Bride for a Night

“Will you? You do not sound particularly happy,” he teased softly.

Her eyes filled with tears. “Please, Jacques.”

“No tears, Sophia,” he commanded gruffly, startled by her vulnerable state.

Over the years he had become accustomed to females who sought to sway him with tears and tantrums, but never, ever Sophia.

“There are no tears,” she ridiculously denied. “I never cry.”

Tenderness surged through him as he studied the female who snuggled against his chest, her dark hair spilling over his arm that he had circled around her shoulders. She appeared oddly fragile.

“Another lesson of courtesans?”

She blinked, giving a delicate sniff. “Oui.”

“I have no desire to claim Talia, ma belle,” he said, realizing as he said the words that they were true. He had enjoyed the thought of rescuing Talia from the cruel hands of her neglectful husband. And savoring the knowledge that he was striking a painful blow at the English nobles by stealing a countess from beneath their arrogant noses. But his heart had already been stolen by another. “I have no desire to claim any woman but you.”

She flinched, almost as if he had slapped her. “Do not say such a thing.”

He barely noticed as they trailed ever farther behind his guards, the steady hoofbeats the only sound to stir the early-morning air.

Was the female being deliberately difficult?

She had just professed her love for him, had she not?

Now that he had admitted to his own desire, she was behaving as if he had threatened to drown her in the nearest well.

“Even if it is the truth?” he growled.

“It cannot be.” Her lips flattened as she battled to conceal the emotions that smoldered in her dark eyes. “You wish for a proper female who you will be proud to have stan

ding at your side. Not an aging actress who was born in the gutters.”

He lifted a brow. “You seem to forget that my mother was an actress.”

“And you were forced to suffer because of her,” she reminded him in raw tones.

He lifted his head sharply, his gaze shifting toward the distant silhouette of Calais.

As difficult as it was to admit, even to himself, there had always been a treacherous part of him that held his mother to blame for his father’s death. Insanity, of course. His mother was not responsible for her haunting beauty. Or his father’s volatile reaction that had ended with him locked within the Bastille.

But as a young man forced to mature without his beloved papa, he had been unable to keep from wondering how his life might have been different had his mother not captured the roaming eye of a lecher.

Was it possible that he had held Sophia at a distance precisely because she reminded him of his mother?

The thought was enough to send a jolt of shame through his heart.

“Non,” he roughly denied. “I suffered because of a depraved scoundrel devoid of morals or honor. A nobleman who is now as dead as my father.”

“But not forgotten,” she said softly.

“He will never be forgotten. And I will never halt my efforts to be rid of men like him,” Jacques swore, returning his gaze to meet her guarded expression. “Will you fight at my side, Sophia Reynard?”

She paused, clearly sensing that he was asking for more than just another ally in the war against the tyrannous ruling class.

“I will be at your side so long as you desire me, but—”

He bent his head to crush her lips in a passionate kiss.