Scratch the Surface (Wolf Within) by Amy Lee Burgess

Author:Amy Lee Burgess [Burgess, Amy Lee]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2015-01-19T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 11

Twenty minutes later someone knocked on the bedroom door. I’d retreated to the room I was supposed to be sharing with Murphy because I couldn’t bear to be in the room next to Grandfather Tobias. It was bad enough he was just down the hall.

I doubted like hell Murphy would knock, and I was right. Allerton, impeccable and implacable as ever, stood outside in the hallway.

“I would like a word with you. Downstairs in the small conference room.” He turned on his heel and, confident I would follow, started for the stairs.

When we passed the front room, I glanced in out of the corner of my eye and saw Murphy sitting in the chair I’d vacated, head down, full glass of cognac cradled in his hands. Kathy Manning was nowhere to be seen. He didn’t look up although I knew damned well he was aware of us as we walked past.

Allerton shut the door behind me and gestured to the chairs surrounding the conference table.

He adjusted the lights so the room was bathed in a soft, non-threatening light and, instead of sitting himself, walked to the built in bookshelves and pretended to peruse the titles on the spines.

In my inferior seated position, I waited for him to tell me I was no longer his Advisor and he wanted nothing further to do with me. I waited for him to tell me I was a disgrace and weak and could not handle difficult things and that he was disappointed in me.

The twenty minutes I’d spent in my room alone had sobered me like a slap of cold water in the face. I wasn’t angry anymore, I was lost. On the whole, I preferred the treacherous warmth of anger to the cold, slick sweat of being lost.

“I don’t know if you’ll believe me or not, Constance,” Allerton said, turning away from the books to gaze at me with a deceptive gentleness, “but I never for one minute intended on making you my next mistress.”

I tried to make myself even smaller in the chair. This was hell. Murphy, the bastard. He had to go and say something.

“Forgive me for this, but you’re not in my league, frankly. You have no power and no social standing compared to mine. I choose my mistresses from my equals or my near equals. Enough so that it would never be something that could be construed as coercive. I want my mistresses to want to be my mistresses, not feel as though as they have no choice or that they somehow owe me. And I would never take one of my Advisors as a mistress, no matter what her social standing or power. That’s much too incestuous and not fair, because, you see, I select my Advisors carefully. I want them to become powerful, but not through sexual services rendered. I’ve never taken a former Advisor as a mistress either and I never will. Whatever power and success they aspire to, it can never be said that it was because she slept with me.

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