Lady in Red, Eliza Knight [have you read this book TXT] 📗

been riding hard, sweat causing his shirt to stick to him beneath his coat. Then all of a sudden, there she was. Jumping out of the way from his horse and falling onto her bottom upon the grass.

Terrence had leapt from his mount, coming to her aid. Her hat had flown off somewhere, leaving her chocolate-brown curls to cascade around her shoulders, and she’d opened her mouth and given him a tongue blistering with her Scottish lilt, the likes of which he’d never heard before.

It didn’t matter to him that she wasn’t of noble blood or that her family in Scotland was not well off. Her smile and charm created a storm in him, a torrent of emotion he’d never experienced to date.

Feelings he’d thought she’d returned all through their courtship. But the morning after they wed, she’d disappeared.

“Where have you been?” he demanded. Blast, but it was increasingly more difficult to hold in his temper. He resisted the urge to grab her shoulders and shake her until the truth spilled forth. He wasn’t a violent man. Had never laid hands on a woman before, and the idea that he was considering it now caused his frustration only to grow. Terrence forced himself to slow down his heartbeat. To breathe evenly. Bullying her would not loosen her tongue.

Elizabeth’s hands fisted at her sides, and a little bit of the indignant woman he recognized came out in the thrust of her chin. “I was told ye were in the country this week.”

Terrence smiled bitterly. “A rumor I started myself.”

Her eyes widened a fraction of an inch. “Why?”

“’Tis I who gets to ask the questions—not you, wife.” Besides, he wasn’t going to tell her he’d done so to entrap her. A man couldn’t give away all his secrets.

Elizabeth shifted her feet, the anger still visible in her eyes, but also mixed now with a touch of sadness. He couldn’t decipher if she was cross that he’d found her, or that he wouldn’t let her go when she obviously was desperate to get away from him. Perhaps it was a bit of both.

He pushed away from the mantle and stepped nearer to her so that only a few feet separated them. “Why did you keep the hat?”

Slim fingers reached up to touch the brim, the hem of her sleeve falling back enough to expose a thin glint of skin where her glove ended just beyond her wrist. Skin he’d once put his lips on. Terrence sucked in a breath, for he was almost certain he could make out the soft orange blossom of her scent.

Her pouty lips turned down in a frown. “I...”

Terrence closed the distance, the tips of his boots touching the toe of her rather feminine-looking leather shoes. “I’ll ask you once more, Lady Shaftesbury. What’s kept you?” He hated the hint of vulnerability in his voice. That he wasn’t certain his face no longer hid how he felt.

Elizabeth’s throat bobbed, and for a moment, he swore she’d run. Perhaps even thrust herself through the glass of the window. But she squared her shoulders, lifted her chin, and stared him straight in the eye. However, the words that tumbled out left him reeling with shock and disbelief.

“My husband and daughter.”

The believability of the words escaping her own lips was just as inconceivable as they’d been two years earlier when Elizabeth had said, “I do,” in the chapel, holding Terrence’s hands.

Within minutes of being returned to Terrence’s magnanimous presence, she’d given him the two darkest secrets she’d struggled with confessing to him before. All the years of lies, the heartache, and deceit. Leaving him had been the only option.

Marrying him had been insanity. She’d had a mission to complete, and she’d failed. Agreeing to be his wife for life and beyond the grave when Linden was...Elizabeth shook her head. She wasn’t going to think about either of her husbands—or her daughter, Sarah. Sweet, sweet, Sarah. Her cherubic face surrounded by the same chocolate curls as Elizabeth’s.

Memories only brought her pain and misery.

Right now, she needed her wits about her. Without her faculties, she wouldn’t be able to resist Terrence’s charm–a potent and powerful wine she wanted to guzzle.

At that thought, her parched throat constricted, her breath catching, and she thought she might faint for the briefest of moments. Was this what she wanted? Was that why she dared to walk past his London house morning after morning, with her red hat like a flag beckoning a bull? When she’d heard he was out of town, there had seemed no harm in it. But she’d been lying to herself all along.

“What do you mean, your husband and daughter?” Terrence’s voice was calm. Too calm.

A shiver of fear raced along her spine, sending gooseflesh to cover her limbs. Her stomach cramped, and she was close to losing the meager breakfast she’d consumed.

Locking her knees, Elizabeth forced herself to look him in the eye and said the first thing she could think of, “I dinna know what ye’re talking about.”

Not really a valid cluster of words, and certainly they made no sense given her pronouncement only moments ago, but, hopefully, they bought her some time. Time to think this through and figure out a way to once more escape the appealing man who should be her mortal enemy.

A man she found so hard to hate.

Terrence’s eyes blazed fury for a moment. His lips pressed into a thin line. He stepped even closer, filling the space between them with his masculine, intoxicating scent: spicy, woodsy and leather. Oh, aye, it was so hard to hate him.

“You know bloody well what I mean.” His tone wasn’t menacing, but it left no room for argument all the same.

Dinna cry, she told herself, when tears of frustration, ire, sadness filled her to the brim.

Elizabeth swallowed. And swallowed again. Her voice wouldn’t work; her tongue felt twisted and swollen; but even worse, her mind did not seem to be within her full control either. She couldn’t think, couldn’t