In Want of a Wife? Read Free Page B

positively everyone in her family that she couldn’t wait to get back on her motorbike and enjoy the wide open spaces and the beautiful, never-ending silence so wildly different from the crowded streets of London.
    Lizzy felt the urge to groan out loud.
    ‘How long will it take you to get back to your house?’
    He turned to face her and she had that suffocating feelingagain as she peered at the stunning angles of his face from behind the safety of her helmet.
    For once the feisty spirit, the never-back-down attitude, deserted her, leaving her dry-mouthed and strangely unable to think clearly.
    With a sigh of resignation, she reached up and began unbuckling the helmet.
    ‘So you’ve finally decided to show yourself?’ Louis said with biting sarcasm. ‘Wise move. I would have found out who you were sooner or later anyway, but don’t bother; I won’t report you back to your parents for reckless speeding on that bike which is way too …’ With his mind caught halfway between wondering how he was going to retrieve his possessions from the rented car several miles back, and speculating on the condition of what he would find inside the rambling manor house, he was one-hundred percent not prepared for the tumble of long dark hair that fell out of the helmet as it was finally unclasped and pulled off.
    For once in his life Louis Christophe Jumeau was rendered utterly speechless. He had expected a teenage lad. Instead, standing in front of him, her head defiantly thrown back and her dark eyes glittering with unconcealed hostility, he found himself looking at a woman with fine, stubborn features, a full mouth, which at the moment was pursed in blatant disapproval, and the graceful, slender body of a dancer.
    ‘You’re not a boy.’ He heard himself state the obvious.
    ‘No.’
    ‘You’re a girl on a motorbike.’
    ‘Yes. I happen to like motorbikes.’
    ‘Why didn’t you tell me sooner?’ His tone was accusatory.
    ‘Why should I? What difference would it have made?’ A brisk gust of icy air made her shiver. ‘Besides,’ Lizzy continued, stoking the flames of her anger as she remembered the arrogance and contempt in his voice as he had made hissweeping generalisations about her family, ‘I was interested to hear everything you had to say about your friend.’
    For a fleeting second, Louis wondered whether this was the object of Nicholas’s infatuation, but it was an idea he dismissed before it had time even to take root. Nicholas had waxed lyrical about a beautiful blonde, sweet tempered and gentle. On all counts, the woman standing in front of him failed to meet the bill.
    ‘You know the woman, do you?’
    Lizzy decided to evade that question for the moment. ‘I know that you’re the most arrogant, high-handed,
unbearable
person I have
ever
met in my whole life!’ Her mother would kill her for saying that. Grace Sharp had been eagerly looking forward to the arrival of this man. She had heard a lot about him and—Lizzy was ashamed to admit even to herself—a lot about his fabulous wealth and legendary status. Alongside Nicholas, he was to be the glittering highlight of the carefully arranged dance—and the reason why so many people were coming, Lizzy suspected darkly.
    ‘I don’t believe I’m hearing this.’
    ‘You’ve never met any of the people from here and yet you think it’s okay to make lots of assumptions about them. You’re a snob, Mr Jumeau, and I can’t bear snobs! ‘
    ‘Mr Jumeau?
Surely we should be on first names at least, considering the circumstances? And maybe we should go inside to carry on this conversation. It’s bitter out here.’ Another frozen gust tossed her hair around her face, and he watched in some fascination as she pulled it back and twisted it into a long coil to hang over her shoulder.
    He had never considered himself a judgemental sort, but he had to admit that preconceptions he’d been unaware of were being trampled underfoot. Why shouldn’t a woman be on a