Cressida's Dilemma Read Online Free PDF

knowledge that he would have to resist his wife and keep his hands off her during her later months of breeding. For that was how it was, and not to be questioned.
    With each successive child, the passion between them was diluted as Cressida focused more on the infants than on him, as he supposed was to be expected. Some men would have sought pleasure elsewhere, still loyal to their roles as husbands and fathers but comfortably justifying their need for sexual diversion.
    Not Justin. He wanted no other woman, and besides, it would destroy Cressida if she ever learned of such an indiscretion.
    So when the young servant girl simpered at him with a far too knowing look as she asked him if there was anything else he required for his comfort, Justin was conscious of the smell of cheap perfume that wafted through from the other rooms of the house and more than a twinge of guilt at being here. Cressida’s sensibilities would be highly offended by even the existence of such a location. If she ever learned he was here, she was quite likely to jump to the worst conclusion.
    The young girl disappeared into the shadows after he’d told her he needed nothing else, and Justin removed his masquerade mask as the door opened.
    “It was good of you to come again, Justin. And at so late an hour.” His old friend’s smile was tired, with no trace of the radiance he remembered from days gone by. Even in the few weeks since he’d acceded to her extraordinary summons after so long an absence, she seemed to have faded.
    “Mariah.” He rose and clasped her hand in both of his, conscious as he’d never been before of the great weight of sadness she carried. And of what she’d once been to him. Mariah had altered greatly in the years since he’d first met her, but she was still a beauty. Now, though, she looked as if she carried the weight of the world on her shoulders.
    Mariah smiled wearily. “My boy got your message a short while ago, and the knowledge that you had discovered something was too much for me to wait until the morning. We both know it is never too late to pay a call to Mrs. Plumb’s establishment, but I was afraid that family considerations might prevent you from coming so soon.” There was a trace of bitterness in her wry smile as she offered him a seat beside her on the chaise longue with a languid wave of her graceful arm.
    He sat, reflecting that she was still striking for that regal grace of hers, which transcended the signs of aging. Only a few strands of gray peppered her almost blue-black hair, and her body was as ripe as he remembered it. But her heart had been broken, and the melancholy that had leeched her vibrancy tugged at his heartstrings.
    “You know I could never refuse you, Mariah,” he said, accepting a glass of brandy from the young servant who discreetly left them alone after plumping a few cushions and tending to the small fire.
    She gave a little laugh and reached over to pat his thigh. “I think you could,” she said, “if I were to overreach myself. Everyone tells me what a loyal and devoted husband and father you are these days.”
    Impulsively, he took her hand, surprising himself. She gripped it, and for a moment, he was afraid she wasn’t about to let it go. But she was too shrewd not to understand the delicate boundaries of their altered relationship, and she gave it an almost maternal pat before releasing it.
    “Devoted, my dear Mariah,” he corroborated in a murmur, his mind replaying the painful events of his parting the previous night with his beloved and increasingly distant wife.
    Whatever happened, he’d always be devoted to Cressida. He’d come here, tempted to expand on what he’d only hinted at to Mariah. He needed the advice of a sensible woman, and there were few of those in his life, he reflected, thinking of his mother, who now lived with them, and of Cressida’s frightful cousin, Catherine. Perhaps Mariah, as a kind woman with considerable experience of life, could