Page 6 of Tamed By a Passionate Lady
She was simply the most divine thing that he had ever set eyes upon.
Transfixed, his eyes followed her as she strolled along the street, sometimes stopping to look in shop windows. She turned her head to talk to her companion, and then she laughed, showing her even, white teeth.
He studied her, spellbound. She was small in stature, and fine-boned. She had bright flaxen hair, so golden that it was almost white. Beneath her green bonnet, he saw that her face was framed by cascading ringlets.
Suddenly, as if she sensed his gaze, she looked up. Her eyes met his, for the longest moment.
Those eyes. They were the bluest eyes, that he had ever seen. They were the colour of cornflowers in a summer’s field, or the sea on a bright day.
He gasped inwardly, feeling those eyes hit him hard, almost winding him. That intense blue gaze was like a cord, stretching from that street to where he sat in that room.
She didn’t turn away bashfully. She didn’t lower her eyes in confusion, as many young ladies would. No, this beautiful creature straightened her shoulders and smiled at him.
And it was in that moment that he knew he was hopelessly, violently in love.
“James?” Reuben’s voice seemed to reach him, from far away. “What the deuce are you staring at, old boy?”
He couldn’t answer. He felt like his voice had disappeared entirely, somehow snatched away, completely gone.
“Oh,” said Reuben, following his gaze. “I see. Sheisrather lovely…”
The young lady was still gazing at him. But the next moment her companion pulled at her arm, and reluctantly, she started walking away. But she kept glancing back, the smile still playing around her lips.
“I must meet her,” he breathed, his eyes transfixed. “Imustfind out who she is, or surely die.”
***
James blinked rapidly. He was slowly coming back into the present moment. The dining table, and the hot soup. Reuben, grimacing slightly as he reluctantly slurped his soup. Isabel quietly eating, in a mechanical way. And Adaline, thoughtfully spooning the liquid into her mouth, a small furrow in her brow.
He looked at his wife. Yes, she was a beautiful, charming woman. It wasn’t her fault, at all, that he could not love her. That his heart was dead and buried, and could never be resurrected again.
He wished that he could leave the past behind. He wished that he could be the husband that she deserved. She had bent over backwards to make him happy since they had been married, but it had always been a useless enterprise.
Perhaps, if she had looked like her…but Adaline was so very different. Dark, where his love had been fair. Tall and rounded, where his love had been small and fine. Adaline was a voluptuous, exotic gypsy beauty, where his love had been an ethereal, flaxen haired fairy sprite.
They were as different from each other as night was from day.
He took a deep breath. He wished he could give himself to her. But the simple fact was that Adaline was so very different that it made it impossible.
If he gave himself to her, it would make his agony a hundred times worse. He just knew it.
Chapter 3
The soup was finished. Dinah returned with the stew, which was steaming in a large pot. Mrs. Hargreaves had decided to simmer some Yorkshire puddings on top of the casserole; thick doughy balls that broke apart instantly, soaking up the gravy in the stew.
It was a dish that the cook had made a thousand times before, and this evening it was as hearty and delicious as ever. But somehow, the chunks of mutton stuck in his throat.
She was still here, in this room, hovering in the air like an apparition. His lost love.
Sighing, he put down his knife and fork. He must stop thinking of her. Determinedly he turned to Isabel, who was picking at her food in a distracted manner.
He smiled. He had known Isabel Montgomery since she was just four years of age, and always been fond of her. A sickly girl, she had grown into a delicate woman. Every time that he saw her she seemed more fragile, as if she had one foot in the other world as well as this one.
He knew that Mrs. Montgomery, her mother, despaired for her. The matron had sent her daughter to so many quacks over the years that he had lost count of them. Isabel had been subjected to continual bloodletting, and more bizarre treatments than he remembered. But none of them had made any difference to her health.
He didn’t think there was even a name for what she suffered from. Her parents had thought it consumption for the longest time, but the doctors insisted it wasn’t. Her cough was continual, and it worsened at night. Sometimes he could hear her in her room, pacing the floor, trying desperately to catch her breath.
“How are you feeling, dear Isabel?” he asked. “Has your health improved at all since you have been breathing the sea air at Birkenhead?”
