Romancing the Countess Read Online Free PDF

examined.
    Tomorrow. She would know tomorrow if she was with child. If all those nights of waiting for Ian to come to her bed, of enduring his patient, thorough lovemaking, had been enough.
    “An heir,” Adelaide breathed.
    A baby , Leah silently corrected. Her child, to love and adore.
    “But this is an even greater reason why you must return home with us,” her mother continued. “You cannot think to live alone. You are far too young, and vulnerable. Ian protected and took care of you when he was alive. And of course you loved him, darling, but he’s gone now. You must come with us. Without a husband, you—”
    “Stop.” Leah’s shoulders trembled, her hand curling at her waist. Her fingertips dug deep, crushing the gown and marking her palm with little indents of pain.
    Adelaide paused, her lips still parted. Then her features drew taut, pinching until every wrinkle she worked so hard to erase ruched like lines of enemy soldiers at the corners of her eyes and mouth. “Leah, dearest—”
    “No.” The syllable came out shaken, quiet, and Leah hated that she was still trying to please her mother, to be the demure and dignified little mouse. “I don’t need a husband,” she continued, stronger now. “In fact, I think I will do quite well without one. And I’m sorry, but I also don’t need my mother to tell me each step to make, to tell me if I should eat, or sleep, or what clothes I should wear!” The last word hovered in the air with a shrill defiance, the echo of her anger loud and insolent.
    Adelaide glared at her; Beatrice’s eyes had gone impossibly wide. Leah felt a thrill of satisfaction even as her head throbbed, the pins from the widow’s cap stabbing into her scalp. She met Adelaide’s gaze. Her voice was calm and steady when she spoke again, her conviction replacing any need to raise her voice. “I may have only twenty years, but I am not a child. I’m not an innocent. I’m a widow, Mother, and if being married has taught me nothing else, I’ve learned that I’m fully capable of managing my own life.”
    Leah waited, the quiet into which her breath rushed nearly tomblike. Adelaide’s face resumed its expression of serenity. Slowly, she placed her cup and saucer down and rose to her feet. “Come along, Beatrice. Your father will be wondering why we’ve been absent for so long.”
    She turned toward the door, her spine the same rigid perfection Leah had achieved years ago. Beatrice obeyed at once.
    Leah firmed her jaw and stared across the room. Minutes elapsed as she listened to their footsteps receding to the front hall below, more as she waited for the sound of movement from the coach outside.
    She was fairly certain her mother expected her to run after them, to make an apology and beg for forgiveness.
    The horses began their steady clop along the cobblestoned street. Heedless of the pins secured in her hair, Leah wrenched the widow’s cap from her head.
    She’d spent nearly two years as the dutiful, obedient wife, even after learning of Ian’s unfaithfulness. It was time to cease playing the dutiful, obedient daughter as well.
     
    The next day, Viscount Rennell’s physician gave her the news: There was no baby. She wasn’t with child.
    For more than a week afterward, Leah had no difficulty acting the grieving widow.
     
    Sebastian knocked and took a step back. It felt strange to visit the George residence, knowing that he would no longer find Ian inside. He also found it odd for Leah George to send a note requesting to see him, but still he’d come, desperate to leave his own house.
    Three months had passed since Angela’s death, and yet Henry continued to ask after her. Sebastian had left it to his son’s nurse to deal with the news of Angela’s death as she saw fit, but Henry didn’t seem to understand. He had hoped a boy of eighteen months would have forgotten by now, but on the occasions when Sebastian entered the nursery, Henry always straightened from his toys and