Being Desired: Historical Second Chance Romance

By Selina Coffey

Carla is a woman with natural desires. She wants nothing more than to love and to be loved. However, it is not the case when she married her husband. Carla's husband married her so that she can give him an heir! After years of trying, now she knows that her husband is unable to give her a child. She must give him a baby now or he will divorce her, so she does the unthinkable: sleeping with Samuel, her husband's best friend! Soon enough, she is pregnant with Samuel's baby and her life will never be the same.

 

WARNING: This book contains mature themes and language, intended for adults only.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lovy Books Ltd
• Release date: Aug 27, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223815365

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

Carla Debenham placed a gentle, elegantly slim hand on her burgeoning stomach and tried to calm the child kicking her from within. The music pouring out of the gramophone did not have its normal soothing effect on the child and the kicking was becoming painful. The baby seemed to respond to its mother’s touch finally and settled down just below her ribs. Rolling on her divan slightly, to ease the burden of the child’s new position, Carla rested her head on the pillow there and thought about her life up to this point. The memories were not happy ones, but that was the life of a woman whose husband had married her only to produce heirs in 1900 Yorkshire. Happiness was not something she should expect.

Carla’s husband, Henry, chose Carla because she apparently looked like a good brood mare.Henry chose a bride from a social gathering of eligible young ladies of the manufacturing elite, the same social strata from which he came. He could have chosen a titled bride, a bride with land or a dowry, but he chose one that looked promising as a producer of children instead. She wasn’t the pale, blonde English rose he wanted, but she would do, despite being 18 years old; two years older than he expected, and dark-haired. She did have the requisite blues eyes Henry wanted, and that was close enough for him. Henry did not believe in love, only the power of capitalism, and the only emotion he ever showed; was anger, a smug gloating, or sometimes an awkward happiness that showed through when his business was doing exceedingly well. Otherwise he was dour, glum, and often brooding. His appearance also left much to be desired as he was portly with a florid face, unkempt hair, and often had a smell of unwashed body polluting the air around him.

Carla had accepted Henry’s offer of marriage because she needed stability. She was the fifth daughter of a steel magnate, but her father passed away, leaving her mother to care for nine young children. Carla, being the youngest, had watched as her family’s fortune’s plummeted and her elder siblings married to attain a better standing in the world. Her mother did not manage the company well; even with a solicitor and advisers there to help her, and Carla’s only choice was to also marry. As the daughter of a virtually bankrupt steel production family, Carla did not have many options in suitors. Henry was the only one that asked for her hand in marriage, and though the man was dour, twenty years older than her and unappealing in every way, Carla agreed to his offer in the hope of securing her future.

Henry made no bones about his need for children, not that he actually liked children, but they were heirs and he needed heirs. He had no time for a wife and would twice monthly perform his marital duties to ensure the production of an heir. The marriage had not produced a child 18 months after their wedding, and Henry, being a man who lacked knowledge about science, blamed Carla for their lack of children and soon began muttering about divorce.

Henry’s temper had also become blacker as the time passed without a child being produced. Carla could do nothing to please him, though she tried, and he drank more each night. He’d begun to come to Carla’s room at night and the things he’d do, alluding to advice he’d received from various sources, demeaned and humiliated Carla. Then he’d begun a campaign of beatings, thinking Carla was wilfully defying his wish for children.

Desperate and knowing the torment would stop if she produced a child, Carla knew she had to do something, anything, to get pregnant. Carla suspected the fault did not lie within