Page 92 of Aurelia

Her jaw sagged.

Roland laughed and pushed to his feet. “I am jesting.” He fetched the hideous cap from the floor where he had thrown it and brought it back to her, watching with resignation as she quickly tucked away her crowning glory and then stood.

Composed but flushed, she looked everywhere but at Roland. “Well, it is late.”

“Very,” he agreed.

Her throat worked, but she seemed unable to dredge up any other vapid pleasantries. After a moment she gave an abrupt nod and said, “I bid you goodnight, then.”

“What about your canvas? Don’t you want it?”

“Oh.” She hurried across the room and snatched up her canvas. “Thank you, my lord.”

Roland needed to walk fast to beat her to the door. He stood with his fingers resting on the handle until she looked up. “It was my pleasure, Aurelia.”

They both knew he did not mean the canvas.

The moment he opened the door she shot out of the room as if she’d been fired from a pistol.

Roland leaned against the doorframe and watched as she hurried down the long corridor, until she disappeared around the corner. He was about to shut the door when he heard what sounded like footsteps coming from the stairwell.

He crossed the short distance to the arched doorway. “Who is there?” he called, his voice ricocheting eerily off the stone walls of the stairwell, which led all the way down to the armory.

When nobody answered he shrugged and turned back toward the library, which is when he noticed a piece of paper partly hidden by the rather moth-eaten carpet runner.

He bent and picked it up, turning it over in his hands for some sign of where it had come from. But there was only his name on the front, the handwriting unfamiliar to him. One of the servants must have dropped it when they’d brought up the mail. Who knew how long it had been lying there?

He sighed and entered the library, momentarily distracted from the letter by the sight of the mess he had made. Crumpled sheets of parchment, a shattered whisky glass, and an assortment of quills lay scattered all over the floor.

As his gaze settled on the empty surface of the table his thoughts turned to the woman who’d so recently been sprawled across it.

Aurelia had claimed their erotic encounter wouldn’t change things between them, but—based on her awkwardness—it already had.

Had it been ill-advised to give in to his desire for her? Probably. But Roland could not bring himself to regret it. He was tired of dancing around his feelings for her. It was true that he’d had two terrible marriages, but then neither woman had been his choice, had they?

For the first time since he had been a boy, he felt something. And it was bloody inconvenient, that was true. But it also brought him back to life when he’d not even realized that part of him had been lying dormant.

Judging by the way Aurelia had stormed out of here, she believed that all he wanted was a quick fondle and was treating her the way he had treated every other woman for the past two decades.

That would not do. Not at all.

Roland might not have any experience wooing a woman, but it was about damned time he learned.

What he needed, he decided, was a plan. A wooing plan.

He smiled at the thought. Who would have believed that Roland Montgomery would be going courting for the first time in his life at almost one-and-forty?

He laughed aloud and then bent to pick up the scattered papers, only to see the letter he still clutched in his hand. He sighed and tore it open, unfolding a single sheet with only a few lines of writing. A quick glance at the bottom showed no signature.

Roland strode across the room and fetched his spectacles.

When he turned back to the letter the first sentence leapt off the page like a springing panther:

Lady Rebecca Crewe, and your son, are alive.

Roland’s jaw hit the floor. “What the bloody hell?” he demanded of the silent room.

I saw her and the boy—blond, tall, and bearing an unmistakable resemblance to you—at the Rusty Scupper Inn in Aberdeen, where she has rented rooms for herself and the boy. She was living with a man named Thomas Carver—in much diminished circumstances—until his death four months ago.