His succeeding laugh was soft and laced with real amusement. “You are hardly ancient, Miss Blanchard. You only just turned twenty-three today.”
Tess eyed him with suspicion. “How did you know it was my birthday?”
“As head of the family, it is my business to know.”
“You are not head of my family.”
“For all practical purposes, I am.”
There it was again, that ironic drawl that convinced her he was deliberately attempting to provoke her.
It was infuriating, how Rotham always seemed to get under her skin, Tess reflected. Particularly when she was normally serene and even-tempered.
She had always thought him vexing—and deplorably fascinating. Rotham not only had a wicked reputation, he even looked wicked. He had striking gray eyes fringed by dark lashes, with lean, aristocratic features that were handsome as sin. His hair was a rich brown shot with gold threads, several shades lighter than her own sable hue, and held a slight curl. He possessed the muscular build of a sportsman but with a lethal elegance that proclaimed his nobility.
Yet it was Rotham’s powerful personality that made him utterly unforgettable.
At the moment his features were mainly in shadow, since it was barely noon on a gray, rainy autumn day and they were shrouded by stage curtains. Yet he still had the strange ability to affect her, Tess acknowledged.
She’d felt that same magnetic allure the first moment of meeting Rotham during her comeout four Seasons ago, when he’d deigned to dance with her. But shortly afterward, she’d fallen in love with his younger cousin Richard.
Ever since, she had felt guilty for her forbidden attraction to the Duke of Rotham. He was every inch the fallen angel. And lamentably even now, she felt his hypnotic pull as his gray gaze bored into her.…
To Tame a Dangerous Lord is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
A Ballantine Books Mass Market Original
Copyright © 2010 by Anne Bushyhead
Excerpt from To Desire a Wicked Duke © 2010 by Anne Bushyhead
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
BALLANTINE and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
This book contains an excerpt from the forthcoming book To Desire a Wicked Duke by Nicole Jordan. This excerpt has been set for this edition only and may not reflect the final content in the forthcoming edition.
eISBN: 978-0-345-51920-7
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