Everything Forbidden
Page 22
“Miranda Albright!” the voice came again and people stopped talking. Heads swiveled, turning to a spot behind her, then returning their gazes to her with curious stares.
“Who is calling your name so crudely?” her mother said as she let Miranda go and spun around. Miranda knew the answer before her mother gasped, “Lord Rothschild.”
Slowly Miranda turned and found Ethan was standing ten feet away from her in the middle of the quickly emptying dance floor. His gaze locked with hers and her knees actually went weak when she saw the open, caring expression on his utterly beautiful face.
“Ethan,” she whispered, the sound barely leaving her throat it was so low and pained. “What are you doing?”
“Miranda, you are the strongest woman I have ever known,” he said over the titillated murmurs of the pressing crowd that was staring from her to him and back again. “You take chances and make sacrifices to aid your family, but you shouldn’t be the only one to take risks.”
She flinched at his use of the word risk. That was what she’d said to him on the terrace a moment ago. That she wasn’t brave enough to risk believing his statement that he loved her. Clearly, he had seen that as some kind of challenge, but what was he thinking? That bellowing after her would prove something to her?
She drew in a harsh breath and opened her mouth to rebuke him when he suddenly dropped to his knees in the middle of the hard, wooden floor. She rushed forward two steps before she stopped herself.
The crowd’s murmurs lifted to hushed, shocked whispers, but Ethan ignored them and kept his gaze on her and her alone.
“Miranda, you certainly deserve a better man than I am.”
She bit back a sob and blinked to clear the tears that were welling up, blurring her vision. “Please—”
He shook his head. “But I do love you. And I will make an ass of myself in front of all these people if it proves that to you.”
“You don’t have to do this,” she whispered as the tears began to fall.
He smiled. “But I do. I must say, in front of all the gossips in London that I will never love another woman. And that any woman who approaches me expecting me to live up to the reputation I’ve cultivated over the past decade and a half will be sorely disappointed. Because even if you never see fit to accept my love, I will never share it or anything else with any other woman. Not ever again.”
Hot blood flooded Miranda’s cheeks as a few of the younger women in the crowd made little sounds of distress.
“You cannot mean that,” she said as she took another step in his direction.
He stared at her, dark eyes clear and filled with all the hopes she didn’t dare to have.
“Look at me, Miranda. Would I make an idiot of myself if I didn’t mean it? I love you. And if I must wait a day or a month or a year or ten years for you to believe me, if I must give up everything I am and everything I have to prove it, I will marry you some day.”
She stared at him, still too shocked to fully comprehend what he was saying. Her gaze shifted to the crowd. Some of the matrons were clucking their tongues in disapproval, there were at least three women who were staring at Miranda like they wanted to scratch her eyes out and several of the men, some of whom Ethan had been talking with earlier, were shaking their heads in disgust.
She sucked in a breath. He had thrown himself on her mercy. With his speech, by dropping to his knees to declare his complete surrender to her, he had thrown away that precious reputation that made his life so charmed. He had turned away any potential lover in public. He had disavowed the life he and his friends enjoyed.
In short, he had given her everything he had ever been, and asked for everything she was in return.
Miranda felt a touch on her arm and turned to find Penelope standing at her elbow. Her sister’s face was flushed and her eyes wide and filled with wild emotion.
“Don’t do this, Miranda,” she whispered, just out of the range of hearing of those around them.
Miranda glanced at Ethan again, then her sister. She touched Penelope’s face. “Don’t surrender love for duty, Penelope. Not because you’re angry with me.”
Her sister’s face twisted as Miranda turned back to Ethan. Her tears flowed freely now, but they were no longer tears of pain or disbelief or anger. Somehow, he had transformed them to tears of joy. Of hope.
She reached out to cup his cheek. “Ethan,” she whispered.
He smiled up at her. “All I ask is that you believe that I’m sincere.”
“I believe you,” she said. “And I love you so very much.”
His eyes lit up like a child on Christmas morning. He bolted to his feet, catching her by the waist and lifting her up in his arms as he stood. The crowd around them burst into applause as his lips met hers.
Miranda laughed and cried at once as he kissed her.
He pulled back. “Marry me and I promise I will one day earn your love.”
She nodded as she wrapped her arms around him and held him close. “You have already earned my love, for the rest of our lives.”
About the Author
JESS MICHAELS always flips through every romance she buys in search of “the good stuff,” so it makes perfect sense that she writes erotic romance where she gets to turn up the heat on that good stuff and let it boil. She loves alpha males, long-haired cats (and short-haired ones), the last breath right before a passionate kiss, and the color purple (not the movie, though, that’s excellent, too—the actual color). She firmly believes that Cadbury Cream Eggs should be available all year round and not count against any diet.
Jess loves to hear from readers. You can find her online at www.jessmichaels.com.
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Also by Jess Michaels
Fiction
PARLOR GAMES
(with Leda Swann and Julia Templeton)
Coming Soon
SOMETHING RECKLESS
Credits
Cover design by Robin Bilardello
Cover photograph by Barnaby Hall/Getty Images
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
EVERYTHING FORBIDDEN. Copyright © 2007 by Jesse Petersen. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Microsoft Reader September 2007 ISBN 978-0-06-154618-1
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