Page 8 of Haunted
As it was, he felt a touch of guilt, because his attraction to Francesca was strong, and shame, because he was in danger of believing in the impossible.
Chapter Three
Francesca lay awakefor some time, thinking about her strangely appealing guest.
She liked his serious expression and his sudden, sweet smile. She liked his instinctive kindness and the way he focused on what she—or Mark—said. She liked that he never imposed.
And, if she was strictly honest, she liked the way he looked, with his bronzed skin and his distinguished, handsome features. From the slight graying of the hair at his temples, she guessed he was around forty years old, a little older than her, pleasingly mature and yet with an air of almost childlike innocence.
The admiration she read in his eyes had surprised her but not frightened her. And he had taken no liberties apart from holding her hand once, and that had been comfort, not attempted seduction. He seemed very open and blunt, and yet mysterious too. She knew he was hiding something about his past.
Well, everyone was entitled to privacy. She had not needed to tell him about her fear of thunder and its association with the theatre attack… She had never told anyone before. She and Percival had rarely even discussed it because it came so close to separating them forever. Percival expressed himself through music, and he had cared deeply. But he had been too selfish to be very observant.
George hadnoticedher fear, and he had seemed to admire rather than judge, understand rather than pretend. Andcuriously, it helped. Had he stayed talking to her merely to distract her, out of kindness?
She liked kindness. But for the first time since Percival’s death, she wanted to beliked. To be admired as a man admired a woman. She wanted George to desire her as, God help her, she desired him. Which was highly dangerous in the circumstances.
But she had been a widow for two years, and she could not help the stirrings of her body or her odd tug of attraction to the intriguing stranger. She savored the feeling, reveling in the secret heat spreading through her body, imagining his kiss, the touch of his hands…the intimate, deliciously physical loving she had known only with Percival.
George would be a different kind of lover, gentler, sweeter, with all the understanding and self-control of maturity. He would seek her pleasure always… Her body began to throb, making her shift restlessly, tangling her limbs in the sheets.
How wonderful would it be to seduce him from that self-discipline, just occasionally?
She gasped at the sudden ferocity of need—and Mark’s laughter rang out, instantly dousing the foolish fantasy. She leapt out of bed and felt her way to the connecting door to Mark’s room. A night light was always left there, burning very low. In its faint glow, Mark was sitting up against the pillows, grinning at something at the foot of his bed. He laughed again, turning his happy gaze toward Francesca.
“Look, Papa! Mama is here and can answer for herself.”
Pain twisted through her, along with a frisson she could not explain. There was guilt that he needed his father so much that he imagined his presence, helplessness because she did not know what to do. At first, she had thought it a phase that would pass and had said little to disillusion him. Now, she wondered if she had done the right thing. Should she have nipped it in the bud from the beginning?
“She certainly can,” she said. “And so can you. Why are you not asleep?”
“Papa woke me.”
Deliberately, she sat at the foot of the bad, as close as she could to where he had been gazing when she first entered. For an instant, she imagined the warmth of another presence, familiar and welcome, and old grief mingled with irritation at her own weakness.
“Marco,” she said gently, “Papa is always with us, in our hearts and memories. Wishing he was still alive does not make it so.”
“Oh, I know that, but he is here. Right beside you.”
She blinked, trying to find the right response.
“We were just laughing at how wet poor Sir George was when he arrived,” Mark said cheerfully. “Papa said he looked like a fountain!”
“Well, so would you if you had walked from the village in that deluge. Although you would have been a much smaller one.”
Mark grinned, then his gaze slid to the side of her. “Papa says you can’t hear him.”
“I can’t.” She sat forward, reaching out her hand to him. “Marco—”
“He wants to know if you like Sir George.”
Her hand fell back into her lap. “Why don’t you just ask me yourself, if you want to know?”
“Oh, I know. I can tell you like him. So do I. But Papa worries, because he is a stranger and because of the recent trouble.”
Francesca deliberately smoothed out her forming frown. There had been a series of annoying tricks this last month—mostly people knocking on the door and hiding. She had blamed children, probably put up to it by their parents, either directly or indirectly. They died away when she had not reacted. Though Martin had tottered after someone into the woods.
Had the incidents worried Mark more than she had seen at the time? “Oh, we don’t need to worry about such jokes,” she said lightly. “And I believe Sir George is a perfect gentleman.”
