Unmasked...
From Chapter 3
“I know it was you in the fountain,” he said
softly, whilst her trapped mind ran back and forth over the
possibilities. “You may protest if you wish but I believe I would
recognise you anywhere.”
A shiver ran along Mari’s nerves and she drew the
silver shawl more tightly about her shoulders. Oh yes, he recognised her
from the gardens but did he know her from the tavern as well? It felt as
though they were already deeply involved in a game of hunter and hunted and
any admission she made could be so very dangerous.
Challenge him. See how far he will go, what
he will give away…
She had always been a gambler. She had had to be in
order to survive. Sometimes to throw down the gauntlet was the only way.
She gave a little shrug. “Very well. I concede that I
was the woman you saw in the fountain. I thought I was unobserved. It was…
careless of me.”
He flashed her another smile, a disturbingly attractive
one. Her toes curled instinctively within her slippers and her heart did
another giddy little skip as though she was a schoolroom miss developing a
tendre rather than a mature woman of five and twenty.
“I like it that you do not pretend,” he said. His voice
was intimately low. “Ninety nine women out of one hundred would have claimed
not to understand me.”
If only he knew. Sometimes she forgot where the
pretence began – and where it ended.
She gave him a very straight look. “Of course they
would, and who could blame them? A reputation dies all too easily, as you
must know, Major Falconer.”
“So why are you different? Why did you admit it?”
Mari
met his quizzical dark gaze and felt a little breathless. “I am not
different. I do not wish you to be the ruin of my reputation, Major
Falconer. But equally, I know that you saw me, so what can I say?” She
spread her hands in a gesture of surrender. “I was bathing. You saw me. It
would avail me little to pretend otherwise. So I must rely on your behaviour
as a gentleman and hope you will not speak out.”
It
was not the whole story, of course. It would be impossible to tell him the
truth, that sometimes the role of the respectable widow grated on her and
she felt an impossible desire to be free. She could not tell him that it was
this impulse that had led her to strip off her clothes and revel in the
fresh coldness of the fountain. That was too intimate a thing to confide to
a virtual stranger, a dangerous stranger who already saw far more than she
wished.
When he remained silent, watching her face, she raised
her brows. “Was that She saw his lips twitch into a smile at her attempted
dismissal of him.
“No, it was not all.” He reached forward. His fingers
brushed against her neck very lightly and lingered, warm against her skin.
“You had better hide that curl if you do not wish anyone else to guess your
secret. Your hair is still wet. You must have rushed home and dressed in a
great hurry.”
Mari’s hand flew to her neck where the wayward curl of
hair nestled against her throat. It felt feathery, soft and damp, drying
from the warmth of her body. She pushed it beneath the edge of her turban,
her fingers suddenly clumsy. She could feel the colour suffuse her face as
Nick continued to watch her.
“Hair as black as midnight,” he said. “I remember.”
There was a heat in the pit of Mari’s stomach as she
thought of what else he might remember about her. Her whole body felt as
though it was on fire.
