Page 3 of Obsession: The Unspoken Sin
He hurried to reassure Exmoor. “I will go today.Immediately. I’ll bring her home. I’ll convince her to return.” And if that didn’t work, he’d throw the minx over his shoulder and haul her off. “You needn’t say anything more.”
Instead of relief, Exmoor’s features grew more strained. “It won’t be that easy.”
Knowing Alice—and know her he did, it certainly wouldn’t.
“She’ll require cajoling and convincing, Denbigh. She won’t be ordered about.”
A long-ago memory slid in; of Denbigh and Alice. One of his mousers had eight kittens. She’d insisted Denbigh not separate the mama from her babes and that he instead make them all pets. He’d laughed and declared he’d do so under no such circumstances.
More than a decade later, he still had all eight of those now-cats, who to this date enjoyed free roam of his country house in Somerset.
Denbigh found his first spot of amusement. “Yes. I’m very familiar with the lady’s stubborn ways,” he said, wistful over his recollection. “I know a thing or two about charming women. Even with your sister, Ishouldhavesomesuccess.”
His good humor instantly fled.
“…Laurence,” Alice gripped him by his lapels, and lifted pleading eyes to his. “I do not need a Season. I know who I want to marry. I know who I love. It is y—”
Denbigh swiftly closed the door on that always raw memory. He’d been such a fool…
He grunted. “I’ll convince Alice to return, Exmoor. She’ll be home before the night is through.” Guilt stabbed at his conscience. What if she still believed herself in love with him? What if…?
He swiftly thrust aside that irrational fear.
“She is no longer a girl, Denbigh.” Exmoor tortured him with a reminder Denbigh far from needed. Far from it. “She is a grown woman. If you believed her spirited then can you begin to fathom how she’s changed living at a naughty gaming hall? She is…”
As his friend went on to unknowingly torment Denbigh with all the ways Alice had likely been transformed, a long-buried, but still familiar secret came to life.
He yearned for his best friend’s sister. It’d been a discovery made too late. Whereas Exmoor had followed a straight and narrow path his entire life, Denbigh, during university briefly travelled in his debauched father’s steps. From drink, to women, to wagering, he’d wanted a taste at what the appeal was for the late earl. Denbigh had convinced himself all men sowed their oats, but that hadn’t been true.
Exmoor hadn’t.
It mattered not that Denbigh had quickly gotten himself together. By then, the damage had been done.
When two or so years later he’d ‘jokingly’ put forward the idea of courting Alice, Exmoor’s deadly serious response killedthatfleeting hope.
After she’d retired to the country, Denbigh convinced himself he’d torched his very own garden of Eden to the ground. Now as he listened to Alice’s brother speak, Denbigh’s hungering for the lady sprung from fertile ashes.
His was a sin far greater than the original one committed by Adam and Eve.
“I will be forever grateful, Denbigh,” Exmoor was saying, pulling Denbigh back to the moment and further twisting that blade of guilt. “There is no friend more loyal and honorable than you.”
The gentleman wouldn’t feel that way if he knew the thoughts filling my head…
Denbigh needed to put an immediate end to the undeserved praise being heaped on him. “Worry not. Yours is an easy ask and an even easier task.”
As obstinate as Alice was, he’d also managed to bring her around, more often than not.
Unlike before, relief had entered the other man’s tortured eyes, but so did a strong dose of skepticism.
Exmoor needn’t be skeptical. Denbigh was beyond certain. He’d have her ready to return home within an hour of their reunion.
And God help him when they were again living in the same world.
Chapter 2
Lady Alice Masterson stared at the partially filled canvas and evaluated the scene of Bacchus and Ariadne. The rendering, though incomplete at this moment, was a good one. Evocative. Colorful. Bacchus at the center, surrounded by a harem of nubile nude beauties, all vying for his attention and affection, and all bestowing their touch and their mouths on various parts of his broadly formed, muscular body.
It was the centerpiece of the main suites rented and inhabited by patrons of the Devil’s Den, who called this gaming establishment home. This was the hour when noblemen were all slumbering off their drunken revelry from the night and early morn before. There was no risk of discovery for her here. These quarters had been closed off and were being newly made over. It was safe. No one here would discover she was the respectable Marquess of Exmoor’s sister. Not that discovery was something she’d come to fear for herself.
