Never Fall for Your Fiancee
- Автор: Heath Virginia
- Год: 2021
- Язык: английский
- Год: St. Martin's Publishing Group
- Жанр: Исторические любовные романы
Электронная книга - «Never Fall for Your Fiancee». Краткое содержание книги:
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Virginia Heath's fun characters and situations will have you laughing out loud! Don't miss this wonderful read! - Sabrina Jeffries, *New York Times* bestselling author**
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The first in a new historical rom-com series, a handsome earl hires a fake fiancée to keep his matchmaking mother at bay, but hilarity ensues when love threatens to complicate everything.**
“If the roads are clear, less than an hour.”
Fool!
He was paying her. Paying her to keep him from the clutches of matrimony. There was a glaring clue if ever there was one as to the man’s intentions. What had she been thinking? Had she thought she was the one to change him? Her? A downtrodden woodblock engraver from Clerkenwell, when all of society’s finest beauties hadn’t tempted him to change his ways before?
Of course not!
The sorry fact was, she hadn’t thought beyond the romance of it all and had allowed herself to be swept away. Right from that first day, she should have told him where he could shove his money!
“I wonder how they all coped without us?” Her tone was light and conversational. She wouldn’t allow him to see how much he had hurt her. If he regretted the kiss, she wouldn’t deign to care about it. Let him think it didn’t matter.
“I suppose we are about to find out.” He came around the side of the curricle to help her in, and she thanked her tall ancestors for providing her with long limbs, so she was able to climb up before he could assist, and wrapped the thick blanket about her suddenly chilled body like a shield.
Redundant, Hugh climbed in beside her and began to steer the curricle around, the tension stretched between them like a barricade across the narrow bench seat. Neither said a thing. Minerva racked her brains for something, anything, light and inconsequential to convince him he didn’t matter to her in the slightest, and when nothing came, she turned slightly away, watching the scenery rather than Hugh, grateful his expensive, sporty curricle was fast as the miles sped by.
They had been whizzing along for a good twenty minutes when he suddenly yanked on the ribbons and brought the little gig to a screaming stop. “We need to talk.”
“We really don’t.”
“I am so incredibly sorry about that kiss. And I’m sorry about earlier … on the stairs. And that night outside your bedchamber door.” Beside her she felt him exhale slowly. Saw the tension in his fisted hand still gripping the reins. “To be perfectly frank, Minerva, I’m having the devil of a job not kissing you now despite knowing it cannot go anywhere.”
Cannot go anywhere.
A very polite way of reminding her that engravers from Clerkenwell had no place forming fanciful attachments to earls.
“But I want to clear the air. Bring the Great Unsaid out into the open and find a way for the two of us to come to terms with the issue. We can’t keep ignoring what is blatantly there between us.”
“Between us? I see you are conveniently relieving yourself of all the blame for what just happened. It was you who kissed me. Twice. I do not recall asking you to on either occasion and am quite content never to do it again. Fear not, I have no designs on you, Lord Fareham. There is nothing between us. It was just a kiss. Not my first and doubtless not my last.”
“It was more than just a kiss, damn it! It meant something. To both of us.” He reached across the seat and took her hand in his while she digested his words. “Am I wrong? Or is it only me who is afflicted with odd, futile romantic feelings which refuse to go away?”
“‘Romantic’ or ‘romantic’?” Her silly heart needed to know despite the fact that he called it futile.
“Both.” All the color seemed to drain from his face, which took away most of the satisfaction of hearing him admit she mattered. “In the beginning I tried to convince myself it was purely a carnal attraction, but this goes beyond lust, Minerva. Is it just me who feels it?”
She made him wait several seconds before she sighed and flicked her gaze briefly his way. “No.… It’s not just you.” At least he was in turmoil, too. Somehow that made her feel less foolish for pouring her heart and soul into a futile kiss. “Shall we blame the forced proximity? The odd circumstances? The fact we are pretending to be an engaged couple to all and sundry? The beautiful atmospheric abbey, the deserted beach…?”
“You could blame any and all of those things.… However, for me, I shall call it what it is. Attraction … passion … undeniable affection. Something which could be much more if we both took a chance on it.”
Her silly heart soared again, buoyed with forlorn hope. “You … have an affection for … me?”
“Well, it should hardly come as a surprise. You are inordinately nice.”
He smiled without humor and stared at their interlocked fingers. “But I have too much affection for you to indulge my feelings with no consideration of the potential consequences. The Standish male makes for an exceptionally bad husband and I was resigned to never be one. I will not make promises I am unlikely to keep, Minerva, as much as I want to. Not to you. I care for you and respect you too much to pretend to be anything other than what I am. Another untrustworthy man, who will probably ultimately disappoint you in the long run—just like your father and that good-for-nothing Romeo who deserted you.”
“What are you saying?”
“That I am not in a position to offer marriage. Just myself for the time being…”
And there it was.
The offer doubtless many an unsuitable woman received from an aristocratic man—the temporary, insecure, and unbinding commitment of becoming his mistress. She should have expected it, just as she always expected to be disappointed by a man, but it hurt nonetheless—because the disappointment came from him. Her knight. When clearly her knight, like every fairy tale, had been entirely a flight of fiction.
“And I dare not ask you to take a chance to wait and see if I might change as our relationship develops…” He paused and stared at her intently as if he expected her to say something, agree to his insulting offer.
“No.” She forced the word out as she removed her hand from the cocoon of his. She wanted a better life. One independent from the financial and social shackles that bound her. Becoming a rich man’s mistress, as well as belittling all she was and all that existed between them, was as transient and unreliable as her piecemeal woodcutting. In fact, it was worse. With woodcutting there was always hope amongst all the uncertainty. As a mistress, there was no hope, just the certainty that eventual abandonment was inevitable. “Please do not ask me that again.”
He stared down at his lap. “Of course … Sorry I brought it up.… It is doubtless for the best.… I suppose I must accept we are two people who, if I had not been born who I am”—another tactful reminder of the chasm between their stations—“might have been perfect for one another but are doomed to be nothing more than a short interlude in one another’s lives.… More’s the pity.”
“I think I preferred my excuses.” She wanted to leave. Or shout and scream and slap him for wounding her. “They sounded less depressing.” Or callous. She turned away and stared back at the distant sea on the horizon. Even that had lost its magic. “We should go.”
“But we are still friends, aren’t we?” He sounded sad and she didn’t care. “I never meant to hurt you.”
“You haven’t hurt me.” Just cut me to the quick. “I am far too sensible to have ever expected promises from you or be deluded enough to want them.” And she had too much respect for herself to agree to his debasing proposition. “Only a fool falls for a scoundrel, after all, and only an idiot would tie herself to him.”
She thought he was different. Because with him, she was different. Happier, lighter, even younger. But not anymore. He had spoiled something she thought was lovely and turned it vile. Diminished her and all that she was, when she had fought so hard to be something.