Lorelie Brown (33 page)
Authors: An Indiscreet Debutante
A notorious rake is about to make the ultimate faux pas—fall in love with his own wife.
Unforgivable
© 2013 Joanna Chambers
Gil Truman has eyes only for the beautiful Tilly—until he is forced to marry plain, sickly Rose Davenport to reclaim the lands his father foolishly gambled away. After a disastrous wedding night tainted with his bitterness, he deposits Rose at his remote, Northumbrian estate, soothing his guilt with the thought that she need never lay eyes on him again.
Five years after the mortifying wedding night that destroyed all her romantic fantasies, Rose is fed up with hearing second- and third-hand reports of Gil’s philandering ways. She is no longer the shy, homely girl he left behind, but a strong, confident woman who knows how to run an estate. And knows what she wants—her husband, back in their marriage bed.
Gil doesn’t recognize the bold, flirtatious woman he meets at a ball, with or without her mask. Yet he is bewitched and besotted, and their night together is the most passionate he has ever known.
But when he confesses his sins to the beautiful stranger, the truth rips open the old wounds of their blighted history. Threatening any hope of a future together.
Warning: Contains a flawed hero who can be redeemed with the right woman—the one who’s been under his nose the whole time. Ain’t that just like a man?
Enjoy the following excerpt for
Unforgivable:
“Are you quite sure this is the best course of action,
cara
?” Lottie asked carefully. “Your husband has refused to come to Weartham all these years, and while I’m sure he’ll be gratified to see how beautiful you’ve grown—after all, the man is horribly shallow—I fear the shock of you turning up on his doorstep unannounced might cause him to do something foolish, like send you home before he’s taken a good look at you.”
Pathetically, Rose found herself seizing on the least relevant part of what Lottie had just said. “Do you think he will find me much changed?” she asked hesitantly, staring into her chocolate cup.
Lottie sighed. “
Cara
, I doubt he will know you.”
“Really?”
Lottie rose and held out her hand. “Come here.” She drew Rose over to the seat she’d recently vacated in front of the dressing table, facing the mirror, and sat her down. Then she lifted one of the silver-backed brushes and began to draw it through Rose’s dark hair, still loose round her shoulders from being brushed out last night. After a brief silence, Lottie said, “Do you recall what your hair was like when you married?”
“Short,” Rose replied.
“Yes, just a covering really; this long.” Lottie held her finger and thumb an inch apart. Had it really been as short as all that? Rose touched her head as though to check, but of course, her hair was long now, long and thick and luxurious, dark brown tresses that spilled almost to her waist.
“I remember it well,” Lottie went on, still brushing. “You were very poorly when I met you, and your hair was growing slowly. Your body had more important things to mend first.” She looked up, meeting Rose’s gaze in the mirror with those expressive black eyes that showed a depth of emotion that Rose hadn’t been able to understand back then. “You almost died.”
“Yes,” Rose whispered. She remembered the worst of it not at all, and much of the rest only dimly. Seemingly interminable days of fever, the days and nights running into one another, the hallucinations more real to her than the world around her.
The physicians had glumly told her father she would die; and she would have done so if left to them.
“But you saved me, Lottie,” she said, smiling at her friend in the mirror.
“Pshaw!” Lottie scoffed. “Anyone could see what you needed: rest, food, care. Those doctors would have had you in a coffin while you still breathed! But look at you now—so beautiful.” She beamed. “No, he won’t know you. On your wedding day, you weighed little more than a bag of feathers, and your skin was a mess. But look at you now! The marks are all gone!”
“Not quite,” Rose countered lightly. “I have a few scars.” Not merely physical ones either. She tried to dismiss the memory of a night in an inn long ago; a girl in a pink dress, a pink ribbon in her hair. A memory that still made her feel like that girl all over again.
“You call those scars?” Lottie retorted. “Those little moon-marks?”
There were hardly any scars on her face, which was amazing, considering how awful they had been. They’d been everywhere, even on her eyelids and inside her ears. But she’d been left with just three scars on her face, three little white circles at her left ear, her hairline and her chin. They were tiny, almost unnoticeable, the silvery scar tissue just a few shades lighter than her creamy skin.
There were a few more obvious battlefields on her body. A little ring of them on the back of her neck, like the interwoven links of a necklace; another clutch on the backs of her knees. A few other isolated ones here and there, on flank and thigh and arm. But none of them were unsightly, just little silver indentations in her flesh. They had long ago lost the power to make her feel ugly. Indeed, they made her feel proud now, to have survived.
