Scandal of the Year (28 page)

“Free, Aidan.” She wrapped her arms around his neck and laughed. “I feel free.”

It was terribly old-fashioned to post banns, but Aidan insisted it was the only practical way to go about marriage with a woman like Julia, joking that posting banns gave her three full weeks to change her mind, jump in that motorcar of hers, and dash off for parts unknown.

Still, when the vicar expressed concerns about holding the wedding of a divorcee in his church, Aidan laid all joking aside. After several long talks on the subject, during which Julia tried her best to look sincerely penitent about her past behavior, and both she and Aidan offered many assurances that this particular marriage was not going to end up in the divorce court like her last one, the vicar agreed to perform the ceremony in the St. Ives Church, and the banns were duly posted.

An announcement was made to the press that the Duke of Trathen was engaged for the third time, and this time, his choice of bride caused quite a sensation. Some people thought their engagement the height of bad taste, while others thought it was only fitting, but no one thought the wedding would actually happen, particularly not Julia’s astonished family, who, though happy at the news of her engagement, were doubtful she’d make it to the church.

The public was also skeptical. Bets were laid at White’s, with odds five-to-one against, and society pages assured the public that the scandal-ridden divorcee who’d been so cold and indifferent to her first husband was sure to jilt the unlucky duke at the altar, making them the scandal of the year twice in a row.

But Julia proved them all wrong. One month after she nearly broke his heart by refusing to marry him, and wearing a white—yes, white—wedding dress, the notorious Lady Yardley, née Miss Julia Hammett, stood up with Aidan Thomas Carr, the Duke of Trathen, at St. Ives Church in Cornwall and said her marriage vows for the second time, but it was the first time she said them with the conviction of her heart.

Her voice never faltered as she promised before her friends, her family, and God to take Aidan as her wedded husband, to have and to hold him from that day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health and all the rest, right out of the Book of Common Prayer, word for word.

Well, not quite word for word. She did leave out the word
obey
.

She must have forgotten that part.

If you loved SCANDAL OF THE YEAR
and are looking for another
sensual, emotionally rich romance,

try the latest in Julie Anne Long’s

sparkling Pennyroyal Green Series . . .

Read on for a sneak peek of

WHAT I DID FOR A DUKE

Available March 2011

After discovering his fiancée in another man’s bed, the Duke of Falconbridge—a notorious noble with a reputation for sin—plans a most suitable revenge: he will seduce his rival’s innocent sister, Genevieve—the only Eversea as yet untouched by scandal. But he’s unprepared for the passion simmering beneath Genevieve’s meek and self-controlled surface. And though Genevieve has heard the whispers about the Duke’s dark past, she is shocked and exhilarated to discover what a woman is capable of in the arms of a wickedly irresistible man . . .

I
t was decided—no one knew where or when the idea originated, but it had been taken up with enthusiasm—that a walk would be undertaken to enjoy the weather while it lasted. The ladies would bring their sketchbooks and embroidery and the men would bring their cricket bats out to perfect their swings ahead of cricket season, and presumably to impress the women.

Since Genevieve could conceive of no place where she would be happy, outside was as good as inside, and it hardly seemed likely that Harry would propose to Millicent whilst surrounded by friends and holding a cricket bat.

And so walk out they did.

The day had remained insultingly bright and clear. It hardly seemed fair to her that Autumn had divested the trees of their leaves and left them to stand embarrassingly nude in a relentlessly lemony sun, let alone the fact that made the world seem cheerfully indifferent to her internal chaos.

Everyone
seemed to be oblivious. Chase, if he were here, might have noticed. Chase was seeing to business in London; he’d sent a brother and a sister, Liam and Meggy Plum, to live in Pennyroyal Green. And Colin could be very observant, but Colin was generally a rascal before he was sensitive, and Colin was at home with his wife a few miles away. Olivia assumed her head hurt.

Ian
had
asked her if her head hurt, which seemed to be the extent of male knowledge of female complaints. She’d asked Ian if his head hurt, as he’d looked a little wobbly, too.

They both denied a thing was wrong.

She drifted away and found a place on the scrupulously barbered lawn far enough away from the cricket horseplay to spread out an old shawl. She sat down, tucked her dress neatly over her knees and leaned back on her hands and she watched the men, and ached, and thought.

Harry was all but glowing in the autumn sun. It was both soothing and bittersweet to watch him. A painter could create an entire palette and call it “Harry’s hair,” and include in it gold and wheat and flaxen and—

A shadow blotted her view before she could add another color to the palette in her mind.

The shadow turned out to be the Duke of Falconbridge.

