Free After the Kiss by Karen Ranney Page B

of her own about him.
    “A widow,” he said, repeating it. “Your name?” he asked, with a smile that did not quite reach his eyes.
    “Margaret,” she said quietly, responding as if she were in a daze. “Who are you, then?”
    “Michael Hawthorne,” he said, bowing slightly.
    “A duke?” She tilted her head.
    “Alas, only an earl,” he said, smiling sardonically.
    “I would have thought you a prince,” she said, startling herself with the admission. He only smiled at her comment.
    “It seems we know little enough about each other.”
    Silence was the best recourse to that statement. She stared at the carpet between them.
    “A few moments upon the terrace should not be so easily recalled. I wondered if you were shadow or substance. Or perhaps a ghost of my imagination.”
    “I am very real,” she said, his words coaxing forth her smile.
    “But more circumspect than before.”
    “You were only a shadow yourself,” she whispered. “Now you are only too real.”
    He strode forward until he stood in front of her. He reached out his hand, pulled the book and her reticule gently from her grasp, set them down on the sideboard. She said nothing in response or protest.
    Something was happening to her. Her mind was clouded in alarmed wonder. Her heart, already beating fast at his appearance, began to escalate, her breath tightening in her chest. This moment replicated that night of violins and breezes. A moment of sorcery so strong that she trembled in its spell.
    “Come,” he said, taking her hand and leading her to the fire. His hand held hers in a gentle restraint, much as he had that night on the terrace. But here there were few shadows, only the orange glow of a fire, and through the windows the gleam of sunlight breaking through the clouds.
    “Have you traveled far?” A commonplace question, but his touch on her hand didn’t seem at all ordinary. She could feel the warmth of his hand even through her glove.
    “Not far,” she murmured, wishing that he wouldn’t stand so close. She could feel his breath against her cheek.
    Suddenly, his hand reached up and brushed a tendril of hair back from her cheek. A lover’s touch. Too intimate. Gentle, almost tender. His knuckles stroked down the edge of her jaw.
    No one had ever touched her this way.
    She reached up and stayed his hand, held it with hers. He studied her face as if he had never seen a woman before, the intensity of his gaze almost burning.
    Run, Margaret. As fast and as far as you can .
    She heard the admonition of her conscience, but another voice intruded. This whisper belonged to her and yet was someone just now discovered. This woman of secret dreams and hidden wishes slipped atop the person Margaret knew herself to be. Thisshadow spoke and moved and thought with her own will. Stay. Touch him. Reach out with your fingers and trace the line of his jaw, that unsmiling mouth .
    She took a deep shuddering breath, dropped his hand, and stepped back from him. He, too, seemed to feel the need to separate himself. He walked to the sideboard, turned, and faced her. The width of a room was between them, yet she felt his presence as if he touched her still.
    “You interest me too greatly,” he said, “and I cannot afford distractions at this time in my life.”
    A statement so arrogant that it had the welcome effect of dissipating the strange spell entwining around them.
    “How am I a distraction?” she asked, suddenly amused.
    “First, by having a curiosity that equals my own,” he said.
    Her cheeks warmed. Did he know she’d read the Journals? How could he?
    “I don’t understand,” she said carefully.
    “You stood on the terrace, spying on a ball.”
    “Yes,” she confessed, relieved.
    “And today. Why didn’t you leave the moment you saw it was me and not Babby?”
    “I have business to conduct with the earl,” she said in her defense. Not quite the truth.
    “You stayed because of curiosity, Margaret.”
    She looked away, wishing