The Game by Brenda Joyce

Author:Brenda Joyce
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: HarperCollins US
Published: 1994-05-11T14:00:00+00:00

17

“Mistress? Please, you must awaken.”

Katherine sighed. She was in bed, her face buried in her pillow, and she was snug and warm beneath blankets and furs. She did not want to awaken, not yet—she was so tired she could hardly move. Indeed, she felt drugged. Helen called her again. Katherine rolled away from her maid and, in a single blinding instant, recalled the night before.

She stopped breathing. Liam. Oh, God, Liam had come to her room, and they had made love, in a manner of speaking—oh, yes. It had been wicked and wonderful and she was still a virgin, quite miraculously. She began to smile. She wriggled her toes, contracted her muscles, thinking of how he had loved her not once but twice—and the second time so endlessly, so thoroughly, so perfectly, she had finally had to beg him to cease. Her cheeks were hot.

Katherine stared at the stone wall while, on the other side of the room, Helen moved about. He was gone now. She had fallen asleep sometime before dawn and had been unaware of his leaving. Realizing that he was gone made her feel bereft. When would she see him again?

Her soft smile faded, and so, too, did her joy. She was mad, mad to be sad over his departure, mad to be remembering their heated encounter in such a dreamy, wistful way. She was mad. He was a notorious pirate. She was a noblewoman. She’d had no right to do the unspeakable things that she had. No right—none.

Katherine did not move, frozen now with dismay. How wrong she was. She’d had every right to play the whore, she now recalled. Her father had so recently asked her to take on that very role.

Katherine closed her eyes. Although Gerald would have approved of what she had done, she could not be pleased with her own behavior. She was ashamed. Especially as she did not want to play Gerald’s game, did not want to become O’Neill’s wife. Yet she had played the whore well, far better than her father would have ever asked her to. Her true nature was far darker, far less genteel, than Katherine had ever dreamed.

Perhaps men looked at her and discerned her sensual nature. Perhaps they all saw through her, Katherine thought miserably. Was that why Hugh Barry and the earl of Leicester, two very noble men, wished to make her a mistress instead of a wife? Could a man look at her and see that forbidden passion stirred in her veins?

How ironic it was. Hugh Barry and the earl of Leicester wanted her to be their whore, but Liam O’Neill wanted her to be his wife.

Katherine hugged her pillow. Perhaps Gerald would succeed in marrying her off to O’Neill. It was certainly becoming more possible, as a result of her recent behavior, and the fact that she could not seem to resist the pirate’s embraces. But Katherine, although well aware of her duty to her father, had been hoping that Liam would not

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