Free Pure Sin by Susan Johnson Page A

lovers."
    "He's a cool one to show up tonight as though nothing untoward has happened in his life," an older man remarked.
    "It's his Indian blood," a young lady standing beside Flora whispered, her gaze traveling down Adam's lean, muscled form, her voice touched with a piquant excitement. "They never show their feelings."
    He looked as though he was showing his feelings now, Flora reflected, watching the animated conversation between their host and the man who was attracting so much attention. The bronze-skinned man smiled often as he conversed, and then he suddenly laughed. She felt an odd, immediate reaction to his pleasure, as though his cheer was beguiling even from a distance.
    "Who is he?" Flora asked, struck by his presence.
    The young lady answered without taking her eyes from the handsome long-haired man. "Adam Serre, Comte de Chastellux. A half-breed," she softly added, his exotic bloodlines clearly of interest to her. "He's even
more
available, now that his wife has left him."
    "Available?" Did she mean marriage? Never sure of female insinuation, since her own conversation tended to be direct, she made a polite inquiry.
    "You
know
…" the pretty blond declared, turning to wink at Flora. "Just look at him." And her sigh was one of many—surreptitious and overt—that followed in the wake of Adam's progress that evening.
     
    Flora was introduced to him much later, after dinner, after a string quartet had begun playing for those who wished to dance. When Judge Parkman said, "Adam, I'd like you to meet George Bonham's daughter. Flora Bon-ham, Adam Serre," she found herself uncharacteristically discomposed by the stark immediacy of his presence. And her voice when she spoke was briefly touched with a small tremor.
    "How do you do, Mr. Serre?" Her gaze rose to meet. his, and her breath caught in her throat for a moment. His beauty at close range struck her powerfully, as if she were imperiled by such flagrant handsomeness.
    "I'm doing well, dunk you," he said, his smile open and natural, the buzz of gossip that evening concerning his marriage apparently not affecting him. "Is this your first visit to Montana?"
    "Yes," she replied, her composure restored. He seemed unaware of his good looks. "Montana's very much like the grasslands of Manchuria. Beautiful, filled with sky, rimmed with distant mountains."
    The earl's daughter was quite spectacular, Adam thought with a connoisseur's eye, her mass of auburn hair so lush and rich and heavy, it almost seemed alive, her face dominated by enormous dark eyes, her skin golden, sun kissed, from so much time out of doors. He knew of her travels with her father; George Bonham had visited several of the Absarokee camps in the past months. "And good horse country too," he replied, "like the steppes of Asia. Did you see Lake Baikal?"
    "Have you been there?" Animation instantly infused her voice.
    "Many years ago."
    "When?"
    He thought for a moment. "I'd just finished university, so it must have been 1859."
    "No!"
    "When were you there?" He found the excitement in her eyes intriguing.
    "June."
    "We set up camp on the west shore near Krestovka. Don't tell me you were in the village and we missed you."
    "We were a few miles away at Listvyanka."
    They both smiled like long-lost friends. "Would you care for some champagne?" Adam asked. "And then tell me what you liked most about Listvyanka. The church, the countess Armechev, or the ponies?"
    They agreed the church was a veritable jewel of provincial architecture. It was natural the artistic countess would have appealed more to a young man susceptible to female beauty than to a seventeen-year-old girl obsessed with horses. And the native ponies elicited a lengthy discussion on Asian bloodstock. They found in the course of the evening that they'd both been to Istanbul, the Holy Land, newly opened Japan, the upper reaches of the Sahara, Petersburg in the season. But always at different times.
    "A shame we didn't ever meet," Adam said with a