Forever My Love (Berkeley-Faulkner #2)(11)

“Yes.” Alec’s eyes lost some of their glinting coolness as he looked at her. “You like to read?”

“Constantly. I like almost anything. But Jane Austen is my favorite author.”

“Why?”

Mira’s expression became distant. She thought back to those long, lazy summer days in the little French village of Anjou… when she was fifteen, and Rosalie Belleau had taught her the nasal and complex sounds of the English language. They had pored over poetry, newspapers, and the novels of Defoe and Addison, studying and reading until the laughter or the glare of the sun on the pages overcame them. Rosalie had taken Mira’s rudimentary knowledge of reading and writing and doubled it… and Mira, eager to please, eager to learn, had soaked up the lessons quickly. Five years ago, when she had been Mireille Germain, a girl in love with life, a girl who had loved her brother devotedly, unaware of his plans to betray them all… Mira, Rosalie, and Rand Berkeley.

“I read her books when I was in France,” she said finally. “They gave me a sense of what the English might be like.”

“Superficial?” Alec asked. “Materialistic… pleasure-seeking?”

Mira sensed that he was trying to trap her in some way. She did not know what he was trying to make her admit, but she chose her words carefully as she answered him.

“I discovered after spending some time here that her works were less reality than satire,” she said qui etly. “But her portrayal of the English seems to be very accurate at times. The English are very odd some times, and difficult to understand. You are seldom a straightforward people.”

“And the French are?”

“The French I knew were.”

“And what kind of people did you associate with in France?”

“I think you already know,” she said, meeting hi: gray eyes squarely. “It is obvious that I’m not put-sang. It is obvious that my background is very different from yours and that I am not highborn as you are.”

“Not so obvious,” he replied slowly. “You have a certain air of pride that I wouldn’t expect from a mere rustic.”

Mira laughed suddenly. “A rustic . . . how snobbish you sound.”

Alec’s expression went blank with surprise. Impudent little wench! Hardly anyone ever dared to criticize him to his face, especially not a woman in her position. Yet she sat there and taunted him with a mischievous sparkle in her eyes. “Why do you look so amazed?” she asked innocently. “Aren’t rustics allowed a little pride?”

“I suppose they are,” he said, his handsome face shadowed with a dawning scowl.

“I think we rustics are more entitled to pride than you are,” she said, smiling flippantly and daring to annoy him further, finding an unaccountable enjoyment in provoking him. “There is more merit in the struggle to raise a family than in attending endless parties. There is more value in the hunt to find food for the table than in the chasing of a small fox.”

“You seem to have experienced life among.the virtuous poor as well as the decadent rich,” Alec murmured. “Yet it is obvious whose company you prefer.”

His dart was sharp and superbly accurate. All of a

sudden Mira’s enjoyment fled. Oh, she should have known better than to cross swords with someone like Alec Falkner. What was the matter with her, that she would try to taunt him so? She bent her head, unable to look at him.

“I do not prefer your company,” she said huskily. “Will you leave or shall I?”

Alec turned Sovereign before she had even finished the sentence.

“I’ll be looking forward to a continuation of our conversation,” he said, and rode off gracefully, his powerful thighs gripping the sides of the horse.

Mira went to a different part of the forest the next day, but somehow she was not surprised when she heard the prancing horse’s feet and a lazy masculine voice interrupted her labors.

“Do they feed you so poorly that you are compelled to go picking roots and weeds to supplement your diet?”

Mira turned around with a reluctant smile, an oddly shaped root in her hand and a smudge of dirt on her delicate cheek. She looked like an impish child who had been playing in the mud, and Alec could not resist smiling at the sight she made. Her maturity, however, was well attested to by the firm curves of her br**sts under the sagging, faded gown and the shapely legs revealed by the cropped hem of the garment. Rich, dark curls escaped from her thick braid and edged her face softly, curls that tempted a man to wind his fingers in them and tilt her face upward for a kiss.

“I am beginning to suspect that you are following me.”

“Small forest,” Alec replied, swinging lightly off the horse and ignoring the strong impulse to go over and wipe the smudge off her face. “It’s impossible to avoid you.”

Mira turned hurriedly and focused her attention on

a nearby plant as Alec came nearer. He became more attractive each time she saw him, and even though she disliked him, she could not ignore the peculiar effect he seemed to have on her. She was strangely drawn to him. Perhaps it was because he reminded her in some ways of the Englishman she had known five years ago, big, healthy, and excessively male—though Alec was not in any part as gentle or kind as Rand Berkeley had been. “What’s that?” he asked, stopping a few feet away from her.