Not Just a Governess by Carole Mortimer Read Free Book Online Page A

his behaviour and attitudes.
    Disconcerted at being summoned to join him for dinner, and the two of them sitting down to eat their meal together alone in this private parlour, she had again forgotten the façade of being the widowed Mrs Elena Leighton and instead talked to him as an equal, forgetting that she no longer had the right to do so.
    If Adam Hawthorne were ever to discover her true identity, then no doubt he would nothesitate to turn her over to the authorities himself!
    She placed her spoon down carefully beside the bowl, her food untouched. ‘I must apologise once again for speaking out of turn, my lord. It is not my place—’
    ‘And exactly what do you consider to be “your place”, Mrs Leighton?’ he rasped irritably as he looked across at her with stormy-grey eyes.
    Elena chewed on her bottom lip before answering, once again disconcerted, this time by the intensity of that deep-grey gaze. ‘Well, it is certainly not to tell you how you should behave towards your own daughter.’
    ‘And yet you have not hesitated to do so.’ She gave a wince. ‘And for that I—’
    ‘Do not apologise to me a second time in as many minutes, Mrs Leighton!’ Adam pushed his chair back noisily as he stood up.
    Elena looked up at him warily as he stood glowering down at her. ‘I did not mean to displease you…’
    ‘No…?’ His expression softened. ‘Then what did you mean to do to me, Mrs Leighton?’
    Elena’s pulse leapt at the sound of that huskiness, the lacing of sensuality she heard underlyinghis tone, his piercing grey gaze now appearing to be transfixed upon her mouth. Disturbing her with sensations she was unfamiliar with.
    Elena ran the moistness of her tongue nervously across her lips before speaking. ‘I do not believe I had any intent other than to apologise for speaking to you so frankly about what is a private matter.’
    ‘No…?’ He was far too overpowering in the smallness of the room. Too large. Too intense. Too overwhelmingly male!
    She found herself unable to look away from him, her heart seeming to sputter and falter, before commencing to beat a wild tattoo in her chest. A fact he was well aware of, if the shifting of his gaze to the pulse in her throat was any indication. A gaze that slowly moved steadily downwards before then lingering on the ivory swell of her breasts as she continued to breathe shallowly.
    As Miss Magdelena Matthews, she had of course attended assemblies and dinner parties in Yorkshire, as she had many other local social occasions. But her mother had unfortunately died shortly before her coming-out Season two years ago, and her grandfather had not been a man who particularly cared fortown or London society, and his visits there had been few and far between, usually only on business or with the intention of attending the House of Lords.
    As a consequence, even following her year of mourning for her mother, her grandfather’s preference for the country meant that Magdelena had spent no time at all in London, and so had not learnt how to recognise or to deal with a gentleman’s attentions. Indeed, Elena’s only experience with a gentleman of the
ton
was of such a traumatic nature that she had feared ever becoming the focus of a male ever again.
    Except Adam Hawthorne did not incite that same fear within her…
    Rather the opposite.
    The warmth she detected in the grey softness of his gaze, as he continued to watch the rise and fall of her bosom, filled her with unaccustomed heat. Her heart once again fluttered wildly and caused her pulse to do likewise, and her breasts—those same breasts he continued to regard so intently—seemed to swell and grow, the rose-coloured tips tingling with the same unaccustomed heat, making the fitted bodice of her gown feel uncomfortably tight.
    It was an unexpected, and yet exhilarating, sensation, every inch of her skin hot and almost painfully sensitive, and she felt almost light-headed as she continued to shyly meet his gaze