The dowager sniffed. “It would seem my son excels at stirring up trouble. He’s been up to an awful lot of it recently.”
Thornton grinned, unabashed. “At least no one can ever accuse the de Vere family of being boring.”
“Much to the dismay of my weak old heart,” the dowager bemoaned. “I shouldn’t be surprised if it gives out on me altogether before too long.”
“Funny that,” Jesse whispered to Bella, “I’d swear she didn’t have a heart.”
“What was that, Whittlesby?” the dowager demanded, at her most regal. “I daresay you Americans have not heard that it simply isn’t done to whisper at the dinner table.”
“I’m sure we haven’t, my lady,” he murmured, somehow managing to maintain a serious expression.
It was Bella’s turn to send him a wink. She’d never been more in love. Indeed, it seemed with each day that passed, the feelings she had for him only deepened. “Perhaps we ought to have sent you to finishing lessons with Clara,” she suggested, enjoying the freedom of having her own household. She could occasionally bait the dowager without suffering any more serious consequences than a brutal harrumph.
“Don’t be foolish, Arabella,” her mother scolded. “I’m pleased to at least find you’ve enlisted a fine English cook here. Otherwise, I should despair.” She took a bite of her roast. “There is nothing better in the world than good English cuisine. I simply can’t abide by the French and all their sauces.”
Bella didn’t have the heart to tell the dowager that their chef was in fact a Frenchman lest her mother spit her roast upon the snowy table linens in her horror. “I’m pleased you’re enjoying dinner,” she said instead.
Her mother had made some progress, but she still detested foreigners. At least she no longer referred to Cleo as that woman. Some small battles had been won if not the war. For now, it was enough of a coup to simply have their family all seated around the same table. The sight of Thornton and Cleo, so clearly in love and blissful, thrilled her. Just a month before, they’d celebrated the birth of their first son. Clara too was smiling, more at home than she’d ever been, on the cusp of womanhood. Even the dowager managed a half-smile, but whether it was because of the roast or for Bella’s sake, she’d never know for certain. What she did know was that they had all truly found their happiness.
“We shall have to make a habit of this,” the dowager said. “Now that we’ll be planning Clara’s comeout, I expect I’ll be spending a great deal of time with you.”
Bella looked at her mother askance. She hadn’t realized the dowager was planning on aiding in Clara’s entrée into society.
“Why are you looking at me as if I’ve sprouted a horn?” her mother groused. “I’m sure you’ll need my aid.”
She smiled, noting the brief look of horror on her stepdaughter’s face. “Of course we shall. Thank you, Maman.”
“You’ve very welcome, I’m sure.” The dowager sniffed and continued eating her roast.
The rest of the dinner passed in the comfort of familial ease. Bella was heartened to have her family all beneath one roof, their conflicts and troubles a thing of the past. The time had never been better to move forward into the glittering future awaiting them.
Later that evening, Bella eagerly awaited Jesse in her chamber. She’d taken extra care with her evening toilette, for she had a very important announcement to make to him. Smith had left her hair unbound just the way he preferred it, and she wore a nearly transparent nightdress she’d had imported from Paris. She dearly hoped he would be as thrilled as she was.
She thought then of Jesse and how far they’d come together. He’d been making slow but steady progress over the course of the last few months, and his inner strength never ceased to amaze her. He still suffered from nightmares but they were gradually becoming less frequent. She knew there was the possibility that he would be subject to them his entire life, but she also knew that together they could surpass any obstacles they faced. They hadn’t stopped sharing a chamber since the night she’d found him down the hall. As a result, their lives were about to become even more complete.
The door between their chambers clicked open. She looked up with a welcoming smile as her husband sauntered across the carpet to where she sat before her mirror. He was handsome as ever, clad in only a dressing gown. When he reached her side, he stopped and took her hands in his large, calloused grip.
