Gracious Lady. Кэрол Мортимер

       CHAPTER ONE

      ‘HOW dare you?’ Sophie had cried with righteous indignation. ‘Stop this car immediately and let me out!’

      And what had the heartless swine done?

      Stopped the car immediately and almost pushed her out on to the grass verge beside the road!

      Which was precisely why, at this moment, she was walking along that very same road at almost one o’clock in the morning, cursing all men, and Brian Burnett in particular. What a louse, what an absolute pig, leaving her out here in the middle of nowhere–even if that was exactly what she had ordered him to do. Men never–at least, not the ones she had experience of!—did what you asked them to do. Except Brian Burnett, obviously! Although she was aware he had acted out of pique and not through any desire to be obliging; she hadn’t been willing to give him what he wanted, and so he had been perfectly happy to stop his car and let her get out, driving off at great speed and leaving her there.

      And he hadn’t come back, damn him. Most men would have realised, eventually, just what a swine they had been just to dump her here in the middle of nowhere, but she had been walking for almost fifteen minutes now, and there was no sign of car headlights returning towards her.

      Swine. Pig. Swine. Pig. She muttered the two names alternately with each step she took.

      She just hoped her aunt Millie had left the back door open for her, or she was really going to be popular, arriving at one-thirty in the morning, which she had calculated it was going to be by the time she got back, and having to drag her aunt out of bed to let her in!

      Maybe she shouldn’t have gone out at all tonight, but her friend Ally had called, and it had been so long since she had seen her, and–God, how her feet ached in these high-heeled shoes she was unaccustomed to wearing. She couldn’t remember the last time she had worn them, or a skirt either for that matter–denims and T-shirts were her usual mode of dress. But Ally had said they would be going out for a drink in a local pub, and so she had made the effort and put on a green blouse, which she had tucked into the narrow waistband of her brown skirt.

      There was a car coming! She could see the headlights clearly as it approached–from a direction opposite to the one it would have been if it were Brian returning for her after all. And she was all alone here, she reminded herself hurriedly, her first feelings of relief fading fast; what if the driver of this car were even worse than Brian had been? Of course, the driver of this car could always be a woman—— No, not the way her luck was running tonight, it couldn’t!

      Too late; while she had been dithering about wondering what to do for the best, the car had already reached her, whooshing to a halt beside her as the driver must have seen her reflected in his headlights. Oh, God, let the driver be friendly!

      ‘Are you asking to be raped?”

      Not that friendly, Sophie gulped. No woman asked to be raped. But this man, his face thrown into sharp, shadowed profile by the eerie green light given off by the dashboard of his car, his voice a harshly cold rasp of accusation, obviously believed that, by wandering about country roads in the middle of the night, that was exactly what she was asking for!

      ‘Or worse!’ he continued relentlessly, his eyes glittering in the darkness.

      He was trying to frighten her–wasn’t he…? Well, he needn’t bother, because she was already frightened!

      ‘Get in the car,’ he ordered abruptly, his tone brooking no argument.

      Get in the——! She might be slightly stupid, but she wasn’t completely witless. Once she got inside his car she would be completely at his mercy. ‘I think I should warn you——’ she raised her small pointed chin defensively, drawing herself up to her full height of five feet two inches ’—that I’ve studied karate.’ Hadn’t everyone seen at least one of the cult films on the subject? She only hoped she wouldn’t actually be put to the test of demonstrating just how much she had ‘studied’ it, because it certainly didn’t amount to much.

      ‘That’s nice for you–now get in the car!’ The instruction was repeated with harsh impatience, completely nullifying his initially mild tone.

      Sophie swallowed hard, frantically trying to estimate how far she would get if she ran in the high heels that were already crippling her feet–she was sure she had blisters on her toes–before he could put the car back into gear and catch up with her. The alternative, of attempting to cross fields on a less-than-moonlit night, she had dismissed almost as soon as it entered her head. It would just