How To Tempt a Viscount by Margaret McPhee Read Free Book Online Page A

for his entry.
    She groaned her need, threading her fingers through the darkness of his hair, and pressed him all the harder to her. She splayed her legs wider, wanting him, feeling the urgency mounting fast within her. She cried out for him, needing him to fill her, and when he covered her body with his and slid into her it was everything she ever wanted.
    He moved within her, one deep thrusting stroke at a time, and she met each thrust, her hands gripping to his firm muscled buttocks as if she would drive him even deeper. And with each thrust they travelled closer to the nirvana that was calling them. Travelling together, with urgency and need and desire urging them on, their eyes fixed on each other.
    ‘Marcus!’ she cried as her whole being exploded with love and light and joy and she felt him gasp and join her.
    ‘Ellen!’ He collapsed by her side, holding her to him as if he would never let her go. Their hearts beat as one. She did not know how many hours they lay in each other’s arms. Knew only that what had happened between them was a commitment stronger than any words, a shifting of the world as she knew it. He had loved her, and everything was right.
    Eventually he kissed her hair. ‘I have to go to Westminster, Ellen. There is something that I have to do.’
    She froze. Felt the stutter of her heart and the sudden plummet of her stomach. It could not be true. But, as she lay there in stunned disbelief, he climbed from the bed and clothed himself. The perfectness of the moment cracked and split apart.
    ‘I will not be long.’ The door clicked shut behind him.
    She heard his footsteps fade along the passageway as he walked away from her. Heard the closing of the front door. And in the ensuing silence she knew that he had not changed at all. All those times he had left her alone in this house while he went to Westminster. Avoiding her. Rejecting her. Now she lay in the bed alone with the sheets not yet cooled from their lovemaking. He was gone, just as he had gone before. The ice spread through her veins. She felt her heart fracture apart. She had been a fool. It was true what her grandmama said, that life kept teaching you the same lesson until you learned it. Well, no more. She rose from the bed and saw her clothes strewn across the floor, abandoned with such haste and hope and passion. And all that she had lost seemed to hit her all the harder. Her eyes squeezed shut and she willed herself to strength. She found her shift and slipped it on, then rang the bell for her maid to do what she should have done this morning before she had weakened and yielded her body and her heart to her husband.
     
    It was barely an hour later when Marcus returned to his town house, having arranged at Westminster what he should have arranged when they had first been married. He took the stairs with a lightness in his step. The torture of the past seemed unimportant. He could see things differently now and that was all because of Ellen. She was an amazing woman. He still could not believe he had not seen it right from the start.
    At the top of the stairs he halted—two footmen were carrying Ellen’s portmanteau out of her bedchamber. And he knew instantly what she was doing: she was leaving him…again.
    He felt his eyes narrow, felt his blood rise. He was a man about to do battle. A man about to fight for his woman. Something of it must have shown on his face for the footmen stopped, offering stuttering explanations.
    ‘Lady Stanley—‘

    ‘Leave the portmanteau where it is,’ he said in a quiet voice that belied the storm within.
    The footmen did as he bid and scurried away.
    He walked into the room.
    The maid was holding Ellen’s cloak, ready to fasten around her shoulders. He looked at the woman and she fled with the cloak still in her hands, closing the door behind her.
    He saw the marginal widening of Ellen’s eyes and knew she had not thought him to return so soon.
    ‘Running away again, Ellen?’ he asked and