Seductive as Flame by Susan Johnson Read Free Book Online Page B

busily playing cards. Chris looked up. “Papa! Look how much I won!” He pointed to a small pile of coins.
    “You’re getting much too good,” Alec said, affectionately ruffling the boy’s flaxen curls. “Soon I won’t be able to win against you.”
    “You already can’t!” the little boy said with a broad smile.
    Alec winked. “Maybe I’ve gotten better.” Turning to the nanny and groom, the earl politely said, “Thank you, you’ve done your duty. We’ll take over now.” Sliding his arm around Zelda’s waist, he drew her close. “Mrs. Creighton, John, allow me to introduce Miss Griselda MacKenzie. She and her fleet roan just beat Zeus and me in a race. She’s a magnificent rider.”
    The retainers both paid their respects, although afterward Creiggy regarded Zelda with a fixed gaze. Alec had never introduced one of his paramours to her. “I see you have the MacKenzie hair.” A tall, grey-haired Scots woman, stern of countenance and slightly forbidding, Mrs. Creighton met Zelda eye to eye. “That distinctive color breeds true, doesn’t it?”
    Zelda expected Lady Dalgliesh had trouble with Chris’s nanny. She wasn’t the retiring type. It helped to have Alec’s arm around her waist in the way of security. “You must be familiar with the Highlands,” Zelda said.
    “I have a second cousin who married a MacKenzie. I’ve been up that way on occasion. Alec came there with me once.” Creiggy shot him a look. “Do you remember?”
    “Of course I do. I was eight, not two. I remember perfectly.” He grinned. “You fell into the pond.”
    “I believe you pushed me,” Creiggy said with a sudden warm twinkle in her eye. Her bright-eyed gaze swung to Zelda. “Now, don’t take any guff from the impudent lad, Miss MacKenzie.”
    “I won’t.”
    “He likes to have his way too much.”
    “I’ve noticed,” Zelda said with a small smile.
    Alec rolled his eyes. “Do you mind, Creiggy?”
    “I expect you to behave, that’s all.” His old nanny’s gaze slid down to his hand gently stroking Zelda’s hip.
    “I always do,” he blandly said, not moving his hand.
    “Don’t forget I can still rap your knuckles.”
    “You’d have to catch me first,” Alec drawled. “And I don’t believe that’s happened since—”
    “Humph, impertinent scamp. Now you enjoy yourself, Master Christopher,” the nanny said, turning to her current charge. “Your Papa will send for me when you’re ready to go back to the nursery.”
    “I’m too old for the nursery. Papa, ” Chris vehemently exhorted, “there’s babies up there!”
    “And also some children your age, Master Christopher, don’t forget,” Mrs. Creighton said in a soothing tone. “In fact, Billy Cannadine was asking for you this morning.”
    Chris’s gaze swung up to his father. “Billy has his own knife! He let me hold it! May I have a big knife like that—pleeease ?”
    Alec glanced at the nanny with raised brows.
    “I was there,” she succinctly said.
    “Perhaps someday you may have a big knife,” Alec kindly noted. “Now how about another game of cards?”
    As the trio in the kitchen began their play, Mrs. Creighton and John walked through the kitchen door and out into the downstairs corridor. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” Mrs. Creighton murmured. “Did he speak to you about Miss MacKenzie?”
    “Not a word.” John had been Alec’s groom since he was young. He and Creiggy had followed the countess and Alec when they’d escaped the main house years ago and went to live in the Dower House. They knew all there was to know about the family, and their loyalty to the earl was complete. “She’s a first-rate horsewoman though. Maybe that’s her appeal.”
    “A whole lot more than that, I’d say. Although, did you see how she was dressed? Mannish—not his usual style.”
    “A beauty though. That’s his style.” A small, slim man, he had to look up slightly to Mrs. Creighton’s greater