Filed To Story: Alessia Mistaken as Mistress Book PDF Free
“Aren’t you going to-?”
“No,” he said, and it was the hardest decision he’d ever made.
“But-but…” Clearly, she didn’t know what to say or think.
“You’ve just had a baby, Claire.”
At that she tensed. “It’s been months,” she replied.
“But you don’t need to have another one,” he argued logically.
She had no reply for that. She pulled away slightly, her passion-bright gaze taking in his still fully clothed body. Crimson stained her cheeks in the firelight. Lord, she was beautiful.
“It’s perfectly all right, Claire.”
Her blue eyes seemed to turn more gray. “It doesn’t feel all right.”
He reached for her face, but she turned it aside so he couldn’t kiss her. He wanted to kiss her. More than he wanted to bury himself in her and slake his desire for her, he wanted to kiss her. Reassure her. What had come over him to even care what she thought or felt? He could have had her. Right then and there, and it would have been better than anything he’d ever known.
He still could. If he spoke to her now, reassured her, stroked her silken limbs and kissed her, he could still have her.
But he wouldn’t. He was too ashamed of himself. Merely pumping his seed into her for the sake of proving that he could was not the conquest he’d imagined it would be.
He’d proved nothing.
Except that he was incorrigible.
And that she was vulnerable.
And that he wanted her like nothing he’d ever known or needed in his life.
He deserved to lie awake all night. He deserved the sick, gut-punched feeling that gripped him where it hurt, and twisted.
Whether that was Stephen’s baby over there or not, this was Stephen’s wife, and he was a no-good son of a bitch for seducing her. Wanting her was bad enough. Following through was worse.
Mixed with his desire for her came the overpowering sense of abasement. No matter what her purpose, he still had his honor.
He calmed her with gentle strokes along her hip and her bare arm. He gently threaded her hair from her face and kissed her temple, all the while holding her, relishing the hard crush of her breasts and the delicate wisp of her breath against his neck.
He became aware of her hand against his shirtfront, urging him back. He loosened his hold, and she pulled away, hurrying to turn her back and pull on the white cotton chemise she found crumpled on the floor.
Her great skein of multitoned tresses bunched beneath the fabric, and when he reached to assist her, she pushed off his hands and stepped away, grabbing for her discarded black dress.
“Claire…?” he questioned softly.
Her chin came up at that, and she looked him in the eye. Tears glistened on her golden lashes. Shame shone clearly on her delicate features. “Please don’t say anything,” she pleaded, her blue eyes more eloquent than her words. “Just let me go to my room.”
He didn’t know what he would have said. That he was sorry? He wasn’t. Oh, he shouldn’t have planned to seduce her, certainly, but would he take back what had happened? Did he wish he didn’t know how her skin felt or how her mouth tasted or the smothered sounds of desire she made when he touched her?
Humiliation burned in the depths of her hurt gaze. He was not sorry he’d aroused her and pleasured her. He was only sorry she’d belonged to Stephen first, and that he had no right to be lusting after her now.
In obedient silence, he took a step back, watched her gather her corset and petticoats and her sleeping son and flee from his study as though demons pursued her.
Nicholas stared at the scattering of hairpins around the foot of the cradle. He picked them up and closed his fingers over them. No, he wasn’t sorry for what had happened.
He only regretted he’d ever heard of Claire Patrick Halliday in the first place.
Alessia had begun to wonder what it would be like to fall asleep without fears or worries or regrets plaguing her long into the night. It had been a year since she’d slept the peaceful sleep of a young woman without taxing concerns.
And all because of her rebellious nature, and her dubious character. It wouldn’t have killed her to marry one of those promising young men her father had paraded before her. Perhaps accepting secret invitations from Gaylen had simply been a means to strike back at a demanding father who never had time for her, but imperiously ordered her life about.
It was all well and good to look back now and say she’d been rash and foolish, but perhaps the truth was that she’d chosen Gaylen because he wouldn’t really care for her, just as her father had never cared for her, and just as Nicholas Halliday didn’t care for her. What was it about her that sought the affections of men who could not respond in kind-men who didn’t even like her? Whatever dark need inside, whatever warped characteristic, it sickened her.
She hadn’t been able to place William in his bed. She’d kept him beside her where she could see his slight form in the low-burning firelight, smell his baby-sweet fragrance and touch him each time the hurt washed over her anew.
She had William. William. He was hers and hers alone. No one could take him from her or come between them. No matter what else befell her in this lifetime, she had her son.
Tears trickled across her temple and into her hair, and an ache like the ponderous encumbrance of a boulder sat upon her chest. She was not the best mother a son could have had. She had to admit that. But she loved him fiercely, and she would do her best for him. She’d made another big mistake tonight. She’d endangered William’s welfare.
If Nicholas had not stopped short of fulfilling the act they’d begun, she could have found herself expecting a second child! Did she never learn? She hadn’t been able to provide for one child, let alone two!
She had no illusions about Nicholas Halliday. He might desire her as Gaylen had desired her, but he was every bit as eager to rid himself of her. The longer she stayed, the harder it would be to leave. There could never be anything between them. Her deceit had seen to that.
The muted sound of glass shattering in the hallway drew her upright. She dried her eyes with the bedsheet and tiptoed to the door. Moonlight flooding through a floor-to-ceiling window on the landing revealed a hunched form sitting at the top of the stairs. Alessia hurried forward.
Pain pierced the bottom of her foot. She stifled a cry and limped the rest of the way to where Celia sat on the top step. “What are you doing? Do you know what time it is?”
The woman bobbed her mane of wild hair and swiveled toward her, and Alessia regretted her words. She’d learned Celia had no sense of time. When she woke, she drank. When she was drunk enough, she slept.
“I was hungry.” Her thick voice betrayed the effects of the liquor, but she appeared coherent.
Alessia crouched down beside her. “One minute I have to threaten you to eat, the next you think you’re starving.”
Just then yellow light flickered across the walls, sending their shadows into deep relief across the wallpaper. Nicholas climbed the stairs in only a pair of trousers, carrying a lamp that reflected a dark puddle on the polished wood floor near the wall and shards of glass scattered to the middle of the wide hallway. He stood towering over them. “Who’s hurt?”
His immediate question caught Alessia by surprise until she saw the blood on the carpet runner. “Your carpet!” she said with dismay.
“The hell with the carpet,” he said with a churlish growl. “Which one of you is bleeding?”
Alessia cringed. “I’m afraid it’s me.”
“Show me,” he demanded.
She sat beside Celia and, holding her nightdress primly around her calf, raised her foot for his inspection.
Shirtless, his dark hair mussed, Nicholas lowered the lamp to the floor and raised Alessia’s foot. Celia’s glittery-eyed gaze traveled from Nicholas’s broad, golden shoulders to Alessia’s pale foot and up to her face. A hint of acknowledgment flitted across her florid features.
Alessia swallowed hard and tried not to stare at the dark swirls of hair curling across his chest. She closed her eyes and tried not to remember seeing him stark naked in his bath or feeling the sensation of his aroused body pressed intimately against hers or the effect his hands and mouth had on her.
“Ouch!” she cried, her thoughts immediately jolted elsewhere.
“There’s a piece of glass in there,” he said. “Just a small one.”
Celia cast her an apologetic glance.
“Celia’s hungry,” Alessia explained. “She was going down to find something to eat.”
The woman nodded. “I didn’t have any dinner.”