“Your nightdress is positively sinful,” he murmured, his scorching gaze traveling over her body as he raised her hands to his lips for a lingering kiss. “I love it.”
She allowed him to bring her to her feet. “How do you think dinner went?” she asked, curious for his opinion. She had missed her family’s presence in her life, and with the Season in full bloom, she was glad to once more have them close at hand. The dowager seemed to truly be relenting. Bella couldn’t believe her mother had actually deigned to offer her support for Clara’s comeout.
“I think it went astoundingly well,” he said thoughtfully. “Your mother kept her insults to a decided minimum and didn’t so much as mention my troublesome treatment of vowels.”
Bella laughed and gave his arm a playful swat. “How ungentlemanly of you to draw attention to my mother’s shortcomings.”
“I never said they were shortcomings,” he countered with a grin.
“She’s a bear and you know it.” She slid her arms around his neck and leaned into the familiar, hard strength of his body. “At least she’s taken to Clara.”
“I am grateful for that.” His hands settled possessively on her waist, anchoring her to him.
Bella was quiet for a few beats, gathering her courage before she plowed onward. “Jesse?”
He gazed down at her, his expression open and loving. “Yes, sweetheart?”
“Do you think Clara would like a brother or a sister?”
Jesse raised a brow. “I’m sure she wouldn’t mind a little scalawag scampering about one day. I suppose I haven’t given the prospect much thought. Have you?”
She hesitated. “Rather a bit more in the last month or so.”
“Bella?” His stormy blue gaze trapped hers, searching. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying that I’m with child,” she finally confessed on an exhaled breath.
His jaw went slack. “Are you certain?”
She nodded, still unaccountably nervous. “Quite.”
A slow grin spread over his face, his dimple appearing in full force. “I’m going to be a father again.”
“Yes, you are.” She pressed her palm to his bristly cheek. “I hope you’re pleased.”
“Pleased?” He dropped a hard, quick miss to her mouth. “Hell, I’m ecstatic. I couldn’t be happier.”
Smiling back at him, she rose on her tiptoes to fuse their lips once more. “Nor could I.”
“Ah, my own sweet Bella.” He held her tightly, sounding slightly dazed by her revelation. “You’ve made me whole again. I have no idea how you managed it, but somehow you did.”
“Love,” she said simply. “All it required was love.”
Reckless Need
Heart’s Temptation Book Three
By
Scarlett Scott
A staid duke
Heath, the Duke of Devonshire, has been living a passionless life of penance after losing the woman he loved. Determined to do his duty, he’s in search of an innocent bride with a sterling reputation. A bride who’s nothing at all like Tia, Lady Stokey.
A bold lady
The Duke of Devonshire may be handsome, but he’s as boring as a bowl of porridge. Or so Tia thinks until he carries her to her chamber and undoes half her buttons while kissing her senseless.
A decadent desire
The moment he scoops the delectable Tia into his arms, Heath wants her in his bed, and he’ll stop at nothing to have her there. When they unleash the scandal of the century, they must face consequences that are deeper and far more dangerous to their hearts than either of the
m imagined. Will they find love, or was the reckless need between them doomed from the start?
Dedication
To my fabulous editor. I can’t thank you enough for all the support you gave me over the years and for all you taught me.
Chapter One
East Anglia, England, 1882
If there was one thing in the world that Tia, Lady Stokey, adored, it was parties. Give her a good fête, an army of new dresses, an entertaining assortment of guests and she was a happy woman.
Under ordinary circumstances, that was.
Grumbling to herself, she trekked through the maze at the Marquis of Thornton’s hunting estate, Penworth, in search of her wayward charge. A mere hour after their arrival for a country house party, Tia had discovered Miss Whitney missing from her bedchamber.
“In need of a nap, my bottom,” Tia grumbled, stalking around a corner. If only the hedges weren’t so frightfully high and she so irritatingly diminutive in height. But of course, that would have rather nullified the purpose of a maze, she supposed.
