Seduced By A Stranger by Eve Silver

Author:Eve Silver
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Kensington
Published: 2009-07-19T07:00:00+00:00

Catherine fisted her hands in her skirt and stepped away, suddenly wary. St. Aubyn filled the space, inhabiting it, owning it. Even in the dimness, he was painted in shades of gold and honey and finely brewed ale. Yet the meager light suited him, for he was more akin to shadow than light, regardless of his sun-bright beauty. He was a man who looked nothing like he ought to. If appearance reflected inner self, he would be cast in the smoke and pewter of shadows rather than the gilded gold of sunlight.

That thought was enough to stir fear in her gut, to rouse memories of another man whose appearance had so poorly matched his temperament and secrets. A man who had cost her everything. The worst of it was, she had chosen to trust Jasper Hunt, to love him. In the end, he had broken her, shaped her to obey. By the time she had understood that, it was too late for her. For her baby.

The woman she was now had risen from the ashes of the girl she had been. The woman she was now would not be lulled and tricked by anyone. She was wiser than that. She would force herself to be wiser than that.

“What are you doing here, in my chamber?” she asked, aware even as she did so that the question was belated. She ought to have bid him leave the second he pushed open the door. And now it was too late, because even if he turned and left now, she would still have knowledge of the well-hidden part of him that had been driven to offer his own rather restrained form of comfort—a glass of water for her parched throat, a cool cloth for her fevered brow. He had taken liberties, crossed boundaries, created an intimacy she did not wish to have with him.

“I heard you. From the hallway.” His lips curved in a faint, sardonic smile. “We seem to alternate roles skulking about in the shadows, you and I.”

There was that. Strangely, his odd attempt at levity eased the ache in her heart just a little.

“Why were you in the hallway? Only Madeline and I are housed in this wing, and I have doubts that you were on your way for a pleasant visit with your cousin.”

He watched her for a moment, assessing, measuring. “I was on my way to make certain that Madeline took the laudanum Graves supplied. A night’s rest would benefit her.”

His solicitous concern for the cousin he freely admitted he despised seemed odd. She studied him, trying to judge his sincerity.

In the meager light of the moon and the single flickering candle, his hair was gilded, his eyes shadowed. But not so shadowed that she did not read the glint of desire that flared in their amber depths as he dropped his gaze to her lips, her breasts.

“I gave her a dose in a glass of Madeira,” she said in a rush, startled and appalled by the answering spark of attraction that flickered in her belly, sending hot tendrils snaking through her limbs.

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