Free The Duke’s Desire by Margaret Moore

me Jocelyn.”
    He crossed the distance between them, halting a few feet from her. “Why did you leave me that way?”
    She backed away. “Is it not obvious? Because I was ashamed.”
    Mercifully, he didn’t come any closer. “So you have been carrying this burden of guilt alone ever since.”
    “No, not alone. I told Daniel.”
    He stared at her incredulously. “You told your husband?”
    “He was not yet my husband when I confessed what I had done, and the consequences. I was not that dishonorable.”
    “While I can commend you for your honesty in this instance, I must admit I am surprised he still married you.”
    “He loved me. He forgave me,” she replied, “and when Jocelyn was born, he loved her as if she were his own child.”
    “He never cast your sin up to you?”
    “No.”
    “The man sounds like a saint, too good to be true.”
    “He was a good man, and I gave him only base coin in return.”
    “Perhaps you shouldn’t have married him, then.”
    “Yet I did,” she retorted. “At the time, I wouldhave married him even if I had not been with child.”
    “Because you spent an hour or two in my bed?”
    “Because I loved him! Daniel saved me. He gave me a home when I had none. My father was a drunkard who had gambled every cent of his fortune, and he left me nothing when he died. If not for Daniel, I would have had to live in the streets, or throw myself on the mercy of the parish.”
    “So Daniel Davis-Jones took in the poor orphan child and got a beautiful young wife in return.”
    “You make it sound so sordid—but it wasn’t like that. When I first came to live with him, he was kind and fatherly. I grew to love him very much. It was only later…much later…that he confessed his feelings for me had changed.”
    “What of your feelings for him? Had they changed, too, from seeing him as a fatherly fellow to a lover? I think not, or I could not have tempted you.”
    Her face reddened. “You would know all my shame, Your Grace? You would have me confess that every time he touched me intimately, I thought of you? That when he made love to me, it was your face I saw, your lips I kissed, your body I welcomed?”
    “Is that true?”
    “Yes!” she hissed, tears starting in her eyes.
    “Verity, did you never wonder what I felt that night?”
    Taken aback, she stared at him with surprise. “I thought…I thought you would believe me to be an immoral woman,” she stammered, “and you would have been right. I should never have gone to your room.”
    “I did not ask your opinion of what I thought. Did you ever give any consideration to how you made me feel? ”
    Her face flushed and she did not meet his gaze. “No,” she admitted very, very quietly.
    “You made me feel like a whore. You made me ashamed as I had never been shamed before.”
    She bowed her head as if bearing the weight of the world on her slender shoulders. “I apologized to Daniel, and now I apologize to you. I deeply regret what I did that night. I have regretted it every day since.”
    She lifted her face. “But I do not regret having Jocelyn.”
    He reached out to take her cold hands in his. “Verity, what you did that night saved me.”
    Her gaze anxiously searched his face, the faint light of hope dawning. “Saved you? From what?”
    “From myself. From the road to ruin I was merrily marching upon. I needed to see the unthinking, unfeeling cad I was. I needed to have it made so clear, I couldn’t deny it anymore. If you had notcome into my bedchamber that night, by now I would be an even worse scoundrel than I was. You rescued me, Verity, and for that I will always be grateful.”
    “You mean it,” she murmured wonderingly.
    He nodded and made a little smile. “I confess I did not enjoy the learning of such a lesson, but I am a better man for it.”
    He slowly moved his hands up her arms. “I don’t think a day has gone by that I haven’t thought of you. And cursed you, at first,” he confessed. “But