Flirting with Ruin Read Online Free PDF Page B

lad.’
    ‘I don’t doubt it. Nor do I doubt that your account was very much sanitised, and I very much admire you for it. As I said, you pitched it perfectly. I meant it as a compliment, Major.’
    ‘So formal! Last night, I was just Fraser.’
    Rosalind blushed. ‘About last night, Major.’
    ‘No. Let’s not, not here,’ Fraser said, looking around the gloomy space with its myriad of pillars. ‘It’s like a damn crypt. Take the air with me, Rosalind.’
    It was exactly what she wished, and exactly what she knew she ought not to do. ‘It is Lady Rosalind, I’ll have you know,’ she said, turning her nose up.
    Fraser laughed. ‘Is it, by God! Take the air with me, my lady.’
    ‘I took the air with you last night.’
    ‘You did, and it was one of the most enjoyable experiences of my life.’
    ‘I ought to go to Kate,’ Rosalind said, not because she believed it but because she felt she ought to.
    ‘Lady Katherine will be best left alone with her sister. Come for a drive with me, Ravishing Rosalind, what possible harm can it do?’
    ‘Two adults, in the open air. Why, nothing at all!’ Rosalind declared, laughingly surrendering to temptation and the shocking hope that he would prove her utterly wrong. ‘Wait for me while I fetch my hat.’
    * * *
    ‘Tell me your history, Lady Rosalind. Tell me what brings you to Castonbury. Tell me your hopes and your dreams and your nightmares. But before you tell me anything,’ Fraser said, grabbing hold of her wrist and pulling her up into the gig beside him, ‘tell me that you are not married.’
    ‘Of course I am not.’ She met his serious look with one of her own. ‘I am many other things, but I am not unfaithful. Are you?’
    Fraser shook his head. ‘Many other things, but not unfaithful,’ he said with just the right note of mockery in his voice. ‘I have never been wed, unless you count the army as a wife.’
    ‘Do you?’
    Fraser picked up the reins and urged the horse into a trot. ‘It’s the only family I’ve ever known, that’s for sure. I joined up as a drummer boy when I was twelve.’
    ‘What of your real family?’
    ‘I am the bastard son of a Highland laird and his laundrywoman. Or so they told me at the orphanage in Glasgow. No, don’t look at me like that, I have no need of your pity. It was a tough rearing, but if nothing else it was a right good grounding for soldiering. It taught me to fight, and it taught me that you have to fight to survive.’
    ‘It’s a lesson you obviously learned very well, since you’ve survived nigh on twenty years of war.’
    ‘Aye, though there have been times when I’ve wondered if I would.’
    Rosalind touched the scar on his cheek. ‘Is it painful?’
    ‘To look at, certainly.’
    His tone was sarcastic, but Rosalind was not fooled. ‘When I saw you today, I thought only that it looked as if it was still healing. I thought it must have been very deep to have taken so long to heal since Waterloo. What I did not think was that it was in any way repellent. On the contrary. As you must be perfectly well aware, Major Lennox, if I did not find myself quite bafflingly attracted to you, I would not be seated by your side in this rather smelly gig, which I fear must have been used at some point in the recent past to transport livestock, allowing you to drive me out into the country without an escort. Do you, incidentally,’ she asked, looking around her at the country lane upon which they were now travelling, ‘have any idea where we are headed?’
    ‘Do you care?’
    ‘Do you always answer a question with a question?’
    ‘Would you prefer, Lady Rosalind,’ Fraser asked, pulling the gig to a halt, ‘if I answered you instead with a kiss?’
    His smile did strange things to her insides. The way he was looking at her too, with intent, made her stomach churn, made perspiration break out on the backs of her knees, of all ridiculous places! ‘Fraser, you cannot mean…’
    ‘Rosalind.’ He pulled