Heiress in Regency Society: The Defiant Debutante

‘Because I—I don’t understand you,’ she murmured hesitantly. ‘I never know what to expect from you. At the beginning you were hostile towards me. You were my judge, jury and executioner all wrapped into one.’ Her luminescent eyes were large and desperate with confusion. ‘And now—these last few days—you—you—’

‘I told you not three days ago that I was wrong in my assessment of both you and your mother and I apologised. But you know, Angelina,’ he said softly, seeing his reflection in the dark centres of her eyes, ‘I seriously think you enjoy baiting me, and nobody does it as well as you. But shall I tell you what I think when I look at you now?’

‘I—if you like,’ Angelina said, trying to answer lightly, but her voice was low and husky.

‘I see an extremely beautiful young woman with shining hair all the wonderful shades of autumn and the smile of an angel.’ His heavy-lidded gaze dropped to the inviting fullness of her mouth, lingering there.

Angelina stepped back a little, but an answering quiver that was a combination of fright and excitement was tingling up her spine. ‘Please don’t look at me like that,’ she whispered.

‘Then I think you’d better go.’

Alex’s desire for Angelina was hard driven, but he couldn’t overstep the mark. But then, he thought, dwelling on a suspicion that had been forming in his mind since before he’d left London, would his uncle mind all that much if he made advances towards Angelina? Wasn’t that what that wily old man had in mind when he’d insisted on her accompanying him to Arlington while he removed himself to Cornwall?

Clutching her towel and bottles to her chest, Angelina crossed the room and opened the door, only to find it slam shut when Alex came up behind her with the sure-footed skill of a panther. She stood there, frozen, anchored between his strong arms, the sleeves of his shirt rolled back to reveal their power. Unable to turn, she could feel his closeness, the muscular hardness of him, the vibrant heat of his body pressed close against her back and his warm breath on her hair.

She trembled when he drew the heavy tresses to one side, feeling defeat, afraid, when she felt his mouth on the soft warm flesh on the back of her neck. On a gasp she sucked in her breath when he parted his lips and touched her skin with the fiery tip of his tongue. Her heart was pounding, and for a moment she knew a feeling of sheer terror when his voice spoke very quietly into her ear. ‘I want you,’ he murmured hoarsely. To his surprise she didn’t fight him; in fact, as his lips began a slow, erotic seduction over her flesh, she didn’t seem to know what he was doing to her.

‘Please—don’t do this,’ she whispered, her heart thundering in her ears.

‘Why? Don’t fight me, Angel. What are you afraid of?’

You, her mind screamed. You, and what you might do to me.

‘You are as much a victim of the overwhelming forces at work between us as I,’ he murmured, his lips continuing their tender assault on her neck, the scent and living heat of her invading all his senses. ‘You and I are one. The simple truth can no longer be denied.’

Lowering her head, a small knot in the wood of the door became the focal point of Angelina’s concentration, a misshapen image tugging at the heart of her memory, conjuring indistinct, cloudy visions in her mind and blending them with a confused jumble of events that took her back to another time, another place, when other hands had touched her, when she had wanted to flee, but had been unable to escape the filthy, groping fingers. She fought a welter of unwelcome emotions that threatened to drag her down to a new depth of despair.

But she was not immune to Alex standing behind her, of the hard rack of his chest pressed against her back, making her feel things she had never felt before, things that were alien to her that she didn’t want to feel. An alarming, treacherous warmth was creeping through her body, a melting sensation unlike anything she had known. She wanted to relax back against him, to feel his arms close around her, but because she could still feel those powerful emotions that seemed to have been drawn into her heart and soul from that night when she thought her life had ended, she could not bring herself to make that move.

With desire crashing over him in tidal waves, Alex looked down at Angelina’s bent head, his lips brushing her shining hair. Slipping an arm about her waist he drew her tight against him, feeling a shimmering tremor in her slender body.

