Read Indiscreet for Free Online Page A

returned his look at least once—coolly and courteously?
    She felt like a girl from the schoolroom again, struck dumb and brainless by the mere sight of a handsome male face.
    No one had mentioned last evening how long the guests were to remain at Bodley. Perhaps they were there for only a few days. Or for a week or two at the longest. Surely it would not be much longer than that. There was still some time before the Season started in London, but young blades would want to be there before all the balls and routs and such began in earnest. Viscount Rawleigh, Lord Pelham, and Mr. Gascoigne definitely qualified as young blades. Though not so very young either. They must allbe close to thirty. The viscount was Mr. Adams’s twin, and Mr. Adams had been married long enough to have produced an eight-year-old daughter.
    She tried desperately to stop thinking about the houseguests at Bodley and about one of them in particular. She did not want to do so. She liked her new life and she liked herself as she was. She made her tea, poured it after it had steeped for a suitable time, and sat down with one of Daniel Defoe’s books, lent her by the rector. Perhaps she could lose herself in an account of the plague year.
    She eventually succeeded in doing so. Toby stretched out on the rug at her feet and sighed noisily in deep contentment.
    â€¢Â Â Â â€¢Â Â Â â€¢
    SHE really was beautiful. She was one of the rare women who would look so even dressed in a sack. Or in nothing at all. Oh, yes, definitely that. He had sat his horse outside her cottage unclothing her with his eyes while she exchanged small talk with everyone else. And his mental exercise had revealed long limbs, a flat stomach that did not need the aid of corsets, firm, uptilted, rose-peaked breasts, creamy skin. And with his eyes he had let down her hair from its plain and sensible knot and watched it cascade in a dark mane down her back to her waist. It would wave enticingly—he remembered the tendrils that had been allowed to remain loose the evening before.
    He had not failed to notice that she did not once look directly at him. Neither had he failed to sense that she was more fully aware of him than of any of the others, at whom she looked andwith whom she conversed quite easily. There had been an invisible thread drawn tautly between them and he had pulled on it only very gently. He had no wish to be teased again by Eden. He had no wish for anyone else to notice, especially Claude, between whose mind and his own there was a strange bond.
    He was glad that she was discreet. If she were not, of course, he would not pursue his interest in her. He certainly would not take her up on the invitation she had so covertly extended the evening before.
    But take her up on it he would. And without delay. His stay would probably be no more than a few weeks long, and he had the feeling that there was enough about Mrs. Winters to hold his interest for a number of weeks.
    There were no guests in the evening even though Clarissa appeared to find the uneven numbers an embarrassment. There were enough people interested in cards to make up the tables. He was free.
    â€œI shall step out for some fresh air,” he announced languidly, hoping that no one else would discover any burning desire to keep him company. Ellen Hudson, fortunately, was one of the cardplayers.
    â€œIt is dusk,” Clarissa said, clearly annoyed that he had avoided partnering her sister. “You may get lost, Rawleigh.”
    Claude chuckled. “Rex and I enjoyed many a clandestine nocturnal adventure here when we were boys, my love,” he said. “We will send out a search party if you are not home by midnight, Rex.”
    â€œI shall use a ball of string if it will make you easier in your mind, Clarissa,” his lordship said, his voice bored.
    He was on his way a few minutes later, blessedly alone. And he blessed too his familiarity with the estate, though he had not