The Feather by Red Garnier

Author:Red Garnier
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2010-05-08T00:00:00+00:00

He did not return for days. Two weeks, in fact.

Whether he was trying to prove something to his loathsome friends or to himself or to Margaret, she didn’t know, but this evening was no different. The footman rapped on her door, and he peered in to announce, “Lord Claymore will not be joining you this evening. I’m afraid there is a pressing engagement at the Morrisons’ he must attend.”

She was sure she would become accustomed to this disappointment. But she was wrong. A pang struck her midsection, and rose to her stupid, lonely heart.

For a moment, a beautiful moment, she delighted in a private vision of rising to her feet and proudly declaring, “You may tell His Lordship, if he comes calling, that I am indisposed to see him, tonight or any night.”

The vision was followed by another, less stellar one, in which Margaret imagined herself being put out on the street without a farthing.

Why?

Why was he treating her like this?

Because he’d been reminded that she was a common whore? Or because this whore made him yell passionately in ways a lord would be reluctant to?

Margaret didn’t know how long she lay on the bed, drowning in a sea of anxiety, tormented by images of returning to her old life, when the slamming of the front door rattled the window casings.

She flew upright.

Footsteps echoed out in the hall, loud and purposeful.

Her heart stopped when she saw him, his clothes conforming to his magnificent body. Lord almighty, but the sight of him hurt.

Margaret smiled (how well she did this), but Gavin merely stood there, not quite in the room but not quite out of it. He didn’t smile back. His dress was impeccable, reminding her of his status.

Her heart thundered in her chest as he tugged on his cravat with single-minded purpose. And her body began to burn. Two weeks. Remembering his touch, his words, his scent clinging to the sheets like the memories of his loving clung to every thought.

Her skin became a hunger, her nerves like pins and needles, and her lungs . . . her lungs closed every time she saw him, as if being suffocated by her expanding heart.

With as much dignity as she could muster, Margaret rose to her feet and pulled the robe around her waist, thrusting her chin out. “I heard you would be at the Morrisons’,” she said, using every ounce of strength in her to appear calm.

His eyes, straightforward in a way that alarmed her, settled on her bosom. “The Morrisons was a bore.”

He shut the door behind him, his eyes never straying from her bosom. She watched his fingers move; deft, elegant. No, she would not remember how good they felt, how they’d touched her.

“So what brings you here at this late hour?” she asked, crossing her arms over her chest to hide precisely those mounds that he seemed anxious to see.

He cocked a brow and began to advance, yanking open his snowy white shirt. “I cannot come to my mistress?”

I am his mistress, she thought.

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