Fool Me Twice by Meredith Duran - Rules for the Reckless 02 - Fool Me Twice

Author:Meredith Duran - Rules for the Reckless 02 - Fool Me Twice [Duran, Meredith]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Historical Romance, Victorian, AcM
ISBN: 9781476741352
Google: QcD0AAAAQBAJ
Amazon: B00DPM7U1M
Barnesnoble: B00DPM7U1M
Goodreads: 18164485
Publisher: Pocket
Published: 2013-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The hour before dawn was always the quietest. Olivia slipped back into her small room and lay down, pretending to herself that she would be able to sleep.

Instead, she listened to the sound of her heart. That it should beat so steadily seemed impossible to her, as though nothing had changed tonight, as though she had not changed. As though whatever had happened might have faded, leaving no physical effect.

She knew there was nothing so rare or complimentary in what had just transpired in the library. A master seducing his servant—it was a tale so old that it had become a cliché. And so, too, was its corollary: the servant welcoming his attentions. Feeling his touch like a miracle. Hungering and praying for more.

She stared hard at the pictures on the wall, seeing them in her mind’s eye though the darkness kept them shrouded. In the village tableau, a couple strolled the lane: a wife who wore her collar buttoned to her throat, and a husband, plump and florid, who would inspire no heated dreams in any woman. There was a message in the picture: what a far distance lay between decency and desire.

Decency held no moral weight for her. Her mother, after all, had taken up with a man knowing he would never marry her. That did not make Mama a bad person. She had lived gently and with grace, and Olivia had no doubt she rested now in God’s arms.

But while she did not count decency a virtue, it was the safer route by far. All her plans centered on it. She was not some foolish girl who dreamed of love. What she wanted was something real, something durable: a home in a little village where people would know her name and nod to her in the street. These were the things her mother had never had. The local gentry had not acknowledged Mama. The merchants and postmaster had taken her money politely, but they had never smiled at her.

Olivia aimed for such a place, where she would be known, and welcomed, and smiled upon. But her longings . . .

She slipped her hand beneath the loose sleeve of her nightgown and ran her fingers up her arm, testing herself. The gooseflesh rose again, for in her mind it was Marwick’s hand that stroked her.

He had shattered her tonight. And he’d been right to warn that she would like it. Like it? What a pallid word for what he’d made her feel! And how easy it was, in the darkness, to touch herself and pretend it was his touch, and feel the shivers build anew . . .

Was she tuned to him now, like a violin refashioned for one player? She could believe it. The Duke of Marwick: like a planet, he exerted his own field of gravity. He had shaped politics, molded the nation. Why should he not reshape her, too?

She made a fist. Replaced her hand at her side and stared up, dry-eyed. The ceiling had a single crack in it, which she could not quite see in the darkness, but she could sense.

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