Free The Scottish Companion by Karen Ranney Page B

to his intensity, but not enough to guard her words.
    “You,” she said simply.
    Strangely enough, he didn’t look surprised by her answer. He remained silent for a moment and then spoke. “Have I given you any reason to fear me?”
    What would he say if she gave him the complete truth? She enjoyed his smiles too much, and she could sit and study the color of his eyes for hours. Beyond his attractiveness, she was fascinated with his mind, and that seemed even more dangerous. Why had he become interested in electrics? What did he want to accomplish in his life? When did he know that he wanted to be more than simply a titled and wealthy man? All questions that veered into the realm of too personal and too intrusive.
    So, yes, he had given her ample reason to fear him, simply by being who he was. She knew only too well that she was lonely and vulnerable. He was the very last person she should be around.
    “I promise not to harm you, Miss Cameron.”
    “I’m not altogether certain that you can promise that, Your Lordship.”
    He came around the table and approached her, and she made herself stand exactly where she was beside the door.
    “Anyone would tell you,” he began and then stopped, frowning at her. “I’m exceptionally impatient in my laboratory, Miss Cameron. But I have found it quite pleasant to have you assist me. If I give my word as the Earl of Straithern, would you return?”
    “And what sort of word would that be, Your Lordship?”
    “What word do you require?”
    “Could you cease being so charming?” she asked, and then wanted to call the words back the moment they were spoken.
    He looked amused by her comment, and she wanted to tell him he was right to smile—it was only a jest. Instead, she turned and left the laboratory.
    “Miss Cameron?” She halted in the corridor without turning around, waiting for him to speak.
    “Will you come back tomorrow?”
    She really shouldn’t. She glanced over her shoulder at him. “If I can, Your Lordship. If Arabella does not need me,” she said, and wondered if she sealed her doom by those few words.
    Gillian opened the massive door to the palace and pulled it shut behind her, standing there for a moment with her hand flat against the carvings.
    She’d always been an avid student, finding refuge in books when her father was suddenly too engrossed with his new wife to pay her much attention. If shewas overlooked by her stepmother it was because the woman soon enough had a child of her own. The dame’s school she attended was more intent upon passing down the skills of housewifery than Aristotle’s lessons. Therefore, Gillian’s education had been allowed to continue, for the most part, at her own pace.
    Her father’s library was a treasure of unexplored lands and treatises from long-dead philosophers. In the soft quiet of an afternoon, the sunshine muted by the dark printed drapes of the library windows, she first explored the words of others and then the thoughts and wonderings of her own mind.
    It was the complexity of her curiosity that amazed her, and then amused her as she would follow one thought to the next as if they were tumbled skeins of yarn.
    How very odd that for the last two years she’d missed intellectual curiosity and only just now realized it.
    As she walked swiftly away from the palace, Gillian had the absurd thought that she’d been wrong. The earl might have summoned her into his laboratory to appease her curiosity, but he’d trapped her with his charm. She could easily be fascinated with the Earl of Straithern, and not simply because of his scientific ambitions or pursuits. The man interested her, the man with the enigmatic smile and the silver eyes occasionally betraying a hint of pain.
    Wasn’t that the best reason to leave Rosemoor, as quickly as she was able?

Chapter 8
    H is mother frowned at him. The countess was quite the termagant when she wished to be, but Grant wasn’t compelled to change his mind. He’d endured the