Three French Hens: A Regency Historical Romance Holiday Tale (The Twelve Days of Christmas Book 10) by Emily E K Murdoch

Author:Emily E K Murdoch [Murdoch, Emily E K]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Romance, Historical
Publisher: Dragonblade Publishing, Inc.
Published: 2022-12-08T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Six

A Christmas carol was being sung as Sophia entered Hyde Park.

She shivered. A chilly December wind rustled by her, but it did not encourage her to return home. Home was full of noise, excited chatter about the visit to Chalcroft they would be making for Christmas Day, preparations and wrapping and questions about Lady Romeril’s ball…

And that was the last thing Sophia needed.

She needed to clear her head. Think. Actually try to understand what on earth was happening.

Because whatever had happened last night, and she was still attempting to understand just what that had been, she could not understand it.

“So while you are out there, dancing the night away, I will be here, thinking of you, pleasuring myself.”

Sophia swallowed as she walked past a pair of ladies sitting on a bench, chattering away, her cheeks flushing at the scandalous memory that soared through her mind.

She should not have stayed to listen—and yet she had never felt more alive.

She had…not precisely controlled him, but certainly affected him in a way she could never have predicted. While Orlando certainly had an effect on her, it was nothing, it seemed, compared to the effect she had on him.

Which did not make sense. True, Sophia had wished for a romance—a scandalous romance, if she recalled correctly from her conversation with Caroline at Almack’s—but that did not mean she was willing to lose her reputation.

And to a man like Orlando…

“How your mind does wander, Sophia. Never let me underestimate you again. No, Lady Romeril and I have not had that particular…pleasure. But Lady Rose, on the other hand…”

“Lady Romeril’s daughter?”

“The very same. A delectable woman.”

Sophia gritted her teeth. No, there was a man who saw no issue with taking a lady’s innocence and leaving them by the wayside, literally hiding in libraries to avoid them.

That was not a gentleman with whom she should be associating.

So why was it that she was so drawn to him?

“You are just being foolish,” Sophia told herself quietly, as the path before her was empty for a good twenty yards. “Making a fool of yourself, more like.”

For was that not what she was doing? Was she not making it abundantly clear to all those around her, even if she thought she was being clever, that she was…

Falling in love?

Sophia swallowed and tried to push the thought from her mind. She was not falling in love; she had only met Orlando a few weeks ago! She was not about to throw away her reputation, her place in the Fitzroy family, for a viscount who did not know what was due her!

“You do not think that your future wife might…might be upset that you have bedded so many people?”

“Why? Are you applying for the position?”

“Absolutely not.”

He had been teasing, of course. No rake like that would ever wish to marry her—in her rather limited experience, no rake wished to marry at all. It was simply beyond their purview; they were interested in bedding, not wedding.

No, she had come here to clear

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