Page 72 of Never a Bride
Though Alex’s methods were suspect, she knew everything he said was right, because it all worked on her.
She was so gullible, so foolish.
Yet these lessonshadto help Maxwell, and she could not throw such an opportunity away. So she followed the two men back to the parlor, feeling her pace lag with reluctance. When she stepped through the doorway, Alex was waiting.
“Come, Emmeline, I have so many more demonstrations in mind.”
For another hour she endured his onslaught, feeling aroused and angry and near tears. He demonstrated how to brush against a woman when he passed by, how to take her arm so she wouldn’t stumble down the stairs. Her skin, her very awareness, was attuned to him, and she despised her weakness even as she allowed it free rein. If all this was an act on his part, why was he so successful at it? Why did everything seem so real?
And then he wanted to dance with her, and he put his lessons in gazing and touching all together in one devastating package. Maxwell was so oblivious to what was happening that he happily pounded out the beat to a dance on a table. He seemed to approve every soulful look Alex bestowed on her as he clung to her waist just a moment longer than the dance required.
“Enough,” she finally cried, breaking from Alex’s hold, her breath coming hard from exertion—or so she told herself.
He smiled at her. “Then you’re ready for Max’s turn at the dance?”
“No! I need—fresh air,” she stammered, giving Maxwell an apologetic look before taking his arm. She led Blythe’s suitor out the tall, windowed doors leading into the gardens, knowing that Alex followed because she could feel his movement like a part of her.
“Why, this is a perfect idea,” he said, coming to stand beside her on the terrace,
She glanced warily at him. “What do you mean?”
“What a fine way to again demonstrate the art of touching.”
He was gazing at a meadow on the side of the mansion, where archery targets had been set up.
“Many of your lady friends practice archery, do they not?” he asked, walking toward the grass.
Emmeline had no choice but to trail behind the two men, for Maxwell seemed intrigued—or at least, amused by the possibilities.
“Come, Alex,” he said, “surely there is not a way to court a young lady on an archery field!”
Alex grinned back at him. “There isalwaysa way. You must use ingenuity to find it. Emmeline, do you shoot?”
“A bit,” she murmured skeptically.
“Good. Do come here, then, and show me your form.”
She inhaled and glared at him.
“I mean your archery form, my lady. Max, she takes such easy offense, does she not?”
Maxwell’s grunt was noncommittal.
Emmeline lifted the bow she had been using that morning, but before she could even take the correct stance, Alex was at her back, his hands on her arms. Stunned, she wondered what to say, how to make him stop without Maxwell realizing how much Alex affected her.
But Alex didn’t seem to be feeling the same things. “Max,” he called, “see how I lift her elbow to the correct height, how I lean close, how I allow my breath to lightly fan her neck?”
Maxwell chuckled and Emmeline forced herself to do the same, trying desperately to control her blush and the shivering that made her arms seem not her own.
She almost kissed Maxwell when he strode toward them. “I can do this, Alex. Let me try.”
Alex’s grip tightened, and she heard his quickly inhaled breath. She glanced over her shoulder at him and saw not playfulness, but unguarded anger in his eyes.
Anger?
Then Maxwell stepped between them, and he guided her left hand to lift the bow, and her right hand to pull back the string.
“Just a bit farther, my lady,” he said in an almost apologetic voice.
