The Reluctant Suitor Read Online Free PDF Page A

by a retiring nature, certainly not after he had made use of her blanketing skirts. On the contrary, she wondered if she had ever met a bolder man.
    “Please, sir! Kindly release me and allow me to breathe! I can promise you that you’re not confronting the enemy here in this place!”
    A soft, amused chuckle issued forth from the officer, but it wasn’t until her toes actually touched the floor that Adriana realized he had swept her, with uncommon ease, off her feet. It wasn’t his physical prowess that astounded her as much as the fact that he was so tall. The top of her head barely reached his shoulder. Her own father and Riordan Kendrick were tall men, yet there had only been one other she had known who could have equaled this officer’s height, and that had been the late Sedgwick Wyndham.
    “Dearest Adriana, please forgive me,” the man murmured, making no attempt to curtail his grin. Casually he glanced aside and accepted with a murmur of thanks the fine, black, silver-handled walking stick the elderly steward handed back to him. Then his eyes gleamed once again into hers. “I certainly didn’t mean to distress you by my failure to heed gentlemanly manners, but I’m afraid I forgot myself in my eagerness to renew our acquaintance. When I saw you talking with Harrison, I was hoping for an introduction, but I never imagined for an instant that I already knew you.”
    Dearest Adriana! Renew our acquaintance! Already knew you! Was the man making overtures?
    Of a sudden, Adriana found the officer’s brazenness too much to bear. Cheeks aflame, she spun away, snapping her skirts about with enough force to whip them across the tops of his highly polished black boots as well as his costly walking cane, the end of which he had braced on the floor. She could only believe that instrument had created their difficulty in the first place. It would probably prove just as valuable as a chastening rod should she decide to take offense at the man’s audacity and lay it over his fine head.

    Only when she had halted the length of one archway away did Adriana dare face the officer again. She did so quite saucily, flipping her skirt about once more before freeing it and lifting her chin in an attitude of haughty displeasure.
    The officer’s lips widened leisurely into a rakish grin as his gaze ranged over her. Though she had been leered at any number of times while strolling along the streets of Bath with her paternal aunt or with her sister in London, this was an entirely different matter. Those warmly glowing gray orbs gave her cause to wonder if his expression would have changed even remotely had she been standing before him entirely naked. Indeed, she could almost swear from the way he was looking at her that he had designs upon her person and was already portioning off the areas where he would begin his manly seducement.
    The gall of him! she thought in rising ire and readied her tongue to flay the hide off this one who had proven himself no gentleman.
    “Sir, I must protest!”
    A second or two passed before it dawned on Adriana that the words had not issued forth from her lips, but from Roger Elston’s, of all people. Taken aback, she glanced around to find him stalking toward them with lean features contorted by rage. The way his hands were clenched into white-knuckled fists, he seemed ready to confront the man, with fisticuffs if need be.
    The wolfhounds had plopped themselves down on the floor near the stranger’s feet, but when they became aware of Roger’s advancing presence, they leapt to their feet with a fierce barking that sundered the confused blend of curious questions that had been evoked from the other occupants of the hall.
    Glinting eyes and evilly bared fangs left little doubt that the dogs would attack if Roger advanced but one step closer. The threat was enough to bring him to a stumbling halt.
    Roger had never noticed any trace of frailty in the physical prowess of either canine during his previous