The Wedding Affair (Rebel Hearts series Book 1) by Heather Boyd Page A

was at Newberry, not fifty yards away. Smiling and laughing as if he had not a care in the world, as if the heart he had shattered six years ago did not matter in the slightest.
    She kept running.
    He was supposed to be aboard his ship, not breathing the same air she did. His precious Selfridge , the command and promotion he had valued more than her love. She did not know how he had wrangled an invitation to Newberry Park, but she would ensure it was the last one the blackguard ever received. Bollocks!
    And if her reaction to seeing him again after so long was any indication, she might not recover at all. She could not seem to catch her breath, and suffering through the interminable meal with her family around them had been almost beyond her capability.
    Her eyes had been drawn to him all through dinner, though he barely looked her way again after being presented to her. He had charmed her mother, she could tell, which annoyed her to the ends of the earth and back again. Her mother was supposed to despise him, as was all of her family, for the fool he had made of her.
    She did not want Felix to be here.
    She stopped at her favorite place, a small pond full of fishes that no one else came to, and lifted her knuckle to her mouth. She bit down on the scream she wanted to let out as a seafaring curse filled her mind. She savaged her finger until it ached and then let it go. “Damn you, Felix.”
    All she had wanted, for the rest of her life, was to forget him.
    “It is lovely to see you too,” he remarked from the darkness.
    She whipped around, searching the shadows of the gardens, attempting to locate where he stood.
    Felix came forward slowly, large and dangerous as he skirted the pond. Her pounding heart probably gave her away and her cheeks grew hot as he neared. Could he not have changed? A limp, a scar to mar that handsome face? Was it too much to ask that he be as wounded on the outside as she was within?
    For a moment she wavered between running toward him or away. Not that she was afraid of him, but what he represented was hazardous to her carefully made plans for a proper marriage. “What are you doing?”
    “Strolling the decks of Newberry Park beneath the stars and asking myself the very same thing.” His deep voice rumbled over her, and she shivered.
    She had thought she had forgotten that voice, but when he had spoken behind her in the white drawing room, she had known who it was without turning around. She had desperately wished to be wrong.
    “I mean what are you doing at Newberry.” Sally turned away in an effort to gather her scattered wits. She hated him. She truly did for the mockery he had made of her young love. “Are you looking for a way to advance to admiral now?”
    He growled, a dark and dangerous warning. Something he had never done around her as a young man. “I have never wanted the distinction because it means playing games with people’s lives the way your father has with mine.”
    She spun about and advanced on him, doing little to hide her fury. “Do not say a word against my family!”
    “Against your family, no, but against the admiral I will say what I like to you. I will not pretend he did not ruin my life.”
    “Ruin your life? That is rich, coming from you,” she shouted. “You were the one who made the fool of me, not him. You ruined me, or have you forgotten?”
    “I have not forgotten. How could I?” He stopped a foot away and drew in a deep breath.
    In the dark she was reminded of their last night together, and her knees went weak. “Do not come any closer, or, or…”
    “I was here first,” he complained, and then he looked her up and down. “I have it on good authority from several reliable sources you still want me dead, but it seems you forgot to bring a sword with which to run me through. So sorry the French could not oblige you during battle, but I will wait if you would like to arm yourself now.”
    She took a pace back. “I never expected to see you