Soul of Sin by Tracy Cooper-Posey

Author:Tracy Cooper-Posey [Cooper-Posey, Tracy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2017-06-21T18:30:00+00:00

Chapter Nine

Natasha gripped her reticule. She felt frozen to the spot.

Raymond met her gaze. “Why don’t you at least take off your gloves and bonnet? Even if you return home immediately, it will still take some time for the carriage to be ready. You can be comfortable while you wait.”

Natasha wasn’t sure she wanted to move. She was gripped by a paralyzing mix of conflicting emotions. “I did not know Elisa would do this,” she said. Her voice was strained.

“I could tell that when I watched you arrive.” He held out his hand. “Give me your purse. Let’s begin there.”

She hesitated. Yet there was nothing significant about handing over her things. She did it many times a day. She held out the reticule on its cord.

Raymond took that and put it on the sideboard under the big mirror.

It was automatic, after that, to take off her gloves and remove her bonnet. Raymond put both of them next to her reticule. “Now, would you like tea?”

“Something stronger, actually,” Natasha admitted.

His smile was small, deepening the line on one side of his mouth. “That sounds like a very good idea. I have some madeira—”

“I would prefer brandy.” Madeira was a lady’s drink.

Raymond’s brow lifted again. “Brandy it is, then.” He waved toward the drawing room.

“The library,” she said. “The drawing room is too…”

“Formal,” he finished and nodded.

Natasha walked over to the recessed doors into the library and stepped inside. This room wasn’t nearly as large as Elisa and Vaughn’s big archive, yet it had the same sort of warmth. There was something magical about a room filled with books. People who read books, who owned them and cared for them enough to give them a special room were thinkers. Natasha had grown up without one, yet her years with Seth and his habit of reading anything that crossed his path had taught her to appreciate the wealth of knowledge a library held. A library always made her feel comfortable.

She moved over to the pair of dark green velvet armchairs arranged in the corner opposite Raymond’s desk and settled in one.

Raymond poured brandy into two snifters and brought them over to the chairs. He placed one on the small round table next to Natasha and sat in the other chair, his snifter in his hand. He crossed his knee over the other. It made him look relaxed. Natasha wondered if that was his true state and glanced again at the dark marks under his eyes.

“How do you fare, Natasha?” he asked. “Are you quite well, now?”

“Well enough. You look tired.”

He took a sip of the brandy. “I admit that sleep has not come easily to me lately.”

“Because of me?”

He frowned, looked down at the brandy. “Because of Rose,” he said shortly. He met her gaze. “Because I kissed you.”

Something shifted in her chest and tension loosened. It was relief. “I have been feeling as though I am the most despicable woman alive,” Natasha said softly. She groped for the glass and brought it to her lips.

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