Free A Lady Undone by Máire Claremont Page A

toward her and pulled her into his lap. “I will tell you anything you wish to know about me and one day, you will do the same.”
    “You’re confident?” she asked, her heart slamming against her ribs. Each breath she took seemed to draw her nearer to him, nearer to the wonderful, terrifying feelings blooming within her.
    He looked down at her, his gaze half lidded with hunger. “Oh, yes. Aren’t you?”
    In answer, she threw her arms around his shoulders and pulled him into her kiss. For now, it was the only honest answer she could give.
    •   •   •
    Clare couldn’t believe the easiness of the next few days. Lord Wyndham, Byron, had seen to everything. A woman came daily with provisions from the village and for the first time in her whole life, Clare did nothing but eat, read, and make conversation with a man who had stolen her heart.
    It was the only thing that gave her fear, for her heart had indeed been stolen.
    What was she to do now?
    She’d not let herself think on it, but with each day that passed, drinking good wine and listening to him recite Shakespeare’s sonnets as they sat wrapped up in blankets by the playful late-winter stream, she felt her heart becoming ever more his.
    It didn’t matter that in the back of her mind was the ever pressing fear of what was happening in London.
    Byron had kept true to his words. Missives came to him through secret messengers and she’d learned that her home for women was proceeding without any threat. Indeed, her disappearance seemed to have done the trick.
    It was the one thing that saddened her. She hated to think that whoever had threatened her had won. But Byron insisted that he would discover who it was.
    She turned her face up toward the sun and tucked a thick shawl Byron had found about her. This place was heaven. All her life, she’d lived in great houses with hundreds of rooms and servants scurrying every which way. Yet, somehow as large and full of people as those places had been, they had been so lonely.
    Here at this cottage, with just the two of them, she felt the most peace she had ever known. How long could it last?
    Forever
, a little voice whispered inside her. If she would let it. Oh,Lord, if only that could be true. But she was not as naive as she once was.
    For this to last forever, she’d have to trust that Byron would never betray her.
    No. She almost laughed at her own attempt to place doubts on Byron. If she was truthful with herself, she knew he never would. Lord Wyndham was a man of honor. He would never control her the way her husband or her family had tried to do.
    He cared about her, not her status or her role as a good lady. The awful, heartbreaking truth was that to keep him, she would have to lie to him for the rest of her days. For how could she ever confess what she had done?
    No man, no one, would ever forgive her, even if she had done it to save herself.
    Tears stung her eyes. It seemed so unfair that she should finally find happiness and not be worthy of it.
    “Clare?”
    She whipped around to the sound of his deep voice calling from the cottage.
    He held up a note. “I have news.”
    She nodded and ran toward him, her feet skipping lightly over the grass. She ran right into his warm embrace, tilting her face up for his. His strong, tender mouth closed over hers. After the soft exchange of their kiss, he wrapped his arms and the long tails of his greatcoat about her and tilted his head away.
    Today, his face was serious, holding none of usual joviality.
    “What is it?” she asked.
    “We must go to London.”
    She searched his features, wary now. “Will it be safe?”
    “You’ll be with me for the entirety of the time.” He glanced away. “I think I’ve discovered who is behind all this.”
    “But you’ve been here with me,” she exclaimed.
    “Indeed, I have, but I have a network of spies that are far more skilled at discovering that which lurks in the shadows than I.”
    She nodded. Why wasn’t he