Midnight Surrender by Nancy Gideon

Author:Nancy Gideon
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: BelleBooks Inc.
Published: 2015-09-30T00:00:00+00:00

Twelve

MOURNING GARB was returned to the cupboard, and with that conscious act Cassie said her goodbyes to her grieving for Arabella in order to concentrate on fulfilling her vow. The past had to be put behind in order to proceed with the future. And her future would soon be arriving at her chamber door. Cassie was a-dither with nervousness.

What she was doing was craziness. What she was allowing was scandal. Yet she could no sooner stop it than she could bring Arabella Radcliffe back from the dead. She was five and twenty with no prospects for romance. If she didn’t grab at this opportunity, she might never again have the chance to experience the mysteries of physical love. And who better to experiment with than the man to whom she’d already pledged her heart?

She’d listened to lectures on free love, and though her independent mind agreed to the wisdom of a woman’s choice, her virginal modesty quailed when confronted with the actual fact. Her relationships with the opposite gender were chastely confined to business, other than those searing kisses with Louis. Those had her eager to discover more. This night she would have all her answers and a live-in lover besides. Even the most liberal-minded females of the day would blush at her behavior. She couldn’t let that matter, not now. Not when she was about to be granted her heart’s desire. Now was not the time for timid reflections upon a morality she’d always considered single-sided and grossly unfair.

Tomorrow she would be a fallen woman. She was surprised that she should feel such a variance of will. Wasn’t Louis everything she wanted? Wasn’t this the straightest mode of winning him as a husband?

Maybe not.

A whisper sounded in the back of her mind that men didn’t marry women they could have upon a whim.

But wasn’t it a bit late to be crying off for propriety’s sake? And did she really want to?

Cassie finished disrobing and slid her pristine cambric gown over flushed bare skin. As she tied the dainty powder blue ribbon fasteners over her bosom and at the base of her throat, she wondered if Louis would soon be pulling them loose again. A suspenseful thrill shook through her. Would he find this gown, with its girlish modesty, pleasing? Would he find her pleasing?

And even as she puzzled over those questions, a deeper truth unfolded. She would not, could not, deny him anything. Not because of the strength of her attraction but because of her weakness of will.

And Cassie frowned at her reflection. What had happened to the big claims she’d made to Arabella about her ideal man allowing her freedom? Louis said, “Prepare for me,” and she was scrambling witlessly to please him. Without thought. Without choice.

She’d let him into her house, this man she barely knew and scarcely trusted. She’d allowed him to embarrass her in front of his family and his servant, to take control of the premises and of her very life. And she was

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