“What of the book?”
“I started reading it and was quite enamored as I do enjoy a good love story, butthegentleman began to remind me far too much of you in appearance and behavior, so I set it aside, deciding ignorance of the details might be bliss. This Anonymous. Is she a former... paramour?”
“How did you even obtain a copy?”
“I have a standing order with a nearby bookshop to put aside anything new that I might fancy. I so love to escape into a book. I missed reading while I was away.”
Away. Her euphemism for the twenty years when his father had seen her disappeared from his life, Society, the world.
“So, are you?” she repeated.
He wanted to deny it but the last thing he desired was for his mother to read the remainder of the book. The very thought made him want to squirm. He didn’t expect her to believe him a eunuch, but for God’s sake, she didn’t need to know the details of him seducing a woman. “It was years ago, when I was young and foolish.”
“Did you love her?”
With all my heart. With all that I was at the time.What a lie. He loved her still. Because of the way she faced him, making it clear she cared nothing at all for him anymore. Because Society might think the circumstances of her birth made her beneath them, but she didn’t accept it. She went to their gaming hell and took their blunt. She didn’t shy away from attending their balls. Her father was no longer there to offer her protection, but she’d learned to stand on her own two feet. To know what she wanted and to go after it.
What she wanted was to provide her daughter with a life far different from hers as a child, and she would do whatever necessary to ensure the lass was accepted. He may love her most of all for that care, for her ability to understand the veracity of a situationand to go about changing it because the alternative was unacceptable.
“It was a long time ago,” he reiterated, rather than respond truthfully.
“That’s not an answer, Arthur.”
“I have no answer that would satisfy.”You or me.
“I read enough of the tale to know she did not conform to Society’s expectations regarding the sort of woman a lord should marry.”
He couldn’t stop a corner of his mouth from curling up. “No, she did not conform.”
“Would you have married her if you weren’t the heir?”
Yes, gladly.
But then his mother would have paid the steep price because if Knight hadn’t been the heir, his father never would have offered him a devil’s bargain.
Chapter 8
He cupped my cheek with his warm hand. He’d removed his gloves, in anticipation of touching me, I suppose. Even the surrounding darkness could not prevent our gazes from clashing. I wondered if within mine, he could read the temptation to give in to my desires.
—Anonymous,My Secret Desires, A Memoir
June 15, 1875
Standing in the garden, Regina couldn’t help but smile at Arianna’s excitement as the hour of her party approached, although it did sadden Regina that other than herself, Ari’s guests—currently being arranged by her daughter on chairs at the smallest of tables in the garden—were an assortment of dolls. She felt guilty for keeping the lass hidden away, but presently it was for Arianna’s own protection, because Regina didn’t want her to publicly carry the burden of being born out of wedlock.
And she would until Regina took to husband a man who would treat her as though she was his own fleshand blood, would stare down anyone who arched a brow at her, would call out anyone who uttered an unkind word. Who would ensure she was educated in the best schools, invited to affairs where she would frolic with his contemporaries’ children, and accepted by Society so she was fawned over, not for her dowry, but for herself.As I had not been.
As long as Regina’s father had been alive, she’d known he would shield his granddaughter from the harsh reality of her birth, but when he’d passed away, everything had pretty much gone to hell. His heir wanted nothing to do with her and wasn’t even aware she had a child. Her options were limited. Move elsewhere and claim to be a widow or stay here and marry.
When Lord Chidding had recently called upon her, she’d viewed him as an answer to her prayers. Although her relief would have no doubt been dashed had he discovered Arianna in the parlor as Knightly had done. She didn’t want to admit how right it had looked to come upon him, his long and lean body perched on the floor, alongside her daughter. Wearing his spectacles, no less.
They’d always had the power to twist her stomach into knots. Without them, he was as handsome as sin, but with them perched on his nose, enlarging his blue eyes, he was mesmerizing, a sage who knew all the answers, a wise man who would never be taken for a buffoon. Someone to whom she could bare her soul... and her body.
She’d revealed both to him, and he’d taken them with such care and treated them so tenderly that she’ddared to hand over her heart. Without fear of rejection or being made to look the fool. He’d filled her with the sort of joy designed to make her feel she would simply float through the remainder of her life without troubles or worries—until he’d burst the bubble of her happiness and she’d crashed back to reality, bruised and broken.
The wounds had managed to heal until he’d danced with her at that damnable ball. She’d felt the remnants of the injuries striking again, but they’d hurt even more than when freshly inflicted because they’d been accompanied by an intense yearning to have him in her life once more.
Had he been correct? Had she written the book to entice him from the periphery of her existence back into the center of it?
