One for My Baron by Christi Caldwell

Author:Christi Caldwell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Romance, Regency
Publisher: Christi Caldwell
Published: 2022-04-11T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 7

When Althea had been a small girl, she’d always worn a wide smile and laughed exuberantly.

That smile and laughter had followed her into her first London Season.

So many of his memories of her, and with her included both that smile and laughter…but there’d also been sadness from her, too.

Sadness over the parents who’d been equally foul people, stories she’d confided in him when they’d been skipping stones at the Duke of Grafton’s summer house party.

And with her sad-tinged greeting, and the way she continued to stare out at the grounds below, Neill was ashamed to say he didn’t know.

That was, not enough.

Oh, whenever they did find themselves with one another, she always had a ready quip, or smart reply on her lips.

But since she’d paid him a visit, and announced in those quiet, clipped words that hers hadn’t been a full life, he’d been haunted.

Haunted by how great a chasm that had built between them and tormented by the realization of just how miserable she’d been. And he wanted to go back in time…be less absorbed in his own roguish pursuits and then his own married life to have known what she’d endured, so that he could—

What? Beat Rand within an inch of his life?

Neill would have done it, too.

Only, there would have been a scandal.

Yes, as children Neill and Althea had been friends, but she’d been married, and he just betrothed…and his chest ached and hurt all the more as he realized how full his own life had been, and how lonely hers had been.

“He was wrong, Althea,” he said quietly. “They both were. You are”—he faltered, searching for the right words, the poetic ones, and finding only one, that was certainly not enough to capture the essence that was Althea—“beautiful.”

She snorted. “Come, Neill Weldington. I’m a woman grown. I know what I am, and I don’t need those false platitudes from you.”

He bristled. Granted, he’d not been poetic, but neither was he a liar. “You are beautiful,” he insisted, hating the almost petulant quality to that avowal. “You—”

“I heard you,” she said. “So you needn’t feed me some fancy gambit now.”

What was she on about?

“In the copse at the Duke of Grafton’s,” she clarified, answering his unspoken question. “The day my husband sheared my hair off. You told Lady Hazel you pitied me.”

He recoiled. “You heard that.”

A little blush stained her cheeks, and she glanced briefly down at the tips of her slippers, before raising her gaze; a defensive glimmer shone in her eyes. “I wasn’t eavesdropping. Not intentionally.” She mumbled that latter part under her breath.

Oh, God. What she must have thought…? How she must have felt believing his friendship with her and their relationship had only ever been motivated out of pity. She—

And then Neill froze, as something she’d said, penetrated, and a different horror lanced him. That last time he and Althea had really talked, alone, as they had done these past few days slipped forward, as fresh as yesterday. A remembrance of her crying, her cheeks puffy and red, her eyes swollen.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.