Page 107 of A Lady of Means
He shook his head.“I can’t.”
A single tear.“Lie.”
She felt the great, bracing breath he dragged in.Hated it.Hated herself.
“I can’t,” he repeated.
“My lady, we really must make haste if we are to make that luncheon.And someone might spot the carriage if it sits too long at the Clairville mews.”
She took his swarthy, beautiful face in her hands.“I wasn’t good enough, or strong enough, or brave enough for you.But as God as my witness, I have loved you.It will never be enough.But I will keep on loving you.I promise you that.You are all there is for me too.”
There was no Ella and there was no empty caretaker’s cottage, and there was no luncheon or ladies to reign over for a moment.It stretched out and onto the shortest forever while he kissed her, forcefully and determinedly.If her last supper were Devyn’s lips and sighs and the press of his body, she was Judas.This was the betraying kiss.She was a traitor and a sinner of the highest order and yet as her tongue clashed against his, she knew nothing would ever feel like this.
She was still holding him by the front of his shirt when he pulled away.He took one small hand in his dwarfing grasp, kissed it, and put it in Ella’s.Ella’s other hand came about her waist, and pulled her toward the door, but her eyes stayed on Devyn.She watched the bob of his Adam’s Apple as he watched her leave.When she stepped over the threshold, he called her name, the sweetest sound in her world.
“Give ‘em, hell, Moria.”
ChapterForty-Three
“Areyou sure this is it, Dev?”Calum asked, eyeing the stylish townhouse they’d been knocking on for two minutes.It was the only question his friend had asked, not the elephant in the room of why Pembooke didn’t retrieve it himself, why Devyn was still retrieving it when she hadn’t chosen him.
“It’s the address her brother and Miss Kelley sent me.”
The door opened with an aging butler on the other side.“Gentlemen, do you have an appointment?”
“Miss Herring, does she live at this address?”
“Who’s asking?”said a masculine voice from the foyer.
“Captain Calum Sterling,” Calum answered.
“How do you know my daughter?”
“She’s acquainted with my fiancé,” Calum answered again.
“Katie!”The graying man bellowed, motioning for the two men to step inside.“You can wait in the parlor.”The man led them to a room literally filled to bursting with books.There was barely room on the furniture, as it was also covered in books.A few moments passed in awkward silence and a redhead young woman appeared.Devyn recognized her from the opera, the Duke’s box.
“The Pages, where are they?”Devyn demanded as soon as she entered.
Miss Herring shook her head, straightening her shoulders.“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Devyn wasn’t a man who’d hurt a female, so instead, he grasped her father by his lapels.The man dangled above the upholstered chair he’d been sitting in.His fleshy face started to take on a purple hue, Devyn cinched his grasp.“Your daughter is a snake, just like her father.And I’ll wager what she did with that book, it was at your behest, wasn’t it?You thought she could use it to ruin her and steal the Duke.”
The man’s eyes bulged, looking at his wife standing in the doorway.“Hector, you didn’t,” the woman breathed.
“A lesson, if I may,” Devyn said, moving his face closer to the other man’s.“Reverendsaren’tsupposed to hand over their subjects to traders.And fathers are supposed toprotecttheir children,” he looked to Kate, “Not whore them out or ask them to betray their friends.”
“She was no friend to me,” Kate spat the words.Calum shook his head and grimaced.
Devyn tightened his hold on the man’s smoking jacket.“Say that again, I dare you.”
Kate rushed, “I’m sorry, I’ll go and get the book, justpleaseput him down.His lungs are still weak from travel.”
Devyn released the man with a shove into the chair.“She’s better than you deserve.”
When Miss Herring returned, he snatched the pink and black book from her hands.
“Andyou’rebetter than she deserves,” Kate said as she slammed the door in his face.
