Velvet Bond Read Online Free Page B

cheekbones and long-lashed sapphire eyes. And she seemed somehow familiar, though Raynor could not think why.
     
    “Elizabeth,” Stephen called out from behind him. His tone was sheepish. “I had forgotten you were here.”
     
    The woman did not deign even to glance Stephen’s way. “Obviously.”
     
    Then he remembered. It was Clayburn’s sister. He had been introduced on his way in to see the king, but he had been of little mind to take note of anything then. Even a woman as lovely as Elizabeth Clayburn.
     
    His eyes met hers, and for a moment a strange sort of current passed between them, making his belly tighten pleasantly. But Raynor pushed it aside. This was his friend’s sister, a noblewoman. And Raynor had no intention of dallying in that direction.
     
    His lips twisted in a self-derisive grimace. Though he was guilty of nothing where Louisa was concerned, he had just admitted to being so. He had no intention of becoming entangled with Stephen’s sister. Even if he did see a stirring of warm challenge in her lovely eyes when she looked at him. Long ago he’d decided no woman was to be trusted in his life. Raynor’s father had loved his wife blindly, giving up every shred of self-respect to please her. And if that was love, Raynor wanted no part in it.
     
    With that thought firmly in mind, Raynor stepped aside so that Stephen could speak with her.
     
    He pretended not to notice how her gaze lingered on him as Stephen told her where they were going and made arrangements for her to be taken home.
     

Chapter Two
     
    L ate that night, Elizabeth waited in Stephen’s bedchamber for him to come home.
    She sat in his chair bedside the fire, a cup of warmed wine in one hand, drumming the fingers of the other in a steady rhythm against the seasoned wooden arm. She was still fuming over the way Stephen had sent her home, as if she were some child to be gotten out of the way. He had no right to treat her thus.
     
    But truth made her admit, at least to herself, that Stephen was only a small part of her irritation. Most of it was directed at herself, because of her own reaction to Raynor Warwicke. Whatever had gotten into her?
     
    Any number of men would fall upon their very knees to have her notice them. But she, fool that she was, looked to a man who acted as though he could not even see her.
     
    But hadn’t there, just for a moment, been a spark in his eyes, when she’d stood before him as the men were leaving the antechamber? Yes, she was sure there had been more than indifference in his gaze as it slid over her. He’d covered it so quickly that another woman might not have noticed. But Elizabeth was not another woman. She responded to even the slightest of reactions in the baron of Warwicke. When he’d looked at her that way, seeing her as a desirable woman, her body had answered in kind. Elizabeth had been left achingly aware of him, the tanned flesh on the wide column of his throat, the very deep rhythm of his breathing. There was something about Lord Warwicke that made her feel alive as never before.
     
    Why, she did not know. But Elizabeth was going to find out. She couldn’t just let this feeling go, this strange singing in her veins that she had heard spoken of but had never thought to experience.
     
    And she meant to enlist her brother’s aid.
     
    She simply had to see the baron again, speak to him, find out whence these stirrings came. What manner of man was he, to engender such feelings inside her? She knew he was handsome, with his dark eyes and unruly hair, but what of the person inside? Surely he must be a knight of great repute to awaken such amorous reactions in her so easily.
     
    Then she forced herself to pause in her headlong thoughts. Mayhap he was not as he appeared. Her own girlish twitterings did not mean that Raynor of Warwicke was of good and noble character.
     
    But Elizabeth could not make herself believe this. How could her own instincts be so badly askew as that?