Page 13 of How to Wed a Courtesan

Her father frowned with more displeasure than she’d ever seen him react with.

‘They do not care for innocent girls the way a man ought to. They act on their own whims, do what suits them. He may love you now, but likely will not in the future. These men are spoiled. Fickle. If you marry him, you will be headed for heartbreak.’

Lottie was crying openly now, unable to hold back the flood of tears. ‘My heart is already broken,’ she said raggedly, between gasps of breath.

‘Better now than when you have truly fallen in love.’ He took her hand in his and gently patted it in consolation.

‘He isn’t like those men,’ Lottie said, in an attempt to sway her father.

‘Every man of the ton is.’

Something bitter glinted in her father’s gaze. Who was this man who was so full of spite and anger? Wasn’t he the one who always told her to give everyone a chance? To allow them to show their character before drawing conclusions based on a short association? And now he was slotting every titled man into a prejudged category. Including Evander.

‘Lottie, I forbid you from seeing him.’ Her father straightened and stood upright. His right knee popped in protest. ‘I’ve likewise informed him to stay away from you.’

‘No, Father—’

‘I forbid it,’ he roared.

Lottie froze at the foreign sound. Never in all her life had her father raised his voice to her, let alone shouted as he did now.

His brow wrinkled as if he were in pain. Or perhaps he’d realised what he’d done.

‘Please go to your room,’ he said in a softer tone. ‘This discussion is over and will not be revisited.’

Lottie pushed herself up from the chair and ran from the study, not stopping until she was face-down on her mattress, letting her heart shatter into a million tears.

Evander waited in the woods the following morning, with a small wooden box in the palm of his hand. The Reverend Rossington would most certainly not approve of Evander’s plan. But it wasn’t Reverend Rossington’s agreement he needed now. It was Lottie’s.

If she would see him.

An ache squeezed in his chest and made it difficult to draw breath.

What if she refused to see him and he never had her in his life again?

The thought was too horrible even to imagine. Not when they had grown so close...when she had so thoroughly rooted herself into his very soul.

In the time Evander had come to know her, he had found her to be the quintessential obedient daughter. She did not speak her mind unless there was something positive of note to say, she sacrificed the entirety of her life to the betterment of others, and she worried often about what people might think of her—far more than she should, in Evander’s opinion. And she obeyed her father without question.

Would she see Evander now? Or would she send him away?

A shadow stretched over the bend in the path at the exact time it always did and his pulse rushed in his ears.

Lottie.

He stepped from the trees and remained where he stood, waiting for her to see him, holding his breath to ascertain her reaction. If she seemed disagreeable, he would do as her father demanded and leave Oxfordshire, never to return. Though, dear God, it would be like cutting out his own warm, beating heart to do so.

However, if—

She gave a little scream and clamped a hand over her mouth. Before he could gauge if that was a good thing or bad, she ran at him. The bonnet flew from her head and the hem of her muslin gown kicked out around her white-stockinged calves.

His emotions soared higher than they’d ever gone before. He met her halfway and she threw herself into his arms and clung to him. She was heaven in his arms, her familiar scent a perfume more intoxicating than the finest wine. This woman who had almost been snatched from his life for ever was now in his arms. He held her to him in an effort to confirm she was indeed real, that this was not some apparition of hope.

‘I thought never to see you again,’ she whispered against his chest.

‘And I you,’ he said into her cool, smooth hair. He breathed in her fresh, delicately floral scent and longing slammed into him, powerful and potent.

‘There is a way we can be together,’ he said urgently.