His dark eyes glinted like the flashes of light in the stream surging beneath them. He smiled, and his teeth were very white, their color echoed in the thin, gleaming scar that tracked across his cheek. Perhaps it was this injury, tugging at the muscles beneath his bronzed skin that resulted in an indent near the corner of his long upper lip and softened the hard line of his mouth.
“I do too,” he said with a smile that brought warmth to her cheeks.
His rich baritone was dangerously attractive, and his drawling enunciation told Sophia he was not a native-born Englishman. He’s American, she thought, recalling the accent of a distant cousin who’d visited some years before.
She was cognizant of the impropriety of conversing with a gentleman when she was unchaperoned and to whom she had not been introduced, but she also held an unhappy awareness that this could be her last chance to venture beyond the bounds of behavior society, and she herself, would demand once she was married to Freddy.
She found herself returning his smile. “I do not know you sir. And I have been warned only recently against speaking to strangers.”
His mouth quirked. “I am not particularly strange,” he said. “But that’s certainly a valid warning for a young lady. It’s one I’d issue myself.”
She dimpled, unable to resist provoking further conversation. “Then perhaps I should bid you goodbye.” But she made no move to step away, intrigued by this new turn of events and excited by the presence of a man unlike any she had encountered before.
His dress was faultless; his white cravat perfectly tied, the charcoal superfine jacket clearly tailored to emphasize his wide shoulders and narrow waist. Skintight buckskins encased long, muscled legs and his black boots were highly polished. But he wore his garments without pretention and carried himself with easy, masculine grace.
Like her, he was hatless, the brim of a tall riding hat held loosely against his thigh. Beyond him and to the right, a bay mare cropped at the grass beside the brook. Sophia was surprised that her observation of the racing water and her unhappy thoughts had so engrossed her, both horse and rider had been able to approach without her awareness.
After a moment or two he angled his face and said: “What were you searching for?”
Sophia tilted her head questioningly.
“You were gazing so intently into the water. I wondered what held your interest.”
Sophia caught her lower lip between her teeth. What could she say? She was watching for mating trout? She turned her face into the cooling breeze.
“Fish,” she said truthfully though with less eloquence than she would have liked.
He nodded interestedly, the corner of his mouth lifting. “To… fish for… or to eat?”
Sophia shook her head. “To watch. They are quite beautiful,” she expanded, finding herself watching the corner of his mouth, waiting for that captivating indent to appear. When it did, her heart gave a little lurch.
His eyes flashed with humor. “I don’t recall ever encountering a woman who considered fish beautiful.”
“Oh, but they are! Only last week I saw a buck directly under this bridge with the most astonishing coloring, flashes of dark red dappled with gold.” She was aware her expression had dimmed. “But I should not like to catch one, for when they are out of their own environment their colors fade to dullness.” Like hers would, once she was married to Freddy, she thought unhappily.
“Do you eat them?”
“I’m sorry to say I do, but if I was to rely on myself to hook them, I do not think I could bear it.”
Bruno was captivated, and glad of the opportunity for diversion. He’d faced and overcome many challenges in his life, but he hadn’t looked forward to fulfilling the mission he’d embarked upon some weeks before. He’d dismounted by the fast-flowing creek to gather himself before his audience with Jonathan Digby Beaumont, the fifth Earl of St Haugh. Although he’d had weeks to prepare, he couldn’t help but feel some concern as to how the old earl would receive him.
Female entanglements had repelled him in recent months but stumbling upon this vision in peach with her wild cloud of dark hair and her face all clear green eyes and soft vulnerable mouth moved him in some inexplicable way.
The bonnet swinging by its ribbons from her gloved fingers, the carelessly discarded jacket and her low-cut bodice lent her a natural sensuality that was somehow out of kilter with her otherwise genteel bearing.
Loose strands of hair drifted across her face and the breeze swirling up from the brook pressed her gown to the contours of her waist and hips. Surely she must be aware that the mound at the juncture of her thighs was outlined beneath the thin fabric painting itself against her figure.
An onslaught of desire struck him, making him clear his throat and bring his hat to the front of his body. “I understand etiquette demands that in England a lady initiates an introduction,” he said, “but on this occasion, I believe it behooves me to introduce myself.”
She lowered a sweep of dark lashes and inclined her head. The mass of her hair danced in the wind. Bruno smelled the sweet, elusive scent of almond blossom and another scent he couldn’t quite identify, an earthy, almost workmanlike smell that puzzled him. The mixture of sweet and wild and who-knows-where-it-might-lead was explicitly exciting.
“I’m called Bruno Cavanaugh,” he said and waited a beat but instead of furnishing her own name, she raised her eyes beneath winged eyebrows and asked: “What brings you to Northbridge, Mr. Cavanaugh?”
Bruno hesitated. “I’m visiting an old friend,” he said after a moment, not willing yet to reveal his true purpose, even to this bewitching stranger. “You may be acquainted with His Grace the Duke of Northbridge, and his duchess.”
His companion’s face lit up. Her smile pulled at something deep within him. “Indeed I am! Why, Vanessa lunched with us only a fortnight ago. How is it you are acquainted with His Grace?”
In the face of her lively interest he found unexpected enthusiasm for relaying the story of his first meeting with The Most Noble Hugo Ashton Duke of Northbridge, known to Bruno now simply as Ash.
“We met in London some years ago,” he began, warming to the subject as he continued. “I’d been travelling with my business partner and our ship berthed for repairs. We’d been weeks sailing through atrocious weather and we limped into dock glad to have escaped with every limb intact.”
Amused by her enthralled expression, he had no intention of revealing how the ocean filled him with a visceral terror he’d never been able to explain. Even the lake at Northbridge Castle unsettled him with its unknown depths and water made black by the rocks that formed its base and sides.
As far as the ocean went, if there was a quicker way to travel across the Atlantic he’d surely have taken it. For now, let her believe him to be a fearless seafarer if that’s what it took to bring a shine to her eyes and lift the corners of that delectable pink mouth.
As if she read his mind she gave a soft, musical laugh. “And I suppose you found a respectable inn and put yourselves immediately to bed?”
He grinned. “We celebrated at Whites, tried our luck at Brooks’ and ended up in a tavern near Paternoster Row. By the time we emerged, it was just the dark side of daylight and we were worse for wear than when we’d steered ourselves into dry dock. They were upon us before we knew it.”
“They?” She splayed her long fingers across her throat with a delicious shiver.
“A band of toughs as wicked as any you’d find in the old Port Royal.” His let his nostrils flare. “They stank of the evil inside ‘em, rotten to the core.”
Her eyes widened. “How many?”
“Ten.”
“Perhaps you were seeing double.”
“…at least eight.”
“Do go on,” she invited, her eyes dancing.
“The scoundrels were armed to the teeth. We were surrounded on all sides.” Bruno embellished his story without remorse, relishing the gurgle of laughter in her voice and her lively expr
ession as she followed his daring tale…
A word about the author...
Leigh D'Ansey writes Regency and Contemporary romance from her home in New Zealand, way down in the South Pacific. With her life partner, also a writer, she lives in the Bay of Plenty in a unique landscape that could have been tailor-made for the writing life.
The Duke's Blackmailed Bride Page 5
