AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“We were soclose,” the elderly woman sighed as she watched Lady Chesterfield run away from across the street.
Her husband merely smiled and puffed out a circle of smoke from his pipe. “You didn’t think it would be that easy, did you?”
“I didn’t think they’d bethisdifficult. The way he swooped in and rescued her! How romantic and dear.” The woman dabbed at her eyes with a monogrammed handkerchief that she’d plucked from the pocket of her husband’s long green cloak, belted at the waist with a knot of black leather and trimmed in thick white fur. “That almost always does the trick.”
“Almost,” the old man agreed, resting a hand on his belly. “But not this time. There is a lot of hurt that must be healed first.”
“We’re running out of days! The beginning of Christmastide is right around the corner.” Vexed, the elderly woman pressed her lips together and gave her basket of mistletoe an impatient shake. “What I wouldn’t do just to march up there and bump their heads together. Maybe that would knock a bit of common sense into them and make them see how perfect they are for each other.”
Her husband chuckled. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d believe you were gettingmoreimpatient with age.”
She swatted his arm, then leaned in and rested her head on his shoulder. “I’ve lost track of the years, but not the minutes spent with you.”
“Ah, my love. Every second has been a blessing.”
“Which is why I don’t want the earl and his countess to miss anotherday.”
He took a thoughtful puff of his pipe. “We do have the sleigh.”
She gasped and lifted her head. “We haven’t had to use that in…I can’t remember!”
“Not since Mr. Adams and Abigail,” he agreed. “But look how well that turned out.”
“Such a darling couple.”
“Not at first.”
“No, not at first.” She hummed a little ditty under her breath. “All right then, the sleigh it is.”
Five
Alexandria burrowed deeper into the velvet armchair and took a sip of tea. In front of her, the hearth crackled with a vibrant fire. On her lap, a book laid open, its pages lovingly worn. Outside, sleet thrashed against the windows, cutting through the dark like little needles through a black piece of fabric.
It was late. She didn’t know the exact time, but the servants had long sought their own beds and the house was quiet and still. She also didn’t know where Duncan was, and she didn’t care. That is, she didn’twantto care. That was why she had come to the east wing library to read when peaceful sleep proved to be a futile endeavor.
The way Duncan had looked at her in the village today…as if he saw her…as if she was important…as if she wasmeaningful…that was precisely how she’d wanted him to look at her for the past ten months! It was what she’d been waiting for. What she had quietly yearned for, night after lonely night. And just when she’d given up hope, just when she’d made up her mind to leave, he’d gone and looked at her as if she were the only woman in the world.
It wasn’t fair.
It wasn’tfair.
Now all of these unwanted feelings were struggling to rise to the surface, and she was beginning to doubt her decision to end their marriage. And wasn’t that pitiful? Sinking her teeth into her bottom lip, she blindly turned the page, the small text blurring as her eyes filled with tears of distress and self-loathing.
Duncan hadn’t told her that he loved her. He hadn’t gotten down on bended knee and begged for forgiveness as he’d done a hundred times over in her fantasies. He hadn’t promised to give up his mistress (as if she believed that he didn’t have one). No,allhe’d done was give her a short apology while using that throaty timbre that never failed to make her toes curl. And here she sat, miserably trying to find a reason to stay.
It was appalling.
Worse than that, it was pathetic.
After almost a year of being ignored and forgotten, was she truly going to melt at the first sliver of affection thrown her way?
A log shifted in the fire, shooting out a flurry of orange sparks. Closing her book with a quiet snap, Alexandria rose from the chair, the blanket she’d thrown over her legs pooling at her feet in a pile of tartan checkered wool. When she bent over to pick it up, the door creaked open. Clutching the blanket to her breasts, she whirled around, her eyes widening at the sight of Duncan looming in the doorway.
“I–I thought you’d gone to bed,” she said, bare toes sinking into the plush carpet as she unconsciously took a step back, retreating into the glow of the hearth while her husband kept to the shadows.
“I had.” He raked a hand through his hair, pushing the inky curls off his temple. Instead of a nightdress, he wore beige trousers and loosely fitted shirt that was hung open almost to his navel, showing a tantalizing peek of bronzed skin stretched taut over hard muscle. A rough layer of bristle covered the lower half of his face, something she hadn’t seen since they’d last been intimate as his valet took care to shave his chin clean each morning. Firelight gleamed in his gaze, illuminating a feral hunger that robbed Alexandria of her breath. “But I found myself unable to sleep.”
He took a step towards her.
