by Isobel Carr
Devere checked the frizzen of his gun for the hundredth time. Gareth uncrossed his ankles and flexed his calves. The Irish constable that the Lord Magistrate had sent to arrest Granby motioned for them to stay still.
They’d been lurking in one of the spare rooms beside Granby’s bedchamber for several hours, while Nowlin and another constable hid on the ground floor in case Granby managed to get past them. Two more constables, including the man that Sir Tobias had sent, were waiting outside.
A whistle, like the cry of a starling, was followed by the sound of the front door opening and brought Devere’s head up. It shut with a solid thump, and then someone could be heard ascending the stairs. The bedroom door likewise announced its use, and Devere cocked his pistol.
Gareth climbed carefully to his feet. The others did the same. The wood of the gun butt had grown warm in his hand. The deadly little instrument had only one purpose, and Gareth very much wanted to use it.
The constable gave them a stern look and eased the door open. He’d oiled the hinges when they first arrived, and the door swung as silently as they could ever have hoped.
“Mr. George Granby,” the Irishman said, voice deafeningly loud. “I’ve an order here for your arrest on the charge of murder.”
When no response was forthcoming, the constable lifted one foot and smashed open the door. By the time Gareth reached the room, Granby was halfway out the window, backlit by the moon like a silhouette. The constable had him fast by the skirts of his coat.
“Come back inside, sir. Nothing out there but my men and a hard drop to the cobbles. And that’s if you miss the spikes.”
A shout from below caused Granby to lose his grip and lurch outward. The constable hauled him back inside, the sound of tearing stitches loud as he did so. Granby landed with a thump and came up swinging.
He took the larger man down and lunged for the door. Gareth sent him sprawling with a kick. Devere’s gun went off, wood splintered, and the stench of saltpeter filled the room.
Granby skittered across the floor and scrambled up, armed with a poker. Devere and the constable closed in on him, hemming him in on both sides.
Granby ignored them, eyes trained on Gareth. His breathing was heavy, labored, like a dog at the end of a fight.
Gareth raised his gun as the constable took hold of Granby’s wrist. A grimace passed over Granby’s face, and he took a deep, audible breath.
“I’d love to shoot you,” Gareth said. “Watching you hang won’t give me nearly the same satisfaction. Swing. Swing, damn you.”
Granby’s hand opened, and the poker clattered to the floor.
The constable took a firmer grip on Granby and shoved him toward the door. Granby’s boot heels dragged heavily across the floor.
“Coward,” Gareth said as Granby passed by him.
CHAPTER 57
Gulliver yawned, showing a great, pink gullet like the inside of a whale, and flopped back down onto the grass beside Beau. They made a sight, the group of them all in black and white, as though matching their color scheme to the house.
Gareth repressed the urge to laugh. Jamie was safe. Beau loved him. And he was home. Jamie and Beau hadn’t spotted him yet. He was free to simply watch them, a happy protectiveness sweeping through him. This was his. All of it.
Jamie glanced over at Beau, indignation writ large on his face. “Not down, Gully,” he said. “Sit.”
The dog continued to ignore him, but its tail swished. Gulliver had clearly been washed and groomed since Gareth had last seen him. His white fur was actually white, and the mass of matts and tangles had been trimmed and combed out.
Jamie bent close and patted its face. “Gully, up.”
The dog rolled over, exposing its belly. Beau rubbed the expanse of pale skin.
“I don’t think you’re going to win that one, Jamie,” Gareth said loudly enough that all three of them jumped.
Jamie screwed up his face, nose scrunched like a rabbit. But he didn’t fling himself at Beau and hide as he’d been wont to do. Beau grinned up at him, the purity of the welcome utterly humbling. She held out a hand. Gareth strode across the lawn and tugged her up.
“Granby?” she said, eyes searching his.
“On his way to Newgate.” When Jamie squatted down next to the dog, back facing them, Gareth swooped in for a kiss. Her lips were soft beneath his, soft and warm and welcoming.
