AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Alec raised an eyebrow. “So soon?” It was barely the afternoon. Marta usually stayed to make the evening meal.
“I thought we could fend for ourselves tonight.”
“Are you sure that was all?” Alec murmured seductively, as his mind filled with the image of having Lottie for dinner instead.
A most becoming blush stained her cheeks. “I confess I may have ulterior motives.”
“Ah, you shouldn’t have admitted that so easily. I would have quite enjoyed extracting the truth from you. I’ve a few tactics in mind.”
“I don’t doubt it. Perhaps I could still convince you to use them?” Lottie let out a shriek of delight as Alec pulled her down on his lap. Then she gasped and immediately sprung up, rubbing her backside.
He had forgotten all about his book. “Sorry darling.” Alec pulled the book off his lap and drew her back down.
She plucked the tome from his hands. Her eyes skimmed the cover. “Are you enjoying it?”
Alec brushed his fingers against the nape of her neck. “I’m not sure ‘enjoying’ is the right word, but it has been surprisingly comforting,” he said. “I hadn’t realized how much I still remembered of his work.”
After the announcement of their nuptials had been printed in all the London papers, Alec received a letter from his cousin, the Honorable Nigel Gresham, who now held his grandfather’s viscountcy. Apparently it had been the late viscount’s dying wish for his brother’s son to be welcomed back into the family. Alec initially balked at the suggestion—he had gotten on perfectly well without the Greshams all these years—until Lottie’s gentle suggestion that perhaps this could be a way to further make peace with his past.
Alec responded to the letter merely to please her, but much to his surprise Cousin Nigel turned out to be a delightfully witty epistoler—not at all the tweedy lout he was expecting. A warm correspondence quickly developed between the cousins, and there was even talk of Alec and Lottie visiting the family seat in Norfolk over the Christmas holiday. Several weeks ago Cousin Nigel had forwarded him a letter from a Cambridge professor eager to write his father’s biography. After mulling it over, Alec had finally agreed to answer his questions and figured he should brush up on his father’s catalogue in preparation. But seeing Italy, his mother, as well as himself through his father’s words helped him to understand Edward Gresham a little more, and to remember the man he had once been.
Lottie turned to him and smiled tenderly. “I’m so glad to hear that. I know it’s not anything like having him here, and it can’t make up for the pain of losing him, but it’s better than trying to forget it all.”
She was right. Like always.
His heart ached with love for this woman who knew him so well. Who had always been able to see him so much better than he could ever see himself. And love him for it. Alec was growing more used to the idea that he really was the man she thought he was. And even if he wasn’t, he had every intention of becoming so.
The intense, gnawing regret he used to feel for all the time they lost had begun to fade, replaced by happier memories. These days it was easier to look toward the future.Theirfuture. The past, and the pain it contained, would always be there, but it could only hurt them still if they allowed it. Alec paid his penance a dozen times over. Now that he had Lottie, and they had a life of their own, he would not waste any of it.
He stilled his fingers and opened his palm to cradle the back of her neck. “Don’t you ever grow tired of being right about me?”
She smirked and sank against his chest. “No. Do you ever wish you could go back to being the mysterious, globe-trotting agent of intrigue, instead of just another boring old husband?”
The thought of being anywhere else with anyone other than her held absolutely no appeal.
He placed a finger under her chin and gently tilted her face up to his. “As long as I’myourboring old husband,” he began and watched her eyes glaze over as he drew her mouth closer. “Never, my dear,” he whispered against her lips. “Never.”
