The Secret Lover by Julia London Read Free Book Online Page B

art.
    Watching him move about, hammering things, carrying large timbers…
    could she help it that she imagined him completely naked? It
had
been eight years since she had been so much as kissed by a man, unless one counted Arnaud, which she certainly did not. She was a woman, for heaven's sake, a living, breathing woman, and she could hardly help the churn of desire in her when this man would appear. Desire? Bloody hell, it was a slow burn. She had not felt a burn like that since…
    All right, then, it was a fact that after she had escaped William, she had spent several years trying to rid her mind and body of the memory of him, and had convinced herself, completely and irrevocably, that she would never desire the touch of a man again.
Never
.
    A prime example, apparently, of why one should never vow
never
, as she had been flat wrong.
    It had returned, unexpected, two years ago.
    She could still remember the moment. It had been in the markets of Stockholm; a gentleman with hair as white as her petticoats had walked up to the butcher and requested a flank of beef. He had stood beside Sophie, his arm lightly brushing hers, and she had felt herself begin to melt, starting somewhere deep inside and quickly spreading throughout her body. He was gone before she could breathe again, but she could not shake the surge of desire he had sparked in her.
    It had happened again and again after that, and with increasing frequency, each incident seemingly more intense than the last, until she began to fear there was something quite seriously wrong with her. She longed to speak to someone about her condition of wantonness, but she could not bring herself to admit that, much to her horror, when she saw an attractive man, her gaze was immediately drawn to the square of his jaw, the breadth of his shoulders, the trim of his waist, and…
and to the
bulge between his legs
.
    The man across the pond certainly was not lacking in that regard.
    So Sophie watched him, pretending to read, feeling the heat creep into her skin as her gaze feasted on him, imagining him in various activities.
    Lewd activities. Activities that crept into her dreams at night. And she was watching him move about one day—well, watching
it
, actually—when she suddenly realized he was
looking
at her. Looking right at her looking at him. It unnerved her so badly, her book flew halfway across the park.
    She didn't return for two days.
    But she could not stay away, and she finally crept back to the pond like a sinner returned to God, taking care to arrange herself just so in a way that she wouldn't appear to be looking. She thought herself quite clever.
    So it was the worst sort of panic that swept through her early one bright afternoon when the foreman on horseback actually appeared on
her
side of the pond. She was reading, having lost interest in the building since
he
was not there and absently looked up at the sound of an approaching horseman.
    She almost toppled right off her wrought iron bench, and in the struggle to keep that from happening, knocked her picnic basket to the ground.
    She quickly bent to retrieve it, cringing when she realized the horseman had stopped.
    Slowly, she sat up, clutching the basket so tightly that the food all but oozed out the wicker sides.
    "Good day," he said, tipping his hat.
    Mother of God, he was gorgeous
! Dumbfounded, Sophie nodded.
    He smiled, flashing brilliantly white teeth, matched only by the brilliance of his pale green eyes. "Lovely day for walkabout."
    Walkabout? Sophie blinked.
What was this? What did he want? Was
her face as red as Honorine's Christmas cape
?
    His smile faded a bit and he shifted uneasily in his saddle. "I beg your pardon if I have imposed. It's just that I have noticed you sitting here on several occasions, and I wondered if perhaps you might know the occupants of the house at the end of the lane just there," he said, motioning behind him.
    Sophie didn't actually see the house he indicated, as she had,