The young Miss Whitney had declared the need for a respite after their travel through the countryside, and Tia had acquiesced. But suspicion had brought her round to collect the girl early, where she’d discovered only a note telling her that her charge had decided to take a restoring turn about the gardens instead.
“Restoring indeed,” Tia scoffed, her ire growing with each step. She had a dreadful feeling that her charge was going to prove much more than a handful. After all, she recognized herself in the girl, and it was one of the reasons why she’d agreed to help introduce her to society.
The sound of gravel shifting interrupted her cantankerous musings. She stopped, holding her breath to listen. It sounded as if Miss Whitney was perhaps just around the next bend, behind the thick hedges obscuring Tia’s vision. Smiling in triumph, she grabbed her skirts and hurried around the turn in the maze.
“Ah ha,” she called out in delight. “I’ve found you now, you little minx.”
But her moment of triumph was terribly abridged, for the noise-making culprit, seated on a bench before her, was not Miss Whitney. Nor, in fact, was it even a female. Quite the opposite.
Dear heavens. Eyes the same wistful color as a summer sky met hers, stealing her breath. She stopped, her heart thumping as madly as a runaway stallion’s hooves. The man staring back at her, an open book in his large hands, a golden brow raised, was decidedly as far as one could get from the petite, Virginia-born Miss Whitney.
“I daresay I’ve been called a great number of things in my life, but never yet a little minx,” drawled the Duke of Devonshire as he stood and bowed to her.
“I must apologize,” she hastened to say, embarrassment making her cheeks go hot. “I mistook you for someone else.”
A small smile curved his lips, drawing her attention to just how finely formed his mouth was. He had changed since she’d seen him last. He’d grown a beard. She swallowed, her heart continuing its mad pace. The duke had always been a handsome man, possessed of a rare masculine beauty that almost made him seem too perfect to be real. But the neatly trimmed beard took the purity of his features and rendered them somehow sinful. Seductive. Her cheeks burned as she realized she was staring and, to her greatest dismay, he’d said something to her.
She had no earthly idea what.
Bother it all, what ailed her? She’d seen Devonshire scads of times before. The boring manner in which he conducted himself had long since rendered her immune to his undeniable good looks. He was quiet, uninteresting. For the most part, he didn’t move in the same circles as she. In private, she referred to him as the Duke of Dullness. Why, then, was she turning into a silly schoolroom miss in his presence? A beard? An intense stare?
Tia released her skirts, allowing them to fall back into place as it occurred to her that she’d likely been revealing far more of her limbs than she’d intended. That bright-blue gaze of his followed her movement, making her feel almost as if he’d caressed her.
“By any chance, were you searching for a lovely young American, Lady Stokey?” he asked, saving her from further embarrassment.
She didn’t know why, but she found it troublesome indeed that he thought Miss Whitney lovely. Tia shook the unworthy notion from her mind, reminded that she was charged with looking after the virtue and the conduct of a rather precocious young girl.
“I was, Your Grace,” she acknowledged, dipping into a slight curtsy as her wits returned to her. “Have you seen her?”
“About half an hour ago,” he confirmed, closing the distance between them. That smile still flirted with the corners of his mouth, almost as if he were enjoying a sally at her expense.
Half an hour. Tia frowned. The girl could be halfway back to America by now. “I don’t suppose she told you where she intended to go next?”
“No.”
A great lot of help he was. Tia tried not to notice how very broad his shoulders were, how lean his legs. She glanced instead to the book he held. It was a volume of poetry. She’d never had much patience for verse. “I’m sorry for the interruption,” she told him, deciding the time for lingering was at an end. She needed to find Miss Whitney and bring the girl to task. England was not Virginia. She couldn’t simply wander about as she chose, especially not as a young, innocent miss. She had a reputation to uphold.
“Think nothing of it, my lady.” Devonshire still stood uncomfortably near to her, looking down with an unreadable expression upon his face. “I was merely enjoying a bit of solitude while I still could.”
