The Lady Always Wins by Courtney Milan

Author:Courtney Milan
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: historical romance, friends to lovers, victorian, sexy historical romance, childhood sweethearts, victorian romance
ISBN: 9781937248116
Publisher: Milan, Courtney
Published: 2013-02-22T13:36:28.134352+00:00

Chapter Five

GINNY WOKE IN HIS ARMS the next morning. He’d been caressing her as she slept—a gentle, sweet rhythm. When she opened her eyes, she was almost surprised at the look on his face: somewhere between stunned and solemn.

“Good morning,” she whispered. It wasn’t just a good morning: It was a great one, great and terrible. She’d agreed to marry him in a matter of some hours.

“See here,” he said. His mouth curled down with the look of a man who had been planning a speech for a while. “I have to say something. I know you don’t love me as much as I do you, but I’m going to change all that. I don’t care how long it takes.” He leaned in and rested his forehead against her shoulder. “You are going to love me.”

For the first time since they’d kissed yesterday, a cold chill ran through her. “You think I don’t love you?”

He snorted. “For Christ’s sake,” he muttered into her shoulder. “You married someone else. What was I supposed to conclude?”

She turned away from him. “That I didn’t want to be poor? That you were threatening to cart me off to Gretna Greene, no matter what I said? I didn’t know how else to stop you. I was in a panic.”

“I wasn’t threatening!” he said. And then, as if he remembered how hot his temper might have run, he threw out: “At least, not seriously. If you loved me enough, the money wouldn’t have mattered!”

He’d said that so many times, and every time, she’d felt a burden of lead collect in her belly. It was an old argument, this one. “I have a horror of being poor,” she said. “It wouldn’t have mattered how much I loved you. It wouldn’t have mattered how much you loved me. Only saints can love through hunger, and neither of us is a saint.”

He sat up, resting on his elbow. “You’re only saying that because you don’t know how I feel. If you loved me the way I loved you—”

She heard herself make an inarticulate cry, and she batted at his questing hand. “No. You wouldn’t say that if you’d ever really been hungry. You’ve never eaten bits of coal out of the refuse pile just to have something in your belly. You’ve never been so cold that you couldn’t sleep at night, and yet hadn’t the strength to shiver. It doesn’t matter how much you love someone. If you’ve not got enough, you resent every scrap that they have and you do not.”

He frowned at her. Her breathing had grown faster; her heart was racing. “We weren’t so poorly off when I was first born. But Papa lost everything, betting on the ’Change when I was eight. And after that… I remember ripping a crust of bread from my elder sister’s hands one time. I was practically an animal.” She shut her eyes. “When she died of diphtheria, I was sad. But part of me, some horrid part of me deep down, thought—‘Good.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.