Free Patrica Rice by Regency Delights Page A

dark draperies.
    He pounded the knocker and pushed past the butler when he asked for his card.
    "Where's Melanie?" he demanded. "Where is my wife?" The butler stared at him blankly. "The family is not at home to callers, my lord."
    So the blamed man recognized him, Damien thought coldly. Good. Let him see the Earl of Reister breathing fire and fury. "I'm not a caller, man, I'm family. If you do not tell me where my wife is, I shall tear the place down until I find her."
    The butler stepped back passively. "I'm sure I cannot say, sir."
    "Fine then. Stay out of my way." Roaring with rage, Damien stormed down the hall, flinging open doors right and left. The library, she had said. She spent her time in the library, staring over the lawns. The library must be in the back of the house or she would be out here now. Melanie wouldn't ignore him. "Melanie!" he screamed at the top of his lungs. She would hear him. She would come running. It would just take her a little time.
    He found a second passage leading to the rear of the house. He ought to remember where the blamed library was, but Jane hadn't spent much time there. Neither had he, for all that mattered. Where did one hide the blamed library?
    He was aware of heads peering around doors and peeking down stairs at him as he rampaged through the silent corridors. He didn't care. He needed Melanie. He needed to explain. He needed to make things right with her. Even if she didn't want him, he had to explain. He wouldn't have her thinking badly of him, or of herself. He knew that was what it was all about. Jane had said something to make Melanie doubt herself.
    That thought filled his head as a familiar figure suddenly darted from the shadows at the rear of the hall. Too round and too large for flitting, the child merely pointed at a closed door and sat heavily on an antique boot bench by the side door. Damien blew Pamela a kiss and threw open the door indicated.
    With draperies drawn, the room held only dusky shadows at first. Gradually he made out the floor-to-ceiling shelves, most of them half empty. Sir Francis didn't spend much time reading, nor had his limited selection of ancestors, Damien suspected. No one used this room, he knew instantly from the uncluttered library tables to the unburned wicks in the lamps—no one but a lonely woman who escaped into her own fantasies amid its dreariness.
    He stalked to the drapery-covered windows. He didn't yell anymore. He would never yell at Melanie. Or maybe he would, occasionally. She had a stubborn will that needed opposition once in a while. But he could think of much better ways of opposing that will than by yelling.
    Gently, he drew back the drapery hiding the window seat. She slept curled against the window frame. Tears sprang, unwelcome, to Damien's eyes. He wanted to pick her up and carry her out to the carriage that would arrive shortly, take her away from here, and never come back. But she wasn't a child like the one he'd held in his arms a few hours ago. She was a woman grown. She was entitled to make her own decisions.
    "Melanie?" he spoke quietly, not wanting to startle her.
    Her lids flickered, and her glance first went to the window. Perhaps he should have climbed in the window after her, Damien thought with amusement. That's what a gallant knight would do. He wasn't any gallant knight.
    Then she woke more fully and turned to look up at him as if she'd expected him there all the time. "Damien," she said flatly.
    "Not Sir Lancelot, I'm afraid," he apologized, jerking back the drapery so the sun flooded the dismal room. "But I've come for you anyway. You should have waited. I didn't want you to have to face your family alone."
    "They're my family. I have nothing to fear from them." She watched him with curiosity now. She sniffed delicately as he sat beside her. "You smell of. . ." She tried to put a name to the odor she no doubt would have difficulty associating with him.
    "Babies," he supplied the word for her. "My daughter