Read Online Her Beguiling Butler by Cerise DeLand - Free Book Online

he told her, combing back his shock of hair with both hands.
    Mrs. Gordon, the housekeeper, appeared before him. Her tiny black eyes bored through him, assessing him. “Lady Ranford asked for ye a bit ago, sir. I’d say you’d better go up. She needs ya.”
    “I will. Where is she?”
    “In her sitting room,” the woman said with a slight curl of her lip. “It’s tea she has. A service for two.”
    For her and him. “Thank you, Mrs. Gordon.”
    At a run, he took the back stairs past the first story up to the second. He hated the looks he got from Mrs. Gordon who disliked the familiarity with which Alicia and he got on. He didn’t mind so much for himself. But Alicia could suffer if the Ranford servants told the ones next door, and they told others. All because she and he were… friends .
    He knocked on the door, opened it at Alicia’s ragged invitation—and when he looked at her, he said to bloody hell with remaining friends.
     
     

Chapter Seven
     
     
    She sobbed, her fair skin blotchy with red marks of her distress. Raising her face to him, she let the tears roll down her cheeks.
    He shut the door—and ran to her.
    “Sweetheart,” he blurted and caught her up in his arms, bringing her up off her chair in a swoop that crushed her long lush body against his. “What’s the matter? What has you so upset?”
    “Oh, Wallace!” She grabbed the edges of his black coat and buried her face in the linen of his shirt. “I cannot bear the loss.”
    “What? A loss?” Had she been notified by Chancery that she was not to gain the barony? She wouldn’t mind the lack this much. Would she?
    She was wetting down his linen in her torrent and his embrace did nothing to calm her. “Alicia, please stop crying. Please, my dear.”
    “I can’t! Oh, Wallace!” She looked up at him and her misery cracked open his heart. She’d suffered enough this past year. Alone, save for her aunt coming to visit, she’d become insular, tender, a recluse. Of course, she’d break apart at the least thing. Was it a small event?
    “Tell me what’s wrong.” He ran a hand across her cheek, his fingers delighting in the raw pleasure of touching her silken skin.
    She sighed, closed her eyes and sank against him.
    This would not do. He appreciated her proximity too much.
    But he could not move and she wrapped her arms around his waist.
    “Oh, Wallace,” she said, sniffling. “My governess has died.”
    “Your—?”
    “My old, laughing, smiling, joking governess. She was a gem of a woman. The best.” Shivering in her sorrow, she choked on her tears and her words came out in gasps. “I hate… that she’s… gone.”
    “Gone.” Tucking the crown of her head under his chin, he stroked her hair, unbound and abundant through his fingers. He marveled at her. The sweet confection he held in his arms was stricken to the core by the loss of a woman whom she’d loved long ago.
    And her tears rolled out, her body trembling.
    “Come with me.” He led her to the settee near her fireplace. “Sit. Let me get you your—“
    “No.” She tugged at his hand and hiccupped.
    He dug out his handkerchief from his vest pocket and wiped her cheeks.
    “I want only you.”
    Her appeal was too heartfelt, too delicious to refuse. As if he were a marionette at a puppet show, he sat down and put his handkerchief on the table. Smoothing her ringlets from her cheeks, he sucked in air when she caught both his hands and brought each one to her lips and kissed each palm.
    “Wallace,” she beseeched him, “I need you.”
    “Alicia, we must not do this—“
    “We will.” She slid closer to him. “I will.”
    “Oh, Alicia—“
    “You’ve called me ‘dear’ and ‘darling’.” She moved so near that she brushed her lips on his. “You’ve called me ‘sweetheart’.”
    “Did I?” He was demented.
    Her hands cupped his face as she blessed his mouth with a fond kiss and breathed, “Oh, yes. Call me that again.”
    “I can’t.” But oh,