Delectably Undone! by Elizabeth Rolls Read Free Book Online Page B

had painted the seascape—he would swear it. Loveday had always painted; he’d known that. But she’d never permitted anyone but Lionel to view her work.
    Evelyn reached London in the evening, to discover Loveday had abandoned the rooms in Little Frenchman’s Yard.
    “Not here,” a blowsy woman told him. “Gone, she is. Got herself a man, they say. There were one sniffin’ round a while back and she moved out right after. So I moved in.” The woman jiggled her breasts at him. “I’ll do yeh, if yeh like.”
    A chill slid through him as he declined politely. Gone. He’d wanted her out of here, but how the devil was he supposed to find her now? With nowhere else to go, he hurried back to the Strand, hailed a hackney and gave the town house address.

    He stared up at his darkened house. At this hour Loveday would be long gone, but there might be some sort of clue to where she was living. She might even have left an address with Hurley, the caretaker, or his wife.
    Hurley took his time answering the banging on the area door. He glared out at Evelyn in the light of a flickering candle. “Who the he—” He broke off. “’Tis you, m’lord!”
    Grumbling under his breath, Hurley found a lamp for Evelyn. “Be you stayin’ here, master?”
    Evelyn realized he would have to; he’d given up the lease on his lodgings. Leaving Steynings in such a rush, he hadn’t thought about such things as a bed for the night.
    Upon hearing this, Hurley grumbled even more. “Need to make up a bed in one of the spare chambers, then,” he said. “Your room’s still a main mess. Paint pots everywhere, and—” he fixed Evelyn with a disapproving eye “—Mrs. Hurley says you’ll need to cover up them paintings before any respectable maid’ll go in there! Like to have a fit, she did, when she saw them!”

    His dreams and fantasies rioted on the wall. The god Apollo, with the nymph in his arms stretching up on tiptoe to kiss him, caught at that single instant just before their lips met… All longing, yearning and surrender. The god, who bore his face, braced, head flung back in ecstasy as she knelt, veiled only in tumbling red-gold curls, to enslave him…and the sweet moment of possession; Loveday—for it was she, and always had been—cradled in his arms, their bodies joined, two halves of a puzzle. And finally, she lay asleep in his arms, her face hidden against his shoulder, his body cradling hers. Forever.
    She had painted his dreams. Even the last one, which he had not had the sense or courage to dream until now.
    A soft, shocked gasp brought him around.
    She was there. Sitting up, tousled and blinking in sleepy dismay in the shadows of his bed. Stunned golden eyes flickered from him to the paintings.
    “I…I fell asleep.” Her husky voice stroked his senses, left him breathless, wondering what it would be like waking up to all that sleepy softness every morning. For the rest of his life. “Why are you here?”
    “Partly because David Winslow told me that Lionel is dead.” Evelyn didn’t know what else to say. Hell, he didn’t even know what he felt. Only that it was going to tear him apart. “When were you going to tell me, Loveday?”
    Something glimmered in her eyes. “I couldn’t,” she whispered. “It was my fault—”
    Evelyn was across the room and had her in his arms before she could go on.
    “Dammit! How was it your fault?” He held her against his heart, her head tucked under his chin. He knew what had happened; Winslow had told him. But Loveday needed to say it. Exorcize it before it could fester.
    Her breath came raggedly. “Because I left him alone. He wanted to get outside. To the shore. So…I took him. Led him down there, and when he asked me if we’d brought anything to eat—”
    “You left him sitting safely on the sand and went back to your lodgings for it.” Evelyn pressed a kiss to her hair. “It wasn’t your fault.”
    “I shouldn’t have left him!” she cried, pulling free