by Sophia James
The fire in the main sitting room overlooking the vista blazed under a mantel of wide hewn stone. A solid and simple house, just as Simeon had promised.
Charlotte and Flora were in their beds full of excitement for tomorrow, and Jamie lay in his cot nearby, asleep at last. At six months old their small son was the spitting image of his father, though his eyes were hers, clear emerald green and startling in the brown hue of his skin. The girls adored him and even her mother who came down often to visit from Athelridge Hall was beginning to look happier.
The ghosts of the past had been pushed away and were being replaced by living and breathing family and the promise of a future which looked bright.
Adelia sat in Simeon’s lap in her nightgown, watching the flame, his arms holding her close, one hand cupping her stomach.
They were expecting their second child in six months, the surprise of him or her still delighting them.
‘We will have a whole brood of children here one day at this rate, my love. A small tribe of Morgans who will keep us busy.’ Simeon said this in a teasing tone, but she could hear pride in every word.
‘Well, the house is certainly big enough,’ she returned and brought his fingers up to kiss them one by one. ‘And we have more than enough love to share around.’
‘Tom Brady is coming up in the morning, did I tell you that? He is off to America in February and he tells me he wants to find a wife as suitable as my own.’
‘Suitable?’ She frowned.
‘Functional. Fertile. Convenient.’
She laughed at all the words he gave her. ‘None of those descriptions sound very flattering.’
‘Then how about beautiful, clever, sensual and brave?’
‘Oh, I like those much better.’
His hand moved down and he lifted up her hem. He knew that she wore only her skin under her nightgown.
‘It’s quiet and late and the baby is asleep.’ There was joy in his words.
‘And the servants have all gone to their families ’til the morrow.’ She added this as he turned her around, feeling his hardness like an ache as he slipped inside her.
Paradise. A home, a family and a husband who had stopped her being afraid and made her feel safe and wanted instead.
She smiled as he quickened his movements and the flame built. Her breasts were full and her nipples were darker and the marks left on her skin from Jamie’s birth were visible in the firelight. Yet she had never felt more beautiful, more whole, more complete in her life.
‘Love me, Simeon.’
‘It’s for ever.’ He whispered this and then there were no more words between them as their flesh heated and they took each other to heaven.
* * * * *
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ISBN: 9781488065651
Their Marriage of Inconvenience
Copyright © 2020 by Sophia James
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
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www.Harlequin.com
When his enemy…
becomes his truly tempting ally!
Inigo’s best friend’s life was cut brutally short by his association with the lovely Audevere Brenley and her father. Now Inigo seeks justice. But never did he dream that his greatest ally would be Audevere herself. What begins as business is branded with passion as Inigo rediscovers the intrepid, determined woman he thought he knew. His most dangerous revelation? His own feelings for her!
The Cornish Dukes
Born to inherit, destined for love!
Vennor, Eaton, Cassian and Inigo grew up together on the coasts of Cornwall, knowing that one day they would inherit their fathers’ weighty titles and the responsibility that comes with being a duke.
When Vennor’s father is shockingly murdered, that day comes sooner than expected. All four heirs are forced to acknowledge that their lives are changing. But the one change these powerful men might not be expecting? Love!
Enjoy this tension-filled new quartet by Bronwyn Scott
Read Eaton’s story in
The Secrets of Lord Lynford
Read Cassian’s story in
The Passions of Lord Trevethow
Read Inigo’s story in
The Temptations of Lord Tintagel
And look for Vennor’s story
Coming soon!
Author Note
Inigo and Audevere’s story is about coming to terms with the past. They share loss and they share a personal guilt over their parts in that loss. They wonder if they can ever move forward from the past or if they are forced to define their futures through it. Their story explores what it means to act on the old phrase “burn the ships” and if that is even possible.
It’s also a story about the courage to take second chances. The setting for the story gives us a chance to connect with other characters from the series and we get a look at how their second chances are going: we check in with Eaton and Eliza, with Rosenwyn and Cador, and we have news from Cassian and Penrose on their honeymoon. We also get to spend some time with Vennor in London. While the former characters are doing well with their second chances, Vennor seems stranded in the past, unable, like Inigo, to move on from tragedy. These provide potent juxtapositions against which Inigo’s story and choices play out.
I think this story resonates with readers because we’ve all needed a second chance, needed forgiveness from ourselves and others.
