The English Witch by Loretta Chase Page B

became more charming. "I do hope you'll settle on hating yourself then, because you'll be kinder to me, and I do need a great deal of kindness now after being so cruelly rejected."
    "Rejected?" She looked up in astonishment at those strange cat eyes, but they were blank and innocent.
    "Isn't that what it was? 'No' and 'stop' to me mean rejection, especially when uttered in such anguish. Yet you needn't expect me to apologise. I'd gladly do the same again, even to be rejected again though that isn't the least bit pleasant, and you may certainly apologise if you like. I'm a very forgiving sort of person, you know."
    Good heavens, but he was impossible. To chatter at her so when she was racked by emotions she could neither understand nor name. She stared at him. He stared back, his face still blank and innocent, as the silence lengthened between them. It was not a peaceful sort of silence. Something seemed to vibrate within it. That something finally drove Alexandra to regain her self-command and make a rather tart comment on his magnanimity.
    "Yes, magnanimity is one of my failings. But come," he went on briskly, "your current state of dishevelment is unconscionably tempting, and I don't think I can contemplate you another minute without doing something perfectly dreadful."
    Thus admonished, she attended to her hair—as best she could, with his helpful interference. He insisted the pins were in wrong and, looking very grave, pulled them out almost as quickly as she put them in. His touch, as he handed them back to her, made her tremble.
    "Will you please stop helping me?" she snapped. "I'll be out here all night at this rate."
    "You didn't think I intended to let you go back in so soon? However tedious my company seems to you, we've been here only a very few minutes."
    "That's quite long enough to be alone in a dark garden with a gentleman, even in Albania. It's hardly proper."
    "No, it isn't proper at all, and if I could think of some beautiful lie to convince you to stay—well, obviously, you can't trust me to behave myself."
    "That's true. And it's very tiresome and unfair of you, Mr. Trevelyan—"
    "Mr. Trevelyan, still."
    "Randolph, then."
    "Basil, you wretched girl. Basil. "
    "Basil, then." Seeing the triumphant smile he wore, she smiled, too. He might have all the experience, but he needn't always have the upper hand. "Basil then, my love, my sweet," she went on in falsely ardent, breathless tones so like his own that she startled the smile off his face. "You are monstrous unfair. For you show me not only that I'm not safe in your company, but that you're unsafe in mine. I must look out not only for myself, but for you as well—since you seem bound and determined to compromise me."
    "Do I?" he asked. He made no move to stop her when she stepped away. His smile was gone, and the bland innocence had turned to watchfulness again.
    "Oh, yes. But I gave you my promise, and I mean to keep it, regardless of how difficult you make it for me. I will save you from yourself, Basil, my love. So rest easy."
    She turned then and left him.

Chapter Five
    Although she found the voyage unspeakably tedious, Alexandra inwardly cursed the favourable winds that sped them on to England and the Burnhams. They learned along the way that the defeated Buonaparte had preceded them and, even now, was being ogled by curious mobs at Tor Bay. Their own vessel's captain, however, had no interest in twice-vanquished Corsicans and, furthermore, was in a tremendous hurry. He made directly for Portsmouth. There they were amazed to find both Henry Latham and Lady Bertram waiting for them, and in very short order these two contrived to separate Alexandra from her father.
    Papa, it is true, did not leave his daughter willingly, but Lady Bertram swept all his objections away as though they were so many odd bits of scrap in her path.
    "To Yorkshire?" she repeated, in magnificently disdainful, disbelieving tones. "At this time of year and after so