Too Precious to Lose by Barbara Cartland

Author:Barbara Cartland
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Barbara Cartland EBooks ltd
Published: 2013-04-25T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter five

Norina could not think how to answer.

She stared ahead, looking at the wall of the coach as the wheels rumbled on to Paris.

The Marquis waited.

Then he said,

“Turn your face towards me, Rina.”

Because Norina was so bemused, she obeyed him and realised that he was sitting sideways to face her.

She had taken off her spectacles because they blurred her vision and she had so wanted to see the stars and the land they were passing through.

She would have put them on again, but the Marquis reached out and cupped her face with his hands.

A little shiver went through her at his touch and he said quietly,

“I will not hurt you. I am only trying to find out whether Jean was right in saying that you are très jolie.”

It was impossible for Norina to move.

Still with one hand on her left cheek, the Marquis slowly outlined her face with a finger of his right hand.

First he moved it gently over her forehead and she was glad that she was not wearing the wig.

Then he outlined her eyebrows and, very slowly so that she was not nervous, slid his finger down to touch the lids of her eyes and, because she was shy, she closed them.

His fingertip lingered for a second on the length of her eyelashes.

Then his finger moved down her straight little nose. It paused beneath it before he touched the curves of her lips. First left – right, then her underlip.

She did not understand, but it gave her a strange sensation she had never felt before.

She made a little murmur in her throat. Yet she did not move as he outlined the contour of her chin, rising up finally to her ear.

He touched it and again she felt something strange streak through her breast. She thought it must be because she was nervous at what he was doing.

Then, so quickly that she was surprised, he released her.

Sitting back again in his seat, he said,

“Jean is right and I am prepared to wager a large sum that you are, in point of fact, very lovely.”

Because Norina felt strangely shaken by what he had just done, she turned her head away.

She then looked out of the window from which the curtains were drawn back.

Her hands still lay in her lap holding her spectacles.

Again unexpectedly the Marquis put out his left hand and covered them.

She thought he was going to refer to the fact that she wore spectacles, but instead, his fingers crept a little lower.

Then he said in the tone of someone who has made a discovery,

“No wedding ring. It is what I suspected!”

Too late Norina remembered, when Dawes had suggested she should be a widow, that she should have taken her mother’s wedding ring from her jewel-box.

Now that she thought about it, having packed everything she possessed, Dawes would not have forgotten her mother’s jewellery. It had been in the safe where her own was kept in a special drawer in her bedroom.

Because she felt she must make some explanation,

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