Forever a Lord by Delilah Marvelle

Author:Delilah Marvelle [Marvelle, Delilah]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Romance
ISBN: 9780373777310
Publisher: HQN Books
Published: 2012-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Touch a finger to my heart.

Touch a finger to my soul.

Touch a finger to the reverence you alone control.

Take my hand, I beg of you, and lead us not astray.

I vow for a quarter of a million,

I will humbly respect you in each and every way.

A laugh rumbled out of him as he fingered the edges of the parchment it had been written on. He angled it more toward himself, as if he couldn’t quite make sense of it. “This is…” His brows came together. He glanced up again. “Is there a point to this?”

She grinned. “I wanted to make you laugh.”

His mouth quirked. “Well, you did.”

“I’m genuinely hoping you and I could be friends. Is that at all possible?”

“Back to the friends, is it?” He muttered something, then folded and refolded her poem several times, until the parchment was a palm-size square. Without meeting her gaze, he tucked it deep into the inner pocket of his coat.

She blinked and couldn’t tell if he had tucked it away because it was worth keeping or if he had tucked it away because it was that bad. It was probably because it was that bad. Her sense of humor wasn’t always the best.

He puffed out a breath and scrubbed a hand through his hair. “Imogene. What you clearly don’t recognize—for you have never seen me in the ring, and God forbid you ever do for I am a very different man when I swing—is that I’m equally brutal as the sport I play. By taking on the role of patron, you would be subjecting yourself to four months of me and my boxing morning, day and…night.”

He said it as if night was a bad thing. “I know.”

He captured her gaze. “I enjoy making people bleed merely to prove that I am stronger. Hardly a quality a lady such as yourself should be exposed to. It isn’t normal. Nothing about me or my life is normal and that has been my life since I was forced to become a pawn at ten. Though I try to pretend I’m well beyond my past, and I sometimes have moments that I forget it exists, I haven’t been the same since I was taken.” He stared unblinkingly at her. “Nor will I ever be.”

Her chest tightened at hearing him say it. She couldn’t even imagine what he wasn’t saying. After everything she had read and everything Henry had told her about his life, and the bizarre circumstances surrounding his disappearance, she sensed this man needed a friend. Not just an investor. She softened her voice. “What was done to you when you were taken? Were you…hurt?”

He glanced off to the side. “Not in the physical sense. No.”

“Do you ever speak of it to anyone?”

“No. Not really. And now that I’m in London, I have to ensure I don’t speak of it at all.”

Imogene’s brows came together. “Why not?”

“There is a reason why I was taken. There is also a reason why I didn’t come back after I was set free.

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