To Have and to Hold: A Finders Keepers Novella by Terri Mackenzie

Author:Terri Mackenzie [Mackenzie, Terri]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Copperplate Books
Published: 2024-11-29T00:00:00+00:00

Cecily kept silent on the carriage ride home. Their pretence was unravelling, thread by thread, with every yard they travelled. All she had were questions.

Had it always been like this with Percy?

Back when he had first started to court her, she couldn’t remember it ever feeling like this. Butterflies and flirtations and . . .

They’d talked. Of course they had, when they’d first met. He’d been a friend to her, and music had drawn them together—and even then, she had loved the duets they sang, as though time paused whenever his voice joined hers, and her heart ached, and she felt that wanting inside herself for more. But once the song ended, she had gone back to pining over William and thinking of Percy as a friend. A father figure, almost, showing interest in her because he wanted to encourage her interests, not because he was in love with her.

Now she wondered if she had ever known what love was. Being with Percy did not make her heart yearn with the same desperate intensity as it had with William when she was nineteen. He was not a firework but the steady burn of a coal fire, all embers and occasional flame.

And she had kissed him.

The memory of it brought a hot flush to her cheeks. An ache between her legs that she didn’t remember feeling before. Vainly, she rubbed her thighs together, only stopping when he glanced down at the movement. If anything, that only made the aching worse.

She’d never wanted like this before. And especially not Percy. Silver-haired, patient-eyed Percy, who had spurned her not hours before, and who had danced with her as though he could not stop himself.

Percy, whom she had long ago resolved never to want. All those years telling herself that she could never forgive him, and here she was, allowing the press of a hand, the touch of his mouth, to vanquish all of that.

She wished she had done it sooner.

She didn’t know she’d been crying until she put her hand to her cheeks and felt the tears.

Percy produced a handkerchief from somewhere. “Was it so very bad, sweet witch?” he murmured, his words a drug.

Cecily reached for the anger that had sustained her through four years of matrimony, only to find it was a storm that had blown itself out.

“No.” She hated the way her voice cracked a little. No, it had not been so very bad.

He reached for her hand, taking it in his. Although they had held hands all evening, this felt different somehow, when their bodies were otherwise so far apart. His skin was warm against hers, the callouses on his palm rough against hers. She recalled the way his fingers had scraped against the page of his book as he concentrated, and her stomach fluttered helplessly. How such an act could be so seductive, she didn’t know, but she couldn’t deny the heat that corkscrewed through her body, ending between her legs at the thought of those hands on her.

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