Etiquette with the Devil by Paula Rebecca

Author:Paula, Rebecca
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Rebecca Paula
Published: 2015-09-10T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 12

Barely awake and half sober, Bly felt as if he had been tossed by a horse. The air squeezed from his lungs as he gazed upon Clara bathed in early morning sunlight. He had wished for this, hadn’t he? This sweet torture of exploring her, bared and naked only to him.

Freckles dotted her arms, swept over the curve of her shoulder, and graced the valley of her spine. She was made up of constellations. Clara was full of everything pure and heavenly while sleeping peacefully in the tattered sheets of her bed in the attic.

His stomach sank. She did not belong sleeping in the attic, nor did he belong in her bed. She belonged in his, as his wife.

In three short months, he had fallen for this woman wrapped up in stars. And not simply fallen, but had become consumed. For all her effort in trying to fade away, she burned with a fire only Bly recognized. It simmered behind those brumous eyes of hers. Clara was a woman made to survive an unending winter, only to harbor away the light of summer in her heart.

He wished to bask in that light, in that warmth. He wished to wake her and share what they had shared just a few hours earlier. He wish to lay his lips upon her and fall, fall, fall…

Bly lifted her hand stretched over his chest and lightly kissed her fingertips. He sucked in a breath as her eyelashes fluttered, threatening to break whatever dream he was in. He didn’t wish to wake. Not if he could keep her beside him and bask in the gentle warmth of her soft skin next to his.

The world waited for him outside this room. Life outside of England, his old life in fact, beckoned. But this morning, a thought teetered in his mind. If he refused to answer, if he focused his attention on Burton Hall, and being a good guardian, and earning Clara’s love, what would happen?

The notion ate away at his nervous stomach, yesterday’s whiskey still burning through his veins and fogging up his mind. He did not deserve the goodness of what waited for him here. Nor did he wish to remain in a village which so thoroughly hated him and his family for abandoning them all. His mother’s death was a tragic mark against him and this house. With her passing, gossip had spread that he had driven her to her death. He was a hellion in their eyes. What the village did not know was that his mother had well and gone mad before he had even been kicked out of his boarding schools to live at Burton Hall.

The village had settled upon a story, and he was the villain.

He dressed, standing beside the bed. A glint of gold caught his attention on the floor, so he bent to retrieve it and was met once more with the figure of Saint Anthony.

Burton Hall had hollowed out what little remained of him when he arrived earlier this summer.

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