The Winter Wife (10 page)

He held her until she slept, but for all his weariness and the throb of sexual satisfaction through his body, he couldn’t settle. Eventually he rose and padded over to the window.
The morning air was cold on his bare skin now that the fire
had burned down to ashes.

Very quietly so as not to wake
Alicia, he parted the curtains. Immediately brilliant light flooded
the room. It was later than he’d realized.
The storm had blown itself out overnight and now the pale sun rose over the horizon, painting the fresh snow gold and making it sparkle like diamonds.

The idyll of a winter’s night had given way to a new day. Christmas Day, he realized with surprise.
A
day of hope
fulfilled.
A
day of beginnings.

Just what would those beginnings bring?

Would his glimpse of paradise prove brutally brief? Could all the lovely harmony of these last hours crash on the rocks of past wrongs and his insatiable demands?

Heaven forgive him, but he didn’t know how to be anything but demanding. He wanted
Alicia with him. He wanted her in his bed. He couldn’t stop himself. He’d spent ten years yearning for her from afar. The experience had devastated him. He couldn’t go back to that again.

He mightn’t have any choice, damn it. “How beautiful.”

He’d been so lost in his troubled thoughts, he hadn’t heard her rise from the bed. His heart slammed to a stop as she slid her arms around his waist and pressed her warmth to his back. He curled his hands over the windowsill to stop himself from sweeping her up and carrying her back to bed.

The bright light of Christmas Day told him that the magical night was over.
Too soon, too soon, his aching heart protested. Now he’d tasted her ardor, he couldn’t live without her.
And she’d tempted him with more than passion.
The sweet intimacy of last

night’s conversation.
The tenderness of her embrace now.
Alicia was everything he wanted. Enduring their separation had been difficult enough before he’d glimpsed this joy. Now if she meant to leave him again, she’d destroy him.

“
I thought you were asleep,” he said softly. “I missed you.”

His gut lurched with anguish as she brushed a kiss across his bare shoulder. “I’ve missed you every day,” he said before he could stop himself.

“
I thought you were glad to be rid of me.” Her voice was muffled

against his skin. “I can’t blame you. I was such a silly chit.” “You were enchanting.
You still are.”

“
You didn’t think so at the time.”
The sheer neutrality of her tone betrayed her suffering as nothing else could.

He swallowed the choking lump in his throat and admitted the humiliating truth. “Yes, I did. But I believed the world would bend to my will merely for the asking.
You were too fine
for my possessing and I was too arrogant to see just what a treasure I had. I was impatient and self-centered and you were right to hate me.”

“
You weren’t impatient last night.”

He laughed without amusement. “Misery is an excellent schoolmaster. I’ve learned the error of my ways.
Although I can’t expect you to believe that after the hash I’ve made of everything.”

“
I should have trusted you.” Her voice was muffled.

“
I wasn’t worthy of your trust then.”

The question hovered—was he worthy of her trust now? He prayed desperately that it was so. He prayed that he hadn’t placed himself beyond redemption and that she’d give him another chance. He wanted to swear his allegiance, promise he’d never hurt her again, vow to make her happy. But emotion too strong for words jammed the declarations

in his throat.

Silence fell, a silence heavy with remembered pain and everything still unspoken between them. Because he couldn’t resist touching her, he rested his hands lightly on hers.
The urge stirred to seize, to grab,

to compel, but he crushed it. Last night, she’d given herself freely. He refused to compromise that memory.
After today, it might be all he had left.

She sighed softly, her breath a sensual tickle against his skin. “The snow is so clean.” Her voice was soft, musing.
As if she spoke to herself rather than for his ears. “Even after the storm, it’s perfect. It’s waiting for us to make the first
footprints.”

He tightened his grip on her hands. So much hinged on the next moments. He struggled to find
the right words, wondering if the right words even existed.

“
Our future could be like that,
Alicia.
A
new path.
A
new life.
A Christmas miracle.” He paused, swallowed, and his voice was husky when he spoke what lay in his heart. “Come back to me.”

He felt her stiffen. His heart breaking, he waited for her to move away, to reject him, to speak in that cold, cutting tone that she’d reserved for their few meetings in London.

