My Lady's Choosing: An Interactive Romance Novel(88)

As you luxuriate in the feeling of hot water cascading down your body, making the fabric cling to every curve, Mac enters the room. You startle at the sight of every hot, sweaty magnificent inch of him. There is an equal hunger in his eyes and in your loins…but still a nagging doubt in your heart.





Do you throw caution to the wind and pounce upon the handsome lug for what might be the first shower sex in the history of the world? Turn to this page.

Or do you decide that now is the time to have it out with him regarding Constantina? You really cannot enjoy yourself while curiosity preys upon your mind. Turn to this page.





Lord Craven kisses you deeply as if for the last time. You respond with equal urgency, your mouth ravenous for his. As you finally pull apart, you set out on the walk back to Hopesend Manor together, and he begins to speak.

“Before the child, we were happy. I did not love her just because she was beautiful, but she was, and she was well acquainted with how otherworldly her beauty was. But when she bore the child, she became obsessed with the look of herself. She saw ugliness where there was only age. She saw weakness where there was only experience. She wished she could have undone it, she said. She no longer wished to be touched. She no longer wished to touch. She wanted only to brush her hair, look upon her reflection, and remember when she was young.

“?‘If I could be young and beautiful forever, I could be happy,’ she would whisper to me, ‘I would give anything for that.’ I told her she was young and beautiful, but she scoffed at me. ‘You are a pottering old fool before your time,’ she said. And she despised my attentions to the child. ‘You love him more than you love me,’ she would say.

“?‘We will all grow too old to be beautiful,’ she would whisper to me before we fell asleep. ‘I must save us all.’ One morning, I woke and she was not next to me. I had a horrible sense of what was about to happen. I ran to her chambers. She was holding the boy before the fire, ready to throw him into the flames.

“?‘This way, he will be a boy forever!’ she cried. I stole him away, and, in so doing, my jacket caught fire and was singed. She grabbed hold of it and tried to push me in as well. ‘Nothing is according to plan,’ she cried. ‘Nothing but this will do. See you in hell!’ We struggled, and as we did so, she must have got turned around. My last memory is of her falling into the fireplace, her hair aflame, her eyes red, her laughter turned to screams, her beauty consumed by the blaze.”

Your mind reels. Hopesend Manor looms in the near distance. “Surely,” you whisper, “you tried to save her?”

“Yes!” he cries in anguish. “I pulled her from the flames, but it was too late. I lay her upon the hearth, I stroked her face, and I wept. But all my weeping could not douse her. I could not save her. And perhaps”—Lord Craven is now fully sobbing—“perhaps it was her wish not to be saved.”

He turns to you, his eyes lost and despairing. You kiss him and together enter the house and near the morning room. Your heart aches for him. You are about to open your mouth and offer some form of redemption, or at least a tongue kiss, when you hear voices arguing within.





Quick, turn to this page.





That does it. You grab the nearest erotically shaped lamp and smash Cad over his hot, handsome head with it. Down he goes, like and unlike so many before him, in the Rose & the Smoke.

“And don’t you ever, ever lay a hand upon him again!” you spit at his inert frame. Turning, you see Benedict staring at you with eyes aflame.

“Benedict?” you gasp.

“You…you damnable…” He stands shakily.

“…maddening…” He takes your face in his hands and stares deeply into your eyes.

“…wonderful woman.” And with that he kisses you so intensely it takes your breath away. You melt into his arms. The world could end at this moment and neither of you would notice.

Until, that is, you feel a gentle tap on your shoulder.

“Ahem,” Lady Evangeline says gently. “Think it might be best if you make a quiet exit. We really don’t want to draw attention to ourselves.”

As one, your eyes travel from the broken furniture, to the broken man, to the dozens of crushed watercress sandwiches that litter the room.

“You—you might be right, Vange,” Benedict admits.

“Of course I am, Benny,” she says briskly. “I suggest the two of you journey back in your coach as soon as possible before anyone notices you are missing.”

“And what will you do?” you ask.

“I…am going to clean up this mess,” says Lady Evangeline. “Don’t worry, I’ve done this before.”

“I wish I could say I was surprised,” says Benedict as he ushers you out the door.





Turn to this page.





You give a last lingering look at the empty doorway, then turn your attention back to the boy. “How did you lose your sister, Master Alexander?” you ask as tenderly as you can manage.

“I think the wolf ate her,” Master Alexander says, wiping at his steady stream of tears.

“The barghest? The wolf from the tales in the village?”

“Not that one. That one is just a village wolf. The one that got my sister was a bad wolf. A very bad wolf. Mama said wolves are always hungry for naughty children and that Helena was very naughty. But she wasn’t naughty! She just knew about Mama and…the man.”