The Passionate One Read Online Free PDF Page B

them.
    “What did you do to
your face?”
    His question caught
her off guard. He’d come closer while she’d been lost in thought. He grasped
her chin, tilting her face into the shafts of late afternoon sunlight.
    “My face?” Was he,
too, going to scrub her cheek clean? She went still, embarrassed and unnerved
and not at all certain it wouldn’t be a touch thrilling to have this exotic,
masculine creature offer so intimate a ministration.
    At the wayward
thought, heat climbed to her cheeks. “Forgive me, sir. We just finished hunting
and I didn’t have an oppor—”
    “You received this
wound hunting?” he asked incredulously, lifting his other hand and lightly
tracing her cheek.
    Warm little
tendrils of sensation danced beneath his touch. His fingertips were rough, the
knuckles large, and his wrists braceleted with old scars. No gentleman had
hands like that. Not even a London gentleman. Particularly a London gentleman.
Who
was
Ash Merrick?
    Her gaze roved over
his face as he frowned at the mark on her cheek. The lashes framing his dark
eyes were as black as his hair, thick and spiky and long as a lassie’s, and
that was the only soft or feminine thing about him. This close, even his
fashionably pale London skin seemed nothing more than a comely happenstance.
The single purpose of that fine flesh was to shed water, avert wind, not to
attract. Though it did that, too.
    “Did you?” He
released his clasp of her chin.
    Ah, yes. He’d
asked about her wound.
    “No,” she answered,
no longer concerned with the words they spoke but rather with some other
interplay occurring between them, some communication happening just beyond the
scope of her mind to facilitate.
    “Then how did this
happen? One would imagine such a prize would awake the instinct to protect.”
    She did not
understand. Her skin was unmarked by pox and not too browned by the sun, but no
one had ever deemed it a prize. He looked into her eyes and his facile smile
wavered and disappeared.
    For the first time
since she’d entered the library, Ash Merrick did not seem completely master of
the situation. He drew away from her, looking puzzled, like the lad who has
unlocked a secret drawer and found something he’d not anticipated and wasn’t
sure he liked.
    “You were about to
say?” His voice was smooth enough.
    “Footpad,” she
answered faintly. “We were coming home from the neighbor’s when we were
accosted by a villain. He shot his pistols at our carriage as our driver
whipped up the team. One of his bullets grazed me. As you can see, we escaped.”
    “Highwaymen? Here?”
His tone was incredulous.
    “Rare enough,” she
admitted. “But it happens.”
    He’d turned away
from her and was rubbing his thumb along his dark, stubbled jawline.
    “It looks worse
than it ever felt,” she offered, obliged by his obvious concern. His eyes slew
back toward her, a flicker of astonishment in their dark depths.
    “Ah... good.”
    “I’m afraid it will
leave a scar, however,” she added apologetically.
    His expression grew
bewildered. “Scar?”
    “Yes.”
    “Nonsense. One
won’t even notice it,” he dismissed the mark roughly.
    It was gracious of
him to reassure her—if that’s what those grudging words had been an attempt
at—but she really wasn’t sensitive about her looks.
    She knew her assets
well enough and a two-inch line traversing her cheek hadn’t devalued their
worth. Phillip certainly didn’t seem to find her any less attractive...
Phillip.
    With a start she
realized they had not yet finished discussing the reason for Ash Merrick’s
presence here.
    “I appreciate your
kindness, Mr. Merrick,” she said, moving away from the magnetism surrounding
him and taking a chair, “but you needn’t worry about me. I am perfectly fine.
I’ve been fine for over ten years and while I am...” she searched for some
gentle way to reveal to him that his long journey had been unnecessary “… I am
very warmed by your father’s