Free A Perfect Mistress by Barbara Mack Page A

away, I'm comfortable here,” he said gruffly, not bothering to open his eyes. He knew she was smiling; he could feel it. Suddenly he felt like a small, pouting boy, and he didn't like it, not at all.  She was the one at fault here, not him.
    “ A servant told me where you were. There's a bed at the inn,” she said.  “And I'm there.”
    His eyes popped open, and he stared at her. Sophie was smiling, and she didn't seem disgusted at all. She sat daintily on the edge of the hay bale, smoothing her skirts around her. A flush brightened her pale cheeks.
    “Do you always go storming off when you're given a gift?”
    Jackson stared at her.  He opened his mouth to speak, then closed it again.
    “How long has it been, Jackson, since you held a woman in your arms?” she asked delicately, deliberately holding his gaze.  “Have you, at all, since your accident?”
    “Two years.”  He turned his face away from hers, and was shocked beyond words when she reached out and firmly turned it back.
    “It has been three years for me.  Were you nervous?”  He nodded, his eyes sliding away from her direct gaze once again, but her next words had them turning back.  “So was I. Terrified, in fact, because the last sexual experience I had was a rape.  I was afraid that I … that I ...”
    Jackson reached out to grasp her hand, and she squeezed it gratefully.  “I wanted to.  I wanted you, but I was afraid that the memory of that time would intrude.  And it did, for a moment. What Delia had planned for me made it all come back again, and I couldn’t get past the fear for a little bit. ”
    “After my husband died,” Sophie said in a voice that trembled only a little, “I went back to live with my father.  I didn't really have a choice in the matter; I was penniless, and my husband had no family willing to take me in.  Our mother died when we were small, and my father was so stern; Delia ran away when she was sixteen, but I'd no way out until I married.  I was happy married to David, though we had very little money. I thought I'd never have to see my father again, and I said things when I left that he never forgave. He made me pay for those words when I came back.  My life with him was a misery, and when he died I tried to mourn, I truly did. Then the lawyer informed me that he'd made no provision for me in his will; instead, he'd left his money to a distant cousin who is a missionary in India.  I was kindly allowed to stay in the house until the cousin arrived to take possession.” 
    “He seemed like an answer to a prayer, Thomas did.  He insisted that I stay in the house while he took lodgings elsewhere in town . Handsome, respectable, oh-so-courteous, every female in town was in love with him.”  Sophie smiled bitterly.  “Including me, of course.   He began courting me immediately, and the match was encouraged at every turn.  It seemed as if, finally, I was going to be happy again.” 
    She let her eyes drop, and Jackson pulled her hand up to hold her palm against his face, his heart pounding.  A relentless anger began to burn in him, because he knew how this story ended.
    “Until the day he cornered me in the library and raped me, that is.  He tore my clothes, called me whore and seducer and said that he knew what I wanted and he'd give me what I'd been begging for.  I still have a scar on my breast where his teet h tore at me.  After... after, while I still lay bleeding on the floor, he wept and told me that he love d me and we would be married at once.” 
    She lifted her head and smiled crookedly at him, and Jackson felt he might drown in the blue of her eyes.
    “I went to Delia straight away and she took me in, but something was broken in me that I thought could never be repaired.  I didn’t know how she was; I hadn’t seen her for years, and I was just a little girl when she left. I barricaded myself in that house, and I never looked at another man. I never thought that I'd want another