In Your Arms Again Read Online Free PDF Page B

is sending them. I am concerned about Octavia’s safety.”
    I’d be more concerned about who was in her bed. That wasn’t fair. Just because Vie was receiving love letters, didn’t mean she actually had a lover. And as the man who had originally relieved her of her virginity, it wasn’t his place to cast stones. This man didn’t write like someone who knew her intimately—good thing, or North might actually be tempted to hunt the blighter down.
    Quickly, he scanned the rest of the letters the earl offered him. As Spinton had said, they were all in the same vein. Nothing threatening, unless unfettered romanticism had become more dangerous than irritating.
    He gave the letters back to Spinton. “I cannot help you, my lord.”
    Spinton blinked. “Whyever not?”
    North regarded him for a moment. “Does Lady Octavia know you brought these to me?” As soon as he asked, he knew the answer.
    “No.” If Spinton got any redder, he’d look like a pomegranate. “As I told you, she does not believe there is any danger.”
    North smiled—a real one this time. No, Octavia wouldn’t be threatened by mere words on paper. “You are a good man to be so…concerned, my lord. Your protective nature does much to recommend you, but if Lady Octavia is not concerned, I do not think you need be either.”
    The fair lord nodded, tucking the letters back inside his coat pocket. “I must seem foolish to you.”
    “Not at all.” That was true, North realized as he rose to his feet. He seemed like a man very concerned about the woman he was going to marry. There was nothing foolish about that.
    Spinton stood as well. “Have you ever been in love, Mr. Sheffield?”
    North swallowed the lump in his throat. “Once.”
    “I do not know if you have ever met Lady Octavia, but she is the kind of lady—a rare and wonderful lady—that most men would count themselves lucky to possess.”
    Damnation, but he didn’t have to tell North that. North had possessed her, for one brief and faraway night.
    “You are a very fortunate man, my lord.”
    The earl left then, but not until he’d made North promise to reconsider taking the case should it take a more sinister turn. There was very little chance of that happening, so North consented.
    “So you believe eventually these letters will stop?” Spinton asked, his hand on the door. “That this admirer of Lady Octavia’s will move on and find someone else to pine for?”
    Smiling, North nodded. He didn’t bother to tell Spinton not to hold his breath waiting for that to happen.
    He knew all too well how difficult it was to get over Octavia.
     
    Evening cast a dark and moody gloom over the city as Octavia sat in her drawing room, sipping a glass of sherry. Spinton was going to be taking her and her cousin Beatrice to the social club Eden for dinner and socialization, but he had yet to arrive, and Beatrice was still above stairs. This was one of those rare moments of silence Octavia treasured above all else.
    Growing up in the theater had accustomed her to noise of various natures and degrees, but there was nothing more soothing than the sound of silence so pure one could listen to the rhythm of one’s own breathing. Of course, silence could be torture at times, as well. There were days—although few and far between—when she missed the excitement. Most of all, she missed sharing that commotion with North—or at least, she did now that she had seen him two nights before.
    She sat alone, in the center of the salmon pink sofa, her wine silk skirts carefully arranged around her, a keepsake book balanced on her lap. Pasted onto the pages were letters, newspaper clippings…anything that marked some important moment in her life. Her grandfather hadn’t known about her book. He wouldn’t have liked her keeping it. There were notices about her mother, letters from Beatrice or other friends, but the newspaper clippings were about North and his daring adventures as a Bow Street Runner, and then