The Earl in My Bed: A Forgotten Princesses Valentine Novella Read Free

toward the boy she had loved all her life. The boy she had imagined she would marry someday. For no one had ever understood and accepted her the way Owen had . . . a girl more comfortable running barefoot on the hills. It seemed only natural that they should always be together. Natural to her and everyone else.
    Instead, she asked, “Does he receive my letters?”
    Jamie stared at her, his gaze penetrating. “Yes.”
    Hurt flashed through her. And he never wrote . No matter the doubts she harbored for their future—if they should actually marry each other—she still cared for him. He could have penned at least one letter. “All of them?”
    “Well, I cannot know how many you wrote, can I?” he countered.
    She felt herself flush. “No. Of course not.” He continued to stare at her, waiting, but she did not care to elaborate and admit she wrote him every week. Sometimes more. At least in the beginning.
    Of late she had not mailed half the missives she penned . . . hating to think they went unread. She wrote them and locked them in her desk.
    And there was something she could barely admit to herself. She was afraid that if she did mail them, they might reach Owen. He would read her words and sense that she wasn’t the same girl he’d left behind. Perhaps, in the scrawl of her script, in the words spoken and unspoken, he would hear that she wasn’t certain they were quite so perfect for each other anymore. That what they once had was nothing more than the fancy of childhood. Perhaps he would detect her hope that he had forgotten his commitment and devotion to her.
    “He wrote in the beginning.” She moistened her lips. “Has something happened to make him stop?”
    “Yes.” He paused, frowning at her, looking at her as though she was dim-witted. “War happened.”
    She nodded, staring down at her hands, feeling wretched. “Of course. I should have realized.”
    As if he possessed insight into her thoughts, the earl stepped closer, murmuring softly, “He has not forgotten you.”
    She drew a quick, hissing breath. The words fell heavily upon her, a burden she did not wish to bear. Doubtlessly, the earl thought he was offering her solace. On the contrary. It felt as though a noose had just tightened about her neck.
    “That is . . .” She groped for the right word. “That is good to hear.”
    “I’m sure your eventual reunion will be most happy.” With a wince, he lifted a hand to his cheek. “No doubt different from our own.”
    Familiar heat crept up her neck to her cheeks. Suddenly an apology was not too difficult to perform. “That was not well done of me.”
    He inclined his head. “I offended.”
    He was apologizing? She angled her head to the side, studying him, quite certain the Jamie of old had never apologized for anything. Especially not to the likes of her.
    They remained where they were, a respectable distance between them in the vast space of the outdoors, yet an air of intimacy cloaked the exchange. Her fingers tapped nervously at her side. The wind lifted loose tendrils of hair and whipped them across her face, reminded her how unkempt she must appear. She gathered them with one hand and tucked the pale strands behind her ear.
    Her pulse stuttered anxiously in her neck. “I hope you’re acclimating well to home, Lord Winningham.”
    “As well as can be expected when I’m to fill the shoes of a much grieved brother. All while I’ve left the other one to risk his neck on a battlefield a world away. I feel a villain in a very bad drama.”
    She blinked. “You do not mince speech.”
    He lifted one shoulder. “To what point? I can see in your eyes what so many others already think.”
    She squared her shoulders. “And what is that?”
    He stepped closer. She held her ground.
    His gaze flicked over her, just a quick, cursory examination before settling back on her face. He peered into her eyes as if confirming for himself that the nameless sentiment to which he referred was there.