Kissed by Shadows Read Online Free PDF

irony entered her voice but Robin noticed that her fingers quivered slightly among the flowers.
    “And are you?”
    “How can I be diverted when I am kept immured in a stone mansion on the river, constantly under the eye of Bernardina. I
have
no diversions.”
    “Why does your guardian not bring you to court? You are of an age.”
    Luisa did not immediately reply. After a minute she said, “'Tis not that Don Ashton is neglectful or unkind, indeed he is not, but I think he's too busy to think of me. He is not often at court himself, and whenever I ask him if I might not meet some of the young ladies there he says he does not know any.”
    She raised her dark gaze to Robin. “Could that be so?”
    Robin thought of Lionel Ashton. He had never seen him in the company of others. In any gathering almost always he stood alone. It was clear that his business for Philip of Spain did not lie in the public corridors of diplomacy.
    “I do not know your guardian,” he said. “He does not usually take part in court diversions, so it is possible.”
    “Well, he cannot then blame me for seeking my
own,
” declared Luisa.
    “Stealing punts and getting stuck in the mud is a strange diversion for a Mendoza,” Robin said dryly.
    “Ah, what right have you to criticize?” she demanded.
    Robin lay back on the bank, linking his muddy hands behind his head. “None at all. It was merely an observation.”
    “Well, what am I to do?”
    “I think as a start it might be wise to return you to your slumbering duenna,” he suggested.
    Luisa flung herself on her back beside him and gazed up into the sun-tinged tendrils of the willow above her. “Is that all you can think of?”
    “For now.”
    She sighed. “I wish I were not so sensible.”
    Robin gave a shout of laughter and a starling scolded him from way above in the leafy fronds.
    “You may well laugh,” she said bitterly. “But if I were not sensible, and not a Mendoza, I would run away, seek my fortune on the high seas.”
    “The high seas seem rather ambitious for one defeated by the River Thames.”
    For answer she threw a handful of marsh mallows into his face. Laughing, Robin sat up, brushing the flowers from his doublet. “For a Spanish lady, I have to say that you are remarkably ill-schooled,” he declared, grinning at her.
    “High-spirited is the term,” she returned, lifting her chin with an air of great dignity.
    He laughed again and got to his feet. He reached down his hands to pull her up. “You remind me of my sisters.”
    Her astounded expression told him he had made a grave error. “Only in that you're so unconventional,” he said hastily.
    There was a moment's silence. Luisa smoothed down her muddy skirts with an air of decorum that was so ludicrous Robin had to fight to keep a straight face.
    “You think me not womanly,” she stated finally.
    “No . . . no, of course not. Indeed you are . . . are most womanly,” he amended quickly.
    “But I am like a sister . . . a baby sister.” With downcast eyes she smoothed the creases from her bodice, adjusted the lace at the neck.
    Robin regarded her. He had the strangest sense that he was being manipulated in some way. Now, where he'd seen the plumpness of emerging womanhood, he saw voluptuous curves. Tangled and begrimed though she was, Dona Luisa aroused in him none of the feelings of a brother.
    “I think you had better return home,” he stated. “Wait here while I free the punt.”
    She made no demur as he jumped down into the mud and pushed the craft free of the bank. When it was once more afloat he reached up and lifted her into the boat. He tried to keep his hands beneath her breasts but there was no way to avoid their soft upward swell. She smelled of mud and flowers, a young sweetness that took his breath away.
    “No, wait,” he said as she immediately took up the pole with a businesslike air, standing feet braced on the bottom of the punt. “Let me do it. You might not find a knight in shining