Seduced by a Stranger by Silver Eve Page B

voice touched her like a caress and for the span of a heartbeat she could form no reply. Annoyance surged. At him. At herself. With a sampling of words, he roused a place inside her that she had felt certain was dead.
    She would not allow him such power over her.
    “My motivation was a letter I received,” she said coldly. “It was importunate in nature, desperate, as I am certain you already know. Madeline, a dear friend of my youth, cried out to me in her melancholy and despair. Was I to deny her? To decline her invitation? I am not so cold as that.”
    “Are you not?” His inquiry slapped her.
    But that was his intent. She had no doubt he wished to unsettle her, though she could not begin to imagine his reasons. His gaze slid over her at his leisure, rising to her hair—twisted in a loose knot at her nape—then dropping to her eyes, her nose, her lips, and finally dipping lower.
    Did he dare to linger on her breasts?
    She felt the heat of her blood in her cheeks, and that startled her. She had not blushed since her early encounters with the new Baron Sunderley after her parents had died.
    “We shall work from that premise, then,” he continued, his gaze meeting hers. “You are not so cold as to ignore Madeline’s pleas. Nor so foolish. I believe you are a woman of intelligence, Miss Weston, one who spies opportunity and leaps upon it like a jaguar upon its prey.”
    She allowed neither action nor tenor to betray her fury. Her hands did not tremble as she set her cutlery aside.
    “Your words are insulting, sir.”
    “Are they?” He appeared genuinely startled by her accusation. “I meant them to be complimentary. To have the intelligence to exploit one’s advantages is a wonderful thing.”
    She stared at him, both repelled and intrigued to realize that he told nothing but the truth. He did mean these insulting observations as praise. How dreadful. All the more so because he was partially correct. Though she had not developed a mercenary nature by choice, there was a part of her that had—by necessity—grown opportunistic, a part that grabbed hold of any prospect with vastly unladylike tenacity and refused to let go. Madeline’s letter had been just such a chance.
    But these were not truths she would share with him.
    Catherine glared at St. Aubyn as he continued his breakfast, his table manners impeccable, his attention now on his meal.
    “Excuse me,” she said, and pushed her chair back from the table.
    He glanced at her, but made no move to rise as common courtesy dictated. “I had not thought you so meek as to flee at the first sign of interesting conversation.”
    Interesting conversation? She held her serene expression, refusing to be baited. She could not begin to fathom his reasons, but she did not doubt he was bound and determined to elicit a show of temper.
    Reaching over, he nudged her plate back toward her. “Finish your breakfast,” he said, an instruction, not a request. He did not cajole. She could not imagine him even trying.
    After studying him for a moment, she decided a head-on approach was best. “If it is interesting conversation you wish, then perhaps we could discuss why you were watching me from the woods this morning. And how you crossed the vast lawn so quickly, managing to join me without exhibiting any effects of the vigorous activity you must have indulged in to arrive here so precipitously. Do you not find it rather juvenile to slink about?”
    He swallowed his food, sipped his coffee, and then settled the cup back in the saucer. His movements were clean and precise. Finally, he looked directly at her. “I was not in the woods this morning, Miss Weston. I enjoyed no activity more vigorous than descending from my chamber on the second floor.”
    “I saw you at the edge of the woods.”
    “Did you? You have wonderful visual acuity to recognize me at”—he shot a glance at the window and the distant encroaching trees—“some ten score yards away. Tell me exactly what