Читать книгу Regency Rogues: Wicked Seduction: Her Enemy at the Altar / That Despicable Rogue - Virginia Heath - Страница 15

Connie whipped around, startled when the bedchamber door suddenly opened, but she was too angry with him to apologise for invading his privacy. Without thinking, she tossed the leather-bound volume of Shakespeare at him and it hit him squarely on his sopping wet head.

‘What the devil!’

Her hateful husband glared at her murderously as he rubbed his temple and Connie glared right back undaunted. ‘You were reading The Taming of the Shrew! The Taming of the Shrew! Did you hope it would provide you with a few pointers on how to deal with me?’

Connie stalked towards him, wielding another book. To his credit he did not back away from her. Far from it, in fact. He met her in the middle of the floor and stared right back at her with his hands planted on his hips as if she did not frighten him in the slightest. His confrontational stance reminded her that he was significantly larger than she was, something that was uncomfortably unfamiliar and quite intoxicating. He topped her by a few inches in height, but in width there really was no comparison. The dark, caped greatcoat that he still wore made him loom even larger and his expression was thunderous. Connie felt like a brittle sapling stood next to a mighty oak tree and was forced to raise her chin to look him in the eye. And they really were magnificent eyes. Her mouth went dry as she stared into the outraged depths of them.

‘The thought crossed my mind.’ Up close, she could see flecks of gold shimmer in the irises. ‘Why are you in my bedchamber, Connie?’

How could she admit to wild curiosity about him without sounding pathetic? ‘I like to know my enemy!’

His dark hair was beginning to curl at the nape of his neck where it was wet. For some inexplicable reason Connie felt the urge to brush the droplets of water from his skin, but stopped herself. What on earth was the matter with her? This man thought her a shrew. Why did she desperately want to touch him?

‘Did you find anything useful?’

His expression had changed. He no longer appeared quite so angry at her behaviour, more amused. As if he knew that she had wanted to know more about him. His arrogance, combined with the awkward realisation that he had seen through her bravado, rankled far more than his temper did.

‘You read boring books.’ What an utterly pathetic and insipid response. Connie felt her cheeks redden at the banality of the insult. His eyes flicked briefly to the weighty tome on farming still on the table before the ghost of a smile touched his lips, mocking her.

‘That particular volume is spectacularly dull, I will grant you that, but monstrously heavy. I suppose I should be grateful that you had the Shakespeare so readily at hand. The Complete Farmer might have killed me.’ He rubbed his head for effect and then shrugged out of the heavy wet coat. After depositing it over the arm of the washstand Connie watched in alarm as he made short work of also removing the wringing, limp cravat around his neck. He had started unbuttoning his waistcoat when she stopped him.

‘What exactly do you think you are doing, Mr Wincanton?’ Surely he realised that undressing in front of a lady was grossly improper. Part of her hoped he would continue.

‘I am taking off this wet shirt, Lady Constance Wincanton. This is my bedchamber after all. All of my dry shirts are in this wardrobe here, although I dare say you know that already seeing as you have been rifling through my things.’

Connie opened her mouth to refute everything he had just said and promptly closed it again when she realised he had a point. She was in his room and she had been poking through his things. And much as she hated being Lady Constance Wincanton, that was also now her name. Instead of a pithy set down, more banality spewed from her mouth. ‘I was merely familiarising myself with the house because you had failed to do so.’

‘I would be happy to give you a tour of the place as soon as I put on a clean shirt.’ To her utter dismay he was already untucking the one he was wearing. She caught the briefest glimpse of the skin of his abdomen and it was dusted with dark hair. Her eyes fixed to that area in the hope that she would see more of his body before she tore them away, disgusted at her own wayward thoughts.

‘Then kindly wait for me to leave. I have no desire to watch.’

