Tempting a Devil Read Free Page A

begged, her tears falling freely now.
    “I have to, Harry,” he said simply. “There’s nothing here for me, you know that. You shall move on one day, too. Neither of us belongs here.” He took pity on her and stopped his horse again and she ran up to him, pressing her hands against the horse’s warm side, looking up at Roger beseechingly.
    “Then take me with you,” she begged.
    He leaned over and took her hand in his and, raising it to his lips, he kissed it as if she were a lady. “I wish I could, Harry,” he told her. She could see he meant it. “I fear what trouble will find you now that I am leaving. But you must find your destiny and I must find mine.” He dropped her hand and the horse pranced away from her. “Goodbye, Harry.” And with that final parting he spurred his horse into a gallop and raced off after his trunks.
    * * *
    Lady Harriet Mercer took an unsteady step back as she stared at a ghost from her past.
    “I …” She stumbled over what to say. How embarrassing. She’d formulated eloquent speeches over the years, with witty remarks that began with a casual, Oh, Roger. How very delightful to see you again . As time went by and his memory faded, those speeches began with a desperate, Save me . But instead all she could do now was just stare at him dumbly.
    He grinned at her. “I never thought I’d see you speechless. Have I changed so much, then? You certainly have. Fifteen years is a long time.”
    “I’m Lady Harriet Mercer, now,” Harry said, stalling for time as she regrouped. He was so clearly Roger. How had she not seen that, even in the dark of the clearing? His hair was just as black, his jaw just as stubborn, his lips just as full. Hadn’t she compared him to Adonis just a few minutes ago? And that was how he’d been as a youth, too. He was just so much more than he used to be. But truly it had been so long, he’d become nothing but a shadowy dream over the years. And she’d never imagined, not even in her wildest dreams, that she’d actually see him again.
    Roger looked nonplussed. “Mercer, not Stanley?”
    “Generally a young woman with no title and no money takes her husband’s name upon marriage.” Her bitterness was showing again. When Mercer died, she’d thought she was past that.
    “You’re married? And looking for an affair?” His tone was odd but held no censure, just curiosity.
    “I am a widow, a state I am very happy with and have no desire to change. Ever.” Harry barely suppressed a shudder. In this she could be completely honest with him.
    “Marriage was not to my liking.”
    “But you found the marriage bed so delightful, you are eager to share the same connubial bliss with a lover, hmm?” Roger asked sardonically.
    “Hardly,” she stated baldly, earning another shocked look from Roger. “I loathed my marriage bed, which is precisely why I am searching for a lover. I have never lain with a man of my own choosing. I am choosing to do so now.” A half-truth. She had hated conjugal relations with her elderly husband, which is why she would gladly choose to forgo relations with any man for the rest of her life. But necessity bred strange bedfellows, or whatever that particular axiom was. Her reasons were far more devious and mercenary than mere lustful intentions. But clearly lust was the way to Roger’s bed, and so she would use it. His identity didn’t change the fact that she needed a lover, and she’d rather enjoyed Roger’s advances for the most part. He most definitely hadn’t made her want to retch as Dumphrees had.
    Roger had moved farther away as they’d been talking, and she walked closer, not wanting to have this conversation on opposite sides of the clearing, but Roger kept pace with her, remaining on the other side of a little fountain between them.
    “You should choose more wisely than Dumphrees,” Roger suggested not unkindly. “He is more than likely ruining your name as we speak. It is true that widows have a bit more