Emily Baker Read Free

liaison.
    She should be flattered, but all she felt was dread.
    His gaze caught hers in the mirror, and she stopped her brushing.
    “Let me.” He stepped over to the dressing table and took the brush from her hand, laying his brocaded waistcoat and crumpled cravat next to her perfumes and powders. Gently, but firmly, he stroked the silver brush through her dark hair, keeping his gaze locked with hers in the mirror. The intimacy of the moment and the intensity of the look in his eyes hitched her breath despite her determination to remain indifferent to his appeal.
    “I meant what I said.” His serious tone belied the tousled carelessness of his sandy brown hair. “I do love you. Marry me.”
    He relinquished the hairbrush and slid his fingers into her hair, sculpting it back, tenderly tracing the curved rim of each ear before resting his hands on her shoulders. His hands looked dark against the ivory silk of her wrapper. The heat of his palms warmed her flesh while the fervor in his gaze chilled her.
    He meant every word. Every socially damning word.
    He might be young, but he was not so naïve as to be unaware his proposal pushed the boundaries required by their relationship, let alone the social reprisals he would subject himself to with such a choice. She couldn’t help wondering what might have happened had she been different. Freddie might be easily duped by a greedier woman than her.
    “Freddie—” She took up his cravat, stood, and turned to look at him.
    He put his finger on her lips to still her protest as he drew her to him. “I know you do not think I am sincere. Or that I know what I am saying. But I do, Maura.”
    His lips brushed hers in a kiss both tender and demanding. A shiver of uncertainty raced through her. It would take too little effort to let herself pretend to love him back, to believe he might be able to mantle her in the respectability she had lost years ago, to leave this part of her life behind and start fresh.
    But she knew better. The impossibility of that wish struck new pain nonetheless.
    “You are so beautiful.” Freddie’s breath fanned her cheek. His hands drew her closer still. “Come back to bed. Let me show you how much I can offer you. Let me spend the night and make love to you until tomorrow dawns and your doubts are nothing but yesterday’s shadows.”
    “Nonsense.” She forced a lightness to her tone she didn’t feel. “You have nothing to prove that you have not already shown me.”
    None of her lovers ever spent the night. Not the whole night. It was a small measure of control and distance she strove to maintain.
    She brushed her fingers over his cheek to take any sting out of her words, pushed back from the security of Freddie’s embrace, and flung the cravat about his collar. “You have always been generosity itself with both your attentions and your financial rewards.”
    He frowned, raising a dark brow at her bald statement regarding the true nature of their arrangement. She persisted nonplussed, smiling up at him as she tried to make light of the tension tightening his shoulders. “As for spending the night, did you not tell me you were escorting your mama and younger sisters to your grandfather’s estate in the morning?”
    “Damn tomorrow,” he offered with the enthusiasm of his youth. “I only wish to talk about us, about tonight. About what I have asked you. Let me stay.”
    She twisted his cravat into the waterfall arrangement he preferred. “Her Ladyship will not take kindly to any tardiness caused by your dawdling in bed with your mistress until all hours.”
    She looked up through her eyelashes and pulled her lips into a pout with just a hint of feigned regret. It was an expression that seldom failed to win her whatever she desired. “Could we not discuss this when you return to Dublin?”
    “Ever the practical one, eh?” He hesitated a moment longer, as if searching for the magic words to make her acquiesce to his demand. Then he pressed