Never Entice an Earl

by Lily Dalton

  Besides, London in winter could be rather dreary. This one in particular had been uncommonly foggy and cold. Perhaps Annabelle simply sought human companionship and had come along with another guest. Sophia certainly understood loneliness. Whatever the reason for the woman’s attendance, her presence was of no real concern. Lady Meltenbourne and her now candy-sugared lips were just as welcome tonight as anyone else. The party would be over soon, and Sophia wished to spend the remainder with her grandfather.

  “Well, it was lovely seeing you again, but I’ve promised this glass of punch to our guest of honor. Enjoy your evening.”

  Sophia turned, but a sudden hand to her arm stayed her.

  “What of Claxton?” the countess blurted.

  The punch sloshed. Instinctively Sophia extended the glass far from her body, to prevent the liquid from spilling down her skirts, but inside her head, the intimate familiarity with which Lady Annabelle spoke her husband’s name tolled like an inharmonious bell.

  “Pardon me?” She glanced sharply at the hand on her arm. “What did you say?”

  Annabelle, wide-eyed and smiling, snatched her hand away, clasping it against the pale globe of her breast. “Will His Grace make an appearance here tonight?”

  Sophia had suffered much during her marriage, but this affront—at her grandfather’s party—was too much.

  Good breeding tempered her response. She’d been raised a lady. As a girl, she’d learned her lessons and conducted herself with perfect grace and honor. As a young woman, she’d maneuvered the dangerous waters of her first season, where a single misstep could ruin her prospects of a respectable future. She had made her family and herself proud.

  Sophia refused to succumb to the impulse of rage. Instead she summoned every bit of her self-control and, with the greatest of efforts, forbade herself from flinging the glass and its scarlet contents against the front of the woman’s gown.

  With her gaze fixed directly on Lady Meltenbourne, she answered calmly. “I would assume not.”

  The countess’s smile transformed into what was most certainly a false moue of sympathy. “Oh, dear. You do know he’s in town, don’t you, Your Grace?”

  Sophia’s vision went black. Claxton in London? Could that be true? If he had returned without even the courtesy of sending word—

  A tremor of anger shot down her spine, but with great effort she maintained her outward calm. However, that calm withered in the face of Lady Meltenbourne’s blatant satisfaction. Her bright eyes and parted, half-smiling lips proclaimed the malicious intent behind her words, negating any obligation by Sophia for a decorous response. Yet before she could present the countess with a dismissive view of her train, the woman, in a hiss of silk, flounced into the crowd.

  Only to be replaced by Sophia’s sisters, who fell upon her like street thieves, spiriting her into the deeper shadows of a nearby corner. Unlike Sophia, who could wear the more dramatically hued Geneva velvet as a married woman, Daphne and Clarissa wore diaphanous, long-sleeved white muslin trimmed with lace and ribbon.

  “Who invited that woman?” Daphne, the eldest of the two, demanded.

  Sophia answered, “She wasn’t invited.”

  “Did you see her bosoms?” Clarissa marveled.

  “How could you not?” Daphne said. “They are enormous, like cannonballs. It’s indecent. Everyone is staring, even Clarissa and I. We simply couldn’t help ourselves.”

  “That dress! It’s beyond fashion,” Clarissa gritted. “It’s the dead of winter. Isn’t she cold? She might as well have worn nothing at all.”

  “Daphne,” Sophia warned. “Clarissa.”

  Daphne’s eyes narrowed. “What exactly did she say to you?”

  Sophia banished all emotion from her voice. “Nothing of import.”

  “That’s not true,” Clarissa retorted. She leaned close and hissed, “She asked you if Claxton would be in attendance tonight.”

  Stung at hearing her latest shame spoken aloud, Sophia responded more sharply than intended. “If you heard her ask me about Claxton, then why did you ask me what she said?”

  Her hands trembled so greatly that she could no longer hold the punch glass without fear of spilling its contents. She deposited the glass on the nearby butler’s tray. Within seconds, a servant appeared and whisked it away.

  Clarissa’s nostrils flared. “I didn’t hear her. Not exactly. It’s just that she’s—”

  “Clarissa!” Daphne interjected sharply, silencing whatever revelation her sister had intended to share.

