The Price of Desire Read Online Free PDF Page A

be.

    He wanted her to feel his presence, to be attuned to him as he was to her. “I told you I would be waiting for you when you and the Captain parted company. And here I am, as promised. Just a little earlier than I expected.”

    She stiffened even further. “You are mistaken. The Captain and I have not quarreled.”

    She was lying. Her whole body, down to the way she carried herself so carefully and the brittle look in her eyes, told him so. He reached out and blotted a drop of water from her cheek with the pad of his thumb. “Then why do you look as if your whole world had fallen apart?”

    She brushed him away with an impatient gesture. “That is not a tear. The air is damp in here from the ferns, that is all. I have not been crying.” Her tone was fierce and brooked no denial.

    “Look into my eyes, Caroline.” He held her head gently so she could not avoid his command without twisting free. “You cannot think to lie to me. Not when the tear tracks still silver your cheeks.”

    “And what if I have been crying?” she asked, her voice almost savage, unable to look away from him. “Is it a crime? I thought myself alone in here. I wished myself to be alone.” Her words were pointed barbs aimed at his breast.

    He did not wound so easily. Her feeble weapons glanced off his tough hide and fell away to the ground. “I, too, wished you to be alone in here.”

    “So you could break into my solitude?”

    “Exactly.” He captured her gaze with his own, using all the force of his personality to hold her to him. “If you had not been alone, I could not have done what I intend to do.”

    Her teeth were worrying her bottom lip, but still she did not look away from him. “What are you going to do?”

    “I am going to do what I have been thinking of doing ever since I first caught sight of you. I am going to kiss you.”

    Her face tinged with pink and he felt her shudder under his hands. “And if I do not want to be kissed?”

    “Caroline, Caroline,” he said gravely, shaking his head from side to side in reproof. “Surely you are not thinking of telling me another lie. That would be two lies in…” He drew his fob watch out of his pocket and consulted it with a grave air. “…in just as many minutes. I think it would be better were you to tell me what was really going through your mind at this moment. I think you should tell me the truth.”

     

    The truth? Caroline gave a bitter laugh. If she were to tell him exactly what had been going through her mind before he accosted her, he would draw back from her in horror. She was a murderess, if not yet in deed, then certainly in intention.

    Before the night had ended, her brother and sisters would be in Heaven and her body would be lying on the floor with a bullet in her brain.
     
    Mr. Savage might not know it, but if he kissed her tonight, he would be kissing a ghost. In her mind she was already dead.

    Even so, she did want to be kissed by him. Desperately. All the more desperately because this would be the first and last time she would ever be kissed by a man that she desired.
     
    For she did desire him. There was something about him that attracted her in a way that she did not understand. His eyes spoke of experiences that were not to be had in London, in the world that she knew. His were the mysterious eyes of a man who had learned about love, life, and death in a world far from her own confined sphere.

    The knowledge of her certain death hung at her heart, counseling her to make the most of the short time she had left to her. Why should she worry what society might think of her actions? What did she care for the people in the other room so ready to be judge, jury, and executioner? When she had already resolved upon the mortal sins of murder and suicide, it could hardly matter if she were to add an act of simple fornication to her list of sins.
     
    Just ten minutes ago she had been wildly regretting that she would die a virgin.

    Now Mr.