For a moment Angelina leaned into him, let his arm hold her, let him prevail in his hunger, his desire—but she didn’t want it. Her confusion, her passion and her pain rose to a pinnacle as she stood trembling against him. To be this close to him felt like suffocating. She didn’t think she could survive it. Terrified of making an overestimation of her ability to carry out the course she had chosen for herself, somehow she managed to place her trembling fingers on the doorknob and turn it.

‘This is mistake,’ she whispered, knowing that if she allowed some tenderness now between them she would be lost. ‘I told you on the day we met that I do not want to be close to any man in the way you imply—and that includes you.’

Twisting herself out of his embrace, she opened the door and then she was gone, her feet driven by panic away from the east wing. Let him rant and rail, let him insult and chastise her to his heart’s content—anything. Just let him never look at her as he had just then, or touch her with such tender intimacy. She would not let herself be at the mercy of a man like Alex Montgomery, who radiated sensual hunger in every glance, every move and every touch, but she could not deny that something had passed between them that would change their relationship for ever.

On reaching her room, she was struck by a desperate, impelling urge to get out of the house. In an act of rebellion and to bring some semblance of order back to her confused and troubled mind, she strode into the closet and rummaged in her trunk, finally finding what she was looking for—her old breeches and shirt. Removing her dress, she pulled them on, tucking the trouser legs inside her new pair of dark brown leather riding boots and lacing them up—incongruous against her shabby garb. After hastily plaiting her hair, she left the house by a back entrance without seeing a soul until she reached the stables.

When Angelina had left him, Alex stood in the centre of his room in deep reflection. Angrily he attacked his sentimental thoughts until they cowered in meek submission, but they refused to lie down. His attraction to Angelina was disquieting—in fact, it was damned annoying. If he wanted an affair or diversion of any kind, he had a string of some of the most beautiful women in the country to choose from—so why should he feel this insanely wild attraction for an eighteen-year-old girl who had hardly left the schoolroom?

He tried to put her from his mind, but failed miserably in his effort. The sweet fragrance of her perfume lingered everywhere, drifting through his senses, and the throbbing hunger began anew. He cursed with silent frustration, seized by a strong desire to go after her and cauterise his need by holding her close and clamping his lips on hers.

Instead he went into his study and attempted immersing himself in his work. Sitting at his desk, he set himself the task of going over the household accounts, subtracting and multiplying and adding long columns of figures. Under normal circumstances this was a simple matter for his keen, mathematical mind, but, slowly, a face with a pert, dimpled chin, a lovely and expressive mouth with soft, full lips, cheeks as flushed as a ripe peach, and thickly fringed amethyst, velvety eyes crept unbidden into his mind—teasing him, tantalising him, laughing, beckoning him—fearing him.

At this thought Alex leaned his head back against the chair and set down his quill, giving in to his reluctant musings. Fear! Having marked Angelina’s unexpected vulnerability when she’d cowered beneath the water, he now realised that that was what he’d seen in her eyes, but failed to recognize, when he’d threatened to join her in her bath. Then he remembered the words she had spoken before she’d left him and the pain in her voice—that she did not want to be close to any man, including him.

Why? He was both puzzled and curious. What had happened to her? Did it all stem from the time the Indians had attacked her home? Had they attacked her? Was the cause of her determination to close her heart and mind on marriage, on men, something to do with the relationship that had existed between her parents—or something else of an entirely different nature that she dared not reveal to anyone?

He directed his gaze to the window and his eye was caught by a mounted rider galloping across the park at breakneck pace. Frowning, he stood up, straining his eyes through the slightly distorted diamond panes better to recognise the person—which he did. Immediately. He was unable to believe his own eyes, as his gaze became impaled on the figure on the horse.

It was Angelina.

In the space of a heartbeat, fury had replaced Alex’s calm composure. He was furious that Angelina worried him with her recklessness, furious that she was able to evoke any kind of emotion in him at all. Clenching his fists, he stood and watched her. Crouched low over her horse’s neck with her face almost buried in the dancing mane, she rode as no lady should, in breeches and astride. There was simplicity and confidence as she soared over a hedge, at one with her mount, its tail floating behind like a bright defiant banner.

