Edith Layton Read Online Free PDF

fallen asleep. She doubted it would be so easy for her. She climbed into her high bed and snuggled down into the feather tick, ignoring how cold the sheets were. Her body heat would warm them soon enough, and her thoughts were warm enough to raise her temperature tonight.
    Now that she was alone, she could think about their elegant visitor. Oh, but he’d been attractive! It had been a long time since she’d seen such a man. The intelligence in those long eyes. Tall and well made, wide shoulders and a neat leg. She did like to see a man with a fine pair of shoulders without a matching stomach or beam to balance them. She didn’t do more than look, but she tried not to stare. Not only because she was too well bred. Because she was sure he’d notice. He didn’t miss much.
    He was every inch the visitor, a traveler, a man not of this place and time, although from a world she’d once known. He’d been exciting precisely because he was so obviously transient, so impossible to ever really know. A dream man, in fact, here for an hour that had changed her whole day.
    He’d looked at her with pleasure, too. When he’d thought she’d been offered for sale to him he’d gazed at her with possessive delight, appraisal, and bold, appreciative lust. His eyes weighed her, found herdesirable, and promised wicked moments of shared carnal pleasures. He looked as though he could deliver every unspeakable thing he was thinking of. It had been shocking. It was delicious.
    Other men looked at her with lust, of course. There weren’t many eligible women here; she was a widow and only two and thirty, after all. But she seldom looked back at any of them with anything but regret, because they didn’t attract her. Or if they did, then she had to ignore them, because they didn’t attract her as prospective fathers for Jamie. She had learned good sense, and practiced rigid self-control.
    William was well enough in looks, fairly well educated, and growing plumper in the pocket. He was decent, respectable, and Jamie could tolerate him. William looked at her possessively these days, too, and with lust, though veiled. She didn’t mind. Until tonight. One glance from the English gentleman had set her body tingling as all these months of seeing William had never done. Still, William’s attentions made her feel like a desirable woman again and had nearly made her consider taking the name and protection he kept offering. So tempting to be loved again. So inviting to allow herself to think of marriage. And so foolish. Because with the name and the protection came loss of freedom. She could live with that, she had before. But she had Jamie to think about. She owed him more.
    His charming, reckless father had given him life and a heritage, and little else. Dashing, so handsome in his uniform, he’d swept what he claimed was theprettiest girl in the district off her feet, and then off to the new world. He gave up his commission in the navy soon after they married, telling her he could only make their fortune that way.
    “A fortune? I don’t need one!” she’d protested with perfect honesty. “It was the uniform I married,” she teased. “I don’t know if I’ll stay with you if you take it off.”
    “Oh, really?” he’d laughed. “Shall we see?” he asked, stripping off his jacket and bearing her back on the bed for those all too brief, breathtakingly intimate moments they shared.
    She told him a fortune wasn’t necessary for her. She hadn’t known it wasn’t for her. But then, she hadn’t known him very well, after all. Even now, she didn’t miss Francis so much as the memory of the laughter and excitement they’d shared. In truth, she didn’t know much more of him than that. They’d had that little time together. How could she have known how he burned to show his brother he could surpass him? The naval career, the lovely young wife, the quest for a fortune, it was all to show his family what a second son could do.
    He couldn’t