Free Too Wicked to Marry by Susan Sizemore Page A

to me, my love, that your parents are quite thoroughly married."
    "Well, yes,
now
, but they weren't when I was born."
    "So you have been duly and legally legitimized."
    "Yes, but—"
    "So there is no scandal. I sympathize with your concern that I might not understand, but fear of facing me with the truth was no cause to runoff."
    "It was cause enough for me," she asserted. "I am not at all the person you think I am."
    "A hint of scandal and mystery always adds to a woman's appeal, my love. Trust me on that." His smile and the glint in his gray eyes took on a sensual edge that sent shivers of excitement through her.
    But Harriet dared not let her own weakness lull her into a false belief that they could be together. This was not the time to allow herself to be attracted to the man's rakish charm, or tempted by the carnal pleasure his attitude promised. Yet attraction was something that simply
happened
, something intangible but very real that sang and simmered between them, and always had. She had four years of practice in controlling the longing to touch and be touched, but ever since he'd first kissed her in his London garden she'd become less and less sure of her ability to control her emotions. The passion of a few minutes ago had only strengthened the craving and weakened her will. She had to end this quickly, to sever the connection and cauterize the wounds.
    She'd seen an avalanche from a safe distance once. It had come roaring down the mountain, an unstoppable storm of white sweeping all before it, destroying everything in its path. Passion could be like that. The smallest thing could trigger a maelstrom—a turn of the head, an unguarded look, an unintentional touch, a whispered word. Once unleashed passion had its way, what was left broken and devastated after its passing meant nothing to the storm.
    But she could not easily make him go away; she couldn't end their association with anything less than the complete truth. She was about to unleash all the devastating passion in Martin Kestrel's fiery nature. Not for love, but for hate—and she was the one who was going to have to try to survive the tempest.
    "Speaking of mystery, my love," he said, before she could bring herself to speak. "If you've been legitimized, why do you use the name Perry? Was it your mother's maiden name?"
    "Gale," she told him. "My mother was a Gale."
    Black, arched brows lowered over his puzzled gray eyes. "But Lady Phoebe is—"
    "My great-aunt." She should not admit to anything he did not need to know, but her need for honesty with this man overrode any possible breach of security. "You traced me through her?"
    He nodded. "Abigail, I don't—"
    "My name is not Abigail," she cut him off, adamant and angry at hearing the hated name from his lips. Angry at herself, and at him for forcing her to this confession. "My name is Harriet MacLeod. And I'm not a bloody governess. I'm a spy!"
----
Chapter 8

     
    "A spy?" Martin was too stunned to manage more than a whisper.
    "A spy," she repeated, her fierce expression daring him to question or refute it.
    He didn't understand. He could tell she wasn't joking, but it made no sense. He understood the words
a
and
spy
, but what they had to do with her, or him, the world in general, and what was between them, was not something he could instantly fathom.
    "You don't know me," she said, as if in clarification. "You can't love me. I am a stranger."
    "Don't be ridiculous," he said, in an attempt to keep the world from spinning out of its orbit. "Of course you're not."
    "Not what?" she asked, one hand on her hip and an eyebrow canted sarcastically. "Not who the great Lord Martin Kestrel, in his infinite self-assurance, has decided I am?"
    Her voice was different, and not only because the mockery in it grated against his ears. There was a lilt of Highland Scots in it that softened her usual precise enunciation. And her hair was unbound, a thick cascade of wavy dark brown framing the pale, fine-boned oval of