Read Online Since the Surrender by Julie Anne Long - Free Book Online Page A

size of a barouche that occupied the center of the room. An uncompromisingly, arrogantly masculine bed, curtains titillatingly drawn about the mattress upon which surely hundreds of bouts of sweaty royal ecstasy had ensued. As arrogant as Captain Eversea, that bed. As potent in its confidence. Before she truly was aware of what she was doing, Rosalind was near enough to touch it, apparently spooled forward by its sheer magnetism.
    magnetism.
    In truth, she hardly felt entitled to be in the presence of such a sensual thing. She stared for a moment, biting her lip. Then she stretched out a hand tentatively, furtively; she drew it back abruptly. And then she drew in a sharp breath and boldly seized the decadent velvet of the curtains and slowly, deliberately, wound her fist in them. She drew in a shuddering breath. Her eyes fluttered closed in deference to her senses.
    And she remembered.
    Not once had she…yearned for her husband’s touch. He’d made love to her with the enthusiastic and unimaginative rigor one would expect of a sinewy old soldier, and she could not truthfully say she’d loathed it, because there was much to be said for gratitude and ease and a warm body stretched alongside hers at night. But had he survived the war, she would have spent the remainder of her days alongside him carrying the burden of a tamped, ferocious
    …hunger. An awareness, a sense of infinite sensual possibility she never would have dared acknowledge or indulge again lest the regret prove more than she could bear.
    Not regret over the indiscretion. Regret that she may have died never knowing whether desire that incendiary had anything to do with love.
    Chase’s legacy to her. She could not say she was grateful for it. But that tamped hunger needled her now, like a limb wakened from sleep.
    When she tossed her head to shake off the torpor she could ill afford, she caught a glimpse of herself in a mirror: it was brilliantly polished but a trifle warped, framed in a network of gilt branches and satyrs. Her wavy reflection gazed back at her, and she could and satyrs. Her wavy reflection gazed back at her, and she could see, abashed, how very white her face had gone when she saw the man.
    Ah ha! She must have seen her own reflection in the mirror, she thought, with a sense of Eureka. Not a man, for heaven’s sake. Not a bloody ghost. The movement of her pelisse as she turned—she must have mistaken it for a cape. She was a bit light-headed, after all, having downed just one cup of tea and crumbled a piece of toast into powder by way of breakfasting this morning, though she would eat heartily enough tonight.
    Once she was convinced she was alone, it was suddenly difficult to shake the impression she was invading someone’s admittedly posh privacy. She began to back from the room.
    “Sorry to intrude,” she muttered whimsically.
    “Oh, it’s no intrusion at all,” came a pleasant voice from behind her. This time her scream had no trouble at all emerging.

    The Velvet Glove fit every man who crossed its portals like its namesake: deliciously snug. It was lit just enough to ensure that intriguing shadows filled corners, and carpeted and upholstered in silk, satin, and velvet in shades of rose and cream and beige, colors and textures evoking the wonders of nude women. Its carpets and chairs and settees—and mattresses, of course—were as lush and inviting as the lap of its proprietress, the Duchess. Her real name was Maggie Trotter, but this knowledge had mostly been lost to the annals of time. No one could recall how she had come by her aristocratic appellation, but then again, a good deal of forgetting went on at the Velvet Glove.
    Chase was hoping to continue that fine tradition this evening, with the aid of a strong hasty drink and a woman.
    “Captain Eversea.” The Duchess greeted him with the hushed reverence usually reserved for royalty. Chase wasn’t unduly flattered, as every man who crossed the Velvet Glove’s portals was