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.**
But she was too sensible to want anything from him, let alone the distant promise of marriage, and he was too unworthy to warrant the chance. Minerva had too much experience of unworthy men to waste another minute on one, and he hated both her wastrel father and the unreliable Romeo even more as a result. If it weren’t for them, he might have stood a chance! But thanks to them, she would leave and he would never see her again. For her, goodbye would mean goodbye. A clean cut. A clean slate. A fresh start. Not at all what he wanted. Too final. Too painful.
Too tragic.
Beneath his ribs, his heart still hurt. If this was what affection did, he shuddered to think what actual love would do to his body.
“And you shouldn’t have taken my sister off alone! I knew you were a despoiler! I warned Minerva you couldn’t be trusted! But I let my guard down and at the first opportunity, you stole her away!” Diana’s pointed finger jabbed him in the chest much too close to his battered heart. “If she’s been ruined, you’ll have to answer to me!”
“I have not been ruined, Diana…”
“Or so you think! There is more than one way to ruin a woman, Minerva, and this repugnant rake probably knows all of them! Did the blaggard promise you marriage in return for favors? I suppose he took you to some filthy inn somewhere so he could have his wicked way with you away from prying eyes!”
Hugh grabbed the jabbing finger before it did more damage to the organ Minerva had already bludgeoned. “I did not ruin your sister!” He’d wanted to. Lord knows he had wanted to. Ruin her and make her his, then never let her go. “And I resent the implication.”
“Resent it, do you?” The most confrontational Merriwell placed one hand on her hip and gestured to Minerva with the other. “Look at the state of her! Do you deny you never laid so much as a finger on her? A man like you? London’s very own Don Juan!”
Hugh did not need another lecture on the sort of man he was. “We have better things to concern ourselves with than your scurrilous accusations, Diana. Can we focus on the problem in hand?”
“Là ci darem la mano … Là mi dirai di sì…” Lucretia’s garbled warbling came from under her petticoat tent at a volume and pitch guaranteed to offend the ears, the choice of song farcically fitting in the wake of Diana’s suspicions—the rake’s infamous seduction scene from Don Giovanni. The one where he tries to lure a good girl away from her morals and her fiancé. Like his mother, Hugh was coming to loathe Mozart.
“I knew it! I knew you couldn’t be trusted!”
“Vedi, non è lontano…”
“Stop singing, Lucretia!” He yanked the petticoats from the woman’s face. “You need to be quiet!”
“Did I ever tell you I played Zerlina at Drury Lane? It was a triumph…” He yanked the petticoats back.
Bloody Giles!
The sister’s finger jabbed again. “What are you going to do to rectify your grievous wrongs, Lord Fareham?”
“Nothing, Diana!” The woman he desperately wanted to be able to ruin finally found her voice above the cacophony. “Because nothing happened.” Her eyes flicked to his, and he couldn’t read them. “I wasn’t ruined. Hugh hasn’t despoiled or seduced me. We did some sightseeing! I saw the sea. That is hardly a crime.”
“The housekeeper said Payne is in his quarters.” Vee burst back through the door, looking distraught. “Apparently he has warned everyone on threat of death he is not to be disturbed, even in an emergency.”
“What the blazes!” Hugh marched to the door himself, desperately needing to strangle someone, and that someone might as well be his insubordinate butler. “We shall see about that!” Clearly the whole world had gone mad today. Nothing had felt right since he’d waltzed with Minerva. He turned to her, and in fairness had to admit that thanks to his reckless curricle driving, she did look like she had been thoroughly ravished. “I’ll be back.”
She nodded, apologetic when she had nothing whatsoever to apologize for, aside from rejecting him, which added more fuel to the flames—when he wanted her to be as furious at fate as he was. Wanted her to fight for him—for them. To at least give it a chance.
“We will hold the fort until you do.” What a typically selfless and utterly annoying Minerva thing to say.
“Of course you will.” Better that than take a stand for something that could be wonderful if …
Bloody what-ifs!
Hugh slammed the door and took the servants’ stairs two at a time up to the third floor and hammered his fist on the door to his butler’s quarters. “Open the blasted door, Payne, or I’ll knock it down!”
He heard a key turn in a lock, and the door opened just enough for his butler to squeeze through before he pulled it shut behind him. “Thank goodness you are home, my lord…”
“Don’t ‘thank goodness’ me, you layabout! What the devil do you mean abandoning the ladies to deal with that drunken actress alone? Is this how you behave in my absence? You promised to fetch coffee and then came up here to rest on your laurels!”
“Something unexpected and urgent came up, my lord.”
“Something unexpected! And urgent to boot? Here—in your comfortable private quarters well away from the crisis below?” Hugh folded his arms and blinked.
“We have a visitor. Or rather, you have a visitor. A most insistent one. Thank goodness he arrived after everyone had retired and I was able to intercept him. For the sake of discretion, I brought him up here, where I have been guarding him since. Patiently awaiting your arrival.” Payne pushed open the door to reveal an older man lounging in a chair by the fireplace. Arrogant emerald eyes locked with his, and Hugh knew exactly who he was before his butler introduced him.
“Mr. Alfred Merriwell, my lord. Miss Minerva’s father.”
His first reaction was to pummel the wastrel to a bloody pulp. Instead, he set his jaw and walked calmly into the room, sensing trouble in spades. “Mr. Merriwell … an unpleasant surprise. To what do I owe the pleasure?”
“I came to visit my daughters.” The man crossed one leg over the other and smiled. “Is this a bad time?”
“I suspect you know perfectly well it’s a very bad time, else you wouldn’t be here. Let’s not beat around the bush, sir.”
“I was in church yesterday and witnessed the strangest thing. My daughter pretending to be someone else as the banns were read announcing her impending marriage. To you … an earl … a renowned rogue…” Hugh’s eyes narrowed in warning. He’d take that criticism from Minerva, he’d suffer it from her sister, but not this snake.
Alfred Merriwell shrugged, unapologetic. “Rather than object when the opportunity was given, I did the decent thing and thought I’d come speak to you. Man to man.”
“You were in the church?”
“I rented a room at the inn. What a friendly place the village is. Everyone was very keen to talk about you and my Minerva. Your long engagement on account of her battle with consumption. The tragic death of her father in the Cairngorms, of all places. She also seems to have found a new mother now, too…”
“What do you want?”