The Runaway Bride by Sheila Walsh

Author:Sheila Walsh [Walsh, Sheila]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Tags: historical romance, regency fiction, regency romance, regency historical romance, georgian romance, clean and wholesome, clean regency romance
Publisher: Wyndham Books (Regency Romance)
Published: 2019-02-27T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eleven

‘Consuelo?’

It was a different voice, sharp, familiar ‒ coming from a long way off. She wanted it to go away again so that she might explore to the full all these wonderful new sensations that were coursing through her.

But Captain Bannion was already releasing her, setting her firmly on her feet and striding away to assist Lady Covington who stood swaying just within the doorway of the main cabin. Valiantly she took a step and clung to the sideboard for support, looking incredibly lovely, incredibly frail in a white floating peignoir, her fair hair cascading around a face filled with pale vulnerable shadows, its only colour the pouting mouth beguilingly touched with pink.

He reached her side and she leaned heavily upon him as he guided her towards the settee. ‘I feel so stupidly weak!’ she sighed in answer to his terse inquiry, her voice no more than a thread of that initial sharp utterance. ‘But I felt I could no longer neglect my responsibility towards dear Consuelo. I do hope the child has not usurped too much of your valuable time?’

Nick did not reply, could not reply, he was so full of impotent rage. Granite-faced, he made her comfortable, fetching a blanket when she prettily complained of feeling a draught and tucking it about her with hands that shook slightly from a suppressed urge to wrap themselves around her elegant neck. Then he pleaded a necessity to return to his duties.

‘Of course.’ She smiled sweetly. ‘We would not dream of keeping you from them!’

Consuelo was still standing where he had left her. There was a curious blankness in her eyes and he saw that she was trembling visibly now. He silently cursed himself for frightening her and was obliged to fight down an overwhelming urge to snatch her up in his arms and carry her for ever out of reach of her father, of Don Miguel ‒ and most of all, of Henry Linton. But, he reminded himself, Consuelo was in love with her ‘Enrique’.

So he avoided her eyes and said harshly as he left: ‘For heaven’s sake, do go and get out of that sodden cloak, or we shall have another invalid on our hands!’

She went on standing there for several minutes after he had gone, attempting to take herself in hand. A torrent of conflicting emotions bewildered and threatened to engulf her. More than anything she was hurt by Captain Bannion’s sudden change of manner towards her. Hampered by a painful lack of experience she could find but one explanation ‒ she had misunderstood him, and was at once terrified lest she had given herself away. How foolish he would think her should he ever guess with what wild inaccuracy she had interpreted those few brief moments of intimacy.

Yet surely she could not have been so mistaken? She recalled his silence when Lady Covington had implied she had been a nuisance, the swiftness with which he had hurried to her side ‒ and jealousy, an emotion until now quite foreign to her nature, washed over her in waves.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.