A Rose for Major Flint (Brides of Waterloo) by Louise Allen

Author:Louise Allen [Allen, Louise]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin Historical
Published: 2015-07-02T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fourteen

‘Oh, yes, I want your body and you have shown every indication of wanting mine,’ Adam said drily. His gaze caressed her mouth, then hardened. ‘What have you done? There is blood on your lip.’

The square of white linen he offered her was pristine. Maggie’s laundry, Rose thought with a stab of homesickness for the simple uncomplicated warmth of that house. She took it from his outstretched hand, expecting him to move in closely and dab at the sore lip himself. But he was angry, she guessed. Angry and keeping his distance from her, the cause of the thoroughly unpleasant day he must be experiencing.

They stared at each other while she pressed the handkerchief to her mouth, smelling the clean tang of starch and soap. ‘One of us is going to have to say something,’ Adam remarked after the silence had hung heavy between them for a while.

‘I have said it. No.’

‘It is not an acceptable response. Not for your parents, not for my honour. Certainly not for your welfare or for that of the child you may be carrying.’ His accent was indistinguishable from the well-born gentlemen he had learned to imitate, without a trace of the faint country burr she had grown to love. That was the voice he used to speak to his men, his horse, his dog and, when he had believed her to be his social equal, the voice he had used to her.

Whatever the choices Adam would willingly have made about his future, now it seemed he had accepted there was only one. He was going to mould himself into an English gentleman for her whether she wanted that or not.

‘Your father tells me you have always held out for a love match. I am sorry for that, sorry for sneering at the notion just now. But if you do not marry me, I doubt you will be able to hide from another man that you are no longer a virgin.’

Rose sat down blindly on the nearest chair, jarring her spine when it proved to be an upright one and not the armchair she was expecting.

A love match? I could love you, Adam Flint. Perhaps I already do. But I have entrapped you when your only fault was to save a woman from an awful fate and then to fail to recognise that she was not what all the evidence proclaimed her to be. And now, even if I ever do find the right man for me, I have to hope he will be uncommonly forgiving.

‘Rose, don’t cry. It is not going to help.’

‘I am not.’ Then she realised she had pressed the handkerchief to her eyes to shut the world out, not to absorb any tears from her dry eyes. He must think she was trying to gain his sympathy, to soften him, as if that was possible. ‘Yes, I want a love match.’ She clasped her hands around the handkerchief in her lap. She did not want Adam to believe she would try to manipulate him by weeping.

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