Free A Most Demanding Mistress (Fashionably Impure Book 2) by Natasha Blackthorne Page B

poetic words in her ears…
    How could the late Lady Danvers have
possibly found the self-restraint to have barred this man gorgeous, tender,
maddening man from her bed?
    Miranda was consumed by a wave of indignant
anger for her lover.
    She had never been fond of Lady Danvers,
seeing her as a feckless girl who had driven Carrville to his wits end with
worry and angst too often. Now Miranda saw her as increasingly too
self-consumed to care about the people around her.
    Lady Danvers had died, due to careless
actions and left her father suffering under a crippling weight of guilt and
grief.
    Previous to becoming intimate with Adrian,
Miranda had always believed him to be too cold and arrogant to have felt much
over his wife’s death. Now she saw that Lady Danvers had left Adrian just as
wounded and self-blaming as Carrville had been. What a pity that Jane
Sutherland’s tragic, violent demise had put a wedge between the two men. They
might have offered each other comfort. That comfort might have prevented
Carrville’s unexpected death.
    Could Miranda herself have been able to do
something to bring the estranged men together?
    She wouldn’t have dared overstep her bounds.
    But had she put her fear of societal
standards above her fondness for Carrville? What was a mistress’ duty to a
protector’s emotional well-being?
    What did one friend owe another?
    A wave of regret went twisting through her
stomach.
    Why did she recriminate herself like this?
    The past was done. Nothing could change it.
All that remained was the here and now. She considered Adrian’s troubled
expression.
    “What makes you think the failure is yours?”
she said.
    “I failed to make her trust me as a lover. I
failed to connect with her in that way. I cannot deny the role that failure had
in ultimately leading to her death.” He took her hand into both of his.
    How warm and safe it made her feel to be
held by him like that. Miranda’s heart seemed to expand. Previously, she would
never have dared to speak disrespectfully to a man of his own deceased wife.
Especially not a nobleman and one who was paying her bills. But she couldn’t
hold back. “Oh Adrian, you weren’t to blame. She was ever attracted to
blackguards. Carrville himself often worried about her taste in lovers.”
    She held her breath, with her heart pounding
in her ears. She loved him so much. She felt his pain as though it were her
own. She wanted to heal all his hurts. That desire to offer him solace and to
help him gain new perspective on old wounds made her bold and able to voice
truths she never could in the past.
    What would his reaction be to this bit of
truth regarding Jane Sutherland and her self-centered fecklessness? He gave a
lengthy sigh as he rubbed the back of his neck. “If I had been able to give her
what she needed, she would never have…” He caught himself, as though voicing
the actual words were too painful. “She would never have gone outside our
marriage.”
    “Perhaps, she selected you, knowing that Carrville
would never approve of her lover but also knowing that you would eventually
give her the freedom she needed?”
    He froze and then shot her a fierce look.
Blue fire reflected by the increasing blaze of sunlight in the chamber. “God, I
should not like to think Jane was capable of that type of scheming.”
    He assumed the arrogant expression she knew
well.
    The warmth that Miranda had been feeling
ebbed a bit. “Why, because she was noble born?”
    His hand went cold against hers.
    Or had she only imagined that?
    Now he looked hard, closed off from her.
    Ah! She had suspected as much. Miranda’s own
heart hardened as she slipped instinctively into a self-protective mode. “Or
was it because she was plain?”
    “I don’t know what you’re saying.”
    “Don’t insult my intelligence.” Anger
pounded into her, making it more difficult to collect her thoughts, to put
thoughts into words. “I know you previously despised me and all courtesans.