Read The Rake Enraptured for Free Online Page A

honed to perfection, for both his pleasure and his amusement.
    There was nothing like a challenge.
    She was a challenge, perhaps a little more intriguing than most. Too quick-witted to dismiss; sharp-tongued as an adder. No one said such things to his face as she had, whatever might be said when his back was turned. But she, all courage and fearlessness, spoke as she pleased when there was no one else to hear her.
    No, she did not care what he thought of her, since he had already lost her good opinion before he even noticed her.
    It was not a harshness in her character. She was poised and pleasant to others, with a natural dignity that made her perhaps a little difficult to approach. Now he was watching her he saw no one sought her out, particularly during these evenings of sociability. He wondered if she was lonely. He had always felt a little sorry for governesses, when he thought of them at all.
    Mr Scott finished his turn and Colin picked up and discarded with careless disregard, then went back to staring at her. Miss Preston. Julia. She had been summoned from upstairs to make up numbers for cards, and he had seen the faint dismay flicker across her face when she realized the empty seat designated for her was directly opposite him. Poor woman. Perhaps he should not hound her.
    No, he would not pretend to a nobility he did not possess. He was intrigued and would find out the secrets of her. When she lay lax and pleasure-dazed in his arms, no different from the rest, then he would be satisfied. It was a new thought and a little surprising - she was very far from his preferred type - but the prospect pleased him.
    He felt his lip curl a s he pictured her there, naked and supple, a willow wand of delicate femininity, blue eyes unfocused and happy. At that precise moment her eyes flicked up to meet his and it was almost a physical touch, the intensity of that connection, the snap of it.
    She was angry again, her nostrils flared, and he found himself smiling wider and giving her a promise with his own eyes:
    I will have you. I will know you. You will flower for me.
    She drew in a sharp breath as if to reprimand him, and Mr Scott and Mrs Bower each turned their heads to her in polite attention at the small sound, caught her look and followed it to Colin.
    "Sorry, whose turn is it?" he asked as if in innocent confusion. "Is it mine?"
    "No, still mine," said Mrs Bower. Sorry. Just . . . there." She threw down her discard with an air of exasperation at her options, and Miss Julia Preston lowered her gaze back to her own cards, which trembled ever so slightly in her slender hand.

 
     
     
     
     
    CHAPTER SIX
     
    Julia gritted her teeth when little Sarah the maid knocked on her door and, in her timid little mouse voice, passed on the message Miss Preston was required at the pianoforte.
    "Thank you, Sarah," was all she said, but when the serving girl was gone and Julia's bedroom door closed behind her, Julia glared at th e wood panels of it. What rotten luck. Was it so much to ask of life, that she could stay peacefully hidden away upstairs for just one evening? It had been such a terribly long day, with the children squabbling and refusing to settle to work, a spilled inkwell to clean up and Sophie's tears over another ruined dress, this one splattered with indigo ink.
    With grim fortitude she went to peer in her small, speckled looking glass. Should she take down her hair and pin it anew? Undoubtedly. And put on one of her two drab evening dresses, solemn and sensible as they were. It did not matter which she wore. With this the fourth evening she had been pressed into duty, all the guests would have seen each already, if they had taken the trouble to notice her at all.
    Sti ll, she put on the one she had not worn last night at cards - when she had unaccountably fascinated Mr Holbrook. Wretched man.
    It was one thing to feel out-of-sorts when he ignored her, but truth be told she had never expected his regard, either. She knew