He settled down next to her on the grass. His pose almost mimicked hers. He stretched out his legs and leaned back on his hands. He plucked off his hat and gently laid it alongside him.

He said nothing at all for a time.

Merely shaded his eyes and followed the direction of hers.

She wondered again if she’d imagined him walking through the garden. So sodden and exhausted had she been she somehow doubted it. And yet . . .

She wasn’t going to trouble to be polite.

She was certain he would find something to say that she would object to or be uncomfortably fascinated by.

“He’s handsome.” The duke gestured with his chin toward Harry. “Osborne is. No
lines
.”

She froze.

And then slowly, slowly turned toward him and fixed him with what she hoped was a subject-quelling incredulous stare.

“I suppose,” she agreed warily. When one looked from Harry to the duke, the duke certainly suffered by comparison. And it wasn’t as though sunlight wouldn’t have anything to do with him. But he was certainly Harry’s chiaroscuro opposite. He didn’t
glow
. His hair was . . . his hair was black. Apart from that frost of gray at the temples, that was. And it was straight and just a bit too rakishly long, just in case anyone should forget his reputation for being dangerous. His skin was so fair that his dark eyes and brows were like punctuation on a page.

She turned away again, her body tensed against any further insights he might volunteer. Olivia and Millicent and Louisa looked like an autumn bouquet in their walking dresses. She focused on that soothing sight instead, deliberately blurring her vision until they were only color, rather than people, one of whom Harry wanted to marry.

“And you’re in love with him?”

Holy—!

She actually yelped. It was as much his tone as the observation: conversational. She turned away again and looked straight ahead, her vision blurring in shock. I am a glacier, she told herself. I am a slippery ice wall against which his insights can gain no purchase. He will stop talking. He will stop talking.

“And he’s . . . somehow broken your heart?”

He said this almost brightly, as though they’d set out to play a guessing game.

Oh, God
.
Pain
. She made a short involuntary sound. As though a wasp had sunk a stinger in.

She whirled furiously on him again, eyes burning with outrage.

So much for glacial control.

Oddly, he didn’t look triumphant. He looked almost sympathetic.

“I’m afraid it’s evident, Miss Eversea. To me, anyhow. If I’m not mistaken, no one else seems to have bothered to notice, if that’s any comfort. Unless you’ve confided in anyone? Your sister, perhaps?”

Rather than claw him in fury, she curled her fingers into the grass, and would have yanked it up by the roots if she wouldn’t have felt guilty about killing innocent plant life and creating more work for the groundskeeper.

And no. Olivia was the last person she would burden with the news of hopeless love.

“No,” she said shortly. Thereby admitting her deepest, darkest secret.

“And has he kissed you?” he asked, lightly.

Each impertinent question shocked her anew and flayed fresh welts over raw and newly exposed secrets. All of her muscles contracted, as if colluding to shrink away from him.

Why was he doing this? How did he
know
?

“He’s a
gentleman
,” she said tightly.

How quickly could she spring up and bolt away? Could she pretend she was being chased by a wasp? If she ran screaming from the duke surely a scandal would ensue. If this was his idea of courtship then she had no doubt his fiancée had abandoned
him
.

“And has he
kissed
you?” he repeated in precisely the same inflection apart from a fresh and maddening hint of amusement.

Her heart rabbited away in her chest, kicking, kicking painfully. This kind of misery was entirely new, and she hadn’t yet learned to accommodate it. Her stomach was roiling, her cheeks were flushed, and she wondered if she ought to go have a lengthy heartfelt chat with her handsome cousin, the vicar, to ask if there was any particular penance she could do to stop the unprecedented variety of suffering raining down upon her this week.

“He has kissed me,” she confirmed coldly.

What made her say it? It wasn’t entirely a lie. Perhaps pride had made her say it. Perhaps the very notion of another man kissing her would drive him away.

But Harry
had
kissed her hand once, lingeringly, as though her hand was a precious thing. It had surprised her; in her mind it had cemented their attachment.

“Has
he?” Amused and clearly disbelieving. “Point to the part of your body he kissed.”

She stared rigidly across the expanse of green, eyeing her brother’s cricket bat and contemplating other more satisfying uses for it. Ian was demonstrating a swing for Harry. And for Olivia and Millicent, of course, so Olivia and Millicent could admire his form.

As if they knew or cared anything about form. The things we do for men, Genevieve thought.

She was silent. She could simply refuse to say another word to the man.

“Was
this
the part?” the duke tapped the back of her hand with one long finger.

She snatched it away from him and cupped it in her other hand as though comforting it and glared daggers at him.