Her mount!

Alex’s face was almost comical in its expression of disbelief when his eyes shifted from the breeches-clad girl to the horse. It was Forest Shadow, a high-spirited, excitable sorrel stallion he’d purchased two months ago at Newmarket to introduce into his hunters. Forest Shadow presented a challenge to even the most accomplished rider, who would be hard pressed to keep the high-stepping animal under control. White with rage, he felt his body go rigid.

‘Of all the brazen, outrageous females,’ he said in a savage underbreath. When she had shot the rabbit, he would have sworn he was incapable of feeling more furious than he had then, but the rage that exploded inside him at that moment surmounted even that.

Turning quickly, he strode to the door, jerking it open, the stallion bearing its young rider already a diminishing speck in the distance. How dare she ride out of the park alone after he’d forbidden her not to, and how dare she take that horse out of the stable when there wasn’t a lad employed by him who was willing to ride out on the animal? On the other hand, he thought with increasing fury as his long legs descended the stairs in leaping strides, that defiant, conniving, dark-eyed witch would dare anything.

Jenkins waylaid Alex in the hall. He shot him an impatient look. ‘What is it?’ he demanded brusquely.

‘I was just coming to inform you that Sir Nathan Beresford and his wife Lady Verity arrived a few minutes ago, my lord. They are with Lady Fortesque in her room.’

‘Thank you, Jenkins,’ Alex replied. Brushing past the butler he stalked towards the door. ‘I have an urgent matter to attend to at the stables. Apologise for my absence and tell them I will be along directly.’

On reaching the stables he cornered one of the lads. ‘Who gave Miss Hamilton permission to ride Forest Shadow?’ he demanded.

‘I don’t know, milord. She just appeared—saying she was going to ride him. We thought you must have told her she could. She wasn’t afraid to ride him, milord.’

‘No, I don’t imagine for one minute that she was,’ he seethed.

‘Miss Hamilton’s good with the horses. Seems to have taken a special fancy to the Shadow—and the Shadow to Miss Hamilton. She understands him. She seems to have a natural communication with him.’

‘Indeed!’

‘Yes, milord. At first, though, when she mounted him, we thought he was going to throw her, but the oddest thing was that when she talked to him—quiet like, into his ear—he seemed to know what she wanted him to do and settled down.’

‘And didn’t anyone think to go with her?’

‘Yes, milord. But she refused the offer of a groom. Will you be wanting Lancer saddled?’ the lad asked, hoping not, having just finished rubbing the stallion down and giving him his feed after returning from St Albans with his lordship. He considered it prudent to keep to himself the stir the young American miss had created by appearing at the stables in breeches—breeches that had seen better days, by the look of them—and of how she had grasped a handful of the Shadow’s mane and leapt on to his back with the casual grace of a well-trained acrobat.

‘No,’ Alex snapped, striding out of the stables like a raging hurricane. He could see no point in riding all over the estate looking for the pesky wench when he knew damn well that she’d come back of her own accord anyway, and when she did he’d teach her obedience if he had to beat it into her.

Walking quickly back to the house, Alex knew a wrath that was beyond anything he had ever felt in his life. That was the moment he encountered Nathan, who had left Verity chatting to her mother and come to look for him. After greeting each other Nathan fell into step beside him.

‘Patience tells me your uncle is in Cornwall,’ said Nathan.

‘He’s visiting a sick friend.’

‘Convenient, don’t you think,’ he remarked, observing his friend thoughtfully, ‘leaving you and Patience to care for Miss Hamilton?’

‘Absolutely,’ Alex growled.

Nathan sensed that Alex was definitely put out about something, and he suspected the cause of it might be about to appear out of the woods on which Alex’s eyes were fixed. Rather than wait for an explanation, he plunged straight in.