Desired by Nicola Cornick Read Free Book Online

of brothel windows. No more gambling. No more Jupiter Club.
    No more satirical cartoons.
    It would undo all her good work to be clapped in gaol. That was a position from which there really was no return.
    Tess pulled a face. The thought of denying her talent for art, of deliberately turning away from the cartoons, the one thing that gave her life such passionate meaning, was almost unbearable. She had been drawing since she was a child, pouring her feelings into her sketches as a means of expression and escape. Sorrow,joy, fear and frustration had all been expressed through her pen.
    Yet she could see that now she had no choice. She would have to abandon political satire and choose something blameless like watercolours or sketching, perhaps. Ladies were forever setting up their easels and capturing some idyllic rural scene. She would do the same. Drawing and painting were amongst the few feminine accomplishments she possessed.
    A respectable marriage would also offer her the camouflage she needed should Lord Sidmouth’s investigators prove efficient enough as to suspect her of sedition. She needed a smoke screen, an elderly, impotent smoke screen. She needed to find a fourth husband and she needed to find him fast.
    She crossed the room to the rosewood desk, took out a thick volume, settled herself again on the gold brocade sofa and started to read.
    A half hour later she was still engrossed when Joanna came in accompanied by a footman with the tea tray.
    “What is that you are reading?” Joanna asked, seating herself beside Tess. “The Lady’s Magazine?”
    “No.” Tess felt a little shiver of apprehension. Joanna’s disapproval was not something she sought. She tilted the cover of her book towards her sister so that Joanna could see the title. “It is the new edition of The Gazetteer .”
    As Tess had anticipated, vivid disappointment registered on Joanna’s face. “Oh, Tess, no!” Joanna exclaimed. “Tell me you are not planning on marrying again! When you came to stay here you promised—” Joanna broke off, biting her lip. Her tone changed. It was cool now, though still indicative of her feelings. “It is your decision, I suppose,” she said.
    “I have a natural affinity with marriage,” Tess said. She could hear the apology in her tone. She did not want to remind Joanna just how insecure her situation was. Her sister knew nothing of her life, least of all her secret political affiliation to the reformers. Nor did she want to tell Joanna of Lord Corwen’s threats. Such a discussion would hold too many painful parallels with her marriage to Brokeby. She set her lips stubbornly and tried to ride down Joanna’s disapproval.
    “On the contrary,” her elder sister corrected her sharply, clearly unable to keep quiet for more than a couple of seconds. “There is nothing natural about it. Your marriages have all without exception been most unnatural .”
    Tess could not really dispute that. She knew that Joanna was one of the few people who had realised that she was afraid— terrified —of true intimacy, though her sister did not know the reason. Joanna had tried to discuss it with her in the past, but Tess had always refused to talk. Clothes, shoes, hats, gloves, scarves… They could chat about fashion for hours and it gave their relationship a veneer of closeness, but when Joanna tried to get Tess to talk about her marriages, Tess would feelthe familiar cold horror spread through her veins like poison and she would turn Joanna’s questions away with trivial answers. She knew Joanna was asking not out of prurient curiosity but out of a real concern, and that made her feel even sadder. But there was nothing Joanna could do to help her. The damage wrought by Charles Brokeby had been done years ago and could not be undone now.
    “Not everyone has the sort of marriage that you share with Alex,” she said. The words came out more harshly than she had intended, perhaps because whilst she was terrified by