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He couldn’t, mustn’t botch this.
This was the moment …
She saw him enter and close the door and sat perfectly still, then bopped up and moved from the winged chair to the dark leather sofa and sat watching him.
He was everything she had been aching for, this vision of a giant, this man in superfine dark blue coming towards her. He was her world, and she put out her hands in welcome.
He clasped them, and she said, “So, you are here at last.”
“Happy birthday, brat,” he answered, taking her hands and sitting beside her without letting either hand go.
She giggled and kissed his bare knuckles as he held her hands. “I knew you would come.”
“Did you? Do you know why I am here?”
“Tell me,” she answered.
“Because I cannot contemplate a life without you in it. Because my bachelor days were done the moment you appeared, because I love you with all my heart …”
He took her into a crushing embrace, and his mouth covered hers as his tongue joined and sealed the truth of his words.
When he pulled away he said on a hushed note, “I don’t want to think what my life would have been without you in it.”
“Then don’t,” she said simply.
“I have never felt this way before. Do you understand, my love? Bloody hell … am I doing this right?”
“I love you, Glen Ashton, Duke of Somerset,” she whispered.
He dropped to one knee and produced an exquisite ring of diamonds. “Will you be my bride?”
She pulled him up and said, “Took you long enough!”
He laughed and placed the ring on her finger, and she pressed herself into his body. “I don’t want a long engagement. Are we clear?” He laughed and kissed her long.
When he let her up for air, she told him in a low and sensual voice, “No … that would never do.”
~ * ~
In the mood for another Risqué Regency?
Try a taste of
Courting Kit (unedited)
~ One ~
THE EARL OF HALLOWAY stood, his hands clasped at his broad back, as he stared out the large panoramic window of his grandmother’s drawing room.
Its central location afforded a lovely view of the Grange’s extensive gardens. Halloway Grange was only one of four Halloway establishments, but it was the only estate that did not belong to the present, young earl.
This was because his late grandfather had purchased the estate and deeded it to his bride as a wedding gift all those years ago. It reposed in elegant state only forty minutes out of London, and it was where the dowager had come to stay permanently when her beloved husband died.
The earl smiled ruefully to himself, as it was most certainly, every square foot, all hers and yet also the earl’s very special, very favorite haven.
He adored his grandmother, and her personality was entrenched in the Grange. He brushed this sentiment aside, however, as it had no place at that moment in his active, frenzied mind. He was frustrated and irritated with his grandmother and not quite certain just what he could do about it all.
A good ten months had passed since Shawna and Roland had been married. He had thought that, by now, his grandmother would be at ease with it and gotten over what she could not change. However, something untoward must have ruffled her feathers. She was tighter than ever about his monthly spending and walked about as though she was on the warpath about something.
