“Sweet without being too intelligent?” Harper repeated in outrage. Her hands curled into fists and she actually took a step in Doyle’s direction before she drew a deep breath and calmed herself. The man was obviously trying to get a reaction out of her which she refused (mostly on principle and a little bit because it would cause a scene) to give him.
“My name,” she said through gritted teeth, “is not Betsy.”
“It isn’t?” Doyle said, all wide-eyed innocence. “How shocking. What is it, then?”
“None of your bloody business!”
The curse, spoken a tad too loudly, earned Harper a disapproving glare from an older woman standing a few yards away and a grin from Doyle.
“Careful,” he warned, wagging a finger at her, “you do not want to upset that one. Rumor has it she is going to be a new patroness at Almack’s.”
Almack’s Assembly Rooms, governed by seven Lady Patronesses from the most influential families in all of England, hosted an exclusive ball every Wednesday night. Only the best of the best received invitations, and once you were off the list…well…no amount of begging or bribery would get you back on. Harper personally did not give a fig whether she was disinvited or not, but she knew it would disappoint her brother if he discovered his sister’s debut season had come to a crashing halt before it ever truly began.
“How do you know that?” she demanded as she cast a surreptitious glance at the woman in question. She’d moved across the terrace and was now standing with a small group of similarly aged women, all of whom were dressed to perfection with nary a hair out of place.
“I will tell you…if you take a walk with me. Just a short one,” Doyle said when Harper’s eyes narrowed. “One turn around the gardens. A small price to pay for a bit of knowledge. A bargain, really.”
“I would rather take a walk with a pig.”
“Sweet and charming.” Doyle pressed a mocking hand to his chest. “Be still my heart.”
“What do you want?” she asked in exasperation.
“I believe we have been over this already. I want you to marry me.”
“That is absurd,” she scoffed. “I am not going to marry you.”
“Why not?”
“Because I do not even know you!” And this, she thought silently, is officially the oddest conversation I have ever had in my entire life. Stretching up on her toes, she attempted to look over Doyle’s shoulder in search of Miles but saw nothing save a growing swarm of unfamiliar faces crowding the terrace as more and more people, their red countenances covered in sheens of perspiration, stepped outside. “I need to go,” she said, but when she attempted to step around Doyle he blocked her path, his tall, muscular body proving to be a formidable obstacle.
“Go where?”
“That is-”
“None of my business. You keep saying that.”
“Because it is true! Oh,” she exclaimed in frustration when she attempted to dart to the other side and he blocked her yet again. “You are the most infuriating man I have ever had the displeasure of meeting!”
“Thank you,” he said, dimple flashing as he grinned.
Stepping back until she bumped into the wrought iron fence, Harper sucked on the inside of her cheek as she quickly reconsidered how to get out of her current predicament. For whatever the reason, Doyle seemed insistent on bothering her. Perhaps if she gave him what he wanted he would finally grow bored and leave her free to continue her search for Miles. It wasn’t a good plan, but at the moment it seemed to be the only one she had.
“Very well,” she conceded reluctantly. “I will go on a walk with you. But” - she held up a finger - “this does not mean I have any interest in marrying you and we will walk inside, not out in the gardens. I am a bit cold and do not want to catch a chill.” The lie tumbled easily off her tongue. In truth, Harper had never felt hotter which was why, if she had to remain in Doyle’s company, she thought it wiser to do so under the watchful eyes of the remaining guests. The man may have been an ass, but he was a handsome ass and though she would ever admit it - especially to him - she wasn’t quite as immune to his charms as she would have liked to be.
His smile turning a bit wicked, Doyle extended one arm in a gallant flourish. “Inside we go, then.”
Together they walked back into the ballroom, jostling past the steady stream of people fighting their way out. Inside the music still played, but the number of couples swirling about had diminished by more than half.
“Dance with me,” Doyle said quietly.
