Free Wildest Dreams (The Contemporary Collection) by Jennifer Blake Page A

his face, grew aware of the heavy beat of his heart under her hands, which were trapped between them. The dark lavender-blue outer ring of her brown eyes darkened and her own fringe of jet-black lashes swept downward again.
    She was released abruptly.
    “Forgive me, my lady!” the man said, stepping back, holding his arms stiff at his sides as he inclined his head in a bow.
    She had known he would speak with an accent, however slight, even before she heard him. “No, please,” she said softly, “I must thank you.”
    “I beg you won’t. What I did, it was nothing.” He looked around him, his gaze lighting on his hat lying in the wet road with its crown crushed by a carriage wheel. Beside it lay her parasol with the handle in two pieces and its broken ribs poking through torn and fluttering silk. Around them, the rain began to quicken.
    “Your umbrella is as useless as my hat, I think, or I would retrieve it for you.”
    “Please don’t try,” she murmured.
    “No, but you must have shelter. Come.”
    With his hand on her arm, he pulled her with him toward the cast-iron pavilion. She went willingly enough, catching up her unwieldy skirts for the quick dash. Their footsteps skimmed over the wet grass, then they were pounding up the low steps and ducking under the water streaming down from the steep slate roof. Violet’s skirts whirled around her, then settled as she came to a halt and turned back toward the open doorway.
    It was amazing how dark it had grown there under the shadows of the trees with the closing in of the storm. The noise of the rain was like the rushing of a cataract as it assaulted the new spring leaves and pounded the grass, rattled on the slates overhead, and splattered on the pavilion steps.
    Violet, watching the rain as if mesmerized, gave a small shiver and rubbed her arms with her hands. The chill came, she thought, from inside, for her arms were covered by the sleeves of her green velvet jacket with its peplum waist. There were drops of rain beaded on the velvet, and she stripped off her gloves to brush at them in distress. The fabric would be quite ruined and she had worn it no more than twice. Gilbert would not be pleased.
    The man beside her spoke in low tones. “It is irregular, I know, but since there is no one to present me, perhaps you will permit me to introduce myself?” He inclined his head briefly. “I am Allain Massari, my lady, at your service.”
    “How could I be so ungrateful as to refuse to know you?” she said, giving him her gloved hand. “But you are not English, I think. French perhaps? Or is it Italian?”
    Amusement sparkled in his eyes. “My mother was Italian and French; my father claimed no particular country as his own, but enjoyed many, especially England. I am many things, then, but prefer to think of myself as simply European.”
    Was that another way of saying that he had no right to his father’s name, so had taken that of his mother? She could not embarrass him by asking. In any case it made no difference, since it was unlikely their acquaintance would be a long one. These thoughts ran quickly through Violet’s head before she realized with a start that they were no longer speaking English. “Ah, you are very fluent in French, m’sieur.”
    “I felt you would be more comfortable. I am right, am I not?”
    She assented, telling him of her Louisiana French background, before she went on. “And are you equally at home in Italian?”
    “I have a lucky facility with languages,” he said dismissively, then frowned a little as his gaze rested on her cheek. He reached to draw a handkerchief from his sleeve. “You will allow me one small privilege further?”
    He touched her chin with the fingers of one hand, tilting her face toward the little light that was available. Using the handkerchief, he blotted the raindrops that stood on the skin of her forehead and the smooth planes of her face, and even those that clung to the ends of her lashes.
    Violet