When Love Comes Calling: Two Short Stories by Samantha Kane Read Free Book Online Page A

her heart. She knew she would leave The Byrne then. She couldn’t stay here and watch Edmund with another woman. She had, in the supreme act of stupidity, fallen in love with him.
    She sighed as she sank down on the velvet divan positioned so she could look out over the gardens. How she loved it here. It was only fitting that The Byrne was the backdrop for the great love of her life. It would make her memories of this beloved house even sweeter when she was an old woman.
    There was only one thing marring her enjoyment of her torrid affair with Edmund—John the coachman. She’d been afraid to go near her own stables for almost a month, afraid of seeing him and the leering, knowing grin she knew he’d give her. She’d seen it. Several days after their horrid encounter she’d called for her coach and he had bordered on insolence. It had been intolerable, but there was nothing she could do. She had lain with him! She deserved those awful looks. She put her face in her hands. What had she been thinking? No, she knew what she’d been thinking. She’d been thinking about Edmund and how much she wanted him but would never have him. She had touched herself until she ached and never been fulfilled, wishing it was Edmund’s hands on her, Edmund’s finger inside her.
    It was on the way home from a dinner at Sir Josiah Poole’s, in Edmund’s honor, that it had happened. Sylvie had watched Edmund all night, watched the young girls flock to him as he smiled and teased them, knowing he would never be hers. By the time she left she was wet and aching from the sight of him, and desolate because she couldn’t have him. When John had pulled the coach over on the dark road and climbed inside with her she thought she had nothing to live for, nothing to lose. No words had been spoken as he’d opened his trousers and shown her his hard cock. The sight had aroused her, the idea of a man hard for her. She’d said nothing when he’d roughly pushed her to the floor on her hands and knees and thrown her skirts up. But it was Edmund’s face she’d seen as he thrust inside, Edmund’s voice she heard in his grunts, Edmund with whom she came.
    Sylvie shook her head to clear the images from her mind. She took a deep breath, resolved to deal with the situation, now, this morning. She wouldn’t let the ugliness of what had happened with John ruin her happiness with Edmund.
    When she got to the stables there was no one about. “Hullo?” she called out in a hesitant voice. The air in the stable was hot and dust filled, and the stalls needed to be mucked out. It should have been done hours ago. Sylvie looked in one stall and realized it hadn’t been done for days. She was appalled. “John?” she called out sharply.
    He came to the door of the back room in which he slept and leaned against the doorjamb. “You rang, milady?” he asked with a sly grin. He sauntered into the stable, his shirt open, looking disreputable and rather dangerous. Sylvie took a step back. She hadn’t noticed John’s looks much, not even the night he’d fucked her. He’d been a cock, that was all. She was ashamed at the thought, but it was true nonetheless. She looked at him now, surprised at his brutish good looks.
    He was tall, as she’d known, with jet black hair that fell over his brow rakishly. His eyes were a startling blue, his other features coarse but attractive. He had a dimple in his chin and strong, white teeth. One of his front teeth was chipped, giving him almost a boyish appeal. But the muscular, hairy chest revealed by his open shirt belied that impression. Sylvie took another step back. As good looking as he was, she still got an uneasy feeling from him.
    “I been wonderin’ when you’d come for some more,” he said insolently, rubbing his hand down his chest to his crotch, where he cupped the bulge there suggestively.
    Sylvie gasped in outrage. “That is not why I am here! I have come to tell you that…that that can never happen again