My Lady's Choosing: An Interactive Romance Novel(67)

Once you hear him leave, you race back to the house. Craven is shielding a trembling Alexander from the Reverend Simon Loveday, who has pulled out a small gold pistol and is aiming it at them.

“This was Blanche’s gun,” he hisses. “I thought it poetic that it should be the one to end both of your miserable lives.”

You seize a nearby urn, stalk silently up to him, and hit him over the head with it. The vicar slumps to the ground, out for the count.

After the authorities arrive and drag off a revived and howling Reverend Simon Loveday, you take an exhausted Alexander to bed.

At the child’s beside, Craven strokes your hair and turns to you.

“You have saved us all,” he says. “But I know that it would be cruel to keep you here. Not when you could be free…free to love a worthy man. Free to go about your business without a care in the world.” He says the words with a tremor in his voice and saddened hope in his eyes. “I can find a place for you, far from here. In America, with an honorable man of my acquaintance. One who I know will be a good employer.”





Do you take him up on this kind offer? Because, let’s face it, life here is more than a little dysfunctional. Even without the evil vicar. If so, turn to this page.

Or is dysfunction merely the spice that makes up a well-rounded dish of life? If so, turn to this page.





“How dare you!” you seethe. “My parents were the kindest, dearest souls ever to have lived, and I will not hear a word spoken against them, you…you…pompous, arrogant—”

“They may have been exemplary individuals, but do you deny that your life is hardly suitable for a woman of your spirit?”

“I do not go hungry, and my wants and needs are not extravagant.” You square your shoulders. “And neither are Henrietta’s. She cares not for finery or titles, only that she is with the man she wants!”

“Henrietta is a child! She doesn’t know what she wants!”

“How can you say that?! She is one and twenty, old enough to—”

Benedict does not let you finish. Instead he looks at you the way a drowning man would a raft. It is more than desire, more than longing that crosses his handsome yet haunted face.

“Sometimes we all want something we shouldn’t,” he says huskily, and then he kisses you with such abandon that it takes your breath away.

To your surprise, you find yourself succumbing to his passionate embrace. Your body is liquid gold as you melt into his. Nothing exists in this moment except you and him.

He is the one to break away first. Your arms are still intertwined as you stare at each other with equal parts horror…and desire. You breathe heavily. He breathes heavily.

“Oh, dash it!” you both cry out and flee in opposite directions.

You meet Lady Evangeline at the carriage outside.

“Are you quite all right, my dear?” she asks as you rub your mouth.

“What? Oh…yes. Yes, quite all right!”

Lady Evangeline nods but clearly does not believe you. Still, you are grateful when she trills brightly, “Well, my dear! We’d best be on our way to London.”

After seating yourself in Lady Evangeline’s elegant carriage, you rest your fevered brow against the cool glass of the window and curse yourself and your foolish loins for getting you into such a scrape.





Turn to this page.





You climax harder than you ever have before. You lay entwined with your lover, and the moonstone of your sex glows with otherworldly desire for Lord Craven.

He places that broken-statue hand of his on your left breast, which he has taken to calling Rent Promise. His other hand travels to your right breast, which he has named Raven’s Wing. He senses your soul stirring betwixt your bosom.

“I sense your soul stirring betwixt your bosom,” he growls.

In answer, you make love to him again, with all the rushed intensity of spirits wrongfully dispatched from the mortal coil trying to communicate with the living from the great beyond.

You climax harder than you did the first time you climaxed harder than you ever had before, but the cries of your ecstasy are pierced by something harsher and louder: the sound of Alexander screaming in terror.





Go see to the child, you neglectful hussy! Turn to this page.





It takes only a moment to stumble out of the carriage and down a snowdrop-lined path deep into a high hedge labyrinth. It takes only a few moments more until you find yourself utterly lost. You are too turned around by the uniformly mysterious shrubbery and your compromised emotional state to escape. Just when you are ready to scream in frustration, you feel strong hands pull you into a leafy alcove off this living maze.

“Miss me?” A cool, deep voice drips into your very soul. Cad. Before you can speak, he silences you with kiss.

It feels like kissing the wind. Brief, strong, impossible, foolish. You push him away.

“I know everything about your lies, Cad. I know about your mother. I know about your father. I know that even the truth won’t stop you from trying to get what you want.”

“And who I want,” Cad adds, and he attempts to kiss you again.

“Do not try me.” You move to slap him, but he seizes your wrist.

“Oh, sweeting.” He laughs, dark and sharp, into the night. “You do realize the only thing stopping you from ruin right now is our own good behavior.”