Only a Kiss Read Online Free PDF Page B

tapping his riding crop against the side of his boot.
    “My lord,” the butler said, inclining his body forward two inches or so and creaking alarmingly as he did. Corsets? Or just creaky old bones?
    “And you are?” Percy made an impatient circling motion with his free hand.
    “Crutchley, my lord.”
    Ah, a man of few words. And then a mangy-looking tabby cat darted into the hall, stopped in its tracks, arched its back, growled at Percy as though it had mistaken itself for a dog, and darted out again.
    If there was one thing Percy abhorred, or rather one class of things, it was cats.
    And then one of the front doors opened and closed behind his back, and he turned to see who had had the effrontery to enter the house by the main entrance without so much as a token rap upon the knocker.
    It was a woman. She was youngish, though she was not a girl. She was clad in a gray cloak and bonnet, perhaps so that she would blend into invisibility in the outdoors. She was tall and slim, though it was impossible with the cloak to know if there were some curves to make her figure interesting. Her hair was almost blond but not quite. There was not much of it visible beneath the bonnet, and not a single curl. Her face was a long oval with high cheekbones, largish eyes of a slate gray, a straight nose, and a wide mouth that looked as though it might be covering slightly protruding teeth. She looked a bit as though she had stepped out of a Norse saga. It might have been a beautiful face if there had been any expression to animate it. But she merely stared at him, as though
she
were assessing
him
. In his own home.
    That was his first impression of her. The second, following swiftly upon the first, was that she looked about as sexually appealing as a marble pillar. And, strangely enough, that she was trouble. He was not used to dealing with females who resembled marble pillars—and who walked unannounced and uninvited into his own home and looked at him without admiration or blushes or any recognizable feminine wiles. Though blushes would have been hard to detect. Both cheeks plus the end of her nose were a shiny red from the cold. At least the color proved that she was not literally marble.
    “And who the devil might
you
be?” he asked her.
    She had provoked the rudeness by walking in without even the courtesy of a knock on the door. Nevertheless, he was unaccustomed to being rude to women.
    “Imogen Hayes, Lady Barclay,” she told him.
    Well, that was a neat facer. If it had come at the end of a fist, it would surely have put him down on the floor.
    “Am I suffering from amnesia?” he asked her. “Did I marry you and forget all about it? I seem to recall that
I
am
Lord
Barclay. The Viscount of, to be exact.”
    “If you had married me,” she said, “which, heaven be praised, you have not, then I would have introduced myself as the Countess of Hardford, would I not? You
are
the earl, I presume?”
    He turned to face her more fully. She had a low, velvety voice—which overlay venom. And her teeth did
not
protrude. It was just that her upper lip had a very slight upward curl. It was a potentially interesting feature. It might even be a beguiling feature if
she
were beguiling. She was not, however.
    He was not accustomed to feeling animosity toward any woman, especially a young one. It seemed he was making an exception in this woman’s case.
    Understanding dawned.
    “You are the widow of my predecessor’s son,” he said.
    She raised her eyebrows.
    “I did not know he had one,” he explained. “A wife, I mean. A widow now. And you live here?”
    “Temporarily,” she said. “Usually I live in the dower house over there.” She pointed in what he thought was roughly a westerly direction. “But the roof is being replaced.”
    His brows snapped together. “I was not informed of the expense,” he told her.
    Her own brows stayed up. “It is not your expense,” she informed him. “I am not a pauper.”
    “
You
are