Page 20 of His Wicked Embrace
“She had a daughter?” Archie asked quietly. “We have aniece?”
“Yes. Zehra is twenty years old now. Lovely girl, according to the reports. Smart as a whip too. Southerby says she has her mother’s eyes.” George shook with grief. “And now she’s gone. Southerby is a good man, but I fear he will never be able to track her down, assuming she’s stillalive.”
Elizabeth’s hand flew to her mouth. “Oh God, oh, the poor dear. Is there really nothing to bedone?”
“We would do whatever we could to help, Father,” Archieadded.
George bowed his head. “If I could fly back on the wings of time to that night Joan said she had accepted Rafay’s proposal, I wouldn’t have pushed her away. Everything might have been different if I hadn’t let my damned pride get in theway.”
“We…” Elizabeth paused to collect herself. “We need to have a service for Joan, and her close friends must be told, the ones who stayed true to her after thescandal.”
“Quite, yes, quite right,” George murmured, but his mind was a thousand miles away and his heart beating back to the past, fighting hard to grasp onto golden memories, the ones of sunny days when his darling girl danced in the gardens, her little pinafore smudged with dirt and her voice as sweet as any songbird as she sang a lullaby about anightingale.
“Do you believe, Papa?” the childasked.
He took the small hand she held out and walked with her down the garden path. “Believewhat?”
Joan beamed up at him, her cunning mind mixed with an open heart. “That in every bit of the world, there is, in essence, a soul? And they fit together like a grandpuzzle.”
How could he not have adored such a child? And how could her growing up not break hisheart?
“My dear little girl…” He came back to himself, realizing Archie and Elizabeth had left him alone to his grief. He raised his hands to cover his face and wept bitterly. His pride and his mistakes had taken his child and grandchild from himforever.
* * *
“The red one.And the blue one, of course,” Lawrence said, his eyes sweeping over Zehra from head to foot. She curled her arms around her waist as she stood on the small dais in Madame Ella’s viewing area. Mirrors flanked her, and she caught glimpses of herself gazing back in wide-eyed wonder. The gowns were lovely—no, beyond lovely. They were extravagant in quality, yet not overdone in ornament andstyle.
Lawrence crossed his arms over his chest as he prowled in a small circle around Zehra. “What do you think, Madame Ella?” The modiste was tapping her chin with a finger, also studyingZehra.
“Any bold colors will do, my lord. Anything pale would not do justice to her coloring. And those eyes… You must buy sapphires. They will reflect the stunning shade quitewell.”
“Agreed. I’ll have three carriage dresses, four evening gowns, four day gowns, and several chemises and other underpinnings. Matching gloves, of course. We will stop at the milliner and shoe shopsnext.”
“Really, Lawrence, I cannot ask—” Zehrabegan.
“Don’t say another word, or I’ll double the order.” Lawrence winked at the modiste, who started tolaugh.
“We can have half the gowns ready in a few hours since we had some ready-made dresses on hand and the rest in a few days. You can take the nightclothes and the gown she’s wearing now if youlike.”
“Perfect.” Lawrence waited until Madame Ella had left them alone, and then he approached the dais. It put Zehra at an equal height to him, and she had to admit she rather liked looking at him eye to eye. Yet as he drew near, her stomach fluttered with freshnerves.
Had she been foolish kissing him earlier that day? She didn’t think so, but it had been wild, scandalous, and entirely inappropriate. Had she done that to anyone back home, her father would have fought the man for her honor, and if he had survived, her father would have forced him to marryher.
She blushed, thinking about marrying Lawrence. She didn’t even know him, not in the way she wanted to know the man she planned to marry. Not that she would marry Lawrence or any man, for that option was lost to her now. It was the true reason why she had kissed him, why such a fierce desperation to live at least a short time on her terms was overpowering. It had been a thank-you kiss, a kiss of passion, and a kiss goodbye all at the sametime.
Perhaps I can know pleasure and happiness with him, know the touch of a man of my own choosingbefore…
Before she was sent back to Persia. Even if the people who had broken up the ring managed to catch Al-Zahrani, she would find no freedom back home. Her parents’ fortunes had been taken, and she would have no claim to them. At best she might find work as acommoner.
At worst, Al-Zahrani was still free and would findher.
“I can’t help but wonder what you are thinking about when you seem so distant.” Lawrence cupped her chin in one hand and curled his other around her waist, his fingers swirling soothing patterns on the rose-red muslin gown shewore.
“You wouldn’t wish to know my thoughts,” she said, sorrow growing inside her so strong for a moment that the bleakness almost consumedher.
And then his lips were on hers. Though it started much like her own kiss earlier that day, something more soon crept into it. A heat and hunger stirred in her until she lost all thoughts of the past. There was only him, his kiss, his touch, his arms around her. She pressed against him, craving anything he could give her. He held her, keeping her from falling off the dais as their lips parted. His silly grin was an echo of the happiness that was filling her, making her a littledizzy.
“What was that for?” she asked, smiling as she bit herlip.
