Enticing Temptation

Chapter 2

            Myles was standing with his back to one of the windows waiting for Catherine Victoria Portia Landsdowne to grace the duke’s study with her appearance. He pictured the old duke then Trey in his mind to try to determine what she would look like. After the butler left, he’d asked a few questions of her grandfather and learned she was seven and twenty. At that age, most considered her on the shelf, a spinster, an old-maid.

            He was at least happy she wasn’t fresh from the classroom. He didn’t think he could stand being married to some giggling young chit that was young enough to be his daughter.

            With a sizable fortune of her own, according to the old duke, he wondered why she was not married. All sorts of thoughts traveled through his mind about her, from being ugly, to fat or maybe her tongue was razor sharp, waspish. Living the privileged life may have made her spoiled. Was it possible, too, that she was pompous and to overbearing for any man to want to marry her?

            Those thoughts made his shudder as he stood there waiting.

            The last thing Myles expected was the woman he’d seen the night before walk through the door of Markham’s study. His whole body stood at attention at the sight of her. If he said yes that beautiful enticing temptation would be his. Mine…she would be mine. His heart beat so loudly he could hear it in his ears.

            Had she wondered what he looked like before giving the Markham her answer? Was that why she was at the Black Horse Inn last night?

            “You wanted to see me, Grandfather,” Cat said upon entering the room trying very hard not to look at the tall handsome man standing near the window but found it nearly impossible to drag her glaze from his. Her heart fluttered then raced at her first glimpse of him up close because up close he was even more handsome, if that were possible, than he appeared last night.

            He seemed to stand taller than she first thought his shoulders broader, his chest more powerful. His waist trim as were his hips and he had long powerful looking legs encased in his trousers and boots. The thought of him as her husband suddenly made the room seem warmer as she neared her grandfather’s desk.

            “Come sit, Catherine, my dear,” His Grace told her.

            Myles watched as the beautiful enticing temptation with the husky voice of a siren came toward them. Nothing in her dress was revealing but she was the kind of beauty to turn heads wherever she went. The grown she wore, cut to show off every appealing aspect of her anatomy, which a certain body part of his was already quite fascinated with. She had the voluptuous figure that a man like him craved.

            Her eyes…

            Her beautiful almond shaped eyes were the same violet as her grandfather and uncle’s but framed with the thickest and longest black lashes Myles had ever seen. The ground shifted beneath his feet once more as she neared her grandfather’s desk, leaving Myles to wondered once again what in the bloody hell was happening to him at just the sight of her.

            Cat’s heart raced faster the closer she came to Captain Myles Cameron.

            His eyes are gray, she thought, as she approached the two men, not just any gray but steel looking sort of gray that would probably turn ice cold when angry or crossed. Moreover, she knew without a doubt that before they returned from China she would see those ice cold gray eyes of his, probably more than once, directed at her.