“And Mr. Nowlin?” she said.
“He’ll have to testify, but he’ll be a free man after that. He can take his sister and go home. Granby certainly won’t be in any position to press his claim, even if he wasn’t going to hang.”
Beau’s mouth curled into a smile. “Found his markers, did you?”
“And burnt them, every last one,” he said with deep satisfaction.
Laugher overwhelmed her, leaving her breathless and clinging to him. “I missed you,” she said simply.
“I missed you too.”
“Good. You’re supposed to.” She glanced over her shoulder. Gareth followed her gaze. Jamie was sitting next to the dog, getting a very thorough tongue bath.
“Kiss me again and tell me that you love me.”
“Do I?”
She pinched him hard, scrunching her nose at him much as Jamie had at the dog. Gareth kissed the tip of her glorious nose, dropped another kiss upon her cheek, and then found her lips. He swept his tongue across the seam of her lips, dipped inside her mouth, and broke away.
“I love you, brat. Never doubt it.”
Look for the sexy conclusion of
the League of Second Sons trilogy!
Ripe for Seduction
Available April 2012
Please turn this page for a preview.
CHAPTER 1
Bird chatter split the morning air, the sharp cries entering Roland Devere’s ear and cracking his head apart. He turned his face away from the sunlight streaming from the window and draped his arm over his eyes.
Never try to outdrink Anthony Thane. Never bet against Leonidas Vaughn, and never fence with Dominic de Moulines. Three rules to live by.
And he’d broken all of them last night, though thankfully not in that order. The evening had begun with a bout of fencing at Angelo’s Salle and ended in an utter debauch at Lord Leonidas Vaughn’s house on Chapel Street. Vaughn’s wife had abandoned them to it, not even bothering to scold.
The soft tread of someone in another room finally forced his eyes open. It sounded as though whoever it was were tiptoeing about in their stocking feet, but the soft creaks of the floorboards was almost more irritating than the birds.
Roland pushed himself upright, head pounding uncomfortably as he did so. His coat was bound up at the shoulders, and he yanked it about. He was still fully dressed save for his shoes, which lolled beneath a chair across from the settee he’d spent the night on. His unbound hair swung into his face, and he shoved it back, hooking it behind his ears.
The last time he’d downed that much port he’d woken upstairs in one of the finer houses of the impure with a troupe of disgusting little puttee staring down at him from the bed’s canopy, their sly smiles and tiny pricks lurid in the morning light. Vaughn’s drawing room was an infinitely more welcoming sight.
The League of Second Sons had caroused their way through London, their band growing larger and more raucous as they went. They’d stormed Lady Hallam’s ball and invaded the Duke of Devonshire’s rout, and had been ejected from The Red Lion—the coffee house the League had made their own—by the elder members. Ultimately, they had finished their night here in Vaughn’s drawing room, or at least he had.
Roland had a vague memory of Thane flirting with Lady Ligonier just before his memory went black. Perhaps he’d been lucky enough to accompany the lady home. For the life of him, he couldn’t remember anyone taking their leave, but he must have been in quite a state if they couldn’t even get him up the stairs and into one of the guest chambers.
Roland ran his hands down his chest as he took
a deep breath, yanking them away as a pin dug painfully into his flesh. He glanced down. A thin, brass dress pin held a slip of paper secured to his coat. Roland tore it free.
His own drunken handwriting crawled across the paper:
I, Roland Devere, bet Anthony Thane one guinea I can beat him into the bed of Lady Olivia Carlow.
His signature and Thane’s were scrawled below the statement. Roland crumpled the note in his fist. How many witnesses had there been? Who’d been left by the time they’d degenerated into boasts and bets? Good Lord, if Lord Leonidas knew—and how could he not—he was sunk. What the hell had they been thinking?
Lady Olivia shimmered insubstantially before his eyes: A heart-shaped face, brilliant blue eyes, a jumble of blonde curls. She had been hotly pursued during her time on the marriage mart. An heiress and a beauty. She’d married well. Or so it had seemed.