  “No, you must tell me,” Sophia demanded. “Lady Meltenbourne has what?”

  Clarissa glared at Daphne. “She deserves to know.”

  Daphne, clearly miserable, nodded in assent. “Very well.”

  Clarissa uttered, “She’s already asked the question of nearly everyone else in the room.”

  Despite the chill in the air, heat rose into Sophia’s cheeks, along with a dizzying pressure inside her head. The conversation between herself and Lady Meltenbourne had been shocking enough. With Clarissa’s revelation, Sophia was left nothing short of humiliated. She’d tried so desperately to keep rumors of Claxton’s indiscretions from her family so as not to complicate any possible future reconciliation, but now her secrets were spilling out on the ballroom floor for anyone’s ears to hear.

  “Trollop,” whispered Daphne. “It’s none of her concern where Claxton is. It is only your concern, Sophia. And our concern as well, of course, because we are your sisters. Someone should tell her so.” Though her sister had been blessed with the face of an angel, a distinctly devilish glint gleamed in her blue eyes. “Do you wish for me to be the one to say it? Please say yes, because I’m aching to—”

  “Erase that smug look from her face,” interjected Clarissa, fists clenched at her sides, looking very much the female pugilist.

  “You’ll do nothing of the sort,” Sophia answered vehemently. “You’ll conduct yourselves as ladies, not as ruffians off the street. This is my private affair. Mine and Claxton’s. Do you understand? Do not mention any of what has occurred to Mother, and especially not to our grandfather. I won’t have you ruining his birthday or Christmas.”

  “Understood,” they answered in unison. Her sisters’ dual gazes offered sympathy, and worse—pity.

  Though Sophia would readily offer the same to any woman in her circumstances, she had no wish to be the recipient of such unfortunate sentiments. The whole ugly incident further proved the insupportability of her marriage and her husband’s tendency to stray. Though Lady Meltenbourne’s presence stung, it made Sophia only more certain that Claxton would agree to her terms. Certainly he would prefer to have his freedom—and he would have it, just as soon as he gave her a child. Seventeen months ago when she spoke her vows, she’d been naïve. She’d had such big dreams of a life with Claxton and had given her heart completely, only to have it thrown back in her face when she needed him the most. Claxton would never be a husband in the loyal, devoted sense of the word. He would never love her completely, the way she needed to be loved.

  Admittedly, in the beginning, that aloofness—his very mysteriousness—had captivated her. The year of her debut, the duke had appeared in London out of nowhere, newly possessed of an ancient title. His rare appearances at balls were cause for delirium among the ranks of the hopeful young misses and their mammas.

  Then—oh, then—she’d craved his brooding silences, believing with a certainty that once they married, Claxton would give her his trust. He would give her his heart.

  For a time, she’d believed that he had. She closed her eyes against a dizzying rush of memories. His smile. His laughter. Skin. Mouths. Heat. Completion.

  It had been enough. At least she thought it had been.

  “Well?” said Daphne.

  “Well, what?”

  “Will Claxton make an appearance tonight?”

  “I don’t know,” whispered Sophia.

  Clarissa sighed. “Lord Tunsley told me he saw Claxton at
White’s this afternoon, with Lord Haden and Mr. Grisham.”

  Sophia nodded mutely. So it was confirmed. After seven months abroad, her husband had returned to London, and everyone seemed to know but her. The revelation left her numb and sadder than she expected. She ought to be angry—no!—furious at being treated with such disregard. Either that or she ought to do like so many other wives of the ton and forget the injustice of it all in the arms of a lover. She’d certainly had the opportunity.

  Just then her gaze met that of a tall gentleman who stood near the fireplace, staring at her intently over the heads of the three animatedly gesturing Aimsley sisters. Lord Havering, or “Fox” as he had been known in the informal environs of their country childhood, always teased that she ought to have waited for him—and more than once had implied that he still waited for her.

  With a tilt of his blond head, he mouthed: Are you well?

  Of course, Lady Meltenbourne’s indiscreet inquiries about Claxton would not have escaped Fox’s hearing. No doubt the gossipy Aimsley sisters were dissecting the particulars at this very moment. Sophia flushed in mortification, but at the same time was exceedingly grateful Fox cared for her feelings at all. It was more than she could say for her own husband.