The Temptations of Lord Tintagel
Bronwyn Scott
Bronwyn Scott is a communications instructor at Pierce College in the United States and the proud mother of three wonderful children—one boy and two girls. When she’s not teaching or writing, she enjoys playing the piano, traveling—especially to Florence, Italy—and studying history and foreign languages. Readers can stay in touch via Facebook or on her blog, bronwynswriting.Blogspot.com. She loves to hear from readers.
Books by Bronwyn Scott
Harlequin Historical
Scandal at the Midsummer Ball
“The Debutante’s Awakening”
Scandal at the Christmas Ball
“Dancing with the Duke’s Heir”
The Cornish Dukes
The Secrets of Lord Lynford
The Passions of Lord Trevethow
The Temptations of Lord Tintagel
Allied at the Altar
A Marriage Deal with the Viscount
One Night with the Major
Tempted by His Secret Cinderella
Captivated by Her Convenient Husband
Russian Royals of Kuban
Compromised by the Prince’s Touch
Innocent in the Prince’s Bed
Awakened by the Prince’s Passion
Seduced by the Prince’s Kiss
Visit the Author Profile page
at Harlequin.com for more titles.
To Scott, who got me through this book as he gets me through so much else.
CONTENTS
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Epilogue
CHAPTER ONE
London—September 1824
The Jilt was getting married. Five years after her last attempt and she was going after a peer. Again. At least that was what it looked like from the society columns and they tended to have the right of it most times. Inigo Vellanoweth set aside the morning edition and took a bracing swallow of hot coffee, searing, strong and bitter, to match the news. It had been bound to happen. Perhaps the surprise was that it hadn’t happened sooner, but it did not lessen the shock of seeing it in print. Print lent a certain official quality to information. Print made rumours into facts. Inigo had been following these particular rumours all Season, every mention of her with the upstanding Viscount Tremblay buried beneath the larger twin excitements of the Season: the arrival and subsequent death of the Hawaiian King and Cassian Truscott’s courtship of Penrose Prideaux. According to The Times, the arrangement between the Jilt and Tremblay was all but done. An offer from the Viscount was expected soon. In September, when most of London was absent to protest or to raise the old rumours about her background. Did no one else see her father’s calculation in that?
A hundred different questions assailed Inigo as he read, mixed with emotions he would rather not acknowledge. He didn’t want to think about her, about the past where their lives had intersected, about his own failures when it came to her and her nefarious father. His reaction to the news was complicated to say the least. Among the myriad questions running through his mind was whether or not she meant marriage this time, or was this another opportunity to ruin a peer? She might mean to go through with it. After all, she was twenty-two now, no longer as young as she’d once been, and Viscount Tremblay, her most recent conquest, was a serious man. A good match by all standards. But the Jilt had made a good match before in Collin Truscott, second son of the Duke of Hayle—an extraordinary match for the daughter of a newly minted knight of the realm. When Sir Gismond Brenley climbed ladders, he did so with ambition and alacrity, using everything and everyone at his disposal—including his own daughter, the exquisite Audevere.
Even now, with five years of tragedy and deceit to tarnish the once-golden debutante, even when he knew to be wary of her charms, Inigo could still see her in his mind’s eye as she’d once been: her blonde head thrown back, her neck exposed as she laughed, a deep, throaty sound that made a man think of decadence and candlelight, of taking down all that carefully coiffed hair pin by pearl pin. He remembered the way her green eyes would flirt and flash, sharp with intelligence and wit, how her gaze would slide towards Collin, a secret half-smile on her lips that suggested something private just between them even though they were surrounded by a ballroom crowd.
Oh, how he’d envied Collin Truscott, his friend—one of his best friends—in those early days! Deep in his heart, Inigo had wanted that for himself: a woman who looked at him the way Audevere had looked at Collin; a woman who could make him laugh with her wit, who had intelligence and who wasn’t afraid to use it, unlike the usual debutante thrust in the path of eligible dukes’ heirs. Inigo pushed back from the table and began to pace, his body and mind agitated by memories. But Jermyn Street bachelor quarters didn’t leave much room to outrun the truth.
In his darker, more honest moments, Inigo admitted it wasn’t that he’d wanted a woman with whom he could share such moments. He’d wanted her. He’d wanted Audevere, his friend’s fiancée. It had shamed him then and it still shamed him now, because she was not innocent in all her father’s ruthless schemes; she bore her share of responsibility for Collin’s death. Only his fantasies held back that truth. In them, she was an unwitting accomplice, unaware of the depth of her father’s corruption, sometimes even a victim, forced against her will to aid her father’s plots. He’d fallen into the habit years ago of making excuses for her and for himself.
