Free The Mysterious Heir by Edith Layton Page B

and would live forever, and his father was immortal as the sun. He would not believe it.
    When he was three-and-twenty they told him it was time to look about him for a wife, to ensure the succession. For Simon had taken none and never would, in the wisdom of his own treacherous body. So young Morgan agreed to be off to London for a season or two, not to find a wife as they asked, for he thought he needed none, but to find a taste of life. And he had, he thought now; he had found more than he bargained for.
    In London, he had found Kitty.
    Kitty Clairmont, the most beautiful creature to have ever met his roving eyes. She was not the toast of the season, nor even one of the leading incomparables. But she was a beauty and at eighteen had a following among the ardent young men in the ton. When he had seen her that night at Almack’s, at first glance, she had driven him wild with the desire to make her his wife. He did not see it as his first taste of calf-love, for at three-and-twenty he had already lain with five women and thought himself an expert at love. No matter that three were females he had paid for and two were girls of the servant class, and none were relationships that lasted more than a night, or were expected to last beyond the rising of the sun. He was three-and-twenty and no one could have told him differently. His father and his brother were fast at Lyonshall and all his friends were of an age with him and knew no more of the true love for a woman than he. Indeed, some knew less and thought Morgan Courtney in his tall, straight, handsome form as worldly as he himself did.
    When he saw her standing there, slender, slightly taller than average, with her clear pale olive skin and midnight hair and slow dark gypsy eyes, he thought she looked like a Madonna from one of the paintings that hung in the corridors of Lyonshall. When she danced with him and he felt her slim form against him and tried to look into those fathomless eyes, he felt she was some sort of seductive houri from his childhood books of The Arabian Nights. Though she spoke seldom and lowered her lashes when he gazed hungrily into her eyes, and never laughed or coquetted as more spectacular belles might do, he was lost to all reason. He would marry her, he must marry her, he could not live if he did not. And lost to all reason, he thought this was love.
    She had no mother, but did have a strict father who had brought her to Town from their small holding in Wales. Her family was obscure, but of a good line, their fortune was established, and young Morgan Courtney could see no impediment. But he did see competition, and lived in a fever of anxiety each time he called at her town house and saw other young men awaiting an audience with her. She was strictly chaperoned and slow to speak, and though she seemed to look kindly upon him, he did not know her feelings and that drove him to new heights of acquisitive passion.
    Once he had drawn her out to the garden at a ball, and that once, he had taken her in his arms, and that one time he had been allowed to kiss her briefly. In a moment she had gently pushed him away, turned her head in shame, and whispered, “We must not.” And that gave him the fuel to continue courting her for weeks. Three times he made his offer to her father, and three times her father had evaded his eyes and said, “She is young yet, give her time.” But Morgan Courtney knew that an older, twice-widowed Baronet was also courting her, and impatience gnawed at him. Then, at the end of the season, the Baronet veered off, and when Morgan Courtney made his fourth offer, her father had sighed and said, “So be it.” And he had won her hand.
    During their engagement, which lasted a summer, he spent every available moment with her. But she was still closely chaperoned and he was given to understand that this was the custom in her small part of the world. And he suffered it. Yet each time he finally got her alone and begged a kiss, she was