(Malloren #8) A Lady's Secret by Jo Beverley

Author:Jo Beverley [Beverley, Jo]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Robin wasn’t asleep, so he knew when she moved apart. Was he imagining reluctance? At least she hadn’t wanted lovemaking. He hadn’t thought it likely, but the prospect had worried him. He knew no gracious way to handle a situation like this. He wanted to blow his brains out over that one word.

Coquette tried her luck again, leaping up and wriggling under his hand. He let her stay. He needed some loving comfort. But then he remembered stroking Petra after that disaster. The elegant pleasuring of women had been part of his education, and it included attention to their feelings and their dignity. “A gentleman should be a gentleman in every part of life” had been his father’s dictum. Whore, duchess, or merry widow, there must be courtesy and mutual delights—and a disciplined avoidance of disasters.

“Disaster” was too tame a word for his current predicament. He was tempted to avoid Thorn for fear of his opinion, but he needed to get Petra into protection as soon as possible. He could leave her at Ithorne, however, on the excuse of racing up to London to make sure Powick and Fontaine were safe. And everyone else at his London house, he supposed.

Yes, he’d do that, and now he’d stay awake to be sure Josh Fletcher didn’t creep up here with a bread knife. Or Varzi appear, torture implements in hand…

“Mr. Bonchurch?”

It took Robin a moment to realize that was him, and that, plague take it, he’d fallen asleep after all. But it was morning and they’d survived. And Josh Fletcher was calling him from downstairs.

“Yes,” Robin called back, sitting up, easing an ache in his back.

“You need to be down, sir, if you want a bite before setting off.”

“Thank you.”

Robin turned, but Petra was already out of bed, her back to him. She, too, stretched, arching with her hands in her back. Robin’s mouth dried at the sinuous beauty of her in morning light. Her simple gown did nothing to hide the lines of her body, and above the neckline he could see the fine bones of her neck and the beginning of the long indent of her spine.

She bent to pick up her shoes, and his mouth watered at her natural grace….

He dragged his eyes and mind away, turned, and pulled on his boots, forcing his mind to practical matters—ways to persuade her to let him help her.

He wanted her, though, in more ways than the physical. He’d fight armies to possess her.

But a part of him wanted to escape the chaos she brought, to get back to carefree days. It had been a terrible year. The shock of his father’s death had crushed the whole family—his mother, his two brothers and two sisters, aunts and uncles, servants, tenants…. A vital, respected, beloved man gone in a week from a neglected gash from a bull he’d been admiring at the local fair.

He realized he was just sitting there and rose to stamp his boots into place. He’d pulled everything together again. The world was more or less turning in the right direction.

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