The Regency Season Collection: Part Two. Кэрол Мортимер

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СКАЧАТЬ known this lay in wait for me there.’

      ‘As well for both of us you didn’t, then, because I had to learn to love before it could be like that. It never was so with anyone else,’ he promised with such earnest need for her to believe him in his eyes that she nodded to admit he was probably right.

      ‘I hate the fact that there ever was anyone else, Luke. I can’t help but begrudge this to every other woman who ever faced you in bed of a morning and rode herself to heaven on your lordship’s most potent weapon,’ she said with a wicked glance at his even now half-alert member that seemed to have a life of its own. He looked half-disgusted and half-resigned about it as he managed a sheepish smile for his new and very demanding wife.

      ‘It’s been more of a curse than a blessing to me until now,’ he confessed and how could she not love the sheer mannish appeal of him as he lay there all gruff and undefended?

      ‘Has it really?’ she said with a dubious gaze that somehow had to linger in fascination on the difference of him, the intriguing drama and details of his sex.

      ‘Yes, when I met and married Pamela need and fury drove me nearly as hard as it did her, we were noxious together, Chloe. Even you would not like the man we made of me between us back then. When she left I was more relieved than angry; she took the tortured need to satisfy her, to somehow please her when the only thing that truly delighted her was to have me force her in some way, and that went against all I wanted to be as her husband. I had a mistress after she went; I admit that to you frankly and can’t bring myself to be sorry for it. She showed me that a woman doesn’t have to be begged or coerced to let me into her bed, proved I was physically desirable in ways Pamela never tired of telling me I wasn’t.’

      ‘I swear I could tear the vicious little cat to shreds for hurting you so deeply, or at least I could if she was still alive.’

      ‘I doubt it; you don’t have enough malice in you to go about avenging yourself on my past lovers.’

      ‘If any of them ever tried to hurt you, your Eve or my Verity, you might find yourself mistaken in that very flattering opinion of my character, Lord Farenze.’

      ‘Maybe so, but luckily I’m not fool enough to look at another woman while I have a wife ready and willing to satisfy me quite royally in bed, and perhaps even out of it?’ he suggested with a hint of ever more wicked possibilities in his deliberately melodramatic leer.

      ‘Perhaps,’ she echoed, her wild Thessaly imagination feeding her reasons to look forward to exploring them very urgently some time soon.

      ‘What an idiot I was not to snap you up ten years ago,’ he murmured as he kissed her tenderly and settled her head against his shoulder, so he could try not to dwell on those tempting scenarios while she was still a very new bride.

      ‘What idiots we both were,’ she said dreamily as she lay back against his powerful torso and simply enjoyed the warmth and reality of him after so many long, long nights fooling herself she could live without him.

      ‘Hmm, and now we have a whole decade of loving to catch up on spread before us like a Lord Mayor’s Banquet,’ he murmured and it was a fit promise for the first part of Lady Virginia Winterley’s expected year of wonders.

      ‘Well, we won’t have time for lying in bed when we get to Caraway Court, it sounds as if there’s far too much to do for that,’ Chloe said, wondering if they should have aped his last bride trip and risked the Lakes in springtime, instead of her childhood home that he’d bought for her, despite its ramshackle state.

      No, she didn’t want any part of her marriage to echo Luke’s first one and shivered at the very thought. He mistook it for her being cold and cuddled the bedclothes even more securely round them, then held her close until she dismissed the idea as nonsense. She and Luke loved each other wildly and completely and his first wife had only ever loved herself. It was a truth Virginia had pointed out when Chloe was still pretending not to care one way or the other about the current Lord Farenze. Now something restless and uncertain in her settled as she realised she might be his second viscountess, but she was also his first love.

      ‘Think of the fun you’ll have getting the place back to how it was in your however many times grandparents’ time; it’s a housekeeper’s dream come true,’ he teased her.

      ‘Or her wildest nightmare,’ she replied as she contemplated the mammoth task of restoring her childhood home to anything like its former glory, after so many years of shocking neglect. ‘I hope you didn’t pay much for it. After what my brothers did to Daphne they don’t deserve a penny piece from either of us.’

      ‘Little enough, and it was worth it for their promise to take themselves off to the Continent with the proceeds and never come back. Crowdale House and the London properties will have to be sold to pay off their creditors, but this seemed a good way of getting them out of our lives with as little embarrassment to you and Revereux as could be managed.’

      ‘The Scottish estates will go as well, then,’ Chloe said with a suspicion that was poetic justice.

      ‘Revereux said he might bid for those.’

      ‘I hope not, my sister would rather see him happy than living in the past. She must have loved him very deeply to keep him a secret even from me. Verity is Daphne’s best memorial and Adam Revereux should be content with her.’

      ‘Aye, we husbands must all learn to be realists,’ he teased and Chloe decided she liked his diversionary tactics and snuggled back into his arms to dream of the future as the spring sun shone in and a symphony of birdsong sounded in the ancient gardens below their window.

      ‘Do you really not mind if I’m like Virginia and can’t give you a child, Luke?’ she asked, as the sounds of a new season and all the life and hope that came with it reminded her this was a time for new births as well as new beginnings.

      ‘I already have one and so do you. Any more will be a bonus. James can spawn a procession of young Winterleys in his image and I’m not sure if I pity the world or James most for that repellent notion.’

      ‘Wouldn’t that make you dislike him all the more?’

      ‘No, and I don’t dislike him. In a way I pity him for having to carry the weight of his mother’s frustrated hopes and dreams all these years.’

      ‘You’re a good man, Luke.’

      ‘No, I’m a lucky man, Chloe, and the fact I’ve finally realised it is Virginia’s finest legacy to me. Or should I count my wife as one of those as well?’

      ‘Willed to you as her last bequest? I’m not sure I like the sound of that.’

      ‘Not the fact of you, but the idea of you, perhaps? I think I learnt to hope the day I met your eyes across a cold expanse of January air and you couldn’t bring yourself to look away and pretend I wasn’t there for once. I was so sad and empty coming back to Farenze Lodge with Virginia dead and it seemed such a waste to know you so little and want you so badly. Oh, I haven’t the right words to say it, but that day I knew we would be different. That there was a chance for us, a future that might be opening up in front of us and it looked more wonderful than I dared to dream I deserved.’

      ‘I like your words, Luke. They’re so much better than your grim northern silences,’ she teased him a little, because it was tempting to give in to the tears stinging her eyes at the thought of him so lonely and grieving that day and this wasn’t СКАЧАТЬ