A Wedding For The Scandalous Heiress. Elizabeth Beacon

by innocents, Miss Alstone. I’m so tempted to find out if there’s red blood in your veins I doubt much else would hold me back.’

      A hard and feverish sort of wanting blazed in his ice-blue eyes as if his steely will was all that stopped him kissing her witless, so she’d have to be grateful Sophia and little Kit were nearby, wouldn’t she? ‘I’d bite you if you tried it, Mr FitzDevelin, then we’d see what yours is like and never mind mine.’

      ‘How very uncivil of you,’ he snapped back sarcastically as if he hoped his words would freeze in mid-air and physically hurt her.

      Isabella was hard-pressed not to wince. ‘Lucky we are being watched, then, since I don’t care to lower myself to your level,’ she replied and she needed to feed that fury; keep him standing across the green dell glaring at her like an enemy. She was almost terrified by the wild emotions burning the frosty air yet fascinated by the idea of exploring them and never mind conventions, relatives by marriage or her thorny Alstone pride.

      ‘You’re afraid you might kiss the bastard back, again.’

      ‘No, I could never want a man who despises me,’ she lied.

      ‘Why not, you did last time, Isabella,’ he reminded her with such deadly softness she felt his words scorch as if he’d written them in Greek fire on her flinching skin.

      He was quite right; that night she kissed him as if her last breath depended on it and why was she such a confounded idiot as to want him and not his half-brother? She felt the merciless heat of longing for a dark and dangerous man she’d never been able to feel for gentlemanly, handsome and much kinder Magnus Haile. Raw wanting ran through her like wildfire, but this time she’d keep it to herself.

      ‘Go away,’ she demanded in a voice rasped and on the edge of admitting something dreadful.

      ‘And tell Magnus he’s right, you’re cold as an iceberg under all that golden beauty?’

      A shard of pain her good friend could say such a thing about her threatened her serenity. She managed a haughty stare and told herself he’d made it up.

      ‘I can’t persuade you to drag my half-brother out of the pit of despair he’s tumbled into since you jilted him? He doesn’t deserve to be treated like a piece of rubbish by a woman he loves for some reason that’s beyond me.’

      ‘No, you can’t and find out what he really wants next time you set out to get it for him by fair means or foul,’ she replied so sweetly she heard him grind his teeth and was savagely glad.