The Redemption of a Rogue, стр. 41
“You there, boy!” she called out.
He skidded to a halt in his running and looked around. She could see him in a partially obstructed view from the hole in the gate. He looked to be around eight or nine, with a dirty face and no shoes.
“You a fairy?” he asked as he looked around for where the voice had come from.
“Of course not,” Imogen said with a laugh she couldn’t suppress. “I’m here, behind the gate.”
He leaned in and her eye met his through the knot in the wood. His face twisted in uncertainty and he eased a little closer. “Seems a fairy thing t’do, you know. ’ide behind a gate and call out. Me ma says the fairies steal children’s souls.”
Imogen twisted her face in horror. “I don’t know if that’s true, but I know I’m not a fairy. Just a woman with a request and a coin for someone willing to fulfill it.”
He stepped up closer and pressed his eye to the knot. She stumbled back at the unexpected closeness and he looked around the garden. “I know this place,” he said. “This is Fitzhugh’s ’ouse. You one of ’is servants?”
“Something like it,” she said, because she certainly wasn’t going to go into the intricacies of her odd arrangement with the master of this house with a child. “I need to send a letter, but I’m not able to do it myself. Would be willing to post it if I give it to you?” She dug into her pelisse pocket and held up the letter along with her last silver coin. “And this?”
He eyed the coin, and she could see his interest. “You a princess trapped in a tower?”
She blinked. “N-no.”
“You look like a princess,” he muttered.
She looked down at herself in the fine gown, and sighed. It wasn’t even hers. It had belonged to the last princess who holed up in this tower with this man…prince or beast might he be.
“Will you do it?” she asked.
He shrugged. “No skin off my nose. Give the coin over then,” he said, and held his hand beneath the knot. She shoved the coin against it, and it wedged, but with a few taps of the edge, it pushed through. For a moment she thought he might just run with the money, but then he waved at her. “Now the letter.”
She rolled the folded pages into a scroll and pushed it through the opening, as well. “You’ll do it today?”
“On me way ’ome,” he said, though she wasn’t certain if that meant right away or later. Beggars, of course, could not be choosers, though, so she nodded.
“Thank you. I do appreciate it.”
He grunted some version of farewell and then rushed off again, racing down the alleyway behind the house and disappearing out of her sightline in the narrow hole.
She drew in a long breath once he was gone. She had no idea if he would truly post the letter, but at least she had tried. And knowing she could ease Aurora’s fears should have made her feel a little better.
Instead, she felt terribly guilty for going against the directive Oscar had given her a few hours before. She owed him so much. But he had made it very clear that he wasn’t meant to be a permanent fixture in her life. Aurora was.
She had to focus on that in the end, and not tell herself stories about the prince masquerading as a beast who had trapped her in his elegantly appointed tower and seduced her with his library. This fairytale could certainly not end well if she let herself forget that the final chapter would not be a happily ever after, at least not for the two of them.
Chapter 15
In the three days since Imogen had flounced out of his study, Oscar had been more confused than he’d ever been in his life. He felt her pulling away. During the day, she stayed out of his path. She read in the library, she worked in his garden, she sequestered herself in her room.
She was doing as he asked. She was keeping up a barrier between them. He should have been happy. But he wasn’t. He found himself shadowing her. Watching her from the window above when she was in the garden. Sneaking peeks of her in the library when she wasn’t looking. Standing at her chamber door, talking himself in and out of knocking.
And yet at night…oh, at night everything changed. She slipped into his room, never mentioning the gulf that lay between them. She came to his bed and sank into the pleasures they could share. When he dominated, she submitted. When he pressed her boundaries, she opened herself to him.
And when she occasionally took the lead, he found himself fighting all the urges within him to fall to his knees and spend the rest of his life worshipping her.
He shook those troubled thoughts away and continued on his way through the house. He hadn’t seen her since she left his bed last night to return to her chamber, and now it was late in the afternoon. The plans he had been formulating for days had finally come through and he almost vibrated with excitement as he exited the house and looked down from the terrace over the garden below.
She was there, a basket in one hand and clippers in the other, trimming his rosebushes. His heart leapt before he jerked himself back from the pleasure he ought not feel and made his way down the stairs to the garden to join her.
She lifted her gaze to his as he came down the last step and strode across the lawn. Her expression revealed nothing of how she felt to see him.
“Good afternoon, Imogen,” he said as he reached her. “What are you doing?”
She glanced at him again and then went back to trimming the dead heads off his roses, this time with a little more…violence than a moment before.
“I’m