Ravished by the Rake by Louise Allen Page B

would have died rather than admit it, even if what had happened next was anything but romantic. ‘He lectured me,’ Dita said, her head buried in her skirts as she pulled her sprig muslin gown on. Instinct was telling her to dress as modestly as she could. ‘He thinks of me as a younger sister,’ she added as she pinned a demure fichu over what bare skin the simple gown exposed. ‘Someone to keep out of trouble.’
    And that’s a lie.
That teasing near-kiss and the feeling of Alistair’s hard, aroused body pressed against her had told her quite clearly that whatever his feelings were, they were not brotherly. He had felt magnificent and just thinking about it made her ache with desire. What would he have done just now if she had bent her head and kissed his bare throat, trailed her tongue down over the salty skin to where she could just glimpse a curl of dark hair?
    She remembered the taste of him, the scent of hisskin. But there had not been so much hair on his chest eight years ago.
He’s a man now,
she reminded herself. What if she had reached out and cupped her hand wantonly over the front of his trousers where his desire was so very obvious?
    ‘What a pity,’ Averil surprised her by murmuring as she stood up to tie the broad ribbon sash. ‘Perhaps he’ll change his mind. It is a long voyage.’
    ‘He will do no such thing,’ Dita said. ‘He knows about my elopement. Bother, I must have an eyelash in my eye—it is watering. Oh, thank you.’ She dabbed her eyes with Averil’s handkerchief. ‘That’s better.’
I am not going to weep over him, not again. Not ever.
    ‘But you are Lady Perdita Brooke,’ Averil protested. ‘An earl’s daughter.’
    ‘And Alistair is about to become a marquis, if he isn’t one already. He can look as high as he likes for a wife and he won’t have to consider someone with a shady reputation. If we were passionately in love, then I expect he would throw such considerations to the wind. But we are not, of course.’
Merely in lust.
‘Not that I want him, of course,’ she lied.
Marriage isn’t what either of us wants; sin is.
    ‘I can’t imagine why not,’ Averil said with devastating honesty. ‘I would think any unattached woman would be attracted to him. He
might
fall in love with you,’ she persisted with an unusual lack of tact. Or perhaps Dita was being better at covering up her feelings than she feared.
    ‘Love?’ Dita laughed; if Averil noticed how brittle it was, she did not show it. ‘Well, he had plenty of opportunitywhen we were younger.’ She brushed out her hair and twisted it up into a simple knot at her nape.
    Not that it had occurred to her that what she felt for him was more than childish affection, not until that night when he had been so bitterly unhappy and she had reached out to him, offering comfort that had become so much more. But now she realised that he had hardly cared who he was with, let alone been concerned about her feelings, whatever endearments he had murmured as he had caressed the clothes from her body. If he had, he would never have rejected her so hurtfully afterwards.
    It was a blessing that he had not understood, simply seen the innocent love that burned in her eyes, the trust that had taken her into his arms.
    She could still feel the violence with which Alistair had put her from him that last day, the rejection with which he had turned his face from her. He had been upset about something, desperately, wordlessly upset, and he had been drinking alone, something that she had never seen him do before, and her embrace had been meant only to comfort, just as the eight-year-old Dita would hug her idol when he fell and cut his head. But it had turned into something else, something the sixteen-year-old Dita could not control.
    He had yanked her into his arms, met her upturned lips in a kiss that had been urgent on his part, clumsy and untutored on hers. And then it had all got completely, wonderfully, out of control and she had