‘I wouldn’t mind if you did. You might find it entertaining. Or educational.’ He shot her such an astute glance, his dark eyes practically smouldering, that she felt herself blush even hotter. He had known that she was looking at him wantonly. How mortifying was that? But then again, he was probably quite used to women looking at him and lusting after him. Not that she had been lusting exactly, it was more out of curiosity. Perhaps it was lustful curiosity? The man was devilishly handsome and knew it. In that wet shirt he looked delicious. It clung to his broad shoulders and chest, giving her a tantalising glimpse of the strength and power of his body. In places the fabric was almost transparent so she could definitely see that there was more of that intriguing dark hair that her fingers ached to explore.

Again she found her eyes drifting below his neck, but as she dragged them reluctantly back to his face the arrogant wretch was grinning unashamedly. Connie wanted to cover her burning face with her hands and curl up into a ball. She managed to paste a haughty expression on her face before she turned around and prepared to exit the room with as much fake dignity as she could muster. Lost for any suitable words, she stalked towards the door and yanked it open. She could still hear his deep chuckle after she slammed it shut behind her.

Constance did not blush prettily, Aaron realised. She positively glowed with abject mortification. Every inch of her visible, milky white skin had turned a most florid shade of pink. Two circular crimson spots had formed on her cheeks, as if they had been painted on with a brush, and her delicate, swanlike neck was covered in angry blotches. And with her vivid red hair already escaping the confines of its pins, tiny strands floated around her head like sparks rising from a bonfire. She had managed to create an entire spectrum of red above her neck in just a few seconds. Aaron had never seen anything quite like it.

She certainly had not looked anything like the ice maiden he had taken his vows next to or the firebrand he had fought with last night. Nor had she sounded like one. The woman who had just stormed out of his bedchamber was a completely different Constance altogether and one he doubted many people had ever seen. Rumpled, flummoxed, innocent Connie was a delight and Aaron could not help wondering if she blushed all the way down those glorious long legs of hers to the tips of her toes. Now that was a blush he would pay good money to see. To think he had brought about such an unexpected transformation just by attempting to take off his shirt—well, that was just too funny. He had only done it in the first place to remind her that she was overstepping boundaries and to get her to leave. Who knew that regal, haughty, argumentative Miss Stuart was easily embarrassed?

Not Miss Stuart, he corrected, she was Lady Constance Wincanton now. She had been positively outraged to have been called that, too. Those were two little things he would squirrel away as ammunition for the future. Aaron had a feeling he was going to need it. When he had sneaked past her room earlier, in a rare display of complete cowardice, he had just congratulated himself on his stealth. Then she had thrown the book at him.

Literally.

He had not expected that. The irony of that book’s title was not lost on him either. Connie could be quite shrewish when she put her mind to it.

But she was a blushing shrew. A shrew who was so loyal to her family that she had agreed to marry a man that she despised. A shrew who had cried in his arms because her fiancé was an idiot and one who had kissed him as if she had been born to do it. Despite all of the inconvenient aspects of his hasty marriage to Connie, Aaron could still not keep his mind off that kiss. His mind had wandered back to it repeatedly during his ride this morning and each time he caught himself thinking about it he was smiling. It had been such a long time since any of his smiles had been genuine that he had quite forgotten how invigorating one could be. And it had been a most spectacular kiss.

Catching himself smiling wistfully again, Aaron snatched a clean shirt from the wardrobe and then wound a fresh cravat around his neck. He wasn’t entirely sure that he could tame Connie, even if he wanted to, but he did need to find a way that they could live together. At least in the short term. He had made his father a promise. He might not want to father a child, but he wanted to put his father’s mind at ease. It was the least he could do after everything he had done. He had taken a life so it seemed only fair that he should make one.

Back in her own room, Connie frantically dabbed her hot face with cold water. How she hated being a redhead. Her pale skin provided no camouflage for the embarrassment that had flooded her face and he had seen it. Why did fate keep allowing Aaron Wincanton to see her when she was at her least composed? He had seen her tears, witnessed the first bloom of her passion, been present when her father had cruelly berated her and now he also knew that she was a complete innocent in all matters pertaining to men. At the grand old age of four and twenty, the mere prospect of seeing a man without his shirt on had sent her running for the hills red-faced. All of her perfectly constructed, haughty, uninterested and unflappable façade had disintegrated in seconds and, to add insult to injury, she was more than a little peeved that she had not been brave enough to stand her ground and feast her hungry eyes on the wretch’s nude torso. And that wretch had first called her the Ginger Amazonian. It was all too humiliating.

