Page 78 of A Potion for Passion

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Why it should matter to him that Flora had lain with another man, Lawrence couldn’t fathom. All the other women he’d been with had husbands, or other lovers besides himself, and he’d never felt a twinge of compunction. Or of jealousy.

He looked at Flora, sitting upright in his bed, swathed in a sheet, her tousled red hair framing her lovely face, her blue eyes open wide and her mouth trembling.

Judas.That was it. He really was jealous.

Yet, Flora was unmarried.

He swore to avenge himself on the man who’d used her so ill, who’d slept with her, then just abandoned her to her fate.

His voice sounded grim as he said, “Tell me. I want to know everything.”

She shook her head, and her hair brushed her shoulders. His fingers itched to do the same, but first he needed to exorcise the pain in his heart. “Flora, please. After what we just shared, we can have no secrets from one another.”

She bit her lip. “You have more secrets than I, Lawrence Campaign. You spend so much time playing the part of a character you’ve invented, how am I to know which is the real man? How am I supposed to divine what is fact and what is fabrication?”

No, this was no good. They mustn’t fight, not after the incredible moment they’d just shared. He needed the ache in his heart to go away, not to intensify.

“Sweetheart,” he said gently, taking her hand in his, “I don’t mean to pry. I don’t censure you at all—why would I? But I was very surprised, and I’d like to know the full story. Who was this man to whom you gave yourself?”

Her eyes flicked over his still-naked body, and despite the solemnity of his thoughts, he felt himself come to life again under her scrutiny. Was she comparing notes between himself and her previous lover?

“Here.” He got up and handed her clothes to her, then hurriedly got into his own. This was important. He needed to think with his head, not with his overly lustful body.

When both of them were decent, he sat beside her on the bed and put his arm around her shoulders. It felt so right having her there, pressed protectively against his side. Had her other lover held her this tenderly? And why should he even care?

“I’ll tell you,” she said quietly. “Though it’s agony to do so. But you must give me something in return.”

“Name it.” He would give anything to quash the disharmony that had sprung up between them.

“You must divulge your secrets, too. Promise me.”

“All of them?” he exclaimed in mock horror. “I wouldn’t know where to start!”

“Well, your illicit activities, at any rate, since they touch upon both my family and the place where I live.”

If he did that, gone would be any hope of making her his again. But perhaps that hope had already been destroyed.

“Very well, I agree,” he said. “You first.” He steeled himself against the surge of jealousy he was bound to suffer as she revealed the truth.

“His name was Frank Mullen,” she said. “He lived locally with his parents. We loved each other and made no secret of it. We were, in fact, engaged to be married.”

Ah, so the man had made an honest woman of her. Or at least planned to.

Then, an invisible dagger struck at Lawrence’s heart. She’d been engaged…and presumably in love with the man. But she’d never expressed any such feeling for him.

“The family was quite well off,” she continued. “They ran a brig between the Spanish coast and Portsmouth, dealing mainly in Merino wool and occasionally in wine.”

She paused, and he laid a soft kiss on her hair, pulling her more tightly against him.

“We could have waited. We meant to wait. But the cottage had been bought, and we were furnishing it…and the bed looked so inviting. Where could be the harm?”

“Where, indeed? You wouldn’t be the first couple to taste each other before the wedding night, and you certainly won’t be the last. But go on.”

She tucked her head against his neck. So tender, so trusting. He didn’t deserve it, as she would soon discover.

“It was a routine journey, one the Maria Parva had made many times. But, so I’m told, a storm came up out of nowhere and dashed the ship upon rocks near St. Michael’s Mount. No one could do anything to help, and all hands were lost. Frank was among them. I never saw him again.”