The Danbury Scandals Read Free Page A

nearly over, so it hardly mattered. If the reports from the
Continent could be believed, the Prussians, Russians and Austrians had, at
last, decided to work together and Napoleon was near to defeat. She had said
nothing of the encounter to anyone, but now she wondered if she had been right
not to do so. To meet him twice and both times on land belonging to the Danbury
family seemed more than coincidental.
    ‘Why, it is ma
petite duchesse ,’ he said, with a tiny twitch to the corner of his mouth
and a slight lifting of the scar above his eye.
    ‘I am not a
duchess,’ she retorted. ‘And you must know that or you would not be so forward.
Please release me.’
    He smiled, but
showed no sign of doing as she asked. ‘ Eh bien ! It is not often a
beautiful young wood nymph throws herself into my arms.’
    ‘I did nothing
of the kind. Please let me go.’
    ‘If you tell me
your name.’
    ‘Maryanne
Paynter.’ Why had she answered him? She should have put her nose in the air and
insisted on being allowed to pass, but it was difficult to stand on her dignity
with her eyes full of unaccustomed tears.
    He looked down
at her small hand imprisoned in his and noted the absence of a ring. ‘ Mam’selle Paynter, I am enchante to make your acquaintance.’ He lifted her
hand to his lips and added, in a voice that was surprisingly warm and without a
trace of an accent, ‘Forgive me, I did not mean to make you cry.’
    ‘I am not
crying. I have some dust in my eye.’
    ‘Then let me
remove it for you.’ He took her face in his hands, tipping it up towards him.
His eyes, searching hers, were like soft brown velvet, belying his strength and
masculinity. She could feel his warm breath on her cheek and shivered
involuntarily.
    ‘Tip your head
up,’ he commanded, taking a handkerchief, which was miraculously clean and
soft, from his pocket. ‘Which eye is it?’
    She blinked and
a tear slid slowly down her cheek. Gently, he brushed it away.
    ‘I think it’s
gone now,’ she murmured, but, try as she might, she could not banish the tears,
nor could she stifle the little sob which escaped her. If only he would go
away; she did not like anyone to see her in such a weak state. She tried to
turn from him, but found herself, once again, imprisoned against his chest.
    ‘ Ma pauvre ,’
he murmured. ‘What have they been doing to you?’
    ‘N... nothing.’
Held securely in his arms, she felt warm and protected and, at that moment,
there was nothing she needed more. No one, since her mother’s death, had attempted
to embrace her; neither the Reverend Mr Cudlipp nor his strait-laced wife would
even have considered an affectionate hug let alone a kiss. No one had told her
they cared for her. Not that he had said anything of the sort, nor did she
expect it but, with her head lying snugly against his shoulder, it was a
delicious self-indulgence to dream.
    ‘Nothing?’
    Tears blurred
her vision as he took her chin in his big hand and tilted her face up to him.
‘Nothing? No one has even taken the tiniest liberty?’
    ‘What do you
mean?’
    ‘This.’ Before
she could protest, he had bent his head and was kissing her in a way which sent
a tremor of delicious anticipation through her body. It was like nothing she
had ever experienced before and she did not understand it. Unversed in the ways
of flirtation, she allowed it to continue.
    Suddenly coming
to her senses, she wrenched herself out of his grasp and stood breathlessly
facing him, like a young fawn catching the scent of the hunt and ready to bolt,
he later described it. It was her expressive violet eyes which gave her away;
they were wide and bright with a kind of knowing innocence. She was every inch
a woman, but she still had an aura of childhood about her, seemed untouched by
the tawdry world of those who lived in that great house, and yet she had come
from there. But perhaps she was not one of them, and, if that were so he had
committed an unforgivable sin. He put out a