Read Columbine for Free Online Page B

he reached out gently to stroke her haft. But when he touched her, she gasped and turned her face full toward him. It was not the tears in her eyes that stopped him. It was the fear. She was so clearly terrified of him that his hand drew back at once as if it had been burned. Awkwardly he jammed both hands in his coat pockets, wondering what the devil had gone wrong.
    Dianna saw how he pulled away and relief washed over her. But mixed with the relief was a kind of chagrin, too. She had saved herself by crying, and though she hadn’t done it intentionally, she felt no better than some blubbering milk-maid cornered by the master. Weak and cowardly, that’s how she’d acted. What had happened to her pride?
    She squared her shoulders and sniffed back the tears, fumbling for her handkerchief.
    “I’ll have you know,” she said with as much dignity as she could muster, “that I don’t usually do this.”
    He narrowed his eyes at her suspiciously.
    “Don’t do what?”
    “Why, cry, of course.” She sniffled again, loudly, and without comment he handed his own handkerchief, an enormous square of bleached homespun.
    “Thank you. I’m sure I don’t know what happened to my own, but I’m quite short of linen for a journey of this sort.”
    “Indeed,” he said dryly.
    “Not what you’re accustomed to?”
    “Faith, no! When Father and I travelled to Paris last spring, we had four trunks between us, and that didn’t count what we bought there. You should have seen the long faces on the porters when they saw all the baggage on top of the coach!” She began to laugh at the memory, until she realized Kit wasn’t laughing with her.
    He wasn’t even smiling. For an instant she dared to meet his gaze and the intensity of those half-closed cat’s eyes. Their expression baffled hen She saw none of the hostility that her uncle had shown when she’d refused his advances, no threats, but the question she found instead was one for which she had no answer. Quickly she looked away, lower, to the front of his shirt. His neck cloth was loose, his waistcoat partly unbuttoned, and his shirt hung open at the throat in a deep V. She had never stood so near to a man other than her father, and curiosity unwittingly made her bold.
    Intrigued, she stared at the tanned triangle and the pattern of the dark curls upon it. Her eyes wandered farther, following the horsetail braid down the front of his waistcoat, across a belly that was flat and lean.
    Lower still, his hips seemed surprisingly narrow for the breadth of his shoulders, while his breeches were cut so snugly that Dianna looked hastily away. The breeches were tucked into tall leather boots, the leather worn and comfortable from long use, and his feet, like the rest of him, seemed enormous. She raised her gaze, stopping short again of his chin. At the base of his throat she could see the measured beat of his pulse, and wondered if it matched the quickening rate of her own.
    She was no longer frightened, though even in her innocence she knew she had more reason to be now than before. Still, she stood before him and could not bring herself to meet his eyes. Instead her own gaze shifted sideways, past the row of polished coat buttons, across the expanse of his chest and shoulders.
    With a little shiver, she remembered how his arms had felt around her that night at her uncle’s house, how he’d held her gently, like a fragile piece of porcelain, yet how aware she’d been of his strength.
    For Kit, her eyes roamed over him with the intensity and the intimacy of a caress, and he wondered how she’d react if once again she looked lower and discovered the effect she’d had on him already. My God, what would happen when she actually touched him? He wanted to catch her and take her now, fiercelY, while the desire ran hot in his blood. A woman this brazen would not expect to be wooed, nor deserve to be, either.
    “What shall we do with you, eh, Dianna?” His question came from deep in