Filed To Story: Alessia Mistaken as Mistress Book PDF Free
Those were not impressions one had of a brother. She hadn’t even experienced those self-torturing and humiliating thoughts about Gaylen, and he’d convinced her to forfeit her virginity to him! She would have married him!
That thought brought her up short. Had she loved him?
Perhaps his flight had been the best thing. One day she would have awakened to a miserable existence and realized she had never loved her husband. The fact that she’d never been as hurt by his rejection as her father’s should have told her that long ago.
Alessia sighed, thinking of the letters she’d hidden in the bureau. She would have to return them in the morning before she went to the station to meet her fate at the hands of Mrs. Patrick.
Claire had been a lovely and generous person. She prayed that her mother was the same…and that Alessia would be able to help her deal with the news of her daughter’s death.
Alessia had always considered herself an honest, compassionate person. The fact that she was playing havoc with these people’s lives did not rest well with her. It was no surprise she spent another sleepless night.
Confident that she knew his daily habits, that she knew the servants’ schedule, and familiar with the routine, Alessia hurried to Nicholas’s room the following morning. The letters had provided a slim amount of information, and more details would have been appreciated.
This was the last time she would invade his quarters and his private possessions. Nicholas deserved her respect, yet she’d been nothing but dishonest and devious with him. Going through his room had been an added invasion, and she couldn’t deal with the shame.
Alessia crossed the space, slid open the desk drawer and lowered the envelopes.
“Exactly what is it-“
A startled shriek escaped her.
“You think-” at her scream, he too jumped “-you’re doing?”
Alessia placed her palm over her racing heart. She stared at Nicholas, drawing a blank.
Dressed in only a pair of black trousers, he strode to where she stood frozen. Unaccountably, her gaze fell to the thick black hair that curled on his broad muscled chest and arrowed into his waistband. The tawny, smooth expanse of his shoulders invited her gaze, and when he placed both hands on his hips, the movement accentuated the muscles of his upper arms and the corded strength in his forearms and wrists.
He leaned forward and her heart stopped.
Nicholas lowered his hand and grasped her wrist. Raising it, he brought the stack of letters firmly held in her paralyzed grasp to an inch below her nose. “What are you doing in here, and what are you doing in my things?”
The musky scent of his skin, combined with the spicy smell of shaving soap, teased her senses. Her shame and embarrassment at being caught blended with the sight and the smell of him to blur all other impressions and emotions.
His tobacco-dark gaze bored into hers, ire flaring in its depths. His grip on her wrist was just short of painful.
“There’s nothing of any value in my writing desk, Claire. Except a mother-of-pearl-inlaid letter opener, but it’s initialed. You might have trouble selling it around here.”
Those words provoked her own anger and freed her tongue. “I’m not a thief,” she objected firmly.
“Oh, really? Why else does one sneak about another’s chamber when they believe the occupant is gone?”
“I was not stealing anything,” she said, knowing she was in the wrong and swiftly losing courage. “I was replacing something.”
“Replacing?” He frowned and pointedly slid a glance to the stack of letters in the hand he held prisoner. He knew immediately what she held, and his gaze came back to interrogate hers.
The pulse in Alessia’s wrist throbbed beneath Nicholas’s fingers. Her blue-eyed expression held a staggering amount of fear. What did she think he would do to her?
She moistened her full lower lip nervously with the tip of her tongue, leaving the pink flesh glistening. A faint trembling in her body registered at the point where he held her securely.
Stephen’s letters? She’d taken Stephen’s letters and was replacing them? Why? “What had you hoped to find?” he asked.
She shook her head uncertainly.
“Did you find what you were looking for?”
Again she shook her head. Her gaze fell uncomfortably to his chest and skittered away to a point over his shoulder. Nicholas found it difficult to believe she was embarrassed by his state of partial undress, but the color in her cheeks proved it.
Her perfect peaches-and-cream skin amazed him still, as it had from the first time he’d studied her in the carriage on the way home. The clean, devastating scent of her hair reached his nostrils and drew his gaze to the riot of soft corkscrew curls framing her face and lying against her neck.
Everything about her was soft and feminine, from her upswept pale hair and the gray-tinged shade of blue in her eyes, to the way her clothing draped her lush body. The ever-present black of mourning lent her skin and hair a pale vulnerability that drew him like a fat bee to a particularly succulent clover.
He imagined her in something white or pastel, in delicate fabrics and loose-fitting styles.
She would fold against and wrap around a man like a billowy piece of heaven. The erotic thought quickened his traitorous body.
Almost as though she knew what he was thinking, her pulse tripped faster beneath his grasp. Her eyes widened and her lips parted.
“Why did you come in here?” he asked gruffly.
She blinked. “To return the letters.”
“Why did you take them?”
“I wanted to read them.”
“And how did you know where to find them?”
“It-it was only logical,” she stammered.
Had she come in search of letters or had she been rifling his room? Was she afraid Stephen had written about something she didn’t want revealed? “And what did you hope to find in them?” he asked.
“I didn’t know.” Her voice had dropped to a near whisper.
“What did you find?”
“His enthusiasm,” she replied, her voice unsteady. “His lack of regard for anything except his plays and his travel.”
He eyed her suspiciously. “Until he met you, of course.”
She carefully dropped her gaze to the desktop. “Of course.”
In his preoccupation, had Stephen excluded Claire as well? Nicholas wondered. He found that difficult to believe. Their marriage had been the subject of his brother’s last two letters, taking precedence even above his beloved plays.
Was it possible that Claire had learned Stephen’s carefree nature the hard way? Once again Nicholas wondered if Stephen had been bringing her home because he was ready to settle down. Had this been a convenient layover until the baby came, or had he planned to leave her in Nicholas’s care indefinitely?
The susceptible flesh of her slender neck drew him forward. A delicate pulse throbbed beneath the fragile surface. She’d been married to his brother but a few weeks, had slept with him before that. Stephen had found her alluringly beautiful and seductively desirable, just as Nicholas himself did.
But Stephen had never committed wholeheartedly to anything or anyone, and as much as Stephen might have desired her, might have loved her, he could never have given her the commitment and stability that Nicholas would have if-
If she were his…
The tiny lines at the corner of her too accessible mouth had him imagining a smile on those lips. Had Stephen made her smile?
He relaxed his hold on her wrist, and the letters scattered across the top of the desk. She didn’t lift her gaze, nor did she step away.
“When a woman comes to a man’s room, she’s looking for something more than a few letters.” Impulsively, he leaned into the beckoning hollow in the curve of her neck, placed his lips and nose against her skin and inhaled.
Sensation zigzagged through his body, tightening his loins, loosening his grasp on coherent thought. Lord, she smelled wonderful: fresh and slightly flowery, and something more. Something elemental and powerful and wholesome.