Rose looked into the mirror and saw a woman who was beautiful. She saw her own beauty with satisfaction and joy and defiance. The gaunt, skeletal face of five years before had filled out to one of heart-shaped prettiness. The sad little cap of thin hair was now a thick, glossy mane. Her skin glowed, and her eyes shone with health.
“He won’t know you,” Lottie said again, but this time, the tone of her voice was almost wondering. “Not immediately. And certainly not masked.”
“Masked?”
Lottie smiled, a wicked slashing smile. “Have you ever been to a masked ball,
cara
?”
“What? No, of course not. They’re hardly
de rigueur
in deepest, darkest Northumbria.”
“Would you like to go to one this evening? I’m sure your husband will be there. And don’t you think that would be a much better place to meet him? Just think, instead of turning up as petitioner at his front door, asking for an audience, you set the time and place. And then you let him see your beauty, perhaps flirt with him a little—flirtation is the best language for your husband,
cara
, trust me. He responds to it better than English.”
“You think I should meet him
in disguise
?”
“Oh, you’ll reveal who you really are at the unmasking at midnight. But first you let him see your charms. Soften him up. Once you’ve caught his interest, everything else will be so much easier. Catch him with honey,
cara
.”
“But what if recognises me straightaway?”
“He won’t.” Lottie shook her head, quite certain. “I have a mask and domino you can borrow—you won’t even know yourself in them.”
“Whose ball is this anyway?”
“The ball is being held by dear Nev, so of course he’ll be delighted to have you attend. I’ll send a note round to him now.” Nev was an old friend of her father’s and more recently of Lottie’s.
“Does this mean it won’t be a respectable occasion?” Rose asked. Nev was known as rather a rakish sort.
“Not
very
respectable,” Lottie agreed. “Which is why I’m so sure your husband will be there. I always see him at Nev’s affairs. I always give him a look, like this.” She demonstrated an expression of scornful disdain.
Rose laughed, but she knew why Lottie gave him that look, and her laugh was hollow. “Because he always has a floozy on his arm, I suppose? He’ll probably have his latest one with him tonight.”
“If you’re talking about Signora Meadows, their affair is at an end,” Lottie said with a placid smile. “And if he is seeking her replacement, as he undoubtedly will be, he is going to find her: you. What could be more fitting?”
“Me?”
“Why not? That’s what you want, isn’t it? A real marriage?”
“I won’t be able to attract him like that—”
“Of course you will. I have a few hours before I have to leave. First we’ll dress you, and then I’ll give you a flirting lesson. What’s the worst that can happen,
cara
? Anything’s better than just turning up at Stanhope House with a list of demands in your hand. That will get things off on entirely the wrong foot.”
Rose thought of all the letters she’d sent Gilbert telling him about Weartham and her life there, the annual invitations to join her for Christmas. He’d never taken her up on any of them, demonstrating a single-minded determination to have nothing to do with her.
He was well known for having a weakness for pretty women, a fact that was tirelessly lampooned in the scandal sheets Harriet loved so much.
Well, Rose was now a pretty woman. The least she could do was turn that to her advantage.
An Indiscreet Debutante
Lorelie Brown
Love is madness.
When Miss Charlotte Vale isn’t running a school for impoverished factory women, she takes tea with an insane painter—the mother she adores. Determined to avoid her mother’s legacy of madness, Lottie refuses to marry and nurtures the
ton
’s
bemused disregard for her reputation.
Through her door strides a man who threatens all she holds dear. Her cherished school, her careful control and her guarded heart.
Sir Ian Heald has tracked his sister’s blackmailer to her last-known location—Lottie’s school. Although he would burn the place to the ground if it would save his sister’s reputation, Ian is drawn to Lottie’s bold candor and indifference toward polite society.
To find his sister’s blackmailer, Ian follows Lottie into a twisted world of illegal gambling clubs and eccentric parties. Even when their mutual passion ignites, Ian knows their affair cannot last. Lottie was never meant to be tucked away on his quiet pastoral estate, and she staunchly refuses his desire to wed. Yet fiery kisses and scandalous showdowns tempt this proper country gentleman to win the woman he loves and never let her go.
Warning: This book contains gambling in low-class clubs, deliciously deadpan dialogue, an unplanned swim to rescue doused women, and a fast, furious spanking. She wants it though, so that hardly counts.
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This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.
Samhain Publishing, Ltd.
11821 Mason Montgomery Road Suite 4B
Cincinnati OH 45249
An Indiscreet Debutante
Copyright © 2013 by Lorelie Brown
ISBN: 978-1-61921-478-1
Edited by Sasha Knight
Cover by Kim Killion
All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
First
Samhain Publishing, Ltd.
electronic publication: May 2013
