Jilting the Duke by Rachael Miles

Author:Rachael Miles [Miles, Rachael]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Kensington
Published: 2015-12-15T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-One

Aidan spent the next several nights watching over Sophia and Ian, slipping into her house after dark, slipping out before dawn, changing clothes, and returning as if he had spent the night in his own bed. Sophia had accepted the additional servants on the argument that they were present to protect Ian. But, in the pit of Aidan’s stomach, he knew she and Ian weren’t safe.

At the same time, remembering their kisses in his garden and their caresses in the carriage, he wondered if she was safer with him in or out of the house. Those newer encounters merged with other memories, older ones, of limbs entwined, of hands and faces touching, of kisses down the line of her spine as she lay spent on the pallet he’d made for them in a forest clearing.

He imagined the ways her body would be different, after a child and a decade. He imagined the swell of her breasts, the flare of her hips, the planes of her stomach. It wouldn’t matter: his body would still fit into hers. Having seen her again, he realized he’d been waiting, wanting at least one more chance to wrap his body around hers.

Over the years, he’d reduced his desire for her to sheer sensation, devoid of emotion. He’d wanted to possess her body once more, to reassert his youthful claim to her passion. He’d wished to feel her move beneath him, given over completely to him and to the pleasure he would bring her.

But at least until this danger was past, he reminded himself, he was obliged to guard her, to think only of her welfare. Protecting her from the threat of an unknown enemy seemed to only heighten his desire. He wanted her to be safe, even from himself.

* * *

A tray on Sophia’s nightstand held a pile of letters. Resting against the bolster, she sorted through them quickly. Aidan had been right. Since the dinner party, she was on everyone’s invitation list. Or at least everyone in Phineas’s party, but she held little sympathy for their political views.

She wondered about Aidan’s political views, but she couldn’t discuss politics with him, not with the question of Tom’s patriotism unanswered. Since the threats at the opera, she’d been reconsidering their years in Italy. Tom’s visitors at odd hours, his insistence that the country was on the brink of revolution. At the time, she’d discounted it as a well-connected exile’s interest in the political winds of his adopted country. She wished she’d known more. Had Tom really traded in secrets? And for whom? Tom wouldn’t betray England.... She knew he wouldn’t.

At the bottom of the pile was a small envelope, the address in Luca Bruni’s hand. Luca had been inseparable from Tom, had accompanied him everywhere.

She broke the seal, unfolded the paper, and read. Luca had arrived two weeks after the funeral of his sister Francesca. Though his niece Liliana had expressed a stoic acceptance of her mother’s death, Luca was unwilling to leave the six-year-old in a convent school, not with the political climate so unstable.

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