“Yes.” I turned, sliding back into bed and bracing myself over her warm body. “But after I make love to you.”
Sarah opened herself to me, caressing my chest, arching her hips in invitation. For a while, I didn’t have to think about anything but the bliss I found inside her.
“Wow.”
The word echoed off the marble floors as Sarah gawked at my family’s London townhouse on Wilton Crescent. There were five floors to the home. Four above us, plus a roof terrace, and one below us.
The spacious entrance hall led to an impressively wide staircase with an elaborately carved balustrade that swept upward, curving along a balcony that overlooked the hall from above. To our side an open archway led to a library/sittingarea. Beyond that were double doors into my father’s study. He’d barely updated the furnishings since my mother’s passing. It wasn’t exactly contemporary, and the hallway walls were cluttered with paintings of our family and our ancestors.
I noted the painting of my mother at the bottom of the stairwell and blocked out the swell of emotion that threatened. This place held a strange mix of treasured memories and pain.
“You grew up here?” Sarah whispered as my father’s butler went to announce our arrival.
“If you think this is something, you should see Haleshall Manor,” I murmured back sardonically. At her uneasy expression, I threaded my fingers through hers.
I knew Sarah and I came from opposite sides of the track, but I didn’t want her using that to put any more distance between us.
I was no longer the Honorable Theodore Merrick Cavendish, second son of Viscount Stephen Jerome Cavendish. I’d buried that boy long ago.
The butler, whom I didn’t recognize, reappeared but disappeared down the staircase at the back of the hall. However, my father had followed in his wake.
Obviously fully recovered from testicular cancer.
He looked like he’d never been sick.
With a heart like his, Stephen Cavendish should have been a balding, fat, ugly little man. Instead, I got my height and lean but strong physique from him. That was where the similarities ended. Sebastian looked more like him. Dark hair, black eyes. Eyes like the fucking devil. I had my mother’s fairer complexion and coloring.
Stephen Cavendish was almost sixty-one years old, had just battled cancer, and yet he didn’t look a day over fifty. He was, regrettably, a very handsome man. Until you looked a bit closer at his insides.
His dark gaze moved from me to Sarah, and I had to fight the urge to stand in front of her, block her from his regard. “You must be the writer I’ve heard so much about.”
I stiffened. Sebastian had been talking.
My father scowled at me. “My son doesn’t keep me updated on his life, so I have to find other ways. I must say I’m extremely surprised to see you here, considering you couldn’t be bothered to visit me while I was recovering from cancer.”
Rage suffused me, but Sarah’s hand tightened in mine, bringing me back. Centering me.
Somehow, for my sake and hers, I had to let this go.
But first, he needed to know why.
“We need to talk,” I replied, gesturing to his study. “Shall we?”
He couldn’t quite mask his curiosity. “All right.”
Sarah squeezed my hand again. “I’ll wait out here.”
I nodded, pressing a kiss to the back of her knuckles before reluctantly releasing her. She didn’t look at my father as she eased onto the chaise near the front door.
My father stared at her a little too long for my liking, and I moved in front of him, blocking her from view. “Lead the way.”
As soon as we were inside, he closed the doors and rounded me to sit behind his desk. It reminded me of the times I’d gotten in trouble at school, and he’d brought me into his study during the school holidays to lecture me on my behavior. Sometimes those lectures had been accompanied by a smack across the face.
I shoved out the old memories.
“I must say, she’s rather lovely for someone of such commonness.”
I stiffened. “Excuse me?”
