Love a Lady at Midnight: A Steamy Historical Romance (The Cavendish Family Series Book 4) by Charlie Lane

Author:Charlie Lane [Lane, Charlie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-02-09T16:00:00+00:00

Thirteen

Gwendolyn slammed the door to her bedchamber and paced the length of the room and back. Over and over and over. Until her lungs ached from lack of breath. And still, other parts of her ached, too. For him. But she clutched her anger to her, her righteousness, her knowing that she was right. No matter how willingly he gave himself to her, she could never have him because she was ruined, utterly, and in more ways than she could identify. And he deserved a queen, a woman of perfection to match him in optimism and cheer, to help him build the future he wanted.

Gwendolyn had no future. Words she repeated like an incantation but which he never seemed to hear. She wished she could pick them from the air and hand them to him on a platter so he could read—

She could! She raced toward her trunk and flung it open, finding the crinkled, ruined paper in a flash. She’d show him what she ran from so he would know the threat was not an idle one.

Jackson would have no choice but to admit defeat. He could not make her his wife when the whole world laughed at her, disdained her, likely wanted her gone. In the Marquess of Preston’s case, dead or in his bed, preferably. If she told Jackson everything, showed him the ruined letter, he’d realize a ruin like her, a woman always running despite her bombastic thorns, could never live in the light.

She could prove how right she was by giving him exactly what he’d asked for and what she’d kept from him for so long—the truth.

She stood with the letter, strode for the door, but each step seemed more difficult than the last.

Coward, he’d called her. Coward.

She beat a hand against her belly. “I am no coward.” Why did her feet refuse to move, then, instead of facing Jackson with evidence of her undesirable past? Why did she run from happiness instead of facing the marquess and demanding he leave her be? “Am I a coward?”

Hisss.

She shot a look over her shoulder. The gray tabby sat primly on the middle of her bed.

“How did you get in here?”

The cat stood, circled, then laid down, curling into a ball and closing its eyes.

“Do you think I’m a coward?” she asked because the cat’s hiss had sounded like one of disagreement.

The cat opened on eye and pierced her with it. A challenge?

She looked at the letter in her hands and tried for the thousandth time to read the puddle-ruined writing. But still only those few legible words jumped off the page—death, fall, deceit, something that could be sins and several words of no import such as I, see, and his. Enough ominous language there to strike the heart with fear. Her worry was not unfounded.

A vibration shook the air.

She looked to the bed, tilted her head. “Are you purring?”

The cat was, and it continued to do so, and Gwendolyn crept onto the bed, sat next to

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