Winter's Woman (The Wicked Winters #9) - Scarlett Scott Page 0,35

to her.

She wanted Theodore Devil Winter. He was the Romeo to her Juliet. She just had to persuade him. And find a way out of her looming nuptials to Lord Denton. And convince her family—already outraged by Addy’s sudden marriage to Mr. Dominic Winter—that her happiness was far more important than any match she could make or coronet she could snare.

But that was all going to have to wait for another day.

Because Theo was battered and bloodied. And it was nearly dawn.

“Get out of my chamber, Lady Evangeline,” he told her coolly.

The dismissal in his voice should have cut her deeply. But she had not slept all night, and she had spent all the time since he had stalked away from her worrying over him, their relationship, their future. To the devil with tragedies.

“You missed the end of Romeo and Juliet,” she told him, pretending he had not just ordered her to vacate the room.

Instead, she stroked a thick lock of hair which had fallen over his brow from his forehead.

He swallowed, and with his cravat untied, the subtle dip of his Adam’s apple briefly riveted her. What a beautifully masculine throat he had. She wondered what the rest of him would look like, similarly bare. His chest. His arms. Lower…

“They’re both going to die,” he growled, and then he jerked from her touch as if she were a bee who had stung him.

It took her addled mind a moment to realize he was speaking of Romeo and Juliet. She frowned at him. “How do you know?”

“It is a tragedy.” His lip curled. “Life is a tragedy. That is how it ends. And this is how we end, milady. Now return to your chamber with your innocence intact. One day you can entertain your grandchildren with the fable of how you once spent a fortnight with an East End rat and still lived to tell the tale.”

“Life does not have to be a tragedy,” she countered. “And you are not an East End rat. You are a gentleman with a kind and gentle heart.”

He threw back his head and laughed as if she had just told him the greatest sally. “What rot. You amuse me, milady. Truly, you do.”

He was trying to hurt her, she thought. Attempting to put as much distance between them—physically and emotionally—as he could. But she was not going to let him, damn it. She was going to fight him every step of the way.

Because she loved him.

The realization thundered through Evie with a physical jolt, as if she had been struck. Somehow, over the course of her fortnight with Theo, she had lost her heart. A heart she had once foolishly believed she would give to her husband in time. But it was no longer hers to give. Like Juliet, who had fallen desperately in love with a Montague when she was a Capulet, Evie had fallen in love with a man who should be forbidden to her.

She loved Theodore Winter.

Once, she had suspected Addy’s mind of turning to pudding. Now, she suspected her own. It was the only explanation.

“Theo,” she said softly. “Tell me where you went. Tell me what happened. Let me tend to your wounds.”

He shook his head. “I told you not to come to my chamber again.”

His eyes had darkened to a deep, stormy shade of blue. A flare of answering heat unfurled within her. “I was worried about you, Theo.”

“Damn it, do I look like a Theo to you?” he roared.

His voice was like a crack of unexpected thunder. Evie flinched, taken aback by the fury in his tone, his countenance. In this moment of raw, unadulterated emotion, he did not look at all like the Theo she had come to know. Instead, he looked the part of the raw, rugged East End gutter rat he purported to be.

But it mattered not to Evie. She loved that part of him, too. She loved all the facets of his personality. She loved his imperfections and flaws, for they made him into the man he was. Loved the scar over his brow, the inked dagger marking on his wrist.

“Yes,” she told him firmly, “you do. You look like my Theo. Now do stop hollering, else you shall bring the entire household down upon us.”

He blinked. “Milady—”

“Stop,” she interrupted, raising her hand in a silent plea. “Call me Evie, if you please.”

“Evie,” he corrected with ease. “Get out.”

Hmm.

One third of the words he had just spoken were excellent. The other two thirds, she