The Unmasking of Lady Loveless by Nicola Cornick

Author:Nicola Cornick [Nicola Cornick]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781408911068
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2008-05-20T16:00:00+00:00

Alex woke as the winter dawn light started to creep into the bedroom. Melicent was curled up against him, her head resting in the curve of his shoulder. Alex moved slightly and she burrowed closer to him. Her hair was spread across his chest just as he had imagined it in his dreams. She was deliciously warm and soft, and she smelled faintly of apples and honey. Her face was serene in sleep.

Alex had never woken like this before. When first they had been wed he had always left Melicent’s room immediately after making love to her and had retired to his own chamber next door. He slept alone and woke alone. He had thought that he liked it; he had always been a man comfortable in his own company.

Now he looked at Melicent, so vulnerable and trusting, and he felt a sense of peace and protectiveness so profound that it shook him to the depths of his being. He had been driven by anger and lust and possessiveness the previous night, and it would have been easy to see Melicent’s response to him as the brazen behavior of an experienced woman, the sort of woman he would expect the erotic writer Lady Loveless to be. Yet he could not believe Melicent had been unfaithful to him. Although she had met with equal passion every one of the sensual demands that he had made on her, there had been no artifice or calculation in her. The sweet honesty of her response to him had touched him profoundly. She had been as open and generous in her lovemaking as he suspected she was in every other aspect of her life. She was simply a very candid and giving person.

Alex felt a sudden pang that he had never taken the trouble to get to know his wife properly before. He had thought himself the injured party when his father had blackmailed him into marriage. But Melicent, too, had deserved better. Now, though, he could make up for the neglect and the hurt of the past. He would court her, cherish her and show her how important she was to him. He felt supremely satisfied at the thought. He was even prepared—most magnanimously—to overlook her ventures into literature. Her work as Lady Loveless had been rather unorthodox, of course, but she had been doing it for the right reasons. Mrs. Durham was greedy and extravagant. It was easy to see from whom Aloysius had inherited his profligate ways.

Alex turned his head and saw that Melicent was awake. She had pulled the sheet up to her chin and was watching him with a mixture of shyness and wariness in her eyes. His heart turned over to see it. He pressed a kiss against the silken softness of her hair.

“Good morning, my love.”

“Alex,” Melicent said. Her eyes grew even bigger as she looked at the rangy length of him taking up most of the space in her chaste single bed. “Did I dream it,” she

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