The Magic of His Touch (May Day Mischief) Read Online Free PDF Page B

polite
conversation with equally polite monosyllables. After a while he gave up and
decided to enjoy his dinner. The baked carp in gravy was indeed excellent, and
as for the veal collops, he would have to send a laudatory message to the
cook.
    Miss Whistleby reached across to pick up a dish of pickles. Her
aroma drifted his way, circling around him enticingly. How could he possibly
concentrate on spring spinach dressed with cream, however well prepared? He had
to exert the utmost control not to lean closer to Miss Whistleby and inhale her
scent.
    This was ridiculous. She was putting him off his feed! Much
good it did him being so strongly attracted to her. The one instance when her
arm almost brushed his, she gasped, dropped the salt and cringed as if she’d
been burned.
    “Bad luck,” he said, almost irritably, before he could stop
himself. “Better throw some over your shoulder.”
    “That’s nothing but a silly superstition,” she retorted.
    “And, er—” He chose a topic Lord Elderwood had mentioned on the
drive over. “Boggarts are not?”
    “No, they’re not.”
    “Peony!” chided her aunt.
    “I’ve been meaning to ask about boggarts,” Elderwood said.
“Whistleby Priory is reputed to have one of its own.”
    “We used to,” Peony said.
    “Peony!” said her aunt again. “Lord Elderwood will have a very
odd idea of you if you say such things. You’re not a baby anymore.”
    Something about the way Peony stiffened, at the way she caught
her lip between her teeth, tore at Alexis’s heart. Damn it, she had the right to
believe what she chose, whether they or he or anyone else agreed.
    “There is such a legend,” said Mr. Whistleby uneasily, “and as
a boy, I thought I saw the boggart.” He gave a deprecating little laugh. “But
children do have such fancies, and of course there’s no sign of one now.”
    “That’s because it left when Great-Aunt Wilma died,” Peony
said.
    “Fascinating,” Elderwood said. “Did her death release him, or
did he choose to go?”
    “She had released him long before. She told me so. I don’t
think he wanted to stay once she’d gone.”
    “Quite possible,” Elderwood said. “I trust you’ve included this
story in your opus, Miss Barnes?”
    “Of course,” Lucasta said in an icy voice, which she
immediately moderated by embarking on a recitation of the various stories of
boggarts she had recorded. At any other time, Alexis might have been amused by
the sparks flying between his two dearest friends, but instead he wished he
could pull Peony into his arms and tell her that she was bright and beautiful,
and that she should believe whatever she damn well pleased.
    What with her aunt’s constant scolding, her father’s weakness
of character and Lucasta’s forceful personality, it was no wonder she had run to
the arms of someone who pretended to appreciate her.
    She was headed for devastating disappointment and perhaps
worse. He wouldn’t put up with it. Something had to be done.
    * * *
    Sitting next to Sir Alexis Court through an interminable
dinner drove Peony quite, quite mad. She could have cheerfully boxed Lucasta’s
ears for arguing with Lord Elderwood about folklore throughout the meal and
paying no attention to her betrothed, thereby obliging him to talk to Peony. He
was good-natured about it, but she couldn’t manage to put two words together.
For once, it wasn’t shyness that deterred her. Strangely, she didn’t feel shy
with him at all. Perhaps that was the result of being viewed in the nude.
    She wanted to touch him. His large masculine presence in such
close proximity made her fingers tingle and itch. His warm, resonant voice sent
tremors through her, and somehow those tremors slithered hotly downward to
settle in her private parts. She ached and throbbed and squirmed on her chair.
It was all she could do to maintain the pretense of being a proper, well-bred
woman. When he reached for the mustard at the same time as Peony picked up