Never mind—admiration was not love so they were still impossible for one another and that was good. She would laugh if she knew what a sad state of longing and yearning he had got himself into when he met her sceptical blue eyes for the first time. He was very tired at the time and she was all sleepy eyed and ruffled, so of course she had looked delicious and desirable and like the embodiment of all the dreams he had refused to have as the youthful quarry of most of the husband hunters in the polite world.
As a suddenly desirable young lord instead of a younger son, at first it had taken all his energy to escape the traps laid for a single viscount in possession of all his limbs and teeth. So he had dared not dream of meeting an enchantress one night in Mayfair and falling head over heels in love lest she turn out to be a younger version of his famously beautiful mother. It was too dangerous to dream back then. Since he had acquired enough town bronze to evade the little darlings so eager to be a viscountess they would have taken him even if he had two horns and a tail, he had become too cynical to dream about anything much at all.
He could not accuse Marianne of trying to enchant him when she was obviously not at all pleased to see him that first time, but he contrarily wished she would, then he could stop thinking his way around this feral attraction and let himself just feel for once in his life. He wanted her to look at him as if she could not help tingling with sensual awareness whenever he was near.
He knew an affair was impossible and he could not ruin a woman who had risked so much for the love of a very different man even if she wanted him to. Yet he tried to define the faint scent she had left behind in this bare old room and knew if she felt anything like as itchy and tempted and frustrated about him as he did about her they would be in deep trouble. He would get over it; he knew how to lock up his emotions, but if hers were engaged he could not fight them both. Her refusal to see sense last time she had loved made her dangerous. Except the very idea of being loved so much she stopped caring who he was and did it anyway seemed magnificent and so much bigger than anything he had ever dared hope for. Just as well she did not love him, then.
He snuffled like a hound and managed to pick a few elements of Mrs Marianne Turner out of the air—hmm, there was rose water to start with and something herbal and sharper underneath it...rosemary, perhaps, or lemon balm. Or was that the scent clinging to the pillow under his head after it was dried by fresh air and summer sun? Not a fancy preparation for a lady’s complexion or a faint drift of expensive perfume anyway—he could not imagine her spending a single penny more than necessary on her toilette. Perhaps those faint, clean scents came from a home-made washing ball. Yes, that seemed a good fit. From the clean and tidy but spartan state of this room he concluded Yelverton had naught to spare for many of the things Alaric took for granted. Yelverton would still lack them until he wed Miss Grantham, so the man’s sister must have worked her fingers to the bone to provide as many as could be had by hard work.
Alaric would be angry on her behalf if he had not realised she was so stubborn she probably insisted on doing everything herself here, even if Yelverton offered to hire someone to do the rough work. She would tell him to put the money into his land and livestock and let her work her way through this grand but neglected old house one room at a time. Alaric hated the idea of her doing everything except scrub floors and chop firewood and he would not put it past her to do even that if her brother let her.
He reminded himself of the reality of his life and the vast distance in station yawning between them, even if she was not still grieving for another man. He was interested in Marianne Turner as a potential companion for his niece in the real world where they both had to live. Getting her to see herself as a lady of gentle birth again was the first part of finding Juno someone she could feel at ease with now Miss Grantham was going to be married to Yelverton and far too busy with him and his tumbledown old house to take on any more responsibility. He could tell from that muttered conversation this morning Marianne was in a dilemma about the future and it seemed like killing two birds with one stone to offer her the post of Juno’s companion to save her from being preyed on or exploited by some ruthless future employer.
His hands tightened into fists again at the very thought of some unscrupulous seducer setting eyes on the unaware but lovely Mrs Turner and deciding to get her into his bed by fair means or foul. A jag of pain shot through his
