“I’m…I’m sorry, my lord,” Black said without shifting his gaze from Alice. “Please don’t let us inconvenience you.”
“We’re used to taking in travelers in trouble,” Lyle said, not sure what he thought about his daughter making such a fast conquest.
Except it was worse than that, damn it.
“I’ll…I’ll show you back to the house. You’ll want dry clothes,” Alice said, returning Black’s interest with a readiness that made every hair on Lyle’s neck bristle with warning. He caught his wife’s eye and stifled his immediate veto of Alice’s offer.
“The play’s about to start, Alice,” Angus said.
“A short delay won’t matter,” she said, without looking at her brother. Her attention was all for the tall young man with the burning gray eyes and wet blond hair.
“You’re too kind, Lady Alice,” Black said.
“Come with me.” A brilliant smile curled Alice’s lips.
“To the ends of the earth,” the young man said, smiling back with untrammeled delight. They turned toward the door, and Lyle instinctively started to follow until his wife’s hand curled around his arm.
“Let them go.” She drew Lyle away from the crowd.
“I don’t like the way he was looking at her,” he grumbled, shooting the oblivious Julian Black a glower over his shoulder.
Charlotte laughed softly. “It seems rainy days and Cinderella have worked their magic again, my love.”
Startled, he turned back to his wife. “But they’ve only just met.”
His countess of a quarter of a century stretched her still-slender body up to kiss him in full view of everyone. When she drew away, he wasn’t thinking about Alice anymore.
“Mo chridhe…”
“It’s no great mystery, my fine Highland laddie.” Charlotte’s smile was incandescent with abiding love. “Sometimes it just takes one look.”
THE END
Continue reading for an excerpt from:
The Seduction of Lord Stone
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Book 1 in the Dashing Widows series
* * *
For this reckless widow, love is the most dangerous game of all.
Caroline, Lady Beaumont, arrives in London seeking excitement after ten dreary years of marriage and an even drearier year of mourning. That means conquering society, dancing like there’s no tomorrow, and taking a lover to provide passion without promises. Promises, in this dashing widow’s dictionary, equal prison. So what is an adventurous lady to do when she loses her heart to a notorious rake who, for the first time in his life, wants forever?
Devilish Silas Nash, Viscount Stone is in love at last—with a beautiful, headstrong widow bent on playing the field. Worse, she’s enlisted his help to set her up with his disreputable best friend. No red-blooded man takes such a challenge lying down, and Silas schemes to seduce his darling into his arms, warm, willing and besotted. But will his passionate plots come undone against a woman determined to act the mistress, but never the wife?
Prologue
Grosvenor Square, London, February 1820
The world expected a widow to be sad.
The world expected a widow to be lonely.
The world didn’t expect a widow to be bored to the point of throwing a brick through a window, just to shatter the endless monotony of her prescribed year of mourning.