Read A Christmas Bride / A Christmas Beau for Free Online Page A

ratafia.
    “I would offer my escort, ma’am, if I thought it would be welcomed,” he said.
    “How kind you are, Mr. Downes,” she said, mocking him with her eyes. “It would be accepted.”
    “Shall I have your carriage called around, then?” he asked. “Shall I have a maid accompany us?”
    She allowed herself to laugh softly. “That will be quite unnecessary, Mr. Downes,” she said, “unless you are afraid of me. We are both adults.”
    He inclined his head to her without removing his eyes from hers, set down his glass, and slipped quietly from the room.
    She found flirtations exhilarating, Helena admitted to herself as she sipped from her glass and looked about the room without making any attempt to rejoin any group. She indulged in them whenever she felt so inclined—always in private. She scorned the appearanceof propriety for its own sake, but how could one conduct a satisfactory flirtation in the sight of others? She did not care if people noticed her disappearing alone with a certain gentleman and thought her promiscuous.
    She was not. She had never desired the distastefulness of full physical intimacy—she had endured enough of that during her seven-year marriage. Though of course there had been a time during that marriage … no! She shuddered inwardly. She would not think of that now—or ever if she could help it.
    She had never sought to enliven her widowhood with affairs—or even with
an
affair. But then she had rarely met a man with as great a physical appeal as Mr. Downes.
    She would take him home and lure him up to her drawing room. She would find out more about him. She suspected that he might be a fascinating man—perhaps he could fascinate her for an hour or more of the night. Nights were always interminably long. She would flirt with him. Perhaps she would even allow him to steal a kiss—there was definite appeal in the thought, though she normally avoided even kisses.
    Perhaps he would not be satisfied with a mere kiss. But she was not afraid. She had never found herself unable to deal with amorous men, though she had known her fair share.
    She smiled as her eyes found the Countess of Greenwald.
    She set her glass down in order to go bid her hostess a good night.
    And perhaps
she
would not be satisfied with a mere kiss, she thought a few minutes later as she allowed Mr. Downes to hand her into her carriage and climb in beside her.
    She had never felt quite so tempted.
    How would it
feel
with him?
she wondered, turning her head to smile half scornfully at her companion,though he was not necessarily the object of her scorn. With a handsome, virile, powerful, doubtless very experienced man.
    She felt a twinge of alarm at the direction her thoughts had taken. And more than a twinge of desire.
    She would talk sense into herself before she arrived home, she told herself. She might even dismiss him on the pavement outside her door and send him back to the soirée.
    But she knew she would not do that.
    Sometimes loneliness was almost a tangible thing.

3
    E DGAR WAS NOT REALLY SURE HE UNDERSTOOD THE situation. Or believed her story. Why would two servants have walked home after accompanying her to the Greenwalds’? And she did not seem the sort of person to tire early when she was at a party. She had been the center of attention in every group gathered about her all evening.
    And why him?
    He sat beside her as close to his side of her carriage as he could so that she would not think he was taking advantage of the situation. She sat with her back half across the corner at her side, looking at him in the near-darkness, talking easily and quite without malice about the people who had attended the party. She spoke in that low, velvety voice, the half smile of mockery or something else on her lips every time a street lamp lit her face.
    He would help her to alight at her door, he thought, see her safely inside her home, and then walk back to Greenwald’s house. It was not very far. He would refuse