Impulse. Candace Camp

       www.millsandboon.co.uk

      Also available from Candace Camp

      The Courtship Dance

      The Wedding Challenge The Bridal Quest The Marriage Wager Promise Me Tomorrow No Other Love A Stolen Heart A Dangerous Man An Independent Woman An Unexpected Pleasure So Wild a Heart The Hidden Heart Winterset Beyond Compare Mesmerised Impetuous Indiscreet Scandalous Suddenly

      About the Author

      CANDACE CAMP is the bestselling author of over forty contemporary and historical novels. She grew up in Texas in a newspaper family, which explains her love of writing, but she earned her law degree and practised law before making the decision to write full-time. She has several writing awards, including the Romantic Times Lifetime Achievement Award for Western Romances.

       PROLOGUE

       1872

      HE WAS WAITING for her, as she had known he would be. Waiting in the same fever of impatience that had gripped her for the past hour while she sought her chance to escape from the house unnoticed.

      He whirled around when she came in, his dark gaze shooting across the room to her. “Angela!”

      He was young, just turned twenty, and he had the slim, lithe build of youth, all muscle and bone. His black hair, still damp from a ruthless dunking earlier under the pump, was pushed back and fell to the nape of his neck, curling over the collar of his rough shirt. Just looking at him made Angela’s heart squeeze in her chest.

      They ran to each other, impelled by a hunger that had been building all day, until now they were almost consumed by it. His arms went around her, pulling her hard against him, and he pressed his lips on hers. Angela threw her arms around his neck.

      They clung together, mouths and bodies molded as if they would get even closer if they could. He shoved back the hood of her cloak, revealing the glorious copper tangle of her hair. It had been up earlier, but it had, as usual, managed to escape from half its pins already. Now he completed its disarray by plunging his hands into its softness.

      Need throbbed in him, a desperate, clawing thing that never went away, was only subdued now and then into a low ache. He pulled his mouth away and rained kisses over her face and neck. His hands, clumsy with desire, went to the ribbon that tied her cloak and tugged at it. It came loose, and her cloak slid off her shoulders to the floor. Beneath it she wore an evening dress of pale blue satin, cinched in tightly to reduce her waist to nothingness and pressing her breasts upward to swell above the low-cut neckline.

      He sucked in his breath at the sight of her, passion rushing through him like wildfire. “Good God …” he breathed. “Your grandparents let you wear that in public?”

      Angela giggled, enjoying the glitter in his eyes and the fact that she could arouse him to feel that way. “Oh, Cam, ‘tis no worse than what anyone else is wearing. It was one of Cee-Cee’s dresses. She wore it two years ago.”

      “It did not look on her as it does on you,” he answered fervently.

      “Anyway, Grandmama is hoping it will inspire Jeremy’s friend Lord Dunstan to offer for me. He’s terribly wealthy, you see, as well as coming from an ‘unexceptionable’ family.”

      Cam’s upper lip curled in a sneer of contempt. “They are as good as selling you to the highest bidder.”

      “The Stanhopes need an advantageous marriage,” she pointed out reasonably. “Anyway, what does it matter, since I have no intention of marrying any of the men they are pushing me at?” She linked her hands behind her back, emphasizing the thrust of her bosom. “I was happy to wear it because I knew you would be seeing it. Well … would it encourage you to bid high?”

      His mouth widened sensually. “Aye. I would give all that I had to have you.” He reached out boldly and cupped her breasts.

      “You have already given me what I want.” She gazed up at him with her clear blue eyes, as trusting as a child, but with all the desires of a woman. She had loved Cam Monroe for as long as she could remember, ever since he first came to work for her family in the stables, and it had seemed a miracle to her this summer when she returned from Miss Mapling’s School for Young Ladies that Cam at last saw her for a woman. It had been even more astonishing when he broke down two weeks ago and admitted that he loved her.

      “The Earl would have my head for being with you like this,” Cam told her. “And rightly so. You’re no more than a babe. ‘Tis wrong of me to take advantage of you.”

      But even as he said the words, he could not stop himself from bending and placing a tender kiss on the top of each quivering breast. Angela closed her eyes in pleasure and put her hands on his shoulders, caressing the powerful muscles that lay beneath his rough shirt.

      “Hush!” she whispered fiercely. “Don’t say such things. ‘Tis not wrong! I love you.”

      He let out a groan, lifting her up and burying his face between her breasts. “And I love you. Angel, oh, Angel. You truly are my angel, my beautiful red-haired angel. I think about you all the time. Sometimes I think I’ll never make it through the day, I want you so much. Today, when you went out riding with that insufferable toad Dunstan and I had to watch him flirting with you, eyeing you … I wanted to murder him.”

      His mouth moved back up the smooth expanse of her throat, and he let her slide slowly down until her feet were once again on the floor. He kissed her lips, opening her mouth to his, and his tongue plunged inside, exploring, caressing, arousing. Angela trembled under the onset of pleasure.

      “Angela!” Her grandfather’s voice roared through the stables.

      They sprang apart and whirled around. Angela’s grandfather stood just inside the stable door, flanked by her brother Jeremy and Lord Dunstan, the very gentleman her grandfather and grandmother had been pursuing so assiduously.

      The Earl rushed toward them, his white hair flying, his face mottled with fury. “Goddamn you, you young jackanapes! How dare you put your filthy hands on a Stanhope!”

      He wielded his cane like a club, bringing it down with all his strength on Cam’s head. Luckily, Cam was young and quick enough to move, so that it did not strike him full on the head, but glanced off the side. Still, the force of it was enough to stun