Harper turned her head, a rebuttal already forming on her lips, but when she met Doyle’s gaze the strangest thing happened. The music dimmed. The people surrounding them faded. Time itself seemed to slow until there was only him and there was only her standing alone in a vast ballroom with their eyes locked together. “Yes,” she heard herself say faintly. “I will dance with you.”
He held her closer than he should have; one hand splaying across the small of her back while the other lingered at the nape of her long neck, fingers toying with the dark tendrils that had slipped loose from their coiffure. Their gazes continued to hold, and as Harper felt herself being drawn deeper and deeper in the depths of his brandy colored eyes she couldn’t help but wonder how they were moving so gracefully in time with the music when the only thing she could hear was the uneven stutter of her breaths and the pounding of her own heartbeat.
“Beautiful,” Doyle murmured huskily, dipping his head so she felt the word like a silky caress across her flesh. “If I were not holding you in my arms I would think you a fairy queen, stunning as the sun and substantial as air.” His hand on her back began to trail scandalously low, following the delicate bumps of her spine. Harper tensed, looking up at him in bewildered confusion as she felt a foreign heat beginning to unfurl inside of her, the source of it centered between her thighs.
“What…what are you doing?” she gasped.
“Touching you.” His mouth skimmed along the curve of her ear and she shivered when she felt the damp slide of his tongue against her lobe. “Tasting you.”
The temptation to melt into him, to let him do to her whatever his heart desired, was nearly overwhelming. Inexperienced in passion, Harper could not identify the swirl of wicked sensations that made her want to press herself against Doyle. She only knew that she didn’t want him to stop, and was teetering dangerously on the edge of begging.
More, she wanted to cry. Give me more.
As though he could read her wanton thoughts, Doyle’s mouth curved in an arrogant smile. “Did you like that?” At her hesitant, bashful nod he whispered, “Tell me your name and I will do it again.”
It was the wrong thing to say.
Had he dumped a bucket of ice water on her head Doyle could not have freed Harper from the lust filled haze she’d succumbed to any faster than those ten words did. A shock of awareness jolted through her, and with a hiss of disgust she jerked out of his arms. “My brother warned me about men like you,” she spat.
Seemingly unperturbed, Doyle folded his arms across his chest and sank back onto his heels. “Did he now?” he drawled, one corner of his mouth settling into a smirk. “I cannot say he was wrong to do so. Too bad you did not listen.”
“You are a cad,” Harper fumed. “A black hearted, soulless cad!” And she was a fool to have let her head be turned by a handsome face and a charming smile.
Eyes gleaming with wicked suggestion, Doyle leaned towards her. “You did not seem to think so a moment ago.”
“Oh! You…you…”
“Black hearted soulless cad? You said that already.”
Harper’s entire body vibrated with anger. Anger that was as much directed at Doyle as it was at herself. “Get away from me.”
He opened his mouth to reply, but whatever he’d been about to say died on his lips as he looked over her shoulder and his entire countenance darkened. “We will have to continue this another time, princess.” And without another word he brushed past her and stro
de purposefully away without so much as a backwards glance.
Well, Harper thought silently, how do you like that?!
Left with a vague feeling of disappointment, she did a slow turn about, expelling a long sigh of frustration as she realized she was no better off now than she’d been an hour ago. Miles was still no where to be found, which meant she was still stranded without any conceivable means of getting home.
“Harper! Harper, do you know who that was?”
Spinning around at the sound of her name, Harper found herself face to face with Lady Edna Vaine, a pretty, albeit plump wallflower her own age she’d thought left hours ago. “No, and I do not care to. Edna, what are you still doing here?”
The brunette waved her hand dismissively. “I spilled a bit of sauce down the front of my gown and had to return home and change into another. I’ve only just returned, and thank goodness! I wouldn’t have wanted to miss this for the world. Honestly, you do not know who that was?” Her brown eyes flitted in the direction Doyle had gone before she refocused on Harper. “Surely you are jesting.”
“I know his name is Doyle Flynn. Beyond that, I really don’t care. Edna, do you think you might be able to take me home? I seem to have lost my brother and-”
“Yes, yes,” Edna said impatiently. “Certainly. I cannot believe you do not know who you were dancing with!”