“
For how long?” Her voice was quiet. She hadn’t moved away.
Yet.

He stared at the glittering scene outside without seeing it. Instead he remained utterly focused on his wife.
Again, he risked honesty, even if honesty cost him any hope of achieving his dream.

“
For the rest of our lives.”

This time she did draw away, and he felt the inches between them as grim absence. “Why?”

He turned to study her.
The light from the window illuminated her as if she stood on a stage. Swathed in the white bed sheet, she looked unhappy and uncertain and remarkably young.
Almost as young as the

pretty girl he’d married. “Because I love you.” “No…” She shook her head in disbelief.

Kinvarra smiled at her, even while she split his heart into a hundred bleeding pieces.
Again. “Yes.”

Alicia raised her chin and regarded him as if what he said made no sense. “I was so foul to you. How can you ever forgive me?”

“
How can you forgive
me
? Let’s rise above the past, my darling. I want you with me. I’ve never wanted anything else. Don’t let old mistakes destroy our hope of happiness.” He paused and swallowed. “If you love me, come back to me.”

For an unendurable moment, her expression didn’t change. Kinvarra’s every heartbeat tolled the knell of doom.
Then the tension drained from her face and her eyes turned as blue as a clear sky. Suddenly, in the depths of winter, he basked in the reviving warmth of summer sunlight.

She stepped toward him, although she didn’t touch him. “Sebastian,

I love you, too.
We’ve wasted so much time. Let’s not waste any more.” Shaking, he reached out to curl his hands around her upper arms and drag her unresisting body against him. He could hardly believe that this

was happening.
Yesterday he’d been lost in an eternal mire of despair.
Today the world offered love and hope and a future with the woman he adored.
The swiftness of the change was dizzying, left him reeling.

“
My wife,” he murmured and kissed her with all the reverence he felt in saying those two words. “My countess. My beloved.”

The vivid, passionate woman in his arms kissed him back with a fervor that set his blood rushing in a wild torrent. Bright, unfamiliar joy flooded
him as he realized that
Alicia at last was his.

Then because it was cold and he wanted her and he loved her—and he’d been apart from her for longer than mortal man could bear— Kinvarra swung his smiling wife up in his arms and strode across to the rumpled bed.

Also by
Anna Campbell:

A
Rake’s Midnight Kiss
(2013)
Seven Nights in a Rogue’s Bed Midnight’s
Wild Passion

My Reckless Surrender

Captive of Sin
Tempt the Devil Untouched

Claiming the Courtesan

And now an exclusive excerpt of
SEVEN NIGHTS IN
A
ROGUE’S BED
, book 1 in
Anna Campbell’s “Sons of Sin” series

(out 25
^th
September 2012)

CHAPTER ONE

South Devon Coast, November 1826

STORMS SPLIT
THE heavens on the night Sidonie Forsythe went to her ruin.

The horses neighed wildly as the shabby hired carriage lurched to

a shuddering stop.
The wind was so powerful, the vehicle rocked even when stationary. Sidonie had seconds to catch her breath before the driver, a shadow in streaming oilskins, loomed out of the darkness to wrench the door open.

“
Here be Castle Craven, miss,” he shouted through the sheeting rain. For a second, terror at what awaited inside the castle held her

paralyzed. Castle
Craven
indeed.

“
I can’t leave the nags standing. Be ‘ee staying, miss?”

The cowardly urge rose to beg the driver to carry her back to Sidmouth and safety. She could leave now with no damage done. Nobody would even know she’d been here.

Then what would happen to Roberta and her sons?

The remorseless reminder of her sister’s danger prodded Sidonie into frantic motion. Grabbing her valise, she stumbled from the carriage.
When the wind caught her, she staggered. She fought to keep her footing on the slippery cobbles as she looked up, up, up at the towering black edifice
before her.

She thought she’d been cold in the carriage. In the open, the chill was arctic. She cringed as the wind sliced through her woolen cloak like a knife through butter.
As if to confirm
she’d entered a realm of gothic horrors, lightning flashed.
The ensuing crack of thunder made the horses shift nervously in their harness.

For all his understandable wish to return to civilization, the driver didn’t immediately leave. “Sartain ‘ee be expected, miss?”