The Lady and Mr. Jones by Alyssa Alexander

Author:Alyssa Alexander [Alexander, Alyssa]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Entangled; Amara, historical, Historical Romance, Romance, Alyssa Alexander, spy, espionage, rookeries, baroness, Britain, convention, rogue, ton
Publisher: Entangled Publishing, LLC
Published: 2017-10-28T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-Five

The floor was frigid, despite the warm night and the soft glow of the tall candelabra. The rough flagstone scraped her bare feet. She’d walked the cloisters as a girl, as her father had—as the monks had, centuries earlier. Meditation and prayer, estate problems to solve, family quarrels. All those thoughts and more were thick in the air under the domed ceiling.

Cat sent her current concerns winging into the night to join those that had come before.

Beyond the arcing mullioned windows lining the corridor, Jones would be waiting in the night. In the house, behind stone walls carved for the original abbey, Wycomb was seeing to his own business. Aunt Essie would be embroidering or netting, perhaps reading. The servants and Mr. Sparks—as much her family as Wycomb and Essie—would be busy with their evening tasks.

She could only pace past stone columns, past elaborate windows, past columns again, and through dim light. So much swirled inside her. Need, temper, fear, sorrow—all of it building. Pressure pushed against her rib cage, against her lungs.

Her home. Her people. Wycomb. Marriage to Hedgewood.

Jones.

And her father.

Fingers curling around a carved stone column, Cat stopped walking to stare into the night beyond the windows. She could see nothing except her own reflection, and vaguely, the reflection of the intricate walls of the original abbey behind her.

“Why couldn’t you trust I would do what was right?” The whisper rose from her lips. Words and sound torn apart. They would go unheard, because her father was not there to hear them.

He had never told her it would all be held under trust. She had run everything in his last year of life. She and Mr. Sparks. Yet her father had never told her the properties would be withheld for so long. A little while she might have suspected. She was not yet of age when he died. But thirty-five? Now she was contracted to Hedgewood.

It could be worse, but it could be better.

It could be Jones.

Whether he owned nothing more than the clothes on his back or an estate larger than hers was unimportant. She knew his measure.

He’d saved a stranger from abduction, before he knew her.

He accepted the task of spying on another spy when he knew it would be difficult.

He put out fires and saved strangers’ grain, because it was right.

She also wanted him. Everything in her body ached, exquisitely tight and ready for something. That moment. The one she’d heard the maids whisper and giggle about.

She breathed in, held it. Skin hot, belly taut with need, she stood in the faint wash of candlelight and wished for Jones.

“The tenants’ roofs are much improved.” Cold words slid into the night, raising the hair at the nape of her neck.

She whirled, resisting the urge to flee as Wycomb stepped from the shadows into the light from the tall candelabra set at the end of the long alley of cloister.

“Uncle.” The light Kashmir shawl she wore over her gown was not enough protection from his frigid eyes.

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