Blood Fire by Sharon Page Read Free Book Online Page A

so tired and shaky, they won’t hold me up. My heart beats without a regular rhythm, and my pulse becomes faint. It’s hard for me to breathe. My body aches everywhere. But some things ease it.” She’d spoken the last before she thought.
    “What things?” he asked, which was quite natural.
    She couldn’t tell him. She was too embarrassed to say that touching herself had always made her feel better and stronger.
    “Come, my mysterious lady. Tell me. Perhaps I can help.”
    “You did. I feel better now.”
    A grin. “Thank you. I’m pleased to know I helped.” He had pulled on his wizard’s robe. Now he put his pointed hat back on his head.
    The servant returned her cloak. Sutcliffe put it around her.
    “There.” He nodded. “An exotic bird should hide its plumes when it walks amongst hunters. Now, mysterious beauty, I’ll take you downstairs, acquire a hackney for you, and send you safely away.”
    Octavia nodded, but her throat had gone tight. Her one night was over. It had been glorious, thrilling, sensual, and exciting. But it was done.
    She had thought she would cling to the memory of pleasure and it would help her. But she found she wanted to look ahead. She didn’t want to just remember pleasure; she wanted to experience more and more of it. She yearned for another night like this. Many nights like this.
    But there wouldn’t be any. She had to accept it.
     
    A half-hour later, Matthew stood in shadow on a street in Mayfair, fighting a surge of guilt. He had followed his nameless young lady. He had assumed she was someone’s gently bred daughter. He had never dreamed she would be Lord Morton’s bluestocking daughter, Octavia.
    He lit a cheroot. Now he knew why that mass of golden hair had been familiar to him. He’d seen it when he had attended her father’s lectures at the Royal Society. He had seen it when he’d been a guest in her father’s home.
    He supposed he deserved this for having sex, for thinking of pleasure, when his brother was dead and would never know any pleasures again. This had to be his punishment. He had ruined a respectable woman. Yes, he could argue that she had begged for it.
    But he couldn’t say that and believe it. It didn’t relieve him of responsibility.
    Hell, he hadn’t known Morton’s daughter was dying. No wonder the old man had been arguing with him so much of late. Normally, they sparred—they both wrote books and lectured about their exotic travels; they were rivals. But her father had been unusually irate lately.
    Matthew threw away the cheroot. Now he understood. The poor man thought his daughter was going to die. Morton was suffering all the grief of loss, but before it even happened. Matthew shook his head. His recognition of Morton’s pain hit him like a blow to his heart. Having lost Gregory—and his father and mother long ago when he was a child—he knew exactly how excruciating grief was.
    But to have to watch someone you loved fade away before death, and to watch it happen to a child? Hell, that was more than any man should have to endure. And Morton was a good man.
    So what did he do now? Decency demanded that he walk up to the house and ask for Lady Octavia’s hand in marriage. Good sense told him that Morton would probably rather shoot him than have him for a son-in-law.
    Lady Octavia had insisted this was only to be for one night. Why couldn’t he quell his conscience and just accept what the lady wanted? She’d wanted a man to show her what a fuck was like. He’d done his duty.
    She didn’t want anything more from him. The last thing he needed was a bride, certainly not one who did not like him. Anyway, he had no time to engage in a wedding. He had to return to the Carpathians. Right now, he had an appointment with Mr. Sebastien De Wynter, a member of a different Royal Society from the Geographical one—the Royal Society for the Investigation of Mysterious Phenomena. De Wynter had insisted on meeting at this unusual time—in the