His knock at the door came too soon and Connie forced some steel into her backbone before she went to open it. Aaron completely filled the door frame and was smiling. Just that made her silly pulse speed up. His hair was still slightly damp, which encouraged it to curl up boyishly at the ends, but he was perfectly turned out in a fresh white shirt and dark black coat. He looked exactly like the arrogant and handsome devil that he was and she felt so very unattractive in comparison. Aside from the unflattering pink tinge to her face, her hair was a complete disaster and was wilfully refusing to do as it was told. Connie had never been any good at pinning her own hair into submission, but without a maid of her own she had had no other choice this morning and it showed. She was not really surprised that he had no interest in bedding her. Who would?

‘Are you ready for your tour Mrs Wincanton?’

‘Do not call me that!’ It made her sound like his property, which she was, damn him.

‘But you continue to call me Mr Wincanton, so I was merely trying to be polite. As you are constantly reminding me not to call you Connie, I confess I am now at a loss at what to call you—perhaps wife?’ His lips were curving upwards in an expression that he probably knew made him appear to be charming.

‘My name is Constance.’ Her voice sounded suitably clipped as she gave him her very best imperious stare. It usually withered the most insolent of gentlemen but it only served to make Aaron Wincanton grin. Of course, that drew her eyes to the twin dimples that appeared on either side of his irritatingly perfect face, providing her with two more thing that she wanted to touch. And taste. Good heavens, where did that thought come from?

He was still smiling. ‘I dislike the name Constance. It comes from the word constancy. That does not suit you at all.’

‘Constancy means steadfast and resolute. I am both of those things.’

He appeared to ponder this for a minute. As he was still blocking the door Connie had no option but to stand and wait for him to finish whatever it was he seemed intent on saying. He smelled delightful.

‘I looked the word up in the dictionary. It has many meanings, and whilst I agree you can be stubborn...’

‘Steadfast and resolute,’ she corrected automatically.

‘Constancy also means that something remains the same, no matter what the circumstances. You, Mrs Wincanton, are a seething cauldron of different emotions. I never quite know which to expect from one moment to the next. You are as changeable as the weather. Therefore, I simply refuse to call you Constance. Which leaves me in a bit of a quandary. You do not like Mrs Wincanton and I could not help noticing that you winced a bit when I affectionately called you wife. So that leaves me with Connie, which was always my preferred choice.’

Connie was still reeling from being compared to a seething cauldron of emotions, but worried that he might elaborate on that observation more if she did not concede, so she rolled her eyes and looked down her nose at him. ‘Call me what you will.’

Finally, he stepped away from the door and offered her his arm. ‘Shall you call me Aaron or husband? Or perhaps my dear or my darling?’ His voice had dropped conspiratorially, giving it a seductive edge that set her traitorous pulse fluttering faster. Why did the man always have to resort to flirting? He must know that it was unsettling. Connie had never quite known how to react to it from anyone at the best of times, seeing it as a ruse to get to her dowry or as something disingenuous that was only done because that particular gentleman flirted out of habit. But from him, it was even worse. Whilst he did have a habit of flirting with every woman, he certainly was not flirting with her to get her dowry. It was too late for that. But when Aaron flirted with her, he had a way of staring deeply into her eyes as if he wanted to see into her very soul and truly understand her, which was a completely ridiculous notion. As if he cared one way or another about her soul. But he did have an intensity in his eyes that made her wonder nevertheless. It made her feel all at sea and so pathetically grateful that he had bestowed her with some attention that she did not quite know herself at all.

She limply took his arm, but avoided looking at him. It was easy to picture his smug expression well enough as she felt another ugly blush stain her wan face. ‘Lead the way, Aaron.’

And now he had just seen her be petulant, too—and she just knew that he was smiling.