One Night of Scandal Read Online Free Page B

you.’
    Deb quickened her horse’s pace to a trot and burst out of the shade and into the open field again. ‘Is my penalty for losing the wager also to find that I cannot lose your company, Lord Richard?’ she demanded.
    Richard smiled. ‘I feel that I should escort you home, Mrs Stratton. One may come across all kinds of rogues if one has the folly to ride out without a groom in attendance.’
    Deborah raised her whip and tapped it thoughtfully against the palm of her hand. ‘Perhaps I could deal with them.’
    ‘I thought that I had already demonstrated that you could not?’
    Richard watched in amusement as Deborah’s fist clenched more tightly about the handle of the whip. The leather of her gloves strained across her knuckles. Her intentions were all too clear.
    ‘I find my need for solitude to be quite overwhelming now, Lord Richard,’ she said coldly. ‘Sufficient to defend it with violence, even.’
    Richard laughed. ‘You have no need to go so far, Mrs Stratton. I can take a hint as well as the next man.’
    He thought that she almost smiled then, despite herself. ‘All evidence to the contrary, Lord Richard,’ she said. ‘I have always thought you remarkably slow to understand.’
    Richard quietened Merlin, who had picked up the tension in the air and was sidestepping nervously.
    ‘Perhaps you are underestimating me?’ he said softly.
    ‘I doubt it,’ Deb snapped. ‘My estimation of you has always been that you are a thorough-going rake, and I have seen nothing to contradict that.’

    ‘I cannot fault your assessment of me,’ Richard said. ‘All that I question is your own response. You are not as indifferent to me as you pretend.’
    He saw the colour come into Deborah’s cheeks then and thought it a mixture of indignation and guilt. She did not wish to admit her attraction to him, but because she was of so honest a disposition she was having difficulty with lies and half-truths.
    ‘You are mistaken,’ she said.
    ‘I do not think so.’
    ‘You are conceited.’
    ‘Possibly. That still does not prove that you dislike me.’
    ‘I dislike you intensely.’
    ‘And that does not prove that you are not attracted to me.’ Richard threw up a hand. ‘Come, Mrs Stratton—Deborah—admit the truth.’
    ‘I did not give you the right to address me by name, my lord,’ Deborah snapped.
    ‘No, you just gave me a passionate kiss in the woods. I concede that one does not need to be on first-name terms to do such a thing. Indeed, you could make love to me and never need to call me by my name—’
    He saw the flash of fury in her eyes, but he did not flinch as the whip came down. It hit the mare’s flank rather than his face, and the creature took off across the fields as though it had the fires of hell snapping at its heels.
    This time Richard let Deborah go, watching with admiration as she leaned from the saddle to retrieve her hat from the grass without even slowing the horse’s stride. With a whimsical smile on his face, he turned Merlin in the opposite direction and cantered back towards Kestrel Court along the track that ran beside the edge of the river, the Winter Race. The path was soft and sandy beneath Merlin’s hooves and the horse settled to a tidy pace leaving Richardat liberty to think about Deborah Stratton. He had forced himself to self-control when dealing with her, but she had brought out every primitive and masculine instinct within him. It was damnably difficult to behave like a gentleman when all he wanted to do was carry her off.
    Richard sighed, deliberately allowing the tension to drain from his body. It had been an interesting morning. First there had been the mysterious letter addressed to the editor of the Suffolk Chronicle . He wanted to know what that had been about. Then there had been his encounter with Deborah herself, as madcap and passionate and yet as determinedly strait-laced as ever. Their meeting had only strengthened Richard’s determination to pursue