Page 9 of Temptations of a Wallflower
At last Lord Allam reached the collection of chairs where Sarah and the matrons sat. The women continued to sit as the vicar bowed.
“Ladies,” said Lord Allam, “may I present to you my nephew, Mr. Jeremy Cleland.”
Learning their names, Mr. Cleland bent over the women’s hands one by one. At last he reached Sarah.
“Lady Sarah Frampton,” Lord Allam said. “My nephew.”
Sarah extended her hand. Mr. Cleland took it.
He wore no gloves, and though she wore hers, she was engulfed in warmth the moment his fingers clasped hers. A current pinged through her body, hot as summer.
They both went still. His eyes widened, as if he, too, felt that sudden spark, that unexpected heat. Mr. Cleland seemed frozen with shock. As though the truth of himself surprised even him.
Perhaps everything she’d imagined for him, all that sensual potential, hadn’t been entirely her imagination. Maybe it was real and alive within him.
She cleared her throat, struggling to regain her balance. “Where is your parish, Mr. Cleland?”
“Rosemead, Lady Sarah, in Devonshire.” He had a velvet voice, low in register, that stroked along her neck and up her calves.
“You must consider London a dreadful pandemonium after the pleasures of the country.”
“I find the greatest collection of demons to be here,”he said with a smile, tapping the center of his chest with his free hand.
“How very true.”
He still grasped her hand in his. They realized it at the same time. She and Mr. Cleland broke apart like the severing of a silk cord.
The women nearby looked from Sarah to Mr. Cleland, and back again, clearly intrigued. As if they, too, finally saw what Sarah had known all along. This man was much more than his simple black clothing. It merely hid the fires that blazed within him.
“If you’ll excuse me,” Lord Allam said, “I must see to my other guests.”
Once he had gone, Sarah was left with Mr. Cleland. They regarded one another with curiosity, each trying to gauge the other after their strange, brief moment. There seemed no accounting for it. They had just met.
Maybe he saw what she recognized. Perhaps the heat that smoldered within each of them called out to the other, like to like.
If she hadn’t been trapped by propriety, she would have asked him what it was that he sought. What drove him, pushed him. A faint tension rose up in him, as if he, as well, struggled with something internally—a decision to be made, a desire suppressed.
Mr. Cleland leaned down. “Would you care to stroll in the garden with me, Lady Sarah?”
“It would be my pleasure.” She never accepted such offers, but the response leapt from her mouth before she could think twice.
He offered her his arm.
To her shock, she stood and took it.
Chapter 3
My heart pounded and I could scarce catch my breath. I pressed a hand to my chest, waiting in an agony of terror as I heard the jingle of the highwayman’s spurs as he approached my carriage. I felt the sword of Damocles hanging perilously above my head. What would he do to me?
The door to my carriage opened suddenly. A man with a cloth covering the lower half of his face stood there, a pistol in his hand. But his hazel eyes widened when he beheld me. His free hand slowly came up and tugged down his disguise—revealing an exceptionally handsome face. He had a sensualist’s mouth and coin-clean features. His raven-dark hair was pulled back into a queue. Indeed, I’d never beheld a man so attractive. My fear began to dissolve . . .
The Highwayman’s Seduction
Tall as Sarah was, Mr. Cleland stood taller by half a head. It was oddly comforting to find herself finally looking up into a man’s eyes, rather than down at hishairline—though she mostly enjoyed not having to stare up at anyone. Even so, it felt strangely nice to for once be smaller than, to be worth protecting and shielding.
Not that Mr. Cleland would defend her against an attack by a band of brigands. Bandits and buccaneers were in short supply in Mayfair, for one, and she doubted that a vicar knew much by way of sword fighting or fisticuffs. But there went her writer’s imagination again, inventing things that could never—would never—happen.
Still, as they walked sedately together down one of the garden paths, she could sense in him a kind of barely restrained physicality. He certainly didn’t move like a soft scholar. Rather, he had a lean grace, muscular and economical. His arm beneath her hand was delightfully solid and firm. Thinking of it, the clerical black clothing he wore rather suited him, hinting not at moral reserve but at a sort of secret danger.