“All I know is whoever he was I never want to see him again.” Bringing the back of her hand up to her mouth, Harper muffled a yawn. “These things are so exhausting. I have no idea why you would ever willingly come back to one, although I have to say I am glad you did. Do you think we would be able to leave soon?”
The tightly wound curls on either side of Edna’s ears bounced up and down as she nodded her head. “I will go find Mother. I am so glad we will be sharing a carriage! That way you can tell me everything about him.”
“Everything about who?” Harper said absently, her thoughts once again on Miles and his mysterious disappearance.
“Why, Doyle Flynn of course!” Eyes bright with excitement, Edna took Harper’s hand and squeezed tight. “The Duke of Greenwood and the most eligible bachelor in all of England!”
CHAPTER ONE
Winfield Estate
August, 1816
“I still cannot believe you refused his proposal.”
“Whose proposal?” Harper replied absently as she turned the page of the book she’d begun two days ago. It was a bit slow for her taste and the heroine lacked a great deal of God given common sense, but the hero was quite dashing. She only hoped he chose someone else in the end.
Miss Mary Hartley, a petite blonde with porcelain skin and large blue eyes, sniffed loudly. “As if you have received so many you cannot tell one from the other. His proposal, Harper. The Duke of Greenwood!”
Closing her book with an annoyed snap, Harper set it aside before she sat up off the blanket she was using to protect her dress from grass stains and frowned at her closest friend. A beam of sunlight shimmered down through the leafy branches of the oak they were using for shade, causing her to squint. “Of course I remember it. How could I forget, when it is the only thing you have been talking about for the past three months straight?”
Mary pursed her lips. “As though there is anything else to talk about.”
“I am quite certain you could find something if you put your mind to it. You weren’t even at the Farcott ball, remember? You were home sick.”
Lucky.
“But Edna was there,” Mary reminded her, “and she saw the whole thing.”
Not the whole thing, Harper thought as a flush heated the back of her neck. She didn’t see Doyle holding me indecently tight against his hard body…or see his hand wander down to the curve of my bum…or see his tongue glide along the outside of my ear… “Edna would do well to learn how to keep her mouth shut.” And I would do well to stop thinking about Doyle Flynn, she added silently. Unfortunately, it was one of those things that was far easier to say than do.
Twelve weeks had passed since Doyle wooed her senseless, and she still couldn’t get him out of her head. Irksome man. She wished she’d never met him, and now no matter how hard she tried she was unable to forget him. Especially not with Mary and Edna inserting his name in every other sentence they spoke. Harper loved her friends dearly - they were, after all, the only two she had - but if she heard either one of them mention the Duke of Greenwood one more time…
“You do know he is coming here next week, don’t you?” Mary asked, her cheeks tinged pink with excitement. Dropping the book she had been pretending to read, she swept the skirts of her printed muslin dress aside and leaned forward onto her gloved hands. “Everyone is talking about it!”
“Who?” Harper said suspiciously.
“Well, I heard from Edna who heard from Lady Cecily who said she-”
“No,” Harper said with an exasperated shake of her head that sent loose tendrils of silky black hair sliding over her shoulders, “not who is talking about it, who is coming here next week!”
“Oh.” Mary blinked. “The Duke of Greenwood, of course.”
“He certainly is not!” Doyle Flynn, come here? It was unthinkable. It was horrible. It was-
“He is.” Looking quite smug, Mary sat back. “Well,” she amended, pale brows drawing together over the bridge of her nose, “perhaps not precisely right here, but he will be taking up residence at Longmeadow Park for the remainder of the summer.”
Harper’s chest lifted and fell as she breathed a sigh of relief. Longmeadow Park, a sprawling manor of twelve hundred acres (and but one of Doyle’s rumored half dozen estates), was at least ten miles away in the neighboring town of Brayberry. The odds of crossing paths with him here, at Winfield, were slim to none.
Particularly if I never leave the grounds.
