Read Online Days of Rakes and Roses by Anna Campbell - Free Book Online

already been thoroughly broken.
    A hollow laugh escaped her, closer to a sob than humor. “You know what’s wrong. I’m engaged to Grenville.”
    “But you love me.”
    She struggled out from beneath Simon’s body, surprised he let her go. Trembling and angry, she curled against the corner of the carriage. “You’re so presumptuous.”
    Slowly Simon rose to sit at the other end of the bench. It wasn’t far enough away for her. Guilt beat at her, made her feel ill.
    In the space following her accusation, she heard Simon’s uneven breathing. They’d verged dismayingly close to the point of no return. And so swiftly. Years of perfect virtue, then one kiss from this scoundrel and she lost her head.
    “But you do love me.” His voice lowered into softness. “Just as I still love you.”
    Heaven help her. Appalled denial vibrated through her, robbed her of breath. This was the last thing she needed to hear a week before her wedding to Grenville.
    Once she’d have cut off her right arm in exchange for the merest possibility of Simon Metcalf declaring his affections. Now she told herself that this was only another ploy to gain her attention, even as she yearned uselessly for it to be true.
    “You don’t even know me,” she said in a flat voice.
    “Devil take you, Lydia, of course I do,” he said stubbornly, and for the first time he sounded genuinely disgruntled.
    She realized that up until this instant, he’d been sure of winning her to whatever purpose he intended. Definitely coaxing her away from Grenville and into an affair. But surely not into marriage—even at Fentonwyck, he hadn’t mentioned a proposal.
    His self-confidence rankled. “Curse you, Simon. I’m not surrendering my maidenhead to a footloose rogue in a carriage in the middle of Mayfair.”
    Unforgivably he laughed. “We don’t have to stay here. I’ll take you to my rooms. Hell, I’ll take you to the moon if it means I finally have you.”
    “Don’t be crude,” she snapped, frustration bubbling up into rage. She was so angry, she had difficulty drawing in a full breath.
    This time when he sighed, she heard the desolation underlying his humor. Her renegade heart fisted with regret as anger receded without disappearing. She’d been wrong when she’d thought that what occurred between them left his emotions uninvolved. An iniquitous yen to give in to him, to ease his sorrow surged, but she forced it back.
    “Take me home, Simon.” Absolute despair bolstered her command.
    “Will you tell Berwick you won’t have him?” Simon didn’t sound like the lazy, charming, amused man she knew so well. His brief vulnerability had vanished. He sounded like a displeased tyrant quizzing a rebellious subject.
    His autocratic manner made Lydia seethe with renewed resentment. “I most certainly won’t.”
    He turned on the seat and gripped her arms with unlover-like firmness. “You can’t kiss me like that and marry another man, God damn it.”
    “Just watch me.” She wrenched free, bruising herself in the process. Her voice broke and thickened. She wasn’t far off crying. Simon’s return had left her feeling ripped into two ragged, bleeding halves. Tonight had capped off a horrible week with the noxious revelation that she’d never be free of her first love. “I’m going to marry Sir Grenville Berwick next Wednesday and you can’t stop me.”
    She waited for more outrage, more demands, but Simon slumped against his corner with another sigh that caught at her heart, much as she wished it didn’t. “How can I change your mind?”
    She glared at him through the gloom, wishing this fraught encounter would end. The longer this quarrel lasted, the more they’d hurt each other. She already felt torn to shreds. “You can’t.”
    “You’re making a mistake.”
    She bit back a tirade about Simon waltzing back into her life and expecting her to receive him with open arms. She bit back a rancorous reminder that she was a woman of her word and