A Secret Love by Stephanie Laurens

most ladies don’t find such encounters unamusing at all.”
    â€œI am not ‘ most ladies .’ I do not find the particular distractions to which you are devoted at all amusing.”
    â€œThat’s because you’ve yet to experience them. Besides,” he glibly added, “you’re used to riding every day. You’ll need some activity to . . . keep you exercised.”
    He raised eyes filled with limpid innocence to hers, expecting to meet a narrow-eyed glance brimming with aggravation. Instead, her eyes were wide, not shocked but . . . it took him a moment to place their expression.
    Defensive. He’d made her defensive.
    Guilt rose within him.
    Hell! Even when he won a round with her, he still lost.
    Stifling a sigh—over what he did not know—he looked away, trying to dampen what he thought of as his bristling fur—that odd aggression she always evoked—and act normally. Reasonably.
    He shrugged lightly. “I must be on my way.”
    â€œI dare say.”
    To his relief, she contented herself with that small barb. She watched as he bowed to the girls, setting them laughing again. Then he straightened and deliberately caught her gaze.
    It was like looking into a mirror—they both had hazel eyes. When he looked into hers, he usually saw his own thoughts and feelings, reflected over and again, into infinity.
    Not today. Today all he saw was a definite defensiveness—a shield shutting her off from him. Protecting her from him.
    He blinked, breaking the contact. With a curt nod, which she returned, he swung on his heel and strode off.
    Slowing as he neared the edge of the lawn, he wondered what he would have done if she’d offered her hand. That unanswerable question led to the thought of when last he’d touched her in any way. He couldn’t remember, but it was certainly not in the last decade.
    He crossed the street, wriggling his shoulders as his peculiar tension drained; he called it relief at being out of her presence, but it wasn’t that. It was the reaction—the one he’d never understood but which she evoked so strongly—subsiding again.
    Until next they met.
    Alathea watched him go; only when his boots struck the cobbles did she breathe freely again. Her nerves easing, she looked around. Beside her, Mary and Alice blithely chatted, serenely unaware. It always amazed her that their nearest and dearest never saw anything odd in their fraught encounters—other than themselves, only Lucifer saw, presumably because he’d grown up side by side with them and knew them both so well.
    As her pulse slowed, elation bloomed within her.
    He hadn’t recognized her.
    Indeed, after the total absence of his typical reaction to her when he’d met the countess last night, combined with the strong resurgence of it in the last hour, she doubted he’d ever make the connection.
    This morning, she’d woken to the certain knowledge that it wasn’t her physical self that he found so provoking. If he didn’t know she was Alathea Morwellan, nothing happened. No suppressed irritation, no sparks, no clashes. Blissful nothing. Cloaked and veiled, she was just another woman.
    She didn’t want to dwell on why that made her feel so happy, as if a weight had suddenly lifted from her heart. It was clearly her identity that caused his problem—and it was, she now knew, his problem, something that arose first in him, to which she then reacted.
    Knowing didn’t make the outcome any easier to endure, but . . .
    She focused on the wrought iron gates through which he had emerged. They were open to admit coaches to the courtyard of the Inn. She could see the Inn’s archways and the glint of bronze plaques—it wasn’t hard to guess the purpose of the plaques.
    He’d seemed satisfied and confident when he’d strolled away from the gates.
    Drawing in a determined, fully recovered breath,