No Man's Mistress Read Free Page B

tryst with a beau. There had been no chance for romance or even for light, harmless flirtation. At the age of five-and-twenty she suddenly felt like the girl she might have grown into, had her life not changed forever more than half a lifetime ago. She liked being that girl, however fleetingly.
    He slid one arm about her waist and drew her against him. With the other hand he grasped her hair below the ribbon and pulled on it with just enough pressure to tip back her head. Moonlight and tree branches were dappled across his face. He was smiling. Did he always smile, this stranger? Or was he merely indulging today, amid strangers he would never see again, in his own escape from more sober reality?
    She closed her eyes when his face dipped down, and he kissed her.
    It did not last long. It was not by any means a lascivious kiss. Although his lips parted over her own, he made no attempt to plunder her mouth. His one hand remained splayed firmly against the back of her waist, while the other cupped the ribbon at her neck. She did not for one second lose herself in passion, though she knew she could swoon into it if she chose. She would not so waste a single precious moment. What she did insteadwas carefully and deliberately savor and memorize each sensation. She felt his long, hard-muscled, leather-clad thighs against the softness of her own, his abdomen hard against hers, his chest firm against her breasts. She felt the moist intimacy of his lips, the warmth of his breath against her cheek. She breathed in the mingled scents of cologne and leather and man, and tasted on his mouth ale and something unidentifiable that must be the very essence of him. She heard music, voices, laughter, water flowing, a single owl hooting—all from a vast distance away. She twined her fingers in his thick, soft hair and felt with the other hand the well-developed muscles of his shoulder and upper arm.
    Beware of a tall, dark, handsome stranger
    She drank her brief, clandestine draft of youthful romance from the brim to the very dregs. And then, when he raised his head and loosened his hold on her, she accepted the fact that the day was ended.
    “Thank you for the dance.” He chuckled. “And for the kiss.”
    “Good night,” she said softly.
    He looked down at her for a few moments longer. “Good night, my country lass,” he said in answer, and strode past her, back in the direction of the green.

2

    T rellick was a pretty village. He had seen that yesterday, gazing down on it as the main road dipped into the river valley. This morning, as he stood at the taproom window inside the Boar's Head sipping coffee, Lord Ferdinand Dudley noticed the whitewashed, thatched cottages with their neat, colorful flower gardens on two sides of the green. On the riverside stood the stone church, with its tall, slender spire and spacious lawn, in the middle of which stood a great old oak tree. The vicarage, its gray stone walls ivy-covered, was beside the church. He could not see the water from where he stood, just as he could not see the row of shops next to the inn, but he could see the forest of trees on the far side of the river, a pleasantly rural backdrop for the church and village.
    He wondered where exactly Pinewood Manor was. He knew it must be reasonably close, since Bamber's solicitor had mentioned Trellick to him as the nearest village. But how close? And how large was it? What did it look like? A cottage like one of those opposite? A house likethe vicarage? A larger building, as its name implied? A dilapidated heap? No one had seemed to know, least of all Bamber himself, who had not appeared to care much either.
    Ferdinand fully expected the dilapidated heap.
    He could have asked for directions yesterday, of course—it was what he had ridden into the village to do, after all. But he had not done so. It had been well into the afternoon and he had persuaded himself that viewing Pinewood for the first time would be better left until the morning. The