“Are you jealous of Amelia?” he asked hopefully. He was always oddly pleased when she displayed annoyance with any attention he drew from the opposite sex.
“Positively pea-green,” she admitted.
He took the brush from her hand and dropped it on the dressing table. “’Twould never do to have you too sure of me.”
“How could I ever be too sure of you?” She gave lie to her words with a smile that would melt stone. “You are society’s darling these days. I cannot tell you how many of my friends have confessed to finding you incredibly handsome.”
“But my former reputation—”
“Gives you a certain…cachet,” she finished for him. “I count myself lucky that you stooped to marriage with a plain little mouse like me.”
He laughed. “Mouse?” He bent and lifted her in his arms. “You cannot possibly see what I see.”
“What do you see, Lord Ethan?” she asked, loosening the shirt studs at his neck as he carried her to the bed.
He placed her carefully upon the coverlet and untied the sash of her dressing gown. “I see courage beyond imagining. I see strength, honor and determination.” He pushed the fabric aside to lay her bare to his view. “I see blinding beauty. And I see my entire future laid before me,” he murmured against the soft beginnings of a swell at her abdomen.
She giggled as she reached up to him, the mere gesture causing an instant firming in his loins. “Have I ever thanked you for saving me from a life of emptiness, my love?” she asked.
Then the irony hit him full force and he threw his head back with laughter. From the day he first met her, he had been trying to save Sarah from real and imagined perils, and from herself—yet she had saved him in every way that mattered. He owed Sarah his honor, his reputation, his very soul.
“Are you ready, Miss Hunt?” he asked, poised above her.
“Lay on, Macduff,” she invited.
ISBN: 978-1-4603-6053-8
SAVING SARAH
Copyright © 2003 by Gail Ranstrom
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Saving Sarah Page 28