Heiress in Regency Society: The Defiant Debutante. Helen Dickson
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presence scorched through her. His unheralded appearance startled her to a sitting position, and Alex watched the soapy water sluicing off her satiny skin. The heat of his appreciative gaze ranged with deliberate slowness over her hair and face and down to her slender shoulders, pausing at length on the exposed, creamy swell of her breasts, leaving the frothy water to provide modest cover for the rest of her.
Alex’s bold scrutiny caused Angelina’s modesty to chafe. With her heart thumping in her breast and fighting to quell the shriek of panic that was rising in her throat, she cast a surreptitious glance about her. Her clothes lay in an untidy heap on the floor like a fallen barricade, and Alex was holding her towel.
Casually Alex relinquished his stance and, closing the door, moved further inside the room. Watching him, uncertain and silent, it was this action that caused panic and fear to course through Angelina. Suddenly she felt intimidated, vulnerable and alone. Memories she was unable to stifle paraded across her mind, and there was a haunting vision of her cowering, quivering and terrified beneath other eyes, with hysterical pleas tumbling from her trembling lips.
Having no concept of her thoughts, Alex crossed towards the bath where she cowered low in the water.
‘Well, well,’ he said, his voice low and mocking, his eyes burning into hers, the atmosphere inside the bathing chamber hot and sultry. ‘Not content with poaching in my woods and threatening me at gunpoint, you now have to add trespassing in my private rooms to your crimes. It’s a good thing I returned early—but—on second thoughts—perhaps I should have waited a while longer. Had I done so, your curiosity about my rooms might have extended to my bed.’
Angelina felt the colour drain from her face. Alex loomed large and menacing, his awesome presence filling the bathing chamber. With his hair a cluster of shining black moist curls, all she could do was stare with a bemused intensity. Compulsively and with a will of their own, her eyes travelled over his broad chest spread with a dark mat of hair, down over the hard leanness of his flat stomach, the pink of her cheeks returning when she saw a trail of black hair start beneath his navel and disappear into his trousers, where a bulge strained against the material.
Alex was watching her closely; her continued regard of that most private part of his anatomy increased the heat in his loins and he felt his tumescence grow. Good Lord, he thought. To his horror he realised his body was reacting to her without the least encouragement on her part.
With a jolt of mortification Angelina tore her eyes away when she realized that she was staring. She looked up at him in desperate appeal, terrified that her blatant intrusion into his private rooms and audacity to make use of his bath would have aroused his wrath to such a degree that it would bring some terrible dark vengeance down on her. She watched him with the terrified eye of a mouse watching a stalking cat.
‘I—I didn’t hear you come in,’ she whispered, disturbed by the scorching heat of his perusal, and quite put out that he had been silently watching her and had made no effort to alert her to his presence. ‘You should have made your presence known to me.’
‘What! And deprive myself of the pleasure of watching you?’ he murmured softly, desperately wanting her to look at him as she had a moment ago. ‘If you don’t get out this instant, you cannot depend on my ability to exercise restraint.’
‘Why—what will you do?’
‘Join you,’ he said, casually lowering his hand to the few remaining buttons securing his trousers.
Horror registered in her eyes when she realised he intended removing that last vestige of decency and joining her in the bath, which was disgustingly large enough to accommodate the two of them. ‘Please, Alex. Pass me my towel, I beg of you. I’ll get out.’
Without revealing any more of her lovely form than was exposed to him already, she held out her hand, dripping water on to the floor. Alex saw it was trembling. Raising his eyes, he studied her as if he were truly trying to understand her. His gaze moved over her pale face, searching her dark eyes and discovering something in their agonised depths that brought a puzzled frown to his brow. Just when Angelina thought her time was up and no angel of deliverance would come to her aid, and that he would either scoop her out of the water or climb in with her, he handed her the towel and turned abruptly, actually scowling.
‘Get dressed,’ he ordered succinctly. ‘I’ll wait in the other room.’
His command penetrated Angelina’s paralysed thoughts, and, when he had gone, she climbed out of the bath immediately, shaking in every limb. After drying herself and struggling into her clothes, she unpinned her hair from its fastening and shook it loose so that it cascaded just past her waist. Emerging from the bathroom into the lion’s den, she drew a deep breath as she tried to steady her nerves. Having thrown on a shirt, Alex stood with his back to her looking out of the window, his whole body tensed into a rigid line, as if he fought some private battle within himself.
Sensing her presence, he turned, his jaw set. She was oblivious to the sight she presented to him. The pure, sweet bliss of having her close spurred his heart. She was too damned lovely to be true. Her cheeks were still rosy from her bath, and her hair—all the wonderful shades of autumn he’d imagined it to be—formed a torrent of brilliant silk tresses, with adorable damp tendrils clinging and curling around her face. The very sight of her here in his rooms wrenched his vitals in a painful knot, and the urge to go to her and pull her into his arms savaged his restraint. If she knew the full force of that emotion he held in check, she would tremble and seek the sanctuary of her room.
In a calm voice that nevertheless carried an unmistakable threat of command, he said, ‘Come here.’
With the width of the room between them, clutching her towel and lotion bottles to her, Angelina could almost believe she was crossing an immeasurable abyss. As she slowly moved towards him, Alex’s towering height increasing. Halfway there she paused.
Alex raised one black devil’s eyebrow. ‘Closer. That’s not far enough.’
He looked like a dark, invincible god, forbidding, intimidating, and yet strangely compelling. When she stood close his hand reached out and touched her tumbling hair, taking one curling tress and winding it gently round his finger.
‘You have beautiful hair, Angelina. It’s a sin to restrain it the way you do.’
Frantically she began to think of things she could say, but all she could do was stare at him in mute appeal. Alex’s suppressed energy and desire seemed to burn in that warm, elegant room, where all reality had been suspended. Angelina felt weak, unable to find the antagonism amid her confusion.
‘You should not be here.’
‘I know,’ she whispered, finding her voice at last. Her pulse quickened when he stepped nearer. Feeling the bold look of his hungry gaze she trembled and instinctively took a step back, her only thought being to avoid any contact with him. ‘I—I was not expecting to see you back so soon.’
‘Evidently. I concluded my business in half the time and returned early—and it’s as well that I did. The last thing I expected was to find you making use of my bathtub. I shall have a few choice words to say to Wyatt.’
Angelina’s eyes flew to his, alarmed that he would vent his wrath on poor Wyatt when the fault was all hers. ‘Oh, no. Please don’t be angry with him. I am entirely to blame.’
‘I believe you,’ Alex replied drily, thrusting his hands into his pockets to keep from reaching out and dragging her into his arms.
‘I—I didn’t mean to intrude, but—I—’
‘You wanted to sample my bathing chamber.’
‘Yes.’
‘Then don’t you think it would have been common courtesy to ask me first? Why didn’t you?’
‘Because I didn’t find out until this morning that you had one. Besides, you would have refused,’ she said softly.
‘On the contrary. I would gladly have given you my permission,’ Alex said, finding