Lady Lyte's Little Secret. Deborah Hale

Lyte had offered him a banquet of forbidden fruit. Even as he’d gorged himself upon it, Thorn had found his appetite piqued rather than sated. By mutual agreement the span of their time together had been limited to this one Season at Bath. Then, with several blissful weeks still ahead of them, Thorn had received a tersely-worded letter from Felicity ending their relationship.

      As he should have expected, she’d grown tired of him. Found a superior replacement, perhaps.

      Now Thorn glanced around her shadow-shrouded bedchamber, satisfying himself that Felicity had been sleeping alone—for tonight, at least.

      He shook his head hard to banish his selfish desires and motives. Certainly he’d been angered by the casual manner in which Felicity had cast him off. Hurt, too—might as well admit it. Still, that didn’t give him the right to burst in on the woman at such an uncivilized hour and shock her into a swoon with his distressing suspicions.

      “Felicity?” He’d bellowed her name in the entry hall, then gasped it when she’d collapsed into his arms. Now he spoke it in a coaxing murmur as he chafed her hand. “Wake up, please. I’m sorry I broke the news to you so baldly. I should have known it would come as a terrible shock.”

      A wave of alarm swelled within him when she did not rouse right away. He pressed his fingers to the tender flesh at the base of her throat, searching for a pulse.

      “Thorn?” Felicity’s eyelids fluttered. She spoke his name with the peculiar softness of affection as her lips half curved in a drowsy, quizzical, trusting smile. “What happened? Where am I, darling?”

      Thorn’s heart lurched in his chest. Could he have misunderstood her letter? Might she still want him, for a few more weeks at least? The possibility elated him and that precarious sense of elation unsettled him.

      What terrifying power over his happiness had he yielded to this woman?

      As if to demonstrate that very capacity, Lady Lyte opened her glittering green eyes wide as a tremor of aversion quivered through her. She flinched from his touch.

      “What are you doing here?”

      If she’d raised her hand and slapped him hard across the cheek, it could not have stung like the steely chill of her tone. Thorn winced from it, pulling upright from his solicitous crouch beside her bed.

      A sharp intake of her breath told Thorn she recalled why he’d come.

      Her next words confirmed it. “Oliver and your sister? Run off together to Gretna? Are you certain?”

      Slowly, she rose to perch on the edge of the bed. Thorn bit his tongue to keep from warning her to be careful. If the woman wanted to risk another fainting spell, it was no business of his, after all.

      “If I’d been certain, I would hardly be wasting my time here, Lady Lyte. I’d be on the road to Bristol this very moment trying to catch them before they got any further with such folly.”

      “You must be mistaken.” Felicity’s doubtful tone belied the certainty of her words. “I breakfasted with Oliver just this morning. I never saw a young man who looked less like he meant to elope.”

      Her balance appeared equally dubious as she surged to her feet. Though Thorn willed his arms to remain straight at his sides, one reached out of its own accord to steady Felicity.

      Thorn Greenwood had always taken modest pride in knowing his own mind and acting in a deliberate manner upon carefully reasoned decisions. Unused to being pulled in contrary directions, he did not enjoy the sensation.

      He wished he did not enjoy the sensation of Felicity Lyte clinging to his arm.

      “I hope you’re right about your nephew.”

      Thorn wasn’t certain he meant it. If they discovered Oliver Armitage tucked up sound and alone in his own bed or burning the midnight oil in his study, then Ivy’s disappearance would take on a far more sinister complexion.

      “Will you at least humor me by confirming his presence in your house?”

      “Very well.” Felicity wrenched her hand back from Thorn’s arm as though she regretted the necessity of accepting his support. “Anything to speed you on your way.”

      As she stalked past him toward the door, Thorn followed, ready to catch her again if she so much as swayed.

      She did not.

      Indeed, her steps seemed to gain assurance as she marched down the hallway.

      “I’ll try his study first.” Felicity tossed the words over her shoulder as she halted before a door at the end of the wide corridor. “He often forgets the time when he’s absorbed in his work.”

      Tapping gently on the door, she called her nephew’s name, but received no response.

      “Oliver?” She turned the knob and pushed the door open a crack. “Are you there?”

      A musty odor of old books wafted from the room, mingled with the faint reek of chemical solutions. But all was dark and still within. Oliver Armitage did not answer his aunt’s call.

      “He must have retired to bed at a decent hour for a change.” A note of uncertainty crept into Felicity’s voice.

      Pushing past Thorn to the door opposite her nephew’s study, she knocked harder and hailed him in a more urgent tone. “Oliver, wake up! It’s urgent I speak with you at once.”

      No acknowledgement.

      “He’s a sound sleeper.”

      Thorn wondered whether she meant the remark to reassure herself or to confound his mounting conviction that he’d been right all along.

      Forsaking subtlety, Lady Lyte thrust open the bedroom door. “Oliver, pardon us for waking you, dear boy. But Mr. Greenwood has come with the most preposterous…”

      The rest of her sentence evaporated into the dormant shadows of the empty bedchamber. The hall lamp’s dim glimmer revealed crisp outlines of furniture, including an undisturbed bed.

      “Perhaps he has gone out, after all,” Felicity suggested, clearly forgetting her earlier claim that there was not a young man in Bath less anxious to venture out on the town.

      “Perhaps.”

      A splash of white against the bed’s dark coverlet caught Thorn’s eye. He brushed past Felicity. His hand closed over a sheet of paper, neatly folded and sealed with wax. Pulling it into the faint ribbon of light that spilled through the open doorway, he squinted to decipher two words written on the outside.

      He shoved the paper toward Felicity. “It’s addressed to you.”

      Chapter Two

      Felicity willed her hand not to tremble as she held it out to receive the communication Oliver had left for her.

      “Can you fetch me a light, please?” she asked Thorn.

      Whatever message this paper held, she had no intention of returning to her own bedroom to read it. Certainly not in Thorn Greenwood’s company.

      Why, the place was crammed to the ceiling with vivid, bedeviling memories of the nights they’d spent together. The last thing Felicity wanted to contemplate just now was any reminder of Thorn’s deliberate, attentive lovemaking and her own ardent response to it.

      Ever obliging, Thorn headed out into the hall and returned bearing a lamp.

      The thickness and texture of the paper in her hand put Felicity in mind of the letter she’d written to him just the other day. Reluctance had tugged at her elbow. Regret at having to end their affair prematurely had sharpened her words. She hadn’t wanted to hurt him, but neither had she wanted him to hold any false hope that she might change her mind.

      If Thorn had entreated her with those steadfast brown eyes and the earnest set of his handsome features, Felicity had