David: Lord of Honor by Grace Burrowes

Author:Grace Burrowes
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Sourcebooks, Inc.
Published: 2014-03-08T22:00:00+00:00

Nine

Four weeks into his affair with Letty Banks, David had come to dread Tuesday mornings. On Mondays, Letty would do her accounts—muttering all the while that something was off—or read in the library while David tended to correspondence. If she had errands to run, he’d take her about in the coach, bringing his letters with him so he might read while she shopped. And while desire was ever present for David, the first firestorm of lust had burned down to pleasures that could be paced, savored, and enjoyed.

As always, on Tuesday mornings, David made slow, sweet love with Letty in that dark, quiet hour before they rose.

“Do you fence today?” Letty asked, her fingers drifting through David’s hair.

“At ten, and I’m to meet Greymoor, Heathgate, and Amery for luncheon.”

“You should enjoy that.” She caressed his ears, a touch he particularly enjoyed. “You haven’t seen them for some time.”

She would never accuse him, never ask a difficult question directly, and yet David knew exactly where the conversation was heading.

He lifted himself away from her, disentangling their bodies. “I have neglected my family.” And because he could not face her as he made that admission, David rose from the bed and busied himself with the sheath he’d used, only to find the damn thing had a small tear near the tip.

“Then you must make time for them,” Letty replied as he washed off with cold water. “Though as to that, David, they don’t seem to find much time to check in on you.”

She chided in hints and innuendo, and he hated it. “They are avoiding me.”

“I see.”

“What do you see, Letty-love?” He tossed the sheath onto the hearth, where it crackled, then smoked, then burned.

“David, you need not reserve your weekends for me. You love your family, and I’m sure they miss you.”

But I love you too.

The sheath turned to ash, and David returned to the bed, arranging himself over his Puritan mistress who wasn’t his mistress or his Puritan. “Why won’t you marry me?”

Beneath him, she shrank away. Not a physical withdrawal, for in fact she lay still, but every other part of her went away from him.

“David, not now.”

“Did you honestly think I wouldn’t ask again? I want to marry you, to sleep with you every night, not merely twice a week. I want our children to be legitimate. I want to raise them with you, not visit on birthdays or Yuletide, assuming I can sneak away from my other obligations. I want to take you out on my arm. I want my family to love you as much as I do. I do not think”—he dropped his forehead to hers—“that I am asking too much, to have the woman I love for my wife, and devote the remaining years of my life to her happiness.”

The woman I love… Oh, he was in for it now.

Letty jerked silently under him, an odd hitching of her body, as if he’d slapped her. He gathered her in his arms and rolled them so she was sprawled on his chest, an embodiment of the weight his heart carried everywhere of late.

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