AN UNEXPECTED KISS
“Don’t worry,” Cary said. “I promise I won’t kiss you again. You have my word as a gentleman. Though I should like to point out that when I kissed you, you seemed to like it.”
“What?” she cried, exasperated. “I thought you were a bat.”
He glared at her fiercely. “You little beast! You did not think I was a bat.”
“I certainly did! Don’t you remember? I jumped out of the wardrobe—”
“Not that,” he said impatiently. “Less said about that the better. I mean, this morning, outside. When I met you by the bridge,” he pressed as she looked at him blankly.
“So you did kiss me!” Abigail exclaimed angrily. “I thought so!”
Cary’s eyebrows shot up. “You thought so? What the devil do you mean?” he demanded. “Was there any doubt?”
“Well—”
She scarcely got the word out. He swung her around, pushed her against the wall, and drove his mouth hard against hers. He kissed her expertly, then left her mouth briefly and kissed her neck, his hands skimming boldly down to her waist. As she tried to speak, he claimed her mouth again. It was just as well; she had no idea what she would have said.
Cary stopped kissing her eventually. “What do you think of that?” he asked breathlessly, holding her steady.
Abigail was equally breathless. And trembling. And confused. But at least the feeling of desperate panic was subsiding and she now had a very clear notion of the sort of man she ought to marry…
Books by Tamara Lejeune
SIMPLY SCANDALOUS
SURRENDER TO SIN
Published by Zebra Books
Surrender to Sin
TAMARA LEJEUNE
ZEBRA BOOKS
KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP.
http://www.kensingtonbooks.com
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 1
Without so much as a pageboy to assist her, Abigail Ritchie inched her way through the crowds of fashionable shoppers in Piccadilly, her packages stacked so high that only her chin kept them from tumbling out of her arms. Any casual observer who saw her slim figure buffeted this way and that by the pressures of the crowd might have mistaken her for a lady’s maid performing errands for her mistress. Indeed, the man who barreled into her, knocking her aside with his walking stick, had no way of knowing he had inconvenienced one of the richest young ladies in Britain. Had he been better informed, he might have been heartily sorry. As it was, he saw no reason to stop and offer either apologies or assistance to the solitary figure enveloped in a simple gray cloak. He simply pushed past her and continued on his way.
Abigail never saw him; her fur hood flopped forward into her eyes as she fell. Luckily, the Christmas presents tucked under her chin had not been dislodged in the collision, but she now had to regain her feet without the use of her hands. In the first attempt, she stumbled over her skirts as the heedless crowd surged past her. Her next attempt was forestalled by a pair of strong hands that picked her up and set her on her feet as if she had been a pawn on a chessboard.
“Ups-a-daisy!” said the owner of the hands. “On your feet, there’s a good girl.”
With her hood half-covering her eyes, Abigail could only see the lower half of her new acquaintance. He wore a long purple driving coat over buckskins and tall boots. In his gloved hands he carried a walking stick with a plain silver knob at the tip. A gentleman.
“Dulwich, as I live and breathe,” he muttered angrily.
Abigail shook her head until her hood fell backwards out of her eyes, then quickly planted her chin atop her packages again. “Was it Lord Dulwich who bumped into me?” she inquired.
“Bumped into you, child? Pretty charitable,” he said scornfully. “I’d have said he mowed you down like summer corn. I knew the man was a common drain, but I never thought him capable of knocking little girls down in the middle of a public street.”
He turned suddenly to smile at her, and Abigail caught her breath. She could only stare. He was, quite simply, the most beautiful man she had ever seen outside of a painting. With his dark hair, pointed beard, and the tiny gold ring he wore in one ear, he looked like a gypsy prince. His skin was unusually brown for an Englishman’s, which made his teeth look very white. She guessed his age at somewhere between twenty and thirty, but if he had claimed to be immortal, she would have believed him. He looked it.
“Beg pardon, ma’am!” he said gravely, though his gray eyes were laughing. “When viewed from the other side, you look precisely aged eleven and three quarters, or I should never have presumed to touch you. But I see from this side that you are quite grown up. Clearly, I ought to have pretended not to see you, like everyone else in this beastly mob.”
Abigail’s natural shyness rapidly transformed into terror. Handsome young men did not usually single her out for their gallantry. They certainly never teased her about her front or back sides. He made her so nervous that she almost wished he hadn’t stopped to help her at all. Beautiful gypsy princes, she quickly decided, were best enjoyed from a safe distance.
“So thoughtless of me,” he continued, evidently amused by her inability to speak. “As a gentleman, I ought to have made sure you were aged eleven and three quarters before I plucked you out of the dirt. Do please forgive my insufferable presumption. In future, I shall ask to see a baptismal certificate before I lend my assistance to any foundering thing in a petticoat.”
Abigail knew she ought to thank him, but her tongue was tied, and her mind had gone blank. Her face was more expressive, though; it turned bright red, invigorating her freckles.
She would have been quite surprised to learn that, despite an undeniable overactivity of freckles, the gentleman had not excluded her from the ranks of beauty. Without being smitten by her in the least, he liked what he saw: curly apricot-gold hair; big, light brown eyes; a wide, pink mouth under a straight, short nose. She looked to him like a good English girl, a credit to her parents, and someone who deserved better than a shove in the back, followed by a trampling.
“Thank you, sir.” Abigail finally forced the words out.
“That’s better; I thought you were going into shock.” With absolute false humility, he touched the brim of his hat. “Cary Wayborn, at your service, ma’am.”
Abigail gasped, her shyness broken by surprise. “Did you say Wayborn?” she cried impulsively. “Sir, my mother was a Wayborn!” As she spoke, one of her parcels began to inch forward, endangering the delicate balance of the entire stack.
“You