For Your Arms Only by Linden, Caroline (best ebook reader for ubuntu .TXT) 📕

and wiser. Giving in to desire again would be unforgivable; hadn’t she already learned her lesson the hard way?

He took the glass and glanced away. Whatever he felt, whatever he desired from her, he kept caged within himself. She should learn from that example, Cressida told herself. She opened her mouth to excuse herself before hurrying back to bed.

“Sit.” He raised the glass to his mouth and drank as he swept one hand toward the other chair, on the other side of the little table.

It would be a mistake. She wanted to stay, and she knew it was because she wanted to see that look again, to see the heat of a man’s desire—of Alec’s desire—for her. It was easy to tell herself she was being foolish to think about him when he had never done more than look at her with unreadable calm, the way one might look at a hideous painting and try to think what to say to avoid hurting the painter’s feelings. But this look, the one she craved, held nothing of that. It coaxed forth that lonely ember of desire in her own breast, fed it and fueled it until she no longer wanted to put it out. And instead of saying good night and going back to bed, Cressida sat.

“He carved this in Spain?” She touched the small horse. For all that it was a rough carving, the vitality of the animal came through clearly. The mane blew on the wind, the ears were pricked up, and one foot was delicately poised in mid-step. And it was so small, just the size to fit in one’s hand. “It’s remarkable.”

“Yes. I sent it home to Julia, thinking she might like it. Will had no brothers or sisters, and by then his father had cut him off.”

She looked up in surprise. “His only son? Why?”

Alec stared at her long, slender fingers rubbing lightly along the arch of the horse’s neck. His skin prickled and tightened at the thought of those fingers running over him, curling around him, stroking, squeezing…He should not have invited her to sit, but the wine had dissolved his noble intentions even before she walked into the room, drifting like a ghostly temptress to stand in front of the window in her nightdress with her hair cascading down her back. Somehow it seemed significant that she had been restless, too, roaming the house on a night when he couldn’t sleep, either. Something about the way she angled her head as she gazed out the window made him think that she, too, longed to be out there, not trapped in the house, confined by her family’s expectations and needs. Something about her called out to him, and he couldn’t ignore it tonight.

“He didn’t approve of Will’s choice of wife,” he said, belatedly answering her question. “She was a Spanish girl of good family, sympathetic to our cause in Spain, but still not English. I expect Lacey thought Will would set her aside if he were harsh enough, come home and marry Darrowby’s eldest or some other girl from Hertfordshire. He waited years to have a son, and by the time Will came along, Lacey had his whole life planned for him. Unfortunately for him, his son was just as strong-willed as he was, and put up quite a fight.” It still made Alec angry to think of how Lacey tried to control Will. His friend’s back and legs had been scarred from Lacey’s discipline. He gulped the last of the wine in the glass and reached for the bottle.

“Good for him,” she murmured.

Alec paused. “To fight his father?”

She put up her chin. Even in the dim light he could see the glitter of her eyes. “For standing by his love. For honoring his promises to her.”

Therein lay a tale, Alec thought. The wine loosened his tongue before he could think better of it. “Someone broke your heart.” She quivered as if struck but gave him only an angry glare in response. His hand curled into a fist; someone had. But that was not his business. Alec eased his fingers open and held out the refilled wineglass, and she took it almost defiantly and drank.

“Marianne broke my heart,” he said, unconsciously reverting to his spy’s bag of tricks, telling his own story as a way to coax her into telling hers. Of course, this story happened to be true, unlike the lies he had spun as a spy. “I was madly in love and thought she was, too—until I came home from Spain and she told me she preferred a more stable sort of fellow. Like my brother, in fact, who proposed to her while I was gone.”

She gasped. Alec grimaced, even though all the bitterness had faded from the memory now. It was an old wound, long since healed. “Yes, my own brother courted the girl I wanted to marry. Unsporting thing to do to a brother, don’t you think? I damned well could have killed him for it, if only he’d had the courtesy to fight back. Frederick would just stand there and insist he loved her too much not to marry her, and then offer to step aside—as if she would have had me then, or I her.”

“Did you really love her?”

He sighed. “Yes, but not the way she wanted to be loved. It was a young man’s love, rash and reckless and unrestrained. And utterly unfounded in any mutual passion or sympathy of temperament, either. My father told me we would make each other miserable—which, naturally, only increased my determination to have her. I did so hate it when he was right and I was wrong. Marianne wanted poetry and delicacy, and she made a far better match with Frederick.” He shifted, settling more comfortably in the chair and at the same time giving himself a better view of her. “So in the end it was better that she threw me over, although it took me some time to admit that.”

She