My Lady's Choice by Lyn Stone

Author:Lyn Stone
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2013-10-14T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eleven

“Only you would ask such a question at a time like this.” His voice was soft but held an underlying tone of exasperation.

Sara knew she had angered Richard again.

It was not her attempt at humor that bothered him, and Sara knew it. He misliked her taking the lead the way she had done. Some wicked imp inside her had driven her to it, she thought with a sigh. The same imp that believed Richard would change his mind and leave her when he’d completed his business here, unless she bound him fast with the passion that flared between them.

That ploy had failed miserably. Rather than drawing them closer as she’d hoped, this intimacy was driving him away from her. He hated wanting her. And because she made him do that, he might grow to hate her for it.

Her boldness repelled him, at least after the fact. Yet she knew no other way to be but bold. Too late in her life to play the weak and simpering damsel now, nor did she want to. Not even for Richard would she stoop to that. If he could not accept her as she was, then she would have to do without him.

Richard had not truly chosen to stay with her as he would have her think. He was merely attempting to gain back some of the control that she and the king had wrested from him when he lay wounded. If he convinced her and everyone else that he wanted her as a wife, then he would not appear quite so misused.

Leaping at King Edward’s offer to annul the marriage would have constituted an admission on Richard’s part that he had been made the butt of a royal jest.

Now, even as she held him in her arms, Sara knew that she must let him go. He wanted out of this bed, out of her home and out of her life, she did not doubt.

There was no hope of winning that heart of his. You could not force someone to love. Sara realized now that she should have learned that lesson with her mother. No matter how zealously she had worked to please that woman and become deserving of her affection, Mother had continued to deny her that and find fault in everything she did. Richard would do the same. Sara clearly saw that now.

Richard Strode would never love a woman like her. She had been a fool to try to make it happen by sheer force of will. Why did she court such heartbreak? Her wits were all she had to take pride in. Had she lost them?

“No,” she muttered, abruptly withdrawing from Richard’s side. “No more. I will not do this again.”

“What did you say?” he asked, rising on one elbow and reaching for her hand.

Sara jerked it away before he could grasp it. “Leave me be, Richard.”

“Come back to bed, Sara,” he demanded impatiently.

“No,” she said, pulling her bed gown about her and heading for the door.

He bounded off the bed and caught her arm, turning her toward him.

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