His Spanish Bride Read Online Free PDF Page B

(including one notable year when she and Raoul infiltrated a regimental party). Which should be doubly true this year.
    Suzanne drew a breath and continued down the passage toward the attachés’ sitting room. No sense in delaying further. Foolish to pause and think. She’d made her decision.
    She rounded a corner in the passage and nearly walked full tilt into Malcolm Rannoch. He put a hand on her elbow to steady her, his fingers warm through the sarcenet sleeve of her gown, then quickly released her. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I wasn’t—”
    “No, I was the one who wasn’t attending.” She swallowed. She was playing the part of a girl who was much more innocent and uncertain than she was herself, yet in truth she felt as though she was stumbling through an alien landscape. “As it happens I was coming to look for you. But it can wait. Are you—”
    “No. That is, I’m perfectly at leisure.” The erudite Malcolm Rannoch also seemed quite at a loss for words.
    “Perhaps we could go into the sitting room?”
    “Yes. No.” He ran a hand over his hair. “That is, Belmont and Vaughn are there, so it might—”
    “Yes, that would defeat the purpose.” Oh, poison. She was being a fool. Better to say it straight out. “I’m making a mull of this as you British would say. The thing is, Mr. Rannoch, if your very generous offer still stands, I should like to accept it.”
    She heard him draw a breath, but she could not have said if it signified relief or fear. The blare of the band reverberated off the paneling. “You do me great honor, Miss Saint-Vallier.”
    At least he didn’t commit the travesty of the conventional “you have made the happiest of men.” “Are you sure?” she asked. “I know propriety says a gentleman can’t withdraw his offer, but I’d understand—”
    “No.” His voice rang unexpectedly strong in the tiled passage. “Believe me. Any concerns I have are for your happiness, not my own.”
    “I owe you a great debt.” Her voice shook, more than she had intended. What she really meant was she had done him a great wrong, but of course she couldn’t say so.
    “Let there be no talk of debts. That’s a poor foundation for a marriage.”
    “Well then.” She looked up at him. The dark hair that fell over his forehead, the gray eyes, the lines that bracketed his mouth, the curve of his mouth itself. “It seems we’re betrothed.”
    She put out her hand, because some gesture seemed to be required. How odd, when she was accustomed to make use of all manner of intimacies in the course of a mission, that the smallest physical gesture felt like a step into open country with snipers lurking behind every rock.
    His fingers closed round her own. He hesitated a moment, then raised her hand to his lips. He had held her in his arms when she’d woken with a nightmare on their journey to Lisbon. She could still remember the careful way he had held her, stiffly at first, then with greater ease, and the touch of his fingers on her hair. But somehow this brush of his lips on her hand now seemed more intimate. Perhaps because of the implications of what they had just pledged.
    When he lifted his head their gazes held for a moment. The blaring of the band outside seemed to reverberate though them. She was conscious of the heat of the candles in the wall sconces, the cold of the tiles beneath her feet, the scent of beeswax in the air.
    She had to do something to break the tension. So she leaned forward and drew his head down to her own.
    For a moment he went still beneath her touch. Then his mouth brushed over her own. Light, tentative. The barest whisper of contact. As first kisses went it was awkward and uncertain. Yet it sent a shock straight through to the soles of her half boots.
    He lifted his head, his breath ragged on her face. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”
    “No. It was—lovely.” And she meant it. She looked into his concerned gaze and remembered that he thought she was the