The Highlander's Forbidden Mistress - Anna Campbell Page 0,2

seemed she was in no mood to be wise. Clutching the book, she marched around the settle to confront him. "Lord Bruard, you…"

"Yes?" He was stretched full-length against the cushions, as relaxed and dangerous as a big cat. Not a lion or a tiger. There was nothing golden about his saturnine beauty. A panther, perhaps.

"A gentleman would have made his presence known." She hated how prim and stuffy she sounded.

A lazy smile curled his long, rather cruel mouth and set his dark eyes glittering. "I’m sure a gentleman would."

He paused for her to make the connection that he wasn’t a gentleman. She didn’t need reminding, God help her.

As the smile deepened, a jolt of unwelcome attraction struck her like lightning. But how could she help it? He was almost sinfully beautiful, with his thick black hair and thin face, all cheekbones and jaw and long, aquiline nose. He looked like a fallen angel. She had no doubt that he’d sinned enough to merit damnation.

Without any conviction, Selina told herself that her response to his presence was no great matter. Any woman with blood in her veins would thrill to the way he looked. It was a natural reaction.

But the woeful truth was that she’d been responding for a week. She’d never felt like this before, like she was a stand of dry timber – and Lord Bruard was a blazing torch, primed to send her up in roaring flames. She’d reminded herself over and over that too many other women felt exactly the same, and if she had any pride she’d stifle this unwilling fascination. Good heavens, even Lady Derwent’s eighty-year-old maiden aunt went all silly and giggly at the sight of this infamous rake.

Selina’s existence had been grim and purposeful. The only happiness she’d ever known was founded in her love for her son. She’d never before fallen prey to an irresistible attraction. And to such an unworthy object, at that. She was disgusted with herself.

Although no amount of disgust changed the way the mere sound of the Scottish earl’s voice made her skin tighten in desire and her heart race with excitement.

He went on in a musing tone. "But if I had announced my presence, I’d have missed out on overhearing a very interesting conversation."

Interesting? His definition of the word must differ from hers. "Your entertainment trumps good manners?"

"Naturally my entertainment is paramount."

She shouldn’t find his complete lack of shame appealing. But she’d spent her life overburdened with rules and restrictions, and Bruard’s contempt for social niceties was alluring.

Devil take him, everything about him was alluring. She’d never met an out-and-out wrong ’un before. She’d never wasted her time thinking about handsome, idle, dissipated men. If she had, she would assume that her overdeveloped sense of right and wrong meant she’d abominate them. She’d certainly had no patience for her late husband’s attempts to ape the excesses of the upper classes.

What an innocent she’d been until she met Lord Bruard. One dismissive glance from those fathomless dark green eyes under their sweep of thick lashes, and all she wanted to do was get closer.

Much closer.

If she had an ounce of principle, she should despise Bruard. Cecil certainly did. Alone with Selina, he’d spent hours railing against the Derwents for daring to pollute the pure air of their country house with the sinner’s presence.

Selina didn’t despise Bruard. She wanted him. At night in her empty bed, she touched herself and imagined that the hands on her skin weren’t small and soft, but large and tanned and skilled, and that a deep, drawling voice murmured profane encouragement in her ears.

Memory of those forbidden moments assailed her now and made her blush again. She was too aware that it was late and that she was alone with a man whose reputation was bad enough to send respectable virgins shrieking for their mammas. Lord Bruard’s company was the closest thing to satanic temptation that she was ever likely to experience.

Selina swallowed to moisten a dry throat and set the book on the mantel with a shaking hand. "I must go," she said, and cursed the squeak in her voice.

"Must you?" Bruard didn’t sound as if he cared whether she stayed or not. He continued as if they were in the middle of a friendly conversation. "You shouldn’t let him bully you, you know. If he bullies you now, before he gets his ring on your finger, he’ll turn into a domestic tyrant when you marry."

She paused in the act of turning away