A Pearl Pleasured: An aspiring composer ignores the scars between them in order to protect a talented harpist in peril (5 Pearls for the Earl Book 2) by Andrea K. Stein & Louisa Cornell

A Pearl Pleasured: An aspiring composer ignores the scars between them in order to protect a talented harpist in peril (5 Pearls for the Earl Book 2) by Andrea K. Stein & Louisa Cornell

Author:Andrea K. Stein & Louisa Cornell [Stein, Andrea K. & Cornell, Louisa]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Muirgen Publishing, LLC
Published: 2024-07-02T00:00:00+00:00


8

Joshua had not spent so much time in taverns and the dark alleys of London since he first arrived as an ambitious musician at the age of eighteen. Then again, he’d never allowed himself to be dragged from one low, disgusting place to another by a ten-year-old boy either. Not that he hadn’t seen the inside of some of these places before tonight. He’d boxed for money at the Lamb and Flag, often called the Bucket of Blood, more than once as a student home from school and as a penniless composer too. Home being Lady Camilla’s St. James Square townhouse. Once his father disowned him he’d never returned to the family estate in Hampshire again.

None of that mattered now. All that mattered was Sophia and her safety. Yes, she’d lied to him, but she’d confessed. Her husband’s cruelty incensed him, and he deeply regretted the man was dead. Not that he’d told her that bit of news. One of his many sins of omission against her. The idea of lying to her, of his real reason for moving into her home and her life, gnawed at him like a hungry terrier. He’d see her safe first and then tell her the truth. She deserved that much.

He loved her. He knew that now. She cared for him and even if she could never love him, that would be enough for him. It would have to be. He’d awakened to an empty bed after their tryst in the music room, but things had been wonderful between them—stolen kisses, composing together, meals with long talks about music and his ambitions for his opera house. And torrid nights in his bed where he did his best to show her how beautiful she was in every way that he could. He sensed he was standing ever closer to a precipice and that the fall would destroy him. He didn’t care.

“Are we going to stand out here in the rain, guv’ or are we going inside before we drown?” The night had turned frigid and the rain fairly sluiced down from the starless sky.

“Drowning might be safer,” Joshua replied as he and the lad, Dickie Jones, made their way to the back entrance of the Prospect of Whitby. Even in the dark, the sound and smell of the Thames told him they were well and truly heading into one of the more dangerous taverns in London.

“Yer right about that. ’Specially when the Runner and the earl find out I brung you here.”

“Tell them I bribed you.”

He snorted. “They know that without me telling ’em. I don’t do nufink for nobody without my palm gets crossed.”

“You helped Mrs. Hawksworth for nothing,” Joshua reminded him as they squeezed their way through the crowd at the back of the tavern. The stench of stale beer and stale bodies came at him in waves.

Dickie turned and glared at him, his expression half anger and half surprise. “That were different. I wouldn’t have come back here for anyone else.”

Come back here? Dickie’s ominous, almost fearful tone gave Joshua pause.



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