  Yet she had no heart for adultery. To Fox she responded with a nod and a polite smile, and returned her attention to her sisters. While she held no illusions about the pleasure-seeking society in which she lived, she’d grown up in the household of happily married parents who loved each other deeply. Magnificently. Had she been wrong to believe she deserved nothing short of the same?

  Clarissa touched her arm and inquired softly, “Is it true, Sophia, what everyone is saying, that you and Claxton are officially estranged?”

  In that moment, the candlelight flickered. A rush of frigid air pushed through the room, as if the front doors of the house had been thrown open. The chill assaulted her bare skin, and the hairs on the back of her neck stood on end. All conversation in the ballroom grew hushed, but a silent, indefinable energy exploded exponentially. Both pairs of her sisters’ eyes fixed at the same point over her shoulders.

  “Oh, my,” whispered Daphne.

  Clarissa’s face lost its color. “Sophia—”

  She looked over her shoulder. In that moment, her gaze locked with the bold, blue-eyed stare of a darkly handsome stranger.

  Only, of course, he wasn’t a stranger, not in the truest sense of the world. But he might as well have been. It was Claxton.

  Her heart swelled with a thousand memories of him, only to subside, just as quickly, into frigid calm. Without hesitation, she responded as her good breeding required. She crossed the marble floor, aware that all eyes in the room were trained on her, and with a kiss welcomed her faithless husband home.

  THE DISH

  Where Authors Give You the Inside Scoop

  From the desk of Lily Dalton

  Dear Reader,

  Some people are heroic by nature. They act to help others without thinking. Sometimes at the expense of their own safety. Sometimes without ever considering the consequences. That’s just who they are. Especially when it’s a friend in need.

  We associate these traits with soldiers who risk their lives on a dangerous battlefield to save a fallen comrade. Not because it’s their job, but because it’s their brother. Or a parent who runs into a busy street to save a child who’s wandered into the path of an oncoming car. Or an ocean life activist who places himself in a tiny boat between a whale and the harpoons of a whaling ship.

  Is it so hard to believe that Daphne Bevington, a London debutante and the earl of Wolverton’s granddaughter, could be such a hero? When her dearest friend, Kate, needs her help, she does what’s necessary to save her. In her mind, no other choice will do. After all, she knows without a doubt that Kate would do the same for her if she needed help. It doesn’t matter one fig to her that their circumstances are disparate, that Kate is her lady’s maid.

  But Daphne finds herself in over her head. In a moment, everything falls apart, throwing not only her reputation and her future into doubt, but her life into danger. Yet in that moment when all seems hopelessly lost… another hero comes out of nowhere and saves her. A mysterious stranger who acts without thinking, at the expense of his own safety, without considering the consequences. A hero on a quest of his own. A man she will never see again…

  Only, of course… she does. And he’s not at all the hero she remembers him to be.

  Or is he? I hope you will enjoy reading NEVER ENTICE AN EARL and finding out.

  Best wishes, and happy reading!

  LilyDalton.com

  Twitter @LilyDalton

  Facebook.com/LilyDaltonAuthor

  From the desk of Shelley Coriell

  Dear Reader,

  Story ideas come from everywhere. Snippets of conversation. Dreams. The hunky guy at the office supply store with eyes the color of faded denim. THE BROKEN, the first book in my new romantic suspense series, The Apostles, was born and bred as I sat at the bedside of my dying father.

  In 2007 my dad, who lived on a mountain in northern Nevada, checked himself into his small town’s hospital after having what appeared to be a stroke. “A mild one,” he assured the family. “Nothing to get worked up about.” That afternoon, this independent, strong-willed man (aka stubborn and borderline cantankerous) checked himself out of the hospital. The next day he hopped on his quad and accidentally drove off the side of his beloved mountain. The ATV landed on him, crushing his chest, breaking ribs, and collapsing a lung.

  The hospital staff told us they could do nothing for him, that he would die. Refusing to accept the prognosis, we had him Life-Flighted to Salt Lake City. After a touch-and-go forty-eight hours, he pulled through, and that’s when we learned the full extent of his injuries.