“If you
please
, Lord Moncrieffe.”

The anguished embarrassment and her glare deterred him not at all. He raised his brows, waiting with infinite, infinite, downright
evil
patience, unruffled. His eyes were dark and deep, as reflective in the sunlight as the polished toes of his boots. Like a body of water, where one couldn’t tell whether you could wade safely through or step in and be swallowed whole by depth. She had the strangest sense he could absorb anything with those eyes and reflect back the same irony: a glare, a smile, a tragedy, a comedy.

But there was something about him . . . She was tempted to wade in. Just a little. it was the same temptation she’d succumbed to when he’d discussed—just as deliberately—Venus and Mars. Because he wasn’t wrong. Because he was honest, and she liked it. Because he was relentless, and she admired it. Because she half-hated him, but he didn’t bore her.

Because he spoke to her the way no one else had ever spoken to her, which meant he saw her in a way no one else saw her.

“Very well. He has kissed my hand, yes. Surely there’s nothing untoward about that.”

“I suppose whether it was
untoward
depends on his intent and the circumstances and how much you enjoyed it.”

“It was an excellent kiss,” she all but whispered.

“Oh, I’m certain it was.” The bloody man was amused. “A real man would have kissed you on the mouth, Miss Eversea. ‘Gentleman’ or no. And it’s a very good mouth you have.” He volunteered this as though offering advice on Harry’s cricket form.

She stared at him, shock dropping open her mouth.

Her
very good
mouth.

Damn him for inciting curiosity about what constituted a
good mouth
.

She nearly raised her hand to touch it. Stopped herself. And then she did, surreptitiously, rest the back of her hand against it.

They were soft, her lips, barely pink. Shaped neatly and elegantly.

But what made it
good?

She’d no vocabulary at all for this type of conversation. For the types of compliments he produced. They were very adult, and he presented them to her as though she ought to know what to do with them.

She didn’t. But speaking with him reminded her of the first time she’d taken a sip of coffee. A bitter, foreign black brew, that grew more appealing, more rich and complex, the more necessary, the more she sipped.

He casually, deliberately removed his coat, folded it neatly, laid it next to him. The wind took the opportunity to play in his hair, lifting it a bit, tossing it about, letting it drop, satisfied at having mussed a duke.

He leaned back on his hands. And then idly turned to her. He inhaled, and exhaled an almost long-suffering sigh.

And he began in a patient, almost leisurely fashion, in a voice fashioned from dark velvet, a voice that stroked over her senses until they were lulled, to lecture directly to her as she was a girl in the schoolroom.

“A proper kiss, Miss Eversea, should turn you inside out. It should . . . touch places in you that you didn’t know existed, set them ablaze, until your entire being is hungry and wild. It should . . . hold a moment, I want to explain this as clearly as possible . . .” he tipped his head back, paused to consider, as though he were envisioning this and wanted to relate every detail correctly. “It should slice right down through you like a cutlass with a pleasure so devastating it’s very nearly pain.”

He waited, watching her face, allowing her to accommodate the potent words.

Her mouth was parted. Her breathing short. She couldn’t look away. His eyes and voice held her as fast as if he’d cradled her face with his hands.

And as he said them, an echo of sensation sounded in her, like a remembered dream, an instinct awakened.

She thought about Mars getting ready to give Venus a good pleasuring.

Stop, she should say.

“And . . . ?” she whispered.

“It should make you do battle for control of your senses and your will. It should make you want to do things you’d never dreamed you’d want to do, and in that moment all of those things will make perfect sense. And it should herald, or at least promise, the most intense physical pleasure you’ve ever known, regardless of whether that promise is ever, ever fulfilled. It should, in fact . . .” he paused for effect “. . . haunt you for the rest of your life.”

She sat wordlessly when he was done. As though waiting for the last notes of a stormy, discordant symphony to echo into silence.

The most intense physical pleasure.

His words reverberated in her. As if her body contained the ancient wisdom of what that meant, and now, having been reminded, craved it.

She should have gotten up to leave and not looked back.

“So you’ve had this kiss? Or is it something you aspire to?” Her voice was a low rasp.

For a moment he said nothing at all. And then a faint, slow, satisfied smile.

She had the oddest impression she’d passed a test. And that she’d surprised him yet again.

“I’ll leave you to wonder about that, as well, Miss Eversea. I’m a man who cherishes my mystique.”

She gave a little snort. But she was undoubtedly shaken.

She turned back to watch Harry, who was now making a great show of balancing the cricket bat on his palm. It was jarringly the opposite of the conversation she was in the midst of.