It wouldn’t be a hard sacrifice for her to make, for it wasn’t as though she’d had any other plans for the next few weeks beyond reading the books she’d acquired during her time in London and working on her own manuscript, a fledgling thing of thirty pages that had more sentences crossed out than were written down. It was a romance. At least, that’s what it was supposed to be. The heroine - a high spirited, rebellious young woman named Lady Elle - all but wrote herself, but the hero…the hero was regrettably lacking in all of the characteristics that, to Harper’s mind, made up a good hero. To put it quite bluntly, Sir Edgar Thomas was a bore. He wasn’t dashing like Tom Betram from Mansfield Park or brooding like Mr. Darcy in Pride and Prejudice (two of her most favorite novels). Even his name was boring, although for the life of her she couldn’t think up a better one.
The problem, Harper mused as she reclined all the way back on the blanket and stared up at the piercing blue sky through a shifting bramble of glossy green leaves, was that all of the men she’d encountered thus far - with the exception of her brother, although Miles could certainly have his moments - were irrefutably boring. Each and every one of them. Well, almost each and every one.
Doyle hadn’t been boring. Infuriating, yes. Arrogant, certainly. But boring? No. Not that.
For the first time in her life she’d felt…alive. Yes, that was a good word. Alive and exposed and exhilarated and dizzy, all at once. And then angry. A little angrier than she’d had a right to be, but it was rather hard to check ones emotions when one was feeling alive and exposed and exhilarated and dizzy, all at once. When Doyle had taken her in his arms… She blew out a breath. The spark she’d felt then was the same exact spark that was lacking between Lady Elle and Sir Edgar Thomas now. A spark she couldn’t seem to capture, no matter how many ways she went about setting up their first meeting where everyone knew all good sparks began.
The main problem, as Harper saw it, was that she simply did not have the experience required to write a male character deserving of Lady Elle. As the saying went, writers wrote best when they wrote what they knew…and she didn’t know what it felt like to be a handsome, dashing, arrogant rake.
But so
meone else did.
As an idea began to form - a very foolish, very hairbrained idea - Harper sat up on her elbow and slanted Mary a speculative glance. “When is he due to arrive?”
Distracted by the crown of flowers she was busily weaving, it took Mary a few seconds to reply. “Who, the Duke of Greenwood?” At Harper’s nod she quickly set the half-finished crown aside and, biting her lip in poorly disguised anticipation, said in a rush, “Lady Cecily told Edna who told me that he should be arriving this afternoon! Do you want to go introduce ourselves? I’m sure my father could get us an invitation!”
Though not a lord of the realm, Mary’s father - Sir Betram Hartley - was an influential member of Parliament and had a seat in the House of Commons. As such, he - and by turn, Mary and her mother - were often granted audiences with some of England’s most notable peers. Given that Harper’s own brother was an earl she could have no doubt garnered an invitation on her own merit, but then it would seem as though she wanted to see Doyle again. Which she didn’t. Not even a little bit. But for the sake of her writing…well, no sacrifice was too great.
“Yes,” she said slowly. “Yes, I think we should. After all, it is only the neighborly thing to do.”
Hands clenched behind his back, weight firmly planted on his heels, Doyle Flynn stared up at Longmeadow Manor and scowled fiercely. “I hate this place,” he said to the woman beside him. Paling a bit, she tentatively touched his arm and squeezed.
“I know,” she said, her soft voice barely audible above the brisk breeze whipping down across the tree lined drive. “But I could think of nowhere else to go. You know you need not stay here with me.”
His stormy expression immediately softening, Doyle turned and met his sister’s fretful gaze. At twenty-three years of age, Aurelia Flynn should have been a blooming example of health and beauty. But instead of being rosy and flush her cheeks were gaunt and sallow. Instead of being bright and gay her tawny eyes, the same exact shade as her brother’s, were dim and haunted. Instead of being thick and shiny her hair, once a gleaming mane of rich chestnut she’d taken great pride in caring for, was now dull and lifeless.
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