The Second Seduction of a Lady Read Free Page B

her up to it.”
    Max did not regard himself a fastidious man. He bred horses and spent much of his life in the stables. But he was inclined to be on the side of Ashdown’s wife in this matter. Though no judge of male allure, he had the feeling that if he was Lady Ashdown, he’d try to avoid bedding Sir George, who possessed a large belly and an unpleasant odor, at every opportunity.
    “You know what?” Ashdown continued, aggrieved. “She asked me to bathe more often. I bathe! Once a month. Just like my father. Always have, always will.”
    Some of the officers, the married men among them, made sympathetic noises and a couple of them mentioned interfering female relations.
    “Interfering is right. She has no business telling my wife what to do. She’s a cold-hearted bitch and could never get a man of her own. Who would want her? Needs to be put in her place.”
    A despicable man, Ashdown, still was. He had been flat wrong about Eleanor. But that crude complaint of Sir George’s had eventually led to the destruction of Max’s hopes.
    An insistent female voice brought him back to Somerset, where he had improbably encountered his lost love.
    “Eleanor!” cried the girl. “This is Robert Townsend, our neighbor. Imagine! We met when we were little children but he hasn’t lived here in years. Now he has returned for his twenty-first birthday, and his guardian is to celebrate it with a grand ball!”
    Eleanor’s presence was explained. She must be visiting relations in the neighborhood. She had a great many relations.
    “Robert,” he said. “I see you’ve managed to get into trouble, as usual. I believe introductions are in order. I am already acquainted with Miss Hardwick.”
    Robert knew how to behave when he wanted to. Despite his wet clothes he produced a bow and his most winning smile. “Delighted to make your acquaintance, ma’am.”
    Eleanor curtsied. “You met my cousin in midstream, and I daresay you introduced yourselves. But now we are on dry land, let’s try for a little formality. Mr. Townsend, allow me to present Miss Caroline Brotherton.” Five years ago, he’d been charmed by her quips. Time had not changed that at all.
    The girl, a pretty creature with a mop of damp red hair, shivering in an indecently clinging gown, curtsied without taking her eyes off Robert. Max coughed.
    Eleanor’s voice turned from amused raillery back to frost. “Caro. This is Mr. Quinton. I believe he is Mr. Townsend’s guardian.”
    “Only for three more weeks! How do you and Max know each other, Miss Hardwick?”
    Max waited with interest to hear her answer.
    “We met in Sussex several years ago. Our acquaintance was of the slightest.”
    That was one way of putting it. Measured in time their acquaintance had, indeed, been slight.

 
C HAPTER T WO
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    E leanor had hoped never to see Max Quinton again. But if she had to, there was a certain satisfaction in having pushed him into the river. Then he had the nerve to beg her pardon. The gall of the man! And he had the nerve to look extremely fine, even when dripping wet. And, unlike her, he had the presence of mind to fetch his dry coat for Caro, not the first time he’d demonstrated such chivalry. In the cool of a summer night, he’d draped his evening coat around Eleanor’s shoulders as they’d sat beside a Sussex lake.
    Hurrying Caro home before she caught a cold, Eleanor continued to dwell on the way Max’s clothes clung to his well-developed sportsman’s physique. Unlike his friend Sir George Ashdown, loathsome husband to Cousin Sylvia, he’d kept his figure despite being past his first youth. Pretty good for nearly forty.
    Who was she fooling? She knew quite well that he was thirty-five and a half, exactly five years older than she. Their birthdays were two days apart. It was absurd the way trivial facts lingered in the memory, facts as unimportant as what she had for dinner on Tuesday. Except that she couldn’t remember last week’s menu and she