Seduced by a Stranger Read Online Free PDF

would not be tall and thin and straight. No, not at all. His lips quirked. The top of her head would reach perhaps to his shoulder. In direct opposition to his expectations, she was well curved and in slight disarray, the hem of her skirt a shade darker than the rest, damp and mud splattered. Her hair was coffee brown, pulled back in a simple style. A single long, waving tendril had escaped and slid over her shoulder to curl over her collarbone and along the full curve of her breast.
    Interest stirred. He should like to brush that curl from its place. The inclination surprised him.
    He recalled then that she was expected. Catherine Weston, his cousin’s childhood friend.
    She stopped mid-sentence, as though her words were reined in with a sharp tug. Slowly, she raised her head, and her gaze fixed on the place he stood. Liquid dark eyes, veiled by a thick fringe of lashes that were very long and very straight. Seconds crept past, and her attention did not waver. She knew he was there, watching, though he was certain the shadows cloaked him from view.
    “What is it?” Madeline asked, her tone high with fear, her fingers moving restlessly, plumping the coverlet into a lump. She would work herself into a state in a matter of seconds. He knew that from experience.
    There was no help for it. He must don the mask of host, bow in greeting to their guest, exchange worthless pleasantries. The opportunity to further observe their visitor was welcome. His cousin’s company was not. For that reason only, he would have preferred to step back, feet silent on the thick carpet, and retreat unnoticed. Such cowardice—for that it was in bold truth—would allow his path and Madeline’s to continue traveling parallel to each other, never crossing. But if he departed now, his cousin would let the flames of her secret terrors rage. She would raise a hue and cry until her fears were assuaged.
    And if he left now, he would not hear the wonderful music of Miss Weston’s voice once more.
    Gabriel stepped forward, making his presence known. Or, more accurately, allowing Catherine Weston’s eyes to confirm what her other senses had already alerted her to. An interloper. A watcher in the shadows.
    She stared at him as he paused in the doorway, her expression utterly blank, her features composed. There was no widening of her eyes at his unannounced appearance, no change in her expression, no movement at all, which led to the realization that she, too, wore a mask. He knew his own well enough to recognize such a thing in another.
    Madeline was her usual distraught self, in no condition to offer polite introductions, so he took the task upon himself.
    “Gabriel St. Aubyn.” He offered the words crisply, along with a shallow bow, leaving off the “Sir” and “Baronet” he might have used. Having spent so many years believing the appellations would never be his to claim, he had never become comfortable with them when they finally passed to him.
    “Catherine Weston,” she replied with her crisp diction, so at odds with her lush, full mouth. Dusky rose lips, forming all those lovely consonants and vowels. Porcelain-pale skin. Brown hair, so dark it appeared black in this poor light. He had the inappropriate urge to thrust his fingers through her neatly pinned hair and set it free to tumble over her shoulders. Such an odd thing. He was not usually so fanciful.
    As they watched each other in the dim, quiet room, the silence punctuated by the sound of Madeline’s nervous, panting breaths, Gabriel recognized a primitive part of himself uncoiling in a slow, sinuous stretch. He ran the pad of his thumb along the length of his index finger, though he truly wanted to run it along her full lower lip.
    The urge stunned him. He was far closer to the edge of control than he had thought, and he rapidly shifted his plans. He had intended to wait until dawn on the morrow to leave for London, but as he held Catherine Weston’s calm gaze, he recognized his