Married to a Stranger by Louise Allen Read Free Book Online Page A

would be on that bed by now.’
    Bereft of words, Sophia turned and walked down the stairs and out into the sunlight. And now she was going to have to sit beside Callum for half an hour, so close that she could feel the heat of his body next to hers and all the while he would be smirking with male superiority over reducing an ignorant spinster to such a pitiful puddle of need.
    The horses looked up and whickered softly at the slam of the front door and she stared at them in sudden speculation. Perhaps she was not trapped here after all. She could drive a gig with one horse. How much more difficult was it to drive a pair? These had been well exercised and seemed biddable enough.
    She ran across the clearing, untied the reins and climbed up on to the high seat. It took a moment to sort out two pairs of reins, but she had been watching Callum’s hands as he drove and she found the knack of it.
    ‘What the hell are you doing?’ He had come out at last, but there was the width of the clearing between them now. ‘Sophia!’
    ‘Get up.’ Sophia clicked her tongue and the pair responded as Callum began to run. She slapped the reins down and they broke into a trot, then a canter. As the carriage swayed up the rutted track she heard a shout behind her, but by now she was too concerned with not overturning the curricle to heed him.
    The track sloped uphill, which helped, and she had the pair steady by the time it turned on to the road. They settled into a walk again and she did not try for more speed. As it was, the instinct to hang on to the side of the vehicle with her free hand was hard to fight.
    But the pair’s docility calmed her. It left her with nothing to do but brood on what had just happened. How could he? Why did he not ask? But he did, in a way, a small voice cut into her tumbling, angry thoughts. He asked to kiss me, it was not his fault that I was so shamefully carried away by it. I gave myself up to his kisses far too easily. I did say I agreed.
    She managed a wry smile. Now she knew something about herself that was a revelation. She had felt physical desire and she had also been frightened by the force of it, the sheer physical power of him. His brother had never made her feel like this, needy and shy and confused and almost out of control of where her passions might take her. Memories of Daniel had not made her want to moan with frustration. The gentlemen she encountered at the modest country gatherings had never tempted her in the slightest, she admitted as she negotiated the village street and a flock of sheep. Her body kept murmuring that it expected more. Sophia tried not to listen to it. More meant surrendering everything to Callum Chatterton.
    ‘Confound the woman.’ Cal stopped at the top of the hill and surveyed the lane down to the village; it was mercifully free of wrecked carriages. The breath rasped in his lungs from running for a mile, but he took a grim satisfaction that he was not panting. He had dragged himself from the lethargy of grief and had thrown himself into physical activity, those past months in London. Boxing, fencing, riding. Sex. They had all helped heal him, helped bring some balance back as well as strengthening his body.
    He surveyed the road. If Sophia had got this far, then she was probably sufficiently in control to get home safely. He had chosen steady horses so he could concentrate on her and they had been well exercised. Now he should stop worrying that she had broken her neck and face the fact that he had badly mishandled that kiss. She truly was an innocent and he had shocked her, not so much by what he had done, but by the reactions he had provoked in her.
    He had not set out to shock her, Cal told himself as he strode down the hill and into the inn yard. He had intended to kiss her, with restraint, and convince her that marriage to him was nothing to be afraid of. And then she had quivered in his arms and he had sensed the innocent natural passion and sensuality so he