No matter how often he’d told himself that such coveting was a sin, that jealousy was poorly done of him, he’d not been able to shake the wanting of her. It was petty of him, he knew. He was the heir and son to the Duke of Boscastle. He was a man who had wealth galore and Midas’s own touch for turning a respectable accumulation of money into wealth unimaginable. He had everything and yet he’d been jealous of Collin, a man who would never inherit a title, who would always walk in the shadows of others and who had no business sense at all; a man who had only his good looks and winning personality to recommend him and who would always be reliant on his family’s connections and wealth for his own livelihood.
But that logic had held little sway with a twenty-five-year-old in desperate, secret love. He’d been privately envious of Collin right up until the day Collin had swum out to the Beasts off the shores of Porth Karrek and promptly drowned, one week to the day after Audevere had broken their engagement and two weeks after Collin’s latest business venture with Audevere’s father had failed dramatically, costing people homes and jobs they couldn’t afford to lose. Collin’s family had called it death by misadventure, but those closest to Collin knew better. Between them, father and daughter, the Brenleys had broken him.
And they would pay for it. Inigo had vowed the night of Collin’s death to bring Brenley down so that no one else would fall prey to such corruption, such scheming. That had been the beginning of his investigation, five years of piecing together a dirty trail of money that followed Gismond Brenley everywhere he went if anyone cared to look closely enough. Most did not. Did it matter? Brenley was careful. He did nothing illegal, just distasteful, depending on one’s politics.
Inigo’s pacing halted in mid-thought. Did Tremblay know to look close enough to be suspect of his impending father-in-law? Did Tremblay know to look behind the scenes of the glorious heroics in the Napoleonic Wars that had led to Brenley’s knighthood? Or to the sudden acquisition of wealth when Brenley’s properties benefited from Parliament’s decision to put roads through certain villages and not others? Did Tremblay understand the importance of pushing Brenley off the board of the Blaxford Mining Corporation last year before he could establish a monopoly on Cornish mining? Did Tremblay know all these things and simply not care? This seemed unlikely to Inigo, given the type of man Tremblay was—conscientious and civically minded. Or was Tremblay walking in blind, as Collin had? Blinded by Audevere’s beauty, willing to overlook the common antecedents of her pedigree and all the dirtiness that went with it?
Inigo’s pacing started anew with a different line of agitation to pursue.
His mind tried to reason that there was no call for extreme alarm. Surely, Tremblay’s solicitors would have done some investigating of their own. But Inigo was uncomfortable relying only on assumptions. He’d assumed Collin would be all right once, too. That was another question raised by the morning’s news. Should he warn Tremblay?
It would require the airing of dirty laundry not his own—sharing the secrets of the Truscott family. Inigo was protective of his friends. He would not willingly cause them pain by bringing up a death they’d taken great care to attribute to an accidental drowning. Perhaps there was a way to warn Tremblay without exposing the Truscotts to resurrected scandal? He owed Tremblay full disclosure. The Viscount was a friend. Not to speak up when he had the power to make a difference would be to serve that friendship poorly and it ran antithetical to the code of honour held by the Cornish Dukes—the seven men he admired most in this world and the next.
Inigo strode into the small room that served as his study and pulled a set of journals off the shelves which contained the results of his investigation. His mind was determined. He had failed Collin. He would not fail another friend. He would meet with Tremblay, perhaps invite him to drinks at White’s, and warn him away from a disastrous choice before history could repeat itself.
* * *
‘I expect Tremblay will want to discuss marriage when we meet this afternoon at Tattersall’s.’ The words washed over Audevere Brenley, cold and relentless as the Cornish sea in winter. Her father was too confident about his edict for her tastes and that frightened her with good reason, although she gave none of that fear away. It was too early in the day for that. Fear and breakfast did not mix.
‘Shouldn’t he be discussing marriage with me? After all, you’re not the one he wishes to wed.’ She sipped her morning tea—a strong Ceylon black—with all the nonchalant sangfroid she could summon. She had been here before, metaphorically speaking. Here at this critical juncture, a pawn advanced in a king’s gambit and now it was time for the trap to fall, for the pawn to be sacrificed in fulfilment of her service. She did not want to be here in London, bait once more in her father’s attempt to secure a title for the Brenley line. A title his grandchildren could inherit and, until then, a title he could manipulate in Parliament. She wanted to be in Cornwall, away from marriage proposals she didn’t want from unsuspecting men who had little idea what a disaster marriage to her would be; men who only saw the beautiful Audevere, the heiress named for an ancient sixth-century Merovingian queen. Her money was nouveau; her name was old.