by Anna Bradley
Her fingers tightened in his hair, and her breath caught on a sob.
“But once I knew you, I realized your beauty isn’t here.” He rose to his feet and traced the back of his hand over the lines of her face. “It’s here.” He rested his palm against her chest, over her heart. “Your true beauty is in your heart. Your kindness, your strength—they come from here. I fell in love with your heart, leannan, and I’m a selfish man, because even though I don’t deserve it, I want your heart for my own.”
She gazed up into his face with tear-filled eyes. “It’s yours. My heart and my love are yours, Lachlan. I can’t remember a time when they weren’t.”
Lachlan brushed her hair back from her face, and caught her tears on his fingertips. “Don’t cry, aingeal.”
A soft laugh escaped her lips, and she shook her head as she rose to her tiptoes to slide her arms around his neck. “Oh, Lachlan, I’m no angel. Someday soon, you’ll discover I’m just a flesh and blood woman, one with too many flaws to count. Then what do you suppose will happen?”
He wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled her hard against him, and the rare smile he saved for her alone curled his lips. “You’ll always be my aingeal. But don’t worry, leannan. I’m also very, very interested in your womanly flesh. I’m a man, after all.”
He lowered his mouth to hers and captured her lips in a breathtaking kiss, and as Hyacinth opened to him, she thought of who Lachlan was—everything he was. An Englishman and a Scot, a brawler with enormous hands and blood on his knuckles, and yet a gentleman still, one who worshipped her with his soft, tender touch.
And hidden inside that massive chest, under the hard muscles and layers of scar tissue over the wounds of his past…
The fiercest, warmest heart she’d ever known.
He was all of those things, but more than anything else…
He was hers.
Author’s Notes
The information about card marking is from a book published in 1894, entitled Sharps and Flats: A Complete Revelation of the Secrets of Cheating at Games of Chance and Skill, written by John Nevil Maskelyne. This fascinating book details the various tricks cards sharps used to cheat their opponents.
There is some discrepancy concerning the dates playing cards began to feature printed designs on their backs. The wealthy could afford custom, hand-painted cards, but the consensus seems to be that until the Victorian era, playing cards had plain, blank white backs, making it easy for cheats like Lord Dixon to mark them with paraffin wax.
About the Author
Anna Bradley is the author of The Sutherland Scandals novels. A Maine native, she now lives near Portland, Oregon, where people are delightful and weird and love to read. She teaches writing and lives with her husband, two children, a variety of spoiled pets, and shelves full of books. Visit her website at www.annabradley.net.
