The Legacy of the Rose by Kasey Michaels

Author:Kasey Michaels
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: love, sexy, gothic, historical romance, regency romance, gothic romance, dark romance, sexy historical romance
Publisher: Kasey Michaels

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The afternoon sun filtered down through the beech trees, dappling the wooly blanket spread over the newly scythed grass where Noddy lay napping, his thumb firmly stuck in his rosebud mouth. Kate sat quietly, watching him sleep, her back against one of the tree trunks, unable to keep from smiling. How she loved this child.

Lying on his stomach, Noddy had tucked his knees up under him, his small round bottom thrust into the air so that a large painted lady butterfly had perched there, slowly opening and closing its wings, as if preening. Her fingers itched for her sketching paper, one of the many things she had left behind at The Willows, as she longed to capture the moment in watercolors.

Somehow a perfect, warm summer’s day had sneaked itself into the usually watery Sussex spring, so that she had stolen a few precious, uninterrupted hours with the child, knowing that Hawkins would sit with Edmund until she returned.

What a wonderful change there had been in Edmund Tremaine! Kate no longer feared for the man’s life, nor did she look forward to his death as a happy release from an increasingly intolerable existence. Just the thought that she had ever believed Edmund’s death to be an answer to all their troubles distressed her. Why, only yesterday he had said her name, not very clearly, and not without a terrible expending of his small energy—but he had said it. In another week, a month, he might be back to where he had been before this last episode. Lucien’s arrival had wrought a near miracle.

Lucien. Kate’s smile faded and she bit her bottom lip. She hadn’t gone back to Edmund’s rooms to see how he had fared after she’d left the two of them alone. Had she done the right thing, to force Lucien into acknowledging Edmund on more than an impersonal level? She had seen Hawkins in the hallway and he’d told her Edmund was napping comfortably, so at least her impromptu interference had not had any immediate ill effects on their patient.

How her actions had affected Lucien, however, was another matter, as was her undeniable anxiety as to how he now felt about her.

Friends. That’s what he had said, that they should be friends, perhaps even help each other, as they seemed to be kindred spirits. And in a way he was right. But true friends didn’t have any secrets from each other, a condition Lucien seemed to consider important, probably because he was aware that she knew his secrets while she had only given him snippets of her own past, bits and pieces of information he could have learned from any member of the Tremaine Court staff.

She might have told him. A week ago, after he’d proved so gentlemanly—if only slightly naughty—at the pond, she might have told him. But the week had passed without his seeking her out again, and her courage had failed her. Now, if only she could banish her memories of the embrace they had shared beneath this very beech tree .

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