Total pages in book: 173
Estimated words: 163328 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 817(@200wpm)___ 653(@250wpm)___ 544(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 163328 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 817(@200wpm)___ 653(@250wpm)___ 544(@300wpm)
Until I found the letter in his discarded trousers.
I’d memorized every painful word over the past two years.
His gaze remained fixed on his lover’s words, his demeanor darkening, as he read in silence what I recited in my head.
My dearest Priest,
Last night, I didn’t just welcome you into my body. I let you into my heart. Again. I won’t call it a mistake. Never that. But it was desperate. A wildly pleasurable, terribly desperate moment of weakness.
I should have waited until you woke to say this in person. But we both know I cannot deny you. Not face to face when you look at me the way you do, with a love so intense I think you might die from it.
So I shall pen this clearly and with a coward’s heart.
We cannot see each other again.
No more stolen nights. No more sneaking around. No more risking our lives to be together. My family, my obligations, my very existence put you in danger, just as yours threatens everything I’ve accomplished.
I cherish every trice we had over the years. Not just the orgasms, but the friendship we shared. The familiarity. The laughter. The sorrow.
The passion.
My love for you will endure, even though last night shall be our last.
It is my most devout hope that this ache will dull on both sides with time. Even so, in these final moments before I must leave, I realize I will be less happy, less honest, and less human without you.
I know I must let you go, and someday I will. But for now…
For now, respect my wishes.
Stay away. Move on. Find love.
Forgive me.
I must leave now before I give into the temptation to join you once again in bed. As I stare at you from across the room, I’ll never forget this view of your flawlessly nude body sprawled across the tangled counterpane. Sated. Peaceful. Magnificent. I’ll remember it well, knowing I put that tranquil expression on your handsome face if only for one more night.
May God watch over you and keep you safe, my heart.
No signature. No name to put with the words that so effectively destroyed my marriage.
When I’d confronted Priest about the letter that morning, he hadn’t made excuses or denied the adultery. He’d been too distraught to form words. More distraught, it seemed, about his paramour leaving him than about his wife discovering the affair.
Upon that realization, I’d lost my ever-loving mind, screaming, throwing dishes, and demanding answers. But he’d only sat there, dazed and speechless, drowning himself in a bottle of rum. He drank so much, in fact, he didn’t notice I’d left the room, boarded Jade, and fled Nassau without him. By the time he sobered, I was long gone.
To this day, the identity of his lover remained a mystery.
I suspected she was a titled lady of breeding, someone like my mother, who couldn’t live beyond her dowry, her role in high society, and her obligation to marry a lord.
As a wanted criminal and son of a prostitute, Priest Farrell didn’t stand a chance with a woman like that. He was lucky she’d given him her virtue. If that had even been the case. Maybe she was a widow.
“Who wrote the letter, Priest?” I reclined in the chair, draping a leg over the armrest in feigned indifference.
“I can’t give you that.” His fist curled, wadding the letter beneath it. “Don’t ask me again.”
He was still protecting her.
My molars ground together. “Does she know you had a wife?”
“Following our agreement, I’ve told no one about our marriage.”
“If you followed our agreement, you wouldn’t have rutted between every pair of legs in a skirt!”
“One person.” His gaze shot to mine, igniting with the same ire that roughened his Welsh accent. “Since the moment I met you three years ago, there’s only been you and one other.”
That couldn’t be true. Not that it mattered.
If I knew his lover’s identity, maybe I wouldn’t kill her. Perhaps I would just ruin her the same way my grandfather had ruined my mother.
Did that make me the villain?
Whomever this woman was, she loved Priest. Her letter said as much. And she’d met him before I had, which meant I was the other woman. A woman she didn’t know existed.
He didn’t just fuck her while he was married to me. He loved her, deeply and completely. That was the greatest, most destructive source of my torment.
I’d watched the devastation of his love bleed out around him the day she left him. He’d loved her long before he knew me and would’ve given her his life. But he wasn’t good enough for her.
So he married me.
His second choice.
A consolation prize.
“If it was aristocratic breeding you wanted in your bed…” I met his eyes. “My lineage isn’t lacking. My grandfather was an earl and—”
“Don’t flatter yourself, madam.” His disgusted tone scalded the air between us. “I don’t give a damn about your noble blood.”