Another little sob filtered past her lips and she buried it in her fingers. “Please, Lucas,” she entreated.
His face spasmed and he took a step back, retreating. “I see.”
She creased her brow. What did he see?
“This is about me,” he said flatly, his gaze moving to a point beyond her shoulder. “I’ve been a recluse since my return, living as an angry, snarling shadow inside my parents’ cold manor. What use could you have for a man such as that?”
How could he see himself in that light? Eve moved in a whir of skirts and captured his face between her hands. “You are so much more than that, Lucas. You are a man of strength who survived when most others would have been destroyed. You see a woman and not a servant. And I love you.” And he is all I want. She needed him. Wanted him in her life forever.
Tears filled her eyes and a single drop streaked a path down her cheek. Lucas captured it with the pad of his thumb. “Then marry me,” he pressed, relentless.
Eve closed her eyes. He offered her everything and in taking that gift he held out, she’d be the selfish creature his brother accused her of being. A woman who lived for her heart and her desires. She’d lived these past years believing she was unworthy of love and happiness. Instead, she’d taken on the guilt of her father’s crimes and the sins of her ancestors before. Only to be set free, by Lucas. He’d shown her that she was more than her name and she wanted a life with him—as his wife. It didn’t matter what anyone thought of her. It was what she believed of herself that mattered. Lucas had shown her that. She opened her eyes and found his gaze trained on her face. “Yes,” she said with a tremulous smile.
He blinked slowly. “Yes,” he repeated.
Her lips twitched in the first real joy she’d known in too many years to remember. “Unless you’ve changed your mind—”
Lucas grinned and covered her mouth with his, silencing her words. And he kissed her in a meeting that proved there was nothing more powerful to shatter an age-old curse than love.
The End
More from Christi Caldwell
Book 11 in "The Heart of a Duke" series
He's spent years scandalizing society.
Now, this rake must change his ways.
Society's most infamous scoundrel, Daniel Winterbourne, the Earl of Montfort, has been promised a small fortune if he can relinquish his wayward, carousing lifestyle. And behaving means he must also help find a respectable companion for his youngest sister--someone who will guide her and whom she can emulate. However, Daniel knows no such woman. But when he encounters a childhood friend, Daniel believes she may just be the answer to all of his problems.
Having been secretly humiliated by an unscrupulous blackguard years earlier, Miss Daphne Smith dreams of finding work at Ladies of Hope, an institution that provides an education for disabled women. With her sordid past and a disfigured leg, few opportunities arise for a woman such as she. Knowing Daniel's history, she wishes to avoid him, but working for his sister is exactly the stepping stone she needs.
Their attraction intensifies as Daniel and Daphne grow closer, preparing his sister for the London Season. But Daniel must resist his desire for a woman tarnished by scandal while Daphne is reminded of the boy she once knew. Can society's most notorious rake redeem his reputation and become the man Daphne deserves?
SLEEPLESS IN A SCANDAL
by Eva Devon
Bard Productions
This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters, and incidents are either the work of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, organizations, events, or locales are entirely coincidental.
Sleepless in a Scandal
Copyright © 2016 by Máire Creegan
All rights reserved under the International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any electronic or mechanical means—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without written permission.
Noelle , Patricia, and Lindsey
You always make my job so much easier. Thank you!
And for my beautiful sons and husband
who, as always, have taught me the true meaning of love.
Chapter 1
Lady Felicity Drake, eldest daughter of the Earl of Penworth, rapped her knuckles along the carved armchair, calling for silence. A veritable cacophony filled the room as five, yes five, young women’s voices reached deafening proportions. The general din of her sisters in full argument volleying off the ceiling and windows was enough to give anyone else pause, but Felicity was quite accustomed to the sound.
She rapped her knuckles again, “Quiet, please!”
Even with her urging, it took several moments for them to cease and as everyone dimmed in their various contributions, her youngest sister, Augusta, grumbled, “It’s not even our fault we’re in a scandal,” before folding her arms and grudgingly listening.
Felicity didn’t bother replying to Gus, since her younger sister had pointed out the obvious. “I call this first meeting of the Scandalous Daughters Society to order.”
The sisters Drake had all been given a good deal of trouble in the past year and such trouble had taken its toll. Truth be told, several months had passed before they had all finally come to realize that their situation needed to be taken in hand.
So, now in their country seat where they had been virtually banished, they were discussing how best to find a footing back into the society which had so ardently (and dare be said, gleefully) tossed them aside.
Well, what could they expect when one’s father had to flee the country for buggery?
Yes. Buggery.
Felicity was not afraid of the word but society whispered it as though it were the most appalling of sins.
Their father’s wife, not their mother, had become appalled by the poet’s ongoing scandalous behavior and had brought forth charges against her own husband for his shocking bedroom proclivities with her person.
Since buggery was a crime and a hanging offense, the earl had had no choice but to run.
And expose the family to gossip of the very worst sort.
Gossip which made the marriage mart a near impossibility.
And loathe them or love them, marriage marts were essential for a young woman to find any sort of meaningful place in the world.
Now, the girls were fairly wealthy due to the moneys their father’s new (and shocked) wife had brought to the marriage (their father had had sizable debts, necessitating a lucrative match), but they were sans character. And sans character, they were in serious societal trouble. For the English were very concerned about bloodlines. Much like their horses and their hounds, wives needed to breed often and breed well.
The Penworth bloodline seemed to run hot. Very hot, indeed. Some might say too hot for the cold-blooded English.
Her new mother, the Countess Lady Anne Penworth, blamed their Italian grandmother.
In Felicity’s opinion the English had a dratted habit of blaming the Italians for anything that went amiss. Or the French.
And if truth be known, they also had a French great-grandmother.
The Drake girls were awash in passionate bloodlines.
She drew in a slow breath, being the calmest of the lot, and surveyed Augusta, Penelope, Marianne, and Georgiana. They were all pleasing; two with dark hair, two with flaming red tresses and they all had slightly dusky complexions. . . A gift from their Italian grandmother. But they were all, well, odd.