Her Only Desire Read Online Free PDF Page B

sky.
    He blinked, half expecting it to vanish.
    It remained.
    But as he gazed at it, once again, as in the spice market, he had the oddest sensation of being slowly bewitched, overcome, perhaps
seduced
by this strange land, as though he had caught the subtle whiff of opium fumes.
    Jumping down off the horse’s back, he turned automatically to assist Georgiana. As she set her hands on his shoulders and he clasped her waist, setting her down gently on her sandaled feet, they stared at each other for a fleeting instant. Above the translucent veil that draped the lower half of her face, her deep sapphire eyes lured him with hypnotic power. In contrast to those dark violet-blue eyes, she had skin like pure ivory, and midnight hair gathered back tightly in a smooth chignon.
    Ian stared. Desire hit him like a fireball shot from a catapult, slamming through the outer wall of all his white-towered chivalry.
    â€œThank you,” she whispered a tad hoarsely.
    Suddenly remembering his annoyance at her, Ian gestured to the front path without a word. She stiffened and dropped her gaze, alerted to his displeasure.
    When a liveried Indian groom dashed out, she ordered the man to walk the mare for a while to ensure that she was cool before putting her back into her stall.
    The groom bowed. “Yes, memsahib.”
    She cast Ian another wary glance full of guarded allure. “Come,” she murmured, then strode ahead of him to the front door, her gait willowy-limbed, gliding. She lifted the hem of her fluid silk sari as she walked with a magical tinkling of bells.
    Ian watched her through narrowed eyes, feeling a bit like Odysseus, far from home, being lured into Circe’s den.
    Most ancient bards agreed that lusting after a sorceress was imprudent in the extreme. It would probably serve him right if she turned him into a newt.
    He followed anyway.
    Tracking her to the entrance, he stole one last, vigilant glance over his shoulder. With any luck, his hasty exit from the marketplace may have shaken off anyone following him. Narrowing his eyes against the sun, Ian scanned the broad, green park across the street, then the parade ground that wrapped around Fort William.
    A haze of humidity softened the hard angles of the looming, octangular stronghold. Imprinting his surroundings on his memory, he saw no one who looked suspicious. So far, thankfully, it appeared they had not been pursued by the dead man’s relatives, either.
    Then he followed Georgiana over the threshold.
    Inside, her household was in an uproar with the arrival moments ago of the Indian lady, delivered by the young gentleman whom Ian had also seen riding away from the fire. He gathered that the lad had carried the woman upstairs to recuperate from her ordeal.
    Meanwhile, a score of Indian servants of all shapes and sizes were running to and fro in panicked disorder, alarmed and scandalized, it seemed, by this turn of events. They clustered around their mistress the moment she walked in the door, and all began talking at once. The lightning-fast dialogue in Bengali was too rapid for Ian to understand.
    He waited for a moment or two, but neither her father nor brothers appeared; so, while Georgiana attempted to answer all their questions and soothe their fears, answering them in their own language and calmly giving them their instructions, Ian took matters into his own hands, making sure that the house was secure in case that angry mob came after them.
    He locked the front door behind him and then prowled from room to room throughout the first floor, closing windows and doors. Along the way, he was bemused to find that the decor inside the house was similar to that of any wealthy home in London, for all its exterior whimsy. The only real difference was a profusion of lush tropical palms that flourished in huge stone urns here and there.
    When all the windows and doors were locked, and he had glanced out from various positions around the house to make sure no one