  He’d had multiple strokes. The not-so-mild kind. The kind that meant he, at age sixty-three, would be forever dependent on others. His spirit was broken.

  For the next week, the family gathered at the hospital. My sister, the oldest and the family nurturer, massaged his feet and swabbed his mouth. My brother, Mr. Finance Guy, talked with insurance types and made arrangements for post-release therapy. The quiet, bookish middle child, I had little to offer but prayers. I’d never felt so helpless.

  As my dad’s health improved, his spirits worsened. He was mad at his body, mad at the world. After a particularly difficult morning, he told us he wished he’d died on that mountain. A horrible, heavy silence followed. Which is when I decided to use the one thing I did have.

  I dragged the chair in his hospital room—you know the kind, the heavy, wooden contraption that folds out into a bed—to his bedside and took out the notebook I carry everywhere.

  “You know, Dad,” I said. “I’ve been tinkering with this story idea. Can I bounce some stuff off you?”

  Silence.

  “I have this heroine. A news broadcaster who gets stabbed by a serial killer. She’s scarred, physically and emotionally.”

  More silence.

  “And I have a Good Guy. Don’t know much about him, but he also has a past that left him scarred. He carries a gun. Maybe an FBI badge.” That’s it. Two hazy characters hanging out in the back of my brain.

  Dad turned toward the window.

  “The scarred journalist ends up working as an aide to an old man who lives on a mountain,” I continued on the fly. “Oh-oh! The old guy is blind and can’t see her scars. His name is… Smokey Joe, and like everyone else in this story, he’s a little broken.”

  Dad glared. I saw it. He wanted me to see it.

  “And, you know what, Dad? Smokey Joe can be a real pain in the ass.”

  My father’s lips twitched. He tried not to smile, but I saw that, too.

  I opened my notebook. “So tell me about Smokey Joe. Tell me about his mountain. Tell me about his story.”

  For the next two hours, Dad and I talked about an old man on a mountain and brainstormed the book that eventually became T
HE BROKEN, the story of Kate Johnson, an on-the-run broadcast journalist whose broken past holds the secret to catching a serial killer, and Hayden Reed, the tenacious FBI profiler who sees past her scars and vows to find a way into her head, but to his surprise, heads straight for her heart.

  “Hey, Sissy,” Dad said as I tucked away my notebook after what became the first of many Apostle brainstorming sessions. “Smokey Joe knows how to use C-4. We need to have a scene where he blows something up.”

  And “we” did.

  So with a boom from old Smokey Joe, I’m thrilled to introduce you to Kate Johnson, Hayden Reed, and the Apostles, an elite group of FBI agents who aren’t afraid to work outside the box and, at times, outside the law. FBI legend Parker Lord on his team: “Apostles? There’s nothing holy about us. We’re a little maverick and a lot broken, but in the end we get justice right.”

  Joy & Peace!

  From the desk of Hope Ramsay

  Dear Reader,

  Jane Eyre may have been the first romance novel I ever read. I know it made an enormous impression on me when I was in seventh grade and it undoubtedly turned me into an avid reader. I simply got lost in the love story between Jane Eyre and Edward Fairfax Rochester.

  In other words, I fell in love with Rochester when I was thirteen, and I’ve never gotten over it. I re-read Jane Eyre every year or so, and I have every screen adaptation ever made of the book. (The BBC version is the best by far, even if they took liberties with the story.)

  So it was only a matter of time before I tried to write a hero like Rochester. You know the kind: brooding, passionate, tortured… (sigh). Enter Gabriel Raintree, the hero of INN AT LAST CHANCE. He’s got all the classic traits of the gothic hero.

  His heroine is Jennifer Carpenter, a plucky and self-reliant former schoolteacher turned innkeeper who is exactly the kind of no-nonsense woman Gabe needs. (Does this sound vaguely familiar?)

  In all fairness, I should point out that I substituted the swamps of South Carolina for the moors of England and a bed and breakfast for Thornfield Hall. I also have an inordinate number of busybodies and matchmakers popping in and out for comic relief. But it is fair to say that I borrowed a few things from Charlotte Brontë, and I had such fun doing it.