The Bride's Seduction
A Marriage of Convenience?Miss Marina Winslow assumed she would never marry. Then the Earl of Mortenhoe proposed a practical, passionless match. Marina knew it was madness to accept when she was in love with him. But perhaps she could risk her heart…
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‘My dear, that is quite the most provocative nightgown I believe I have ever seen.’
His voice was a growl dipped in honey, and his weight on the bed next to her angled the mattress so that her hip touched his flank. His skin was hot.
‘You forgot the candles.’ The room seemed bright as day.
‘Oh, no, I haven’t.’ Justin’s fingers were tangling with the ribbons at her neckline, not with any apparent urgency, but with the leisurely pleasure of someone trailing wool for a kitten. ‘I love looking at you, Mari. I love it when you blush. I love it when you drop your lashes like that to try to hide the expression in your eyes.’
She gasped again as his fingers brushed the line of her collarbone. Focus on how it feels. Do not think... How hard that was to do. Her mind ran off along its own unhappy path. He loves all those things about me, but he does not love me. He does not trust me. He will not share his life or his worries or his secrets with me. His secrets.
LOUISE ALLEN has been immersing herself in history, real and fictional, for as long as she can remember, and finds landscapes and places evoke powerful images of the past. Louise lives in Bedfordshire and works as a property manager, but spends as much time as possible with her husband at the cottage they are renovating on the north Norfolk coast, or travelling abroad. Venice, Burgundy and the Greek islands are favourite atmospheric destinations.
Recent novels by the same author:
ONE NIGHT WITH A RAKE
THE EARL’S INTENDED WIFE
THE SOCIETY CATCH
A MODEL DEBUTANTE
THE MARRIAGE DEBT MOONLIGHT AND MISTLETOE (in Christmas Brides)
THE VISCOUNT’S BETROTHAL
Contents
June 6 1817
‘With this ring I thee wed, with my body I thee worship...’
Marina was thankful for the protection of her veil as the blood surged hot in her cheeks. What am I doing? How did I let it come to this? If only I had more resolution. She resisted the temptation to look up at the tall figure standing next to her and made herself concentrate as the ceremony took its course. Finally,
‘I now pronounce you man and wife.’
A soft murmur went round St George’s. Relief? Marina wondered, or surprise that the old maid of the Winslow family had found herself such an eligible husband? Or perhaps it was simply a sentimental sigh. Her distraction was cut short by Justin raising the edge of her veil and setting it back from her face. She looked up at him and saw the look in his eyes that had convinced her to accept his proposal: kindness and honesty that had made her trust him, had made her feel safe and able to set aside all her doubts and scruples. Suddenly her nervousness seemed foolish.
Then, as he bent to touch his lips to hers, she saw a spark in his eyes, which turned their hazel to green. Not so safe, a panicky little voice whispered as their lips met. She returned the pressure until another murmur, this time an unmistakably sentimental one, brought her to herself. She was standing almost on tiptoe, one hand raised to rest against her new husband’s chest, and there was the strange fluttering through her veins that she was coming to expect whenever he touched her. Whatever she did, she must not betray her true feelings, not to this man she had just married.
Blushing in real earnest now, and without her veil to protect her, Marina let Justin place her hand on his arm as they turned. Slowly they began to walk back down the aisle and she made herself behave as her position now required. Nodding and smiling from side to side, the new Countess of Mortenhoe was conscious of genuine smiles, of her mother unashamedly weeping into her lace handkerchief, of some speculative looks and one or two less friendly glances.
Well may they stare and wonder, she thought as they emerged on to the steps of St George’s overlooking Hanover Square. They probably find it as hard to believe as I do that Justin Ransome should marry Charlie Winslow’s sister, a woman who has been on the shelf these four years past.
And what possessed me to agree? she wondered as she had done almost every waking hour since Justin’s proposal, the panic rising in her breast again. Whatever made me think I could make a success of a marriage to a man I have known only eleven weeks and who makes no pretence of the fact he does not love me?
As the animated, chattering guests thronged out of the church into the bright sunshine, she turned, catching their mood all of a sudden. She threw her bouquet with a laugh into the mass of young ladies who reached and jostled for it. Beside her Justin laughed too, amused by the sight of ladylike behaviour abandoned for a few moments, and she glanced up at him again.
