Scandalous Secret, Defiant Bride. Helen Dickson

now realised that she had made herself look a fool, running after him the way she had, and her heart quailed contemptuously at her forward conduct. The enormity of it all hit her like a rock and stung her to new rage, rage at herself with all the fury of thwarted and humiliated first love.

      Blinded by tears, she whirled about, knowing only that she must get away from the lake. So lost was she in her anger and self-chastisement that she didn’t see the horse and rider coming towards her. A voice calling her name startled her. She jumped, not expecting anyone to be in the woods at this hour. She stopped and stood very still as the powerful figure of Max Lloyd drew level and he dismounted.

      ‘Christina? I didn’t expect to see you at this hour. You’re out and about early.’

      ‘I can see I’m not the only one.’

      ‘I like to ride early.’ He looked concerned as he studied her tear-stained face and the droop of her slender shoulders, realising she was in the grip of some powerful emotion, for there were tears of rage and misery in her eyes. ‘Is something wrong? You look upset to me. You have been crying.’

      ‘I’m perfectly fine,’ she retorted, averting her eyes while realising she must look a mess. She took a deep breath, trying to stifle her rising embarrassment. Max Lloyd had caught her at her most vulnerable. Anger at being so surprised made her voice tremble and her eyes gleam like two hard green stones as she said coldly, ‘Please excuse me. I’m—in a hurry to get back to the house.’

      ‘Then I’ll walk with you.’ Taking the reins of his horse, he walked beside the irate young woman, matching her quick strides with his own. Turning his head, he looked at her for a moment, touched by her obvious youth and perhaps also by some private scruples. As she moved she had the animal grace of a young thoroughbred, yet at the same time a warm, vibrant femininity that touched a deep chord in him.

      ‘You’ll probably resent me saying this, but you look more than a little out of sorts. What, I ask myself, is so important as to drag you from your bed at this hour and make you cry?’

      ‘Fishing,’ she snapped. ‘And I’m not crying.’

      He arched a brow. ‘Fishing? You like fishing?’

      ‘I do.’

      ‘Alone?’

      ‘No. Peter and James have taken the boat out on to the lake.’

      Max was beginning to understand. Concealing the irritation he always felt when James Embleton’s name was mentioned, he said, ‘And you wanted to go with them.’

      ‘Yes. They refused to take me.’ She sighed, her face crestfallen. ‘I was too late anyway.’ Turning to look at him, she saw the blue eyes laughing in the tanned face and amusement tugging at the corners of his firm lips, which quickly rekindled her ire. ‘Don’t you dare laugh. It’s in very poor taste.’

      ‘Why should I laugh?’

      ‘Because there is no more foolish sight than a woman who makes a fool of herself over a man who does not want her—the way I have done over James Embleton.’

      ‘So the unimaginable has happened.’

      She nodded. ‘It looks like it.’

      ‘I think you are more upset with your own behaviour than James Embleton’s rejection of you. So he isn’t as susceptible to your charms as you would like him to be.’

      ‘You don’t understand. You’ll never understand,’ she blurted out before she could stop herself.

      ‘I can understand only too well. You seem to have got yourself into quite a pickle, as you English say, over this young man. You are very young, Christina, and have much to learn.’

      Christina stiffened with childish fury. How dare this impudent foreigner say these things to her? ‘I’m not obliged to discuss my feelings with you. It’s always the same assumption. Can no one think of me in any light but as a silly naïve girl?’

      A slow, lazy smile swept across Max’s face, and Christina braced herself for him to say something mocking, but his deep voice was filled with admiration and teasing. ‘You are a delightful girl, Christina, who has a habit of doing without thinking first. Like I said, you have much to learn about life—and men.’

      She stopped abruptly and glowered up at him. Not for one second was she deceived by his tender concern. ‘And who will teach me these things? You?’

      He smiled and his eyes shone with a roguish gleam. ‘I would like to.’

      ‘Is there something wrong with me? Am I not attractive to look at?’

      ‘You worry too much,’ Max said, his eyes held by the pale, graceful figure. The lights in her glorious hair changed colour rapidly in the light that filtered through the upper branches of the trees, from the deepest brown to a rich mahogany. A kind of anger welled up inside him against James Embleton for causing her distress. ‘Take it from me, there is nothing wrong with the way you look. James Embleton must be blind. He doesn’t know what he’s missing.’

      ‘He doesn’t?’

      ‘No.’

      ‘Then—would you like to kiss me?’

      Max frowned and looked away. She didn’t know what she was asking.

      Christina misinterpreted his response and continued to walk on in a huff, her hands clenched and her chin thrust out. ‘There, I knew it. There is something wrong with me.’

      Striding after her, Max took her arm and spun her round to face him. ‘Have you never been kissed?’

      She shook her head sullenly.

      Cupping her chin in his hand, Max looked deep into her eyes, his own intense and gentle at the same time. ‘One day I will kiss you, Christina. That I promise you, and when I do you will want me to go on kissing you. But not now, not when you’re all fired up and thinking of someone else. When I kiss you it will be because it is me you want. Do you understand?’

      Max was attired in snug-fitting calf-coloured breeches and tan riding boots, bottle-green jacket and a rakish cream silk cravat around his neck and she looked at him hard, as if for the first time. His magnificent physique was displayed in a way that made her throat go dry. With a thick lock of black hair drooping across his brow and his incredible blue eyes, she thought how terribly attractive he was, the most attractive man she had ever met, and there was no point in denying it.

      With the quietness of the woods all about them, for a moment she was held by his gaze, unable to drag her eyes from the ones that commanded her attention. It was as if he searched out her very soul, and he had a way of making her feel consumed by that heated regard. His fingers still cupped her chin and his touch excited her, warmed her, but her mind shied away from going any deeper than that, for it seemed obscene to even consider she might have feelings for any other man but James. He seemed to sense her discomfort; his smile became positively wolfish.

      ‘You must think me stupid,’ she retorted, taking a step back so that he had to release her chin. She looked away and stiffened her spine. Max’s dark brows drew together over incredulous blue eyes.

      ‘No, I don’t. You decided that.’ For a moment he studied her with heavy-lidded, speculative eyes. ‘Perhaps I will kiss you after all.’

      Christina found she was unable to move when his hand suddenly cupped her cheek. ‘Look at me,’ he said in a low, velvety, unfamiliar voice that sent apprehensive and exciting tingles darting up her spine. She raised her eyes to his tanned face. Although no one had ever attempted to kiss her before, she took one look at the slumberous expression in his eyes and was instantly wary.

      ‘Are you really going to kiss me?’

      A slow, lazy smile that made her heart leap worked its way across his face and Christina was unable to drag her eyes from his hypnotic gaze. ‘Yes, I am.’

      Terrified of what would happen next and that she would make a complete idiot