The Veiled Heart by Elsa Holland

Author:Elsa Holland [Holland, Elsa]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Historical Romance VictorianRomance Erotic Romance
Publisher: Elsa Holland Books
Published: 2015-07-12T23:00:00+00:00

15

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

There was movement in her room. Miriam rolled onto her back.

“Mary, is that you?”

Her whole body felt like two winter comforters lay on top of her and her mouth was dry.

“I’m not getting up.”

The usual practical steps of Mary walking to the window to draw the curtains were absent. No litany of where breakfast was at nor the list of the day’s to-dos. A list she was still not ready to face. Instead, there was just silence.

“Mary?”

Opening her eyes, she saw it was much too dark for the morning routine.

Her heart pushed forward and started to pound hard at the anomalies. Her eyes darted around the darkness.

Then she saw his shape. Even in the unlit room, she knew who it was.

Max.

He was kneeling by the grate and building a fire from the banked up coals. Although it wasn’t very cold, the flames were comforting, and after the absolute disaster of her plans, she’d lit one in her room and kept it alight. A vigil of sorts.

A bath drawn in front of it tonight had soaked away the tensions of failure. A little old-fashioned given that they had a bathroom installed. However, sometimes you just have to hunker down into what made you feel good.

Freddy had liked to play in the bathroom. He’d said learning to hold your breath was the symbol of a wife who knew how to hold her tongue.

The copper bath in front of the fire had been perfect.

“I waited for your notes.”

She huffed at that.

Whatever she said, it would say too much.

It had been a long time since staying in bed with the covers drawn was better than getting up and facing the world.

She’d told Aunt D that she’d caught a cold. But there was a limit to how long she could stay up here and not have the doctor fetched.

“You know I still don’t know anything about you, what you do or where you live. You could be married.” Her voice was a throaty sexy sound. All soft and sleepy. If she were a man, she would have liked it. No accusation, no scold, just a sound that said all the barriers were down, and staying that way.

“Not tonight, Lily. Tonight you can imagine me anyway you like.”

He walked over to the curtains and pulled them open. The light from the moon shone in. It wasn’t much, but enough to make the room glow in a grayish-silver hue.

She struggled out of the tangle of sheets, sat up, and watched as he stared out at the night.

“How did you get in?”

He turned. That wonderful face of his was etched with shadowed crevices.

“I sat out there wondering what you were doing up here. Imagined you in your room. Remembered the smell of you, the taste of you on my tongue. Wondered what your breasts would feel like naked and free in my hands.”

He tugged at his necktie and pulled the hem of his shirt out of his trousers.

“I took you as a survivor. I still think you are, so I reached the conclusion that you were sulking.

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.