Helen Dickson by Marrying Miss Monkton Page B

knew absolutely nothing about him. How could she? And maybe it wasn’t safe to know.
    She withdrew her hand and turned her thoughts away from this new, dangerous direction. She felt a sudden stillness envelop them. Vividly aware of his closeness, the spicy scent of him, she was overwhelmingly conscious of him—and confused. She was slightly irritated by the way in which he skilfully cut through her superior attitude, theartificial posturing she often assumed to save herself from him. She knew she asked for it, but the magnetic attraction still remained beneath all the irritation.
    ‘I’m not cold,’ she said, her voice sharp.
    ‘Then go to bed.’
    She did as she was bade and crawled back into the warm softness, allowing sleep to overtake her and her troubled thoughts.
    Charles sat staring into the shifting, glowing lights in the dying embers of the fire, his mind wandering back to his young charge between the covers. A picture of a tumbling mass of blue-black hair swirled through his thoughts, of dark fringed green eyes that glowed with their own light, the colour of their depths forever changing like richly hued jewels. A nose was added to the lovely vision, slim and pert and a feature of perfection. A pair of lips floated into mind, gently curving and expressive; in his recollection he remembered the moment when they had left the inn to begin their journey and her lips had turned upwards and parted with laughter.
    Let it be for ever so, he mused, but he knew it would not.
    Thinking of the long and arduous journey ahead of them, he hoped they would reach their destination without mishap. Maria was depending on him, he reminded himself. She trusted him to get her to England safely. He owed it to her not to fail.

Chapter Three
    T he following morning when Maria awoke, the sight of Charles standing half-naked at the wash stand, his shirt thrown over a chair and his trousers unfastened at the waist and falling slightly low over his hips, was almost too much for her virgin eyes to bear. The vision of his tall, lithe, wide-shouldered form with sculpted muscles as he hummed a military march, bathed in the golden glow of early morning sunlight, would be for ever branded on her brain.
    Shoving back the covers, she knelt on the bed and stared at him. Never having seen the naked male form before, she stared in virginal innocence, thinking he was one of those rare men who looked like a Roman statue. Up close, in broad daylight, his maleness, the power, the strength of his body, seemed even more pronounced. Armed with shaving dish and razor, a towel round his neck and lather on his face, he continued to shave.
    Curious, never having seen a man shave before, as she watched him she felt an unfamiliar sensation—amelting sensation that somehow made breathing difficult and made her heart race. He did seem to have a way with him, and she could not fault any woman for falling under his spell, for she found to her amazement that her heart was not so detached as she might have imagined it to be. As handsome as he was, she could imagine that he had grown quite adept at swaying young women from the paths their parents had urged them to follow.
    Catching her eyes in the mirror, Charles paused and grinned, his eyes glowing in the warm light of day. ‘So, you are awake at last. Good morning, Maria.’
    ‘Good morning,’ she murmured, trying to shake off the effects of his winning smile. Unexpectedly she found herself the victim of an absurd attack of shyness.
    Charles saw that her face was a mirror of lovely confusion, and, taking pity on her innocence, he fastened his trousers and quietly said, ‘Have you never seen a man shave before?’
    ‘No—of course I haven’t—not even my father, and Henry—’ She stopped what she had been about to say, that she had been very young when her betrothed had gone away and it had never entered her head to find out how and when he shaved.
    Charles paused to look at her, the razor in mid-air.