LITMIR.BIZ

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how I feel. She had done this all wrong, she realised. She should have told him she loved him, told him she trusted him with Alice. She should have loved both of them enough to risk letting them go.

      And now she had to stay here, stay in this bed or this, this beautiful, stupid, wicked mistake, would have been in vain. She had chosen the wrong path, but now she had to follow it to its end.

      ‘Thank you,’ she murmured as Avery tossed aside cloth and towel. She reached out and touched his arm. ‘Come back to bed.’

      ‘You can hardly keep your eyes open,’ he said, his own heavy-lidded gaze resting on her face.

      ‘We can sleep a little and then later...’ Laura let her voice trail off as she held out her hands to him. She did not have to act. Avery smiled and slid down beside her, pulled the covers over them both and settled her against his side, her head on his shoulder. It felt so good to be held by a man again, to be held by this man. His skin was salty and musky with their lovemaking, warm and soft over hard-strapped muscle. She wriggled closer and tried to turn a deaf ear to her conscience. It is too late. Too late to go back, too late to say I love you. Too late for trust.

      Laura closed her eyes and finally slept.

      * * *

      They had woken twice during the night and reached for each other without words. Laura woke for the third time to the delicious drift of kisses across her stomach, then lower. Light was streaming through the open curtains, early morning light that showed her Avery’s broad shoulders and the top of his head as he eased himself between her wantonly spread thighs.

      ‘Avery?’ She had heard of this, but Piers had never touched her in that way. Avery silenced her with a kiss so deep, so intimate that her whole body arched off the bed. His hands held her ruthlessly while his lips and tongue and teeth destroyed every last inhibition she had. Her hands were fisted in the sheets, her breath was sobbing from her lungs and her voice was hoarse with pleading, but he was implacable. Laura convulsed, shaking and ecstatic, her blood thundering in her ears.

      Then Avery cursed savagely and she realised the noise was not her blood pounding, but knocking on the door and an agitated female voice. Avery threw a sheet over her and twisted one around his waist as the door she had persuaded him to leave unlocked flew open to reveal Lady Birtwell, Mab and the indistinct shapes of other figures in the corridor behind.

      Lady Birtwell slammed the door behind her, leaving everyone else outside. ‘Avery Falconer, how could you?’ she demanded, brandishing something at the bed, the evening slipper Laura had managed to drop from her foot the night before as Avery opened the bedchamber door. Her plan had worked and now she felt sick with nerves and self-reproach. Alice, think of Alice.

      ‘And Laura Campion, I am shocked and disappointed. Thank heavens your poor mother is not alive to hear of this. Well?’ She turned her furious gaze on her godson. ‘What have you to say for yourself?’

      ‘Who knows of this?’ he asked coolly. Laura, close to him, could see the tension in his jaw, the clenched fist on his thigh, but his voice betrayed nothing but bored enquiry.

      ‘Who knows? The entire dratted household, I should imagine!’ Lady Birtwell snapped. ‘Lady Amelia found the slipper when she was on her way to Miss Gladman’s room to borrow something and she brought it to me immediately, which was very proper of her, for, as she said, something must have happened to you if you were wandering about with only one shoe.’ She glared at them both. ‘Well, Falconer? What are you going to do about it?’

      ‘I can do little about the fact that Lady Amelia is a prurient little busybody,’ Avery drawled. ‘My immediate plans are to get dressed and have breakfast.’

      The infuriated dowager raised both hands heavenwards as if in supplication for more strength. ‘What are you going to do about Lady Laura?’

      Avery swivelled round to look at Laura, as unconcerned by his near-naked state as some pasha disturbed in his harem, she thought with unreasonable resentment. The irritation helped her meet his green eyes with some semblance of calm while she waited for the outburst. ‘Why, marry her, of course,’ Avery said calmly.

      ‘Thank merciful Providence for that.’ Lady Birtwell did not sound very thankful. She opened the door a crack, hissed an order and Mab sidled into the room. ‘Take your mistress in there.’ Lady Birtwell gestured towards the dressing room. ‘Get her clothed while I make sure no one else is still wandering about.’ She went out, closing the door behind her with a decided snap.

      Laura swathed the sheet around herself, slid off the bed without looking at Avery and hobbled painfully after Mab, who had been gathering up scattered garments. The maid closed the dressing-room door and leaned against it. ‘What were you thinking of?’ she demanded.

      ‘Getting Alice. It worked,’ Laura said, pulling on her petticoat. If she sounded confident and pleased, then perhaps she could convince everyone else that was how she felt. It was a pity she could not convince herself. For one night she had known how it felt to be loved by the man she was in love with. Now, although she would lie with him for the duration of their marriage she had forfeited the right ever to tell him how she felt, ever to expect his love in return. ‘Stop lecturing and fasten my corset.’

      ‘But the scandal!’ Mab jerked the strings tight and shook out the chemise.

      ‘Lady Birtwell will squash it and he will marry me. I will be Alice’s mama-in-law.’ She turned on her maid who was unrolling stockings. ‘What are you muttering about?’ she demanded and sat down to take the weight off her ankle. She must have twisted it again during the night for it was throbbing like the devil.

      ‘You are getting Alice, but you are also getting a husband who is going to hate you—and he didn’t care for you too much to start with!’ Mab knelt to roll on the stocking, tutting over Laura’s swollen ankle.

      ‘Avery will not show his feelings for Alice’s sake,’ Laura said, praying she was correct. ‘And I will make him a good wife.’ Somehow I must make amends.

      ‘He’ll not forgive you,’ Mab warned. ‘He’s a proud man used to having his own way, used to being in control. You’ve trapped him in a net of his own honour.’ She stood and began to stick pins into Laura’s tangled hair with emphatic force. ‘You’ve got a tiger by the tail, my girl. Let go and he’ll eat you alive.’

      * * *

      Avery waited until Laura had been bundled out of the room by her maid, waited until Darke put his head round the door and retreated, wary and silent, to fetch hot water, and then swore viciously and inventively until he ran out of words. When he looked down, the sheet between his hands was ripped across.

      Thank heavens he had not asked her to marry him before she had revealed her true nature, not let her glimpse the feelings he had not been able to acknowledge to himself until those moments when he had held her in his arms and thought he had read truth and pain and some stirring of emotion for him as a man.

      Now his questions had been answered. He could not trust her, she was as manipulative and deceitful as he had feared. She had told him yesterday evening as clearly as it was possible that the thing she wanted most in the word was the thing that had been stolen from her. Alice. Avery smiled, with a bitter kind of satisfaction. Laura thought she had trapped him, cock-led him into matrimony. All that had happened was that she had betrayed herself, armed him thoroughly against her future wiles. There was nothing she could negotiate with now and he had what he wanted, a mother for Alice whose devotion to the child was assured.

      Darke eased himself in from the dressing room and cleared his throat. ‘Your shaving water is ready, my lord. Will you require me to shave you this morning or...?’

      ‘I will shave myself.’ Avery looked down at his clenched hands. ‘No, you do it, Darke.’

      * * *

      Twenty minutes later he sat back in the chair, chin raised while Darke negotiated the tricky sweep around his Adam’s apple, and resumed the outward calm that had seen him through one duel and numerous diplomatic crises. Laura Campion

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