One Final Season Read Online Free PDF Page A

without the interested gaze of the cream of fashionable society upon them, of course.
    What on earth did the copper-haired torment mean by staring at him across the ballroom as if she’d never set eyes on him before, as if he’d finally come to her attention as something more than a dancing, talking marionette and she was intent on beckoning him to her side by sheer force of will? Could anything good be flying about her busy brain? he wondered, as he tried his best to pretend she was merely a polite acquaintance, despite the fact that his disobliging body and most of society knew he’d been besotted with her from the first moment he’d laid eyes on her three years ago. Unfortunately she knew it as well and, try as he might, he couldn’t relax and just enjoy this dance with a graceful and accomplished partner who should now mean absolutely nothing to him.
    He’d been far too boyish and silly to hide his infatuation with her three years ago. When she’d carelessly turned him down that last time as if she was waving away an annoying fly or a brash young puppy pestering her with unwanted adoration, he’d told himself his stupid obsession with her had been a youthful folly he would very soon grow out of, and that one day he’d look back on it with astonishment that he’d ever been so young and gullible. Well, he’d made it so at last by cutting her and all the dreams he’d had of her painfully and painstakingly out of his heart so he could come here again to find the woman he could marry and live with for the rest of his days, and that woman was not Katherine Alstone.
    This spring, he’d assured himself as he travelled from his very substantial estates in Herefordshire to his impressive house in Grosvenor Square, he’d look about him for a quiet and biddable female to become his viscountess. Marrying the too-clever, tricky and far-from-biddable beauty his heart had once been set on so uselessly would have been a disaster on both sides. He’d told himself blithely that he was grateful to her for saving them both from such a fate and he should thank her on his knees for refusing him again and again.
    It had seemed such a sensible plan when he was still at Cravenhill Park, where Miss Alstone had refused an invitation to stay for the summer and get to know him better with a sweet, distracted smile and a brief assurance that they were too young and probably wouldn’t suit anyway.
    How would she know? he silently quizzed himself as he struggled with a strong urge to shake the slender, curvaceous, infinitely desirable and utterly contrary female until her perfect white teeth rattled even now, when both of them were three years older and supposedly wiser.
    He shifted uncomfortably to avoid making yet closer contact with her and inflaming himself even further and caught surprise in her blue, blue eyes as she turned to look up at him questioningly. Turning the movement into a demand that she spin fluidly past a less sure couple, he fought a whole pack of demons at the feel of her body so close to his, moving so gracefully to the steps of the dance and reminding him, as if he needed reminding, exactly who he held in his arms at last, warm and desirable and all too real.
    No, he ordered himself as his body responded instinctively to hers and he fought the magic fiercely, he was done with self-inflicted torture. He’d wrung Kate Alstone from his thoughts and routed her from his heart and never again would he spend restless nights tossing and turning as he was driven distracted by a bitter yearning for her in his bed, at his board and for ever by his side. Knowing, for the simple reason of having tried it in the throes of youthful desperation, that making love with a demi-mondaine he’d fooled himself looked just like her would never satisfy his ridiculous fantasies of Kate, warm and shameless in his bed, with every inch of her velvety skin and stubborn will in tune with his desires at last, he utterly refused to become the