Free A Regency Invitation to the House Party of the Season by Nicola Cornick, Elizabeth Rolls, JOANNA MAITLAND

jostled for space in Cassie’s head whilst Peter waited and she groped for words to explain herself.
    ‘It’s you!’ Cassie took a step back. As an opening gambit she was aware that it was not very satisfactory.
    ‘Yes,’ Peter said cordially, his interested gaze missing no detail of Cassie’s unorthodox attire. ‘Was there something that I can do for you, Miss Ward?’
    ‘Yes! That is, no!’
    Cassie was so confused to find him there when she was expecting him to be absent in flagrante that she knew she was making no sense. Then, while she gaped, a door opened stealthily down the corridor and Peter caught her arm and pulled her into his room in one quick movement, closing the door behind them.
    ‘What on earth are you doing?’ Cassie demanded, recovering her senses.
    ‘I am avoiding scandal. What are you doing,’ Peter countered, ‘knocking on the doors of gentlemen’s bedchambers in the middle of the night?’
    ‘It is not the middle of the night,’ Cassie argued, ‘and it was only the one bedchamber. Yours!’
    ‘The question still remains,’ Peter said. He folded his arms. He looked unyielding and Cassie had the sudden conviction that she had got herself rather deep into difficulties entirely through her own impulsiveness.
    ‘You never think about the consequences,’ Eliza had said to her, and once again her maid had been proved right.
    Cassie gulped. ‘I was not expecting to find you here,’ she said.
    Peter raised one black brow. ‘Then why come looking for me in the first place?’
    It seemed a logical question. Cassie fidgeted with the ribbons on her peignoir as she tried out and rejected various replies.
    ‘Because I wanted to know—’ She stopped and started again. ‘Oh dear…I thought I saw you out in the gardens, you see.’
    ‘I am sorry, but I do not see.’
    Cassie was torn between embarrassment at her predicament and irritation at his obtuseness. The one thing that did not occur to her was to prevaricate. Though it was humiliating to admit it, she had to tell him the truth. ‘I thought you were with someone,’ she said crossly. ‘Out in the gardens.’
    Comprehension and amusement leapt into Peter’s face. ‘I see now.’
    ‘This,’ Cassie said, ‘is quite mortifying.’ She surreptitiously backed towards the door. ‘I think I should leave.’
    Peter came towards her with a very deliberate tread. He stopped when he was a mere couple of feet away and allowed his gaze to travel over her. Cassie suddenlybecame acutely aware of her tumbled hair, the transparent filminess of her nightdress and peignoir and the very particular way in which Peter was regarding her.
    ‘Mortifying is not the word to describe my feelings at this moment,’ he murmured.
    Cassie gave a little wail as she remembered Eliza’s comment about the peignoir. She retreated further. Peter followed.
    ‘So,’ he said thoughtfully, ‘you thought that I was involved in dalliance in the garden with another lady?’
    ‘No!’ Cassie said, blushing to the roots of her hair.
    ‘Yes, you did. So you came rushing in here to see if your supposition was correct, not expecting to find me.’
    ‘But you are here,’ Cassie said, her back coming up against the door panels, ‘so evidently I made a mistake.’
    ‘Yes, you did.’ Peter was still talking in the same soft tones, but Cassie found them far from soothing. There was something rather dangerous about such quiet absorption, and when Peter leaned one hand against the door, trapping her between the panels and his body, she tried unsuccessfully to flatten herself. Her breath came in quick gasps. She was aware that the tips of her breasts were just brushing Peter’s shirt and the friction—and the knowledge of her body’s reaction to it—was far too stimulating to be comfortable.
    ‘What I would like to know,’ Peter said, ‘is why it mattered to you whether or not I was with another lady?’
    Cassie forgot her embarrassment briefly in sheer indignation.