Free Once Upon a Rake by Samantha Holt Page B

scarred skin on his cheek. It
must have been so painful. And dangerous. The fire could have cost him his life
if it had come so close as to burn him.
    Coldness shuttered his gaze
suddenly and he snapped back. Eleanor almost released a squeak of
disappointment—a foolish reaction on her behalf. Perhaps he had suddenly
realised exactly who he was going to kiss, or perhaps she was simply so lacking
in knowledge about men that he had never intended to kiss her in the first
place. Either way, she should not have been feeling acute disappointment. She
certainly did not want Lucian to kiss her.
    Not now. Not seven years
ago. Not ever.

Chapter
Eight
    The Cliché
    He’d been about to kiss her. What in the devil was going
on? Lucian retreated quickly and made a show of studying the prospect from the
window. Looking out onto the open expanse of grass that led down to the bridge
he remembered the sight he had come across—a young lady leaning against the
stone, her curls blowing in the breeze. For several moments, she had
appeared...interesting. Riveting almost. With the sun glinting off her blonde
tresses and her shapely figure shown to great advantage, his heart had done
some sort of strange flip.
    And again in the library.
After studying the pictures of her, he had turned to find the sight of her
oddly arresting. Even with those straight eyebrows and that too long nose,
there was something wholly fascinating to her features. As though she were a
painting simply viewed from the wrong angle and when one caught her from the
right side, she became completely enchanting. He considered those black and
white images of her and how she had seemed so unlike the scarecrow he had
remembered her to be. Yes, she was certainly not as graceful as she was now but
radiance shone from her.
    Lucian groaned inwardly.
Hell, he would be spouting poetic words of her beauty before long and little Ellie
Browning had never been beautiful. And he had never spouted poetry. Not even in
the pursuit of attractive widows.
    “I hear the state rooms
rival that of some of the palaces in England,” he muttered, keeping his gaze
latched onto the view though not really seeing the lush lawns.
    He was too aware of her
movement behind him. Of the crinkle of her skirts and the slight sigh of the
fabric as she sat, somewhere in the periphery of his vision. All he saw was a
blur of blue. Against the dark wood of the room and the red and gold wallpaper,
she was like a beacon of light. Like a sunny sky breaking a storm. Devil take
it, there he went with the poetic thoughts again. Her accident had affected him
worse than he’d realised. He’d hardly slept a wink.
    Scrubbing a hand over his
face, he turned to face the room and slipped onto the chair facing the
fireplace. He had a good view of the photos and her husband’s vast collection
of bugs and insects. He hadn’t been humouring her with his compliments of her
husband’s interest but bugs did not do anything for him. How she had tolerated
years of looking at the blasted things and travelling to God knows where just
to catch a glimpse of one was beyond him.
    “Shall I ring for some tea?”
she asked.
    Lucian frowned at her for
too long. He knew he’d taken too long about it because she began to fidget.
“Yes, do,” he finally managed to spit out.
    It had been so long since
he’d taken tea with someone, he hardly knew what to do. Not that sitting around
drinking tea had ever been his style. He was more likely to indulge in some
fine spirits, but still he had been known to play the gentleman when needs be.
No longer though. Since the fire, he had all but become a recluse. He smirked
to himself as Ellie rose to ring the bell and he tracked her movements with his
gaze.
    He had become a cliché. The
grizzled old man hiding away in his grand old house. Before long he would live
in only one room and the vines would grow across the building, blocking out the
daylight and keeping away the visitors. Perhaps he would even