My Lady's Choosing: An Interactive Romance Novel(66)

The sun is low in the sky when Timmy, who you only now realize had been missing the entire day, trudges up to your happy, strange family circle. He wears a weary grin and drags Dodger along with him.

“I have good news and bad news, miss,” Timmy says. You and Mac share a look and a laugh.

“Well,” Mac booms.

“Out with both!” you say with a cackle.

“The bad news is, Dodger broke a wall when we were looking for secret passages,” Timmy explains. You shoot Mac a worried look. How much will replacing a wall cost?

“The good news is,” Timmy continues, “he found the hidden treasure! Now we can all live happily ever after!”

The children cheer. You and Mac kiss. Dodger tries to pick up a fallen caber in his mouth.

Only one thing could make the occasion sweeter. You find an obliging local blacksmith and marry Mac over the anvil in traditional, inexplicable Scottish fashion. Afterward, when the villagers have tired of the day’s merriment and the children are all in bed, you and Mac take a stroll about the castle grounds and survey the glory of the first day of the rest of your lives.

The sun sets, staining the sky the pale-fire color of memory, promises, and Mac’s head of hair.

You turn to your love and share a look of total simpatico. If teamwork makes the dream work, you two make that dream a very wet one, indeed. You kiss as though you are discovering islands off each other’s hidden coasts. Finally, breathlessly, you pull away.

“I want you to take me in the stables,” you say.

“Aye, lass.” Mac takes a steadying breath.

“I want you to flip your kilt up, lift my skirts, and toss your caber deep inside me.”

Mac spins you around and bends you over, right there on the shores of the loch. “Yes, lass,” he murmurs. “But first can you meet the monster that haunts my depths?”

“Aye, laddie,” you answer, and pull his strong hands down to slip over your slick glen.

You take great pleasure in making the large, gorgeous man shudder like a rickety guest house in a gale. As you take each other everywhere you wish, you realize something wonderful.

Living happily ever after is exactly what you’ll do.

The End





You say nothing and try not to make any sudden movements. Delphine tightens her grip upon your arm and pulls you roughly out of the battle. You cannot help but tremble in fear.

“What is wrong with you?!” Delphine whispers viciously. “Why are you not fighting? Has Evangeline really moved on, really found happiness with a weak, pathetic ingénue?”

She pulls the knife closer, and you gasp as the wicked blade pierces your skin. A small trickle of blood runs down your neck. You try not to quiver lest it draw more blood. You fail. Delphine crows in simultaneous triumph and despair.

“She didn’t used to be like this! She used to be free! Free and wild and in love with me! What happened to her? What did you do to her?” Delphine hisses this last part in your ear, her breath hot and angry.

“Unhand her at once!” shouts a cut-glass voice.

A thrill runs down your spine as you see Lady Evangeline approaching, her small gold pistol pointed at her traitorous ex-lover. Delphine stares at her wildly.

“You—you have no loyalty!” cries the outraged Frenchwoman. “I would have loved you—I still love you—for all time! But you prefer this boring petite anglaise to a woman who would do anything for you!”

Evangeline’s beautiful eyes are filled with tears, but her voice holds steady.

“It’s over, Delphine,” she says. “You made your choice when you betrayed me. I thought I might never love again. I was wrong.”

You gasp as Lady Evangeline turns to you. “You showed me that, my dear. No matter what happens after this day, I must thank you.”

“Lady Evangeline!” you sigh.

“NO!” screeches Delphine. “You will not have this! Not while I still live—”

A gunshot rings out, and for a split second you think that Lady Evangeline has done it, has killed her former love. You turn to her and are startled to see her face crossed with a curious mixture of anguish and relief as she stares at a figure several feet away.

Following her sapphire gaze, you turn and see a familiar looming presence, silhouetted against the bright sunshine and holding a gun.

“Fabien! But why?!” you gasp. He turns to you, his tormented Nile-green eyes even more tormented than usual.

“Because you stopped her from killing me,” he says at last. “Consider our debt settled.”

Before you have a chance to respond, he nods at you, holding your gaze for several loaded moments. Then he swings himself onto his camel and rides deep into the desert, as if he had been a mirage the whole time.

At the sight of their employer’s demise, what remains of Delphine’s hired thugs turn and flee like the mangy scum they are. Your brave battalion of Sekhmets, lionesses each and every one, whoop and cheer.

You barely notice, for Lady Evangeline has pulled you into one of Delphine’s abandoned tents and is kissing you fiercely yet tenderly, your bodies entwined as perhaps they had been fated to be all this time.





Well, finally, you two! Turn to this page.





Knowing that it would be useless to struggle, you pretend to be dead. The vicar laughs triumphantly and maniacally as you lie as still as a dormouse.