She’d been through a lot in the last year. He ought to know, having borne witness to all the most humiliating details of the scandal that had ended her marriage. She didn’t need the gentlemen of the ton making sport of her, but it was inevitable that she would be pursued like a vixen by a pack of hounds now that she’d returned to town.
Lady Olivia wasn’t quite a widow, nor was she ruined in the traditional sense of the word. Her situation was unique.
Numbness spread through Livy’s hands as she finished the letter that had arrived on the silver salver with the morning post. The tingling spread up her arms and coalesced into a blinding ball of fury inside her chest. She stared dumbly at the words, raking her eyes over the sentences that sloped haphazardly across the page.
She’d known returning to town was a mistake. Had known it bone deep. But just when she’d convinced her father that it was a terrible idea for her to accompany him back after the Easter recess, her grandmother had started in, siding with the earl—against her—for the first time since her marriage had ended.
Her marriage. Livy’s stomach churned, and she tasted bile at the back of her throat. Her not-quite-marriage had been the great scandal of the ton the previous year, eclipsing even the runaway marriage of her former not-quite brother-in-law.
Bigamy. It was still nearly impossible to grasp that the man she’d married, the man her father had chosen so carefully from her legions of suitors, had already had a wife. Some low, Scottish cutler’s daughter, who was, even now, happily remarried and living in Canada.
The crinkle of paper brought her head up from the insulting letter. Her father was staring at her over the sagging upper edge of The Morning Post. Livy forced herself to pick up her teacup and take a drink. The tea was stone cold, and the sugar had congealed in the bottom, but it served to settle her roiling stomach all the same.
“Bad news?” the earl asked, brows rising to touch his gaudy silk banyan cap.
Livy shook her head and refilled her cup. “No, just country gossip from Grandmamma,” she said, the lie coming easily to her lips. Lying was a new skill, but it had become a necessary one. She couldn’t possibly have been truthful about how she’d felt since her marriage had been invalidated. Not even with her father.
The earl smiled, his attention already slipping back to the news of the day. There were ink stains on his fingers. A sure sign that he’d torn himself away from his desk to join her in the breakfast parlor.
He was a man of intellect. A man who waged war with verbs and won battles with synonyms. But it wasn’t magic. He wasn’t like the bards of old, who could raise blisters with a word or lay waste to an army with a song. And today, she rather wished he was. Surely Devere deserved some sort of reprimand?
Livy smoothed the letter on the table and read it over again, sucking the marrow out of every word. Devere’s penmanship was atrocious, and there was a dark ring where a glass of wine had been set down on the sheet of foolscap, making the ink of several words blur, but his offer—and the insult therein—was unmistakable.
Devere was offering himself as the sacrificial lamb for the pyre of her marriage. Every widow must start somewhere, and he thought, perhaps, she would like to start with him. Arrogant bastard.
Livy toyed with a muffin, breaking off a piece and slathering it with ginger preserves. She chewed thoughtfully. This was just the beginning. Just a warning shot across her bow. She was damaged goods, and men who’d once vied for her smiles would be expecting something more—and offering a great deal less—this time around.
She swallowed and took another bite, letting the heat of the ginger linger on her tongue. Roland Devere was a pompous ass, and he deserved to be punished. No, not just punished. He deserved to be tortured over an extended period of time for his presumption, and he should serve a higher purpose as penance.
Livy smiled and slipped the letter into her pocket. Not only should Devere do penance, he should serve as a warning to others, and she knew exactly how to go about making him of use.
THE DISH
Where authors give you the inside scoop!
From the desk of Christie Craig
Dear Reader,
As an author of seven humorous suspense romance novels, I’m often asked how I come up with my characters. Since the truth isn’t all that fun to describe—that I find these people in the cobwebs of my mind—I usually just tell folks that I post a want ad on Craigslist.
