The Second Seduction of a Lady Read Free

acknowledged his own wrongdoing in his courtship and seduction, the end had been her decision. Anger had fought regret and sometimes prevailed. He’d wondered about his reaction when they met again. Now he knew.
    “Eleanor!” She looked up. He stepped forward to meet her on the bridge. “Eleanor!” He should ask her how she was, why she was there. But he didn’t care why she was there. All he wanted to do was take her into his arms and tease her stern mouth into returning his kisses.
    His outstretched arms were welcomed with a hearty shove and he landed on his back in cold water.
    “What—”
    She looked down at him, grim satisfaction on her elegant features. “I beg your pardon, Mr. Quinton, but you were in my way. I have things to attend to.”
    As he struggled upright in the thigh-deep water, she completed her crossing. Cold soaked through every garment, chilling his skin, his ardor, and his heart. “Wait! You are trespassing,” he called, a surge of rage making him petty. He’d been wrong, yes, but his intentions had ultimately been honorable. She had sent him about his business with a cold rebuke. And returned all his letters unread.
    “Oh? Is this your land?” she said, arching a haughty brow, knowing well that his home was over a hundred miles away, near Newmarket.
    “Effectively, yes,” he said, clambering up the bank. “I have control of the Townsend estate for another three weeks, until my ward reaches his majority.”
    “In that case,” she replied, “I’ll collect my charge and be off.”
    Ignoring the squelching in his boots, he reached for her again. In the bare second his wet hand rested on her lower arm, warm under his chilled fingers, longing flooded his veins. “Eleanor,” he whispered.
    “Get your wet hands off my gown.” She shook him off.
    “Won’t you forgive me?”
    Her gray eyes held his. He’d seen them bright with affection and wild with ecstasy. Now they contained polished steel.
    “I think, Mr. Quinton, it would be better if we both forget that there is anything to forgive.”
    Max deliberately mistook her meaning. “Good,” he said. She watched with the outrage of a dowager as he unbuttoned his clammy, clinging waistcoat. Yet she’d seen him wearing even less. Or felt him, rather. It had been dark at the time.
    The garment slid down his arms. “I’m ready to apologize again, but I’d like it even better if we could begin a new chapter. May we start again? Please Eleanor.”
    Eleanor watched Max Quinton drape his wet waistcoat over a branch, in fascinated disbelief that, meeting him after five years, he should be stripping off his clothes. She trusted he wouldn’t be removing all of them. The entreaty in his voice affected her, but only for an instant. Giving him a dunking had blunted the edge of anger that his appearance provoked, that was all. Nothing else had changed.
    “I made it clear in the past,” she said, “that our acquaintance was over. Forever. Should we meet again, which I trust won’t be necessary, you may call me Miss Hardwick.”
    “Don’t you think that’s absurd, given what we once were to each other?”
    She stepped farther away from this unpleasantly damp man. Never mind that his figure was displayed to advantage beneath clinging linen, fine enough to limn the contours of his chest and reveal an intriguing dark shadow descending to the waist. It was true that his thick, wavy hair looked quite good wet, but she no longer responded to the lilt of laughter in his deep voice. “Our past relationship was founded on falsehood and meant nothing. I never think of you and I’d like to keep it that way. We meet as indifferent strangers.”
    A smile tugged on his lips. It was one of the first things she’d noticed about him, that hint of humor in an otherwise grave face. “Do you often push strangers into rivers?”
    “You deserved it.”
    “I’ll own up to my transgressions and again humbly beg for your forgiveness. I have never held you in