Solitude? Tia thought it an odd statement indeed but perhaps another indication of why she’d never been particularly drawn to the man. Aside from his undeniably arresting appearance, that was. She considered him now, her gaze dropping to his mouth of its own will before she forced herself to once again become ensnared in his riveting stare. “I confess I’m confused, Your Grace. Is not keeping the company of others rather the point of a country house party?”
He nodded, appearing a solemn, lonely figure suddenly. “I daresay it is, my lady. For most.”
She couldn’t help it. She knew she ought to be running after her errant charge, but there was something suddenly compelling about Devonshire. Here in the outdoors, the sun shining down upon him, the polish of his ordinary façade buffed away by the manner in which she’d caught him unaware…he seemed different to her. Almost dangerous. Certainly handsome. But sad too, as if he were a man who had never quite located his true place in the world.
“But not for you?” she asked him quietly.
“Ça dépend,” he answered, stroking the binding of his book absentmindedly.
There was something about watching his long fingers that caused an ache deep inside Tia. It had been so very long since she’d been touched by a man. Too long, she reminded herself, else she wouldn’t be mooning over the Duke of Devonshire. “On what does it depend?”
“The others with whom I’m expected to keep company,” he answered cryptically.
“I see.” She frowned again, supposing she really should have left well enough alone. She had the distinct impression he didn’t want her there. “Then perhaps I should leave you to your seclusion after all. I don’t wish to further inconvenience you. Good day, Your Grace.”
She spun on her heel, determined to beat a hasty retreat before she made any more of a fool of herself, tarrying over conversation with a man who would prefer to be left alone. A man she didn’t even like, no matter how attractive she found him. Yes, it was the beard, she decided as she hurried away. The beard had rendered him quite magnetic.
Lost in her round of self-chastising, Tia wasn’t paying proper attention to her mules. They were delicate silk, horridly impractical for being outside and not at all the sort of things to be rushing about in. Her heel caught in the stones of the path, twisting her ankle and making her lose her balance at the same time.
Pain shot from her ankle up her leg as she landed in an inglorious heap on her hands and knees. Sh
e must have cried out, because the duke came rushing around the bend, all the better to prolong her humiliation. Her ankle aching, she stared at his trousers in misery, wishing she’d had the grace to fall somewhere out of his earshot instead.
He hunkered down at her side, his striking face coming back into her view. “Lady Stokey, are you hurt?” His voice was laced with genuine concern.
“Yes,” she told him, grimacing when she flexed her foot and was met with another sharp twinge of discomfort. “My pride and my ankle are both grievously wounded.”
He took her hands in his, turning them over to inspect her palms. They were bare because she’d been too intent on chasing after Miss Whitney to care. Devonshire was gloveless too, and the contact of his skin on hers gave her an unexpected jolt. He rubbed his thumbs over her lightly, lingering on the abrasions she’d earned in her tumble. “I’m afraid you’re bleeding as well.”
She glanced from her raw palms to his face. He was unbearably near, so near she had great difficulty catching her breath. Good heavens. She had to compose herself. “I shall mend,” she said, trying for an air of unconcern. It wouldn’t do for him to know the effect he had on her. Why, she didn’t like the man. He was altogether unappealing. She preferred men who were eager and attentive, who knew how to kiss and woo a woman. Who were seductive and easy to understand and flirted with practiced ease. Men who didn’t hide in the gardens reading poetry, of all things.
“Let me help you to stand,” he said in a tone that allowed for no argument. “On the count of three. One, two—” He pulled her up without waiting for her compliance and without waiting to say “three”.
Tia leaned into the duke as she stood, wincing when the pressure of weight upon her ankle produced more pronounced pain. Oh dear, perhaps she’d sprained it. However would she contain Miss Whitney if she were hobbled like an old dowager for the entirety of the party?
Heart’s Temptation Books 1–3 Page 57
