Duty Before Desire Read Online Free Page A

A woman’s pleasure was Sheridan’s greatest joy. To think that all the time he’d been pleasuring women in his bed, he’d been hurting Deborah every bit as much.
    A guttural moan vibrated in his throat. Perspiration damped his hairline.
    “Perhaps we should take our leave, my dear,” said Eli.
    Yes,
Sheridan cried to himself.
Begone, and take your witch of guilt with you.
It was just the pain that had his mind in such a muddle, he assumed. Once he felt better, his mind would set itself to rights.
    “Sheridan?” Deborah’s hand touched his chest. Sheri’s eyes opened; he found he was laying on the floor, his sister-in-law crouched beside him.
    “Deborah,” he rasped. “I’m so sorry. Every bit of unhappiness I caused you, I wish I could take it for myself.”
    She smiled sadly. “I think you shall.” She took his hand. “Don’t you love me, Sheridan?”
    “You’re the sister I always wanted,” he replied in a rough voice. Grace was never far from his thoughts. “I couldn’t have picked a better sister for myself. I’m grateful every day that Elijah chose you.”
    Her angelic smile was a blessing. His eyes started to drift closed.
I really must summon French with that medicine.
    “Do you acknowledge that you have caused me a great deal of social embarrassment with your indiscreet behavior?”
    “Of course, darling, I already did.”
    “And would you like to make it up to me?”
    “If I can, certainly.” There were several jewelers Sheri patronized when he needed to make amends with a woman. Through the haze of pain, he wondered whether Deborah would prefer a new fan or a pearl bracelet.
    Her face filled his vision as she leaned over him. Sheridan sensed the bulk of Elijah behind her, physically supporting his wife. “Then get married, Sheridan. You’ve made every woman in the
ton
happy, and now it’s my turn. Find a wife. Tell me you will, Sheridan. You’ve never once broken your word to me. Tell me you’ll marry and be a good husband and stop your wicked sinning.”
    “Yes, Deborah, I shall marry.”
    A moment later they were gone, and Sheri was on the floor, gutted and raw by the promise he’d made. He wouldn’t go back on his word to Deborah—not ever. It would be the end of any relationship Sheri hoped to have with his brother and nephews in the future—not to mention with Deborah herself.
    Even now, the flowers and letters filling his chamber, which had marked the happiest part of his life, were the funereal arrangements for that same time of life. It was over. Gone. Dead.
    Sheri would marry.
    Somewhere in the back of his mind, a rallying thought: hadn’t he always been prepared for this eventuality?
In Case of Crisis, Wed ...
    Sheridan stiffened. Yes, he would have a happy bride in no time.
    Quickly, he rose to his feet. And just as quickly collapsed on the ottoman. His leg felt like hot, liquid lead. “French,” he bellowed. “The laudanum. Now.”
    He might not have a happy bride in
no time
. But soon, he thought, rubbing his hand over the battered rump. Soon.

Chapter Two
    Three weeks later
    If this was Home, Arcadia wanted nothing to do with it.
    This place, this England her mother had rhapsodized about, was all wrong.
    To begin, it was cold. Arcadia had arrived yesterday morning and had been shivering ever since. She’d stepped off the boat on legs as wobbly as a newborn foal’s—still weak from the fever and stomach illness that had plagued her since somewhere off the coast of Spain—and into a drizzly atmosphere possessed of the kind of cool dampness that seeped all the way down to her bones. Not even the carriage rug draped across her lap warded off her tremors.
    From her seat in the landau, she gazed listlessly across Hyde Park, her hands pressing the comforting weight of her reticule to her tender stomach in an attempt to still its roiling.
This
was the park that had captured her mother’s imagination, this alien place with its gloomy sky and acres of faded grass