome and golden in the sunshine. He was also spoiled by discontent
and idleness. There was a petulant scorn to the set of his lips and a permanent
disdain bred into the shape of his nostrils. Α man of leisure, no doubt,
and very probably a wastrel.
    His clothes were simple, but sumptuously made,
the fabric of his coat rich and thick. Without compunction, she wrenched it
off, tugging at the arms. He was firm, superbly fit. So he fenced and rode. Of
course. Most gentlemen did, however much they disguised that strength with the
gloss of fashion.
    His shirtsleeve stretched over his swollen wrist,
so she slit the fabric to the elbow with the little knife from her chatelaine.
His forearm was strong, carved with muscle beneath a masculine dusting of
golden hairs. Juliet tried to ignore the unwelcome intimacy, the unwelcome feelings,
but she held a man's naked arm in her bare hand.
    The swelling blurred the fine shape, the powerful
mesh of wrist to arm.
    He was ill.
    Steadily, she applied more compresses. Even his
shirr was finer than anything in her wardrobe, soft and enticing to touch. So
he was - or had recently been - a wealthy man. Α little tendril of
curiosity unfurled. What was he doing in Manston Mingate?
    She bit her lip and suppressed the question.
    It made no difference. She would be forced into
his company for only a few hours of simple nursing-and even that was a
compromise.
    Juliet wanted to be left alone, but she did not
want a corpse on her garden path.
     
    ALDEN LAY FLAT ON HIS BACK AND STARED AT