A Secret Disgrace

She could feel her heart thudding. This close to him she was so conscious of everything about him—especially all those things she didn’t want to be conscious of: his maleness and her own vulnerability to it, the scent of his skin, the ache deep down in her own body caused by his proximity.

She tried to push past him but he stopped her, taking hold of her, and then she was in his arms and he was kissing her—fiercely, determinedly, almost as though he was laying claim to her. And she was kissing him back. Such a hunger possessed her, such a need, such an aching, tearing, irresistible yearning that she couldn’t withstand its call. She wanted to hold him, to touch him, to own him as she had done all those years ago. A need it was impossible for her to control had come out of nowhere to crush all the opposition in its way.

Everything she’d believed she had learned was forgotten as the desire only he could arouse within her took control …

PENNY JORDAN is one of Harlequin Mills & Boon’s most popular authors. Sadly Penny died from cancer on 31st December 2011, aged 65. She leaves an outstanding legacy, having sold over 100 million books around the world. She wrote a total of 187 novels for Harlequin Mills & Boon, including the phenomenally successful A PERFECT FAMILY, TO LOVE, HONOUR AND BETRAY, THE PERFECT SINNER and POWER PLAY, which hit the Sunday Times and New York Times bestseller lists. Loved for her distinctive voice, her success was in part because she continually broke boundaries and evolved her writing to keep up with readers’ changing tastes. Publishers Weekly said about Jordan: ‘Women everywhere will find pieces of themselves in Jordan’s characters’, and this perhaps explains her enduring appeal.

Although Penny was born in Preston, Lancashire, and spent her childhood there, she moved to Cheshire as a teenager and continued to live there for the rest of her life. Following the death of her husband she moved to the small traditional Cheshire market town on which she based her much-loved Crighton books.

Penny was a member and supporter of the Romantic Novelists’ Association and the Romance Writers of America—two organisations dedicated to providing support for both published and yet-to-be published authors. Her significant contribution to women’s fiction was recognised in 2011, when the Romantic Novelists’ Association presented Penny with a Lifetime Achievement Award.

In May 2012 Penny launched the new continuity The Santina Crown with THE PRICE OF ROYAL DUTY. A SECRET DISGRACE is Penny’s final original novel.

Recent titles by the same author:

THE PRICE OF ROYAL DUTY

THE POWER OF VASILII (Russian Rivals) THE MOST COVETED PRIZE (Russian Rivals)

Did you know these are also available as eBooks? Visit www.millsandboon.co.uk

www.millsandboon.co.uk

‘YOU say it was your grandparents’ wish that their ashes be buried here, in the graveyard of the church of Santa Maria?’

The dispassionate male voice gave away as little as the shadowed face. Its bone structure was delineated with strokes of sunlight that might have come from Leonardo’s masterly hand, revealing as they did the exact nature of the man’s cultural inheritance. Those high cheekbones, that slashing line of taut jaw, the hint of olive-toned flesh, the proud aquiline shape of his nose—all of them spoke of the mixing of genes from the invaders who had seen Sicily and sought to possess it. His ancestors had never allowed anything to stand in the way of what they wanted. And now his attention was focused on her.

Instinctively she wanted to distance herself from him, to conceal herself from him, she recognized, and she couldn’t stop herself from stepping back from him, her ankle threatening to give way as the back of her pretty wedged shoe came up against the unseen edge of the gravestone behind her.

‘Take care.’

He moved so fast that she froze, like a rabbit pinned down by the swift, deathly descent of the falcon from which his family took its name. Long, lean tanned fingers closed round her wrist as he jerked her forward, the mint-scented warmth of his breath burning against her face as he leaned nearer to deliver an admonishment.

It was impossible for her to move. Impossible, too, for her to speak or even think. All she could do was feel—suffer beneath the lava-hot flow of emotions that had erupted inside her to spill into every sensitive nerve-ending she possessed. This was indeed torture. Torture … or torment? Her body convulsed on a violent surge of self-contempt. Torture. There was no torment in this man’s hold on her, no temptation. Nothing but self-loathing and … and indifference.

But her whispered, ‘Let go of me,’ sounded far more like the broken cry of a helpless victim than the cool, calm command of a modern and independent woman.

She smelled of English roses and lavender; she looked like an archetypical Englishwoman. She had even sounded like one until he had touched her, and she had shown him the fierce Sicilian passion and intensity that was her true heritage.