Page 2 of The Scandalous Love of a Duke
Katherine would have to go back too, but she would rather be in the water. Her gaze returned to the lake. The day was hot, and the heat was heavy, clinging and oppressive.
‘Kate!’ Eleanor called, in anare-you-comingvoice.
Katherine glanced back and nodded before taking an irresistible final look at the boys.
John was standing in the shallow water, near where the lake dropped over a weir into a cascade, taunting her brother.
The lake rose to the indent of muscle at his hip.
Katherine’s breath was trapped in her lungs for a moment.
He had lost the coltish look he had a few years ago when she first met him. He was physically magnificent now, over six feet tall, sinuous and muscular. She longed to touch him, and her heart beat raced like the thudding hooves of a galloping horse as warmth flooded her veins.
‘Kate!’ Eleanor called again.
John’s head turned and his intense, ice-blue eyes spun in the direction of the trees where she was hiding.
There was an aura about John, an attraction which drew everyone in.
His looks were striking and he had a presence which captured people’s attention when he was in a room.
He was born to lead people, or perhaps bred to do so.
His fingers lifted and swept his damp jet-black hair off his brow, but his gaze didn’t leave the trees.
He had an inherent grace too.
He was calm and silent in nature, though strong-willed. He won most arguments with her brother. But he had an instinctive awareness of others, and he was always kind to her. John acted like a brother to her. He was always considerate. He included her even when Phillip forgot to, and John never grew tired of her dogged company as Phillip sometimes did.
At what point her feelings had changed from sisterly to something else, she could not say. Perhaps she had always felt differently about John. But now it was obsession.
His eyes seemed to find hers, though surely he could not see her. She smiled. All the girls in his family were stunningly beautiful, it carried from their mothers. In John that beauty was breathtakingly masculine. She could not take her eyes off him when she was near him.
‘John!’ her brother called.
John’s gaze ripped away, his awareness disengaging from the trees and returning to the lake.
‘Kate!’
Katherine caught her breath, dragging air into her lungs and turned back.
Eleanor and the others were at the top of the slope, waiting for her.
Katherine lifted her hand to say she was coming and began to climb.
2
Egypt, December, seven years later
John let the handle of the spade rest against his midriff, set one hand on his lean waist and wiped his brow with his forearm. Then he lifted the wide-brimmed leather hat from his head and tipped his gaze to the endlessly clear, blue sky.
God, it was hot here, but it was the middle of a bloody desert.
‘The skin, please.’ He looked at one of the native men in his train. Almost instantly the waterskin was in John’s hand.
The warm water slid down his throat, relieving the dryness.
They’d found a new tomb but it was buried beneath centuries of sand.