One of those folks replied that she’d be checking out my ad and applying for the position of romance heroine. Right then I wondered if she’d ever read a Christie Craig book. Well, it’s not just my books—every good story is really a triumph over tragedy. (Of course, I have my own lighter spin of tragedy.) And by the ending of my books, my heroines have found a man who’s smoking hot and deserving of their affection, and they’ve experienced a triumph that’s sweeter than warm fudge. Friendships have been forged, and even the craziest of families have grown a whole lot closer. And I do love crazy families. Probably because I have one of my own. Hmm, maybe I get some of my characters from there, too.
Point is, my heroines had to earn their Happily Ever After. The job requires a lot of spunk.
Take poor Nikki Hunt in DON’T MESS WITH TEXAS, the first book in my Hotter in Texas series, for example. Her cheating ex ditches her at dinner and sticks her with the bill. She then finds his dead body stuffed in the trunk of her car, which makes her lose her two-hundred-dollar meal all over his three-thousand-dollar suit. Now, not only is Nikki nearly broke, she’s been poisoned, she’s barfing in public (now, that’s a tragedy), and, worse still, she’s a murder suspect. And that’s only the first chapter. Nikki’s fun is just beginning. You’ve hardly met Nikki’s grandma, who epitomizes those family members who drive you bonkers, even though you know your life would be empty without them.
As we say in the south, Nikki’s got a hard row to hoe. For certain, it takes a kick-ass woman to be a Christie Craig heroine. She’s gotta be able to laugh, because sometimes that’s all you can do. She’s gotta be able to fight, because life is about battles. (I don’t care if it’s with an ex-husband, a plumber, or a new puppy unwilling to house-train.) And she’s gotta be able to love, because honestly, love is really what my novels are about. Well, that and overcoming flaws, jumping over hurdles, and finding the occasional dead body.
So while in real life you may never want to undergo the misadventures of a Christie Craig heroine, I’m counting on the fact that you’ll laugh with her, root for her, and fall in love alongside her. And here’s hoping that when you close my book, you are happy you’ve met the characters who live in the cobwebs of my mind.
And remember my motto for life: Laugh, love, read.
www.christie-craig.com
From the desk of Isobel Carr
Dear Reader,
I’ve always loved the “Oh no, I’m in love with my best friend’s sister!” trope. It doesn’t matter what the genre or setting is, we all know sisters are forbidden fruit. This scenario is just so full of pitfalls and angst and opportunities for brothers to be protective and for men to have to really, really prove (and n
ot just to the girl) that they love the girl. How can you not adore it?
Add in the complications of a younger son’s lot in life—lack of social standing, lack of fortune, lack of prospects—and you’ve got quite the series of hurdles to overcome before the couple can attain their Happily Ever After (especially if the girl he loves is the daughter of a duke).
If you read the first book in the League of Second Sons series, you’ve already met the sister in question, Lady Boudicea “Beau” Vaughn. She’s a bit of a tomboy and always seems to be on the verge of causing a scandal, but she means well, and she’s got a fierce heart.
You will have also met the best friend, Gareth Sandison. He’s a committed bachelor, unquestionably a rake, and he’s about to have everything he’s ever wanted—but knew he could never have—dangled in front of him… but he’s going to have to risk friendship and honor to get it. And even then, things may not work out quite as he expected.
I hope you’ll enjoy letting Gareth show you what it means to be RIPE FOR SCANDAL.
www.isobelcarr.com
From the desk of Hope Ramsay
Dear Reader,
In late 2010, while I was writing HOME AT LAST CHANCE, something magical happened that changed the direction of the story.
A friend sent me an e-mail with a missing pet poster attached. This particular poster had a banner headline that read “Missing Unicorn,” over a black-and-white photograph of the most beautiful unicorn I have ever seen. The flyer said that the lost unicorn had last been seen entering Central Park and provided a 1-800 number for tips that would lead to the lost unicorn’s safe return.
The unicorn poster made me smile.
A few days later, my friend sent me a news story about how hundreds of people in New York had seen this poster and had started calling in reports of unicorn sightings. Eventually, the unicorn sightings spread from Manhattan all the way to places in Australia and Europe.
