Fragrant Flower by Barbara Cartland Read Free Book Online Page A

herself how she would feel when she had to meet Lord Sheldon again.
    How could he have kissed her? And how, while he did so, had she stayed in his arms instead of fighting violently against him or screaming for help?
    He must have hypnotised her, she thought. Then she remembered that strange, sweet, unaccountable sensation that his kiss had evoked.
    She had only to think of it to remember the warm and wonderful feeling that had crept through her whole body until it seemed to end in her lips.
    “It was an illusion – part of my imagination!” she said to herself severely.
    Yet she knew that what she had felt had been an inexpressible rapture, and however severe she was with herself, however much she tried to deny it, she longed to feel the marvel of it again.
    ‘He is despicable, conceited, autocratic, and altogether abominable!’ she reiterated in her mind.
    Yet whatever his character, he had aroused a response in her that she could never forget. She tried to remember if in all her reading she had ever come across a description of anything so complex.
    How could one hate and despise a man, and yet be aroused by him in a manner that was so perfect that there was something spiritual as well as physical in its very wonder?
    ‘I am just ignorant and confused,’ Azalea told herself, and yet she was intelligent enough to know that was not the proper answer.
    “Dinner will be at seven o’clock,” Lady Osmund announced.
    The sharpness of her tone made Azalea jump, because her thoughts had been far away.
    “Am – am I to – dine with you, Aunt Emily?” she asked humbly.
    “I suppose so,” Lady Osmund replied grudgingly, “but I do not expect you to push yourself forward! Not that I imagine anyone will take much notice of you.”
    She paused and her eyes flickered over her niece unpleasantly.
    “After all, we cannot pretend you are not a relation, even though it is nothing of which we can be proud!” she said spitefully. “But poor relations are expected to be humble and subservient, so you will make no effort to join in the conversation and you will certainly not speak unless you are spoken to.”
    “I understand, Aunt Emily.”
    Feeling she must not show that she minded such admonition, Azalea went quietly from the cabin to start unpacking for herself.
    She had with her a much more varied wardrobe than she had ever owned before, since Violet and Daisy had been provided with what was a complete new trousseau.
    Therefore, contrary to what had happened in the past, the clothes Azalea had received from them were in good condition and comparatively new and fashionable.
    They were, however, too fancy and too be-frilled to be becoming to her slender figure. Although she contrived to remove some of the ruchings, fringes, braiding and bows, which she thought made them look like Christmas trees, there was nothing she could do about the pale colours which somehow looked wrong against the darkness of her hair.
    “But as Aunt Emily said,” Azalea told herself, “no one is going to look at me!”
    However, she put on a gown which she felt was the most attractive of all the gowns she now owned, remembering as she did so that her mother had once said that first impressions were important.
    But there was another thought at the back of her mind which she hardly dared admit to herself.
    Lord Sheldon, before he had kissed her in that outrageous fashion, had asked her what her position in the house was. He had thought her too cultured for a housemaid, but he had never for one moment thought she might in fact be a lady.
    Very well, there was a surprise in store for him!
    He would find that she was not only a lady, but the General’s niece as well!
    That was not a circumstance which Azalea personally thought was much of a recommendation, but Lord Sheldon, with his conventional, hide-bound ideas, would undoubtedly be impressed by Uncle Frederick, as a distinguished soldier.
    Azalea therefore took a little more trouble than usual in