Ruined by Rumor by Alyssa Everett

Author:Alyssa Everett
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2012-06-10T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirteen

We pardon in the degree that we love.

—Francois, duc de la Rochefoucauld

It was still barely three o’clock when Roxana left the dower house. She paused on a grassy rise to admire the prospect before her—Broadslieve, its silvery-white limestone fairly gleaming in the afternoon sun, its vast wings with their evenly spaced windows stretching out on either side of its columned portico. How strange to think she was mistress now of such a house.

A distant movement caught her eye, and from her hilltop vantage point she spied a rider on a black horse setting out across the park—Ayersley, on his way to the home farm. Her mother-in-law had been surprised they were spending the day apart. What would Ayersley think if she rode out to join him? Whatever they had agreed over breakfast, they were newlyweds.

Roxana hurried down the hill and back to the house. A scant twenty minutes later, she had donned her riding habit and was being handed up onto the neat gray filly Ayersley had bought her as a wedding present.

“Are you sure you wouldn’t like one of the lads to go with you, my lady?” the head groom asked as he rechecked the girth on her saddle.

It took her a moment to realize he was speaking to her. Having been plain Miss Langley all her life, she had not yet grown used to being called my lady.

Roxana tilted her head to one side, considering. Admittedly, she wasn’t much of a horsewoman, but she didn’t intend to ride very fast or very far. A groom would only be de trop once she met up with Ayersley. “Not this time, thank you. I’ll be on Broadslieve land most of the way.”

The groom touched his cap. “As you wish, my lady.”

She started off in the direction of the home farm. As she left the stables behind, a heady sense of freedom overcame her. Her mother had never let her ride about the countryside unattended, always insisting she take a groom or companion of some kind with her. Now, as a married woman, she had no one to answer to except Ayersley, and he was hardly a tyrant.

No, Ayersley was no tyrant. She smiled to herself. Sharing a bed with him that morning had been so much more exciting than she’d anticipated—the taste of his kisses, the satisfying weight of his body pressing hers into the feather mattress, the thrill of pleasure his touch had evoked. Only a single detail marred the memory, those four words he’d said when it was over. It will get better. What had he meant?

It had already been astonishingly good. But then, she’d never lain with a man before. As the more experienced half of the equation, Ayersley had clearly expected more. She wished she were not too ignorant to know precisely how she’d disappointed him, or too embarrassed to ask for instruction. She wanted to please him—and besides, she looked forward to trying it again.

How often did husbands visit their wives’ beds? Was there

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