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.**
Had she gone quite mad? “I don’t love Sarah!”
“But you did!” She spat the words in his face. “For once in your life, tell the truth, Hugh!”
Several pairs of eyes were now watching them intently, so he took her elbow and steered her toward the alcove. The awful truth might well be common knowledge here but nobody ever said it aloud. Especially him.
“Sarah is my sister, Minerva!”
Her mouth fell open. Then she craned her head to look at his sibling, no doubt taking in the unmistakable similarities. The blond hair. The height. The blue eyes. The same features. All his father’s. Peas in a pod. “I never knew you had a sister!”
“Neither did I until I turned seventeen! The woman over there with her was my father’s mistress.” And once again, although for the life of him he would never understand it, his mother was chatting to the woman as if she hadn’t stolen her husband and destroyed her marriage. “Probably one of many, I suspect—but he moved them both into our house when he found out he was dying…”
He could still remember his mother sitting him down and explaining it to him. That his father’s other family had a right to be there, too, because they loved him just as much as he did. So calmly, as if the walls of Jericho weren’t crumbling around his ears and everything he had believed about the man he had worshiped hadn’t all been a flimsy lie.
Days later, Hugh had had to stand with those unwelcome strangers around his father’s bedside as he took his final breath, holding the hand of the woman who wasn’t his wife while his actual wife looked on like a spectator. His father had died without ever explaining how that horrific and, for Hugh alone apparently, sudden new reality had come to pass.
“I think this gives me the right to behave a little peculiarly on the odd and unavoidable occasions when I collide with them.”
Behind them, people clapped as the waltz came to an end.
“She didn’t break your heart?” That was the single detail she cared about when he had just laid his blackened soul bare?
“No.” Hugh screwed up his face in disgust. “I cannot believe you even thought such a thing.”
“Perhaps if you had been open from the start, I wouldn’t have jumped to conclusions.”
“I have always been open with you.”
“You allow me to know what you think only if it suits you to tell me.”
“That is unfair.”
“Is it? You are the master of deflection. Constantly making jokes and hiding behind a mask of charm or avoiding real honesty because it…” She threw up her hands. “Really, I do not know what causes you to behave like that—but I suspect you avoid genuine honesty at all costs because it frightens you.”
“I have always been honest with you, Minerva.”
No, he hadn’t.
There had been pockets of brutal honesty spread amongst a great deal of deflection. He was uncomfortable being seen as anything other than what he was—a huge disappointment who couldn’t be trusted not to let people down. “You know more of the real me than most do.” That was closer to the truth.
“Maybe—but I’ve learned more about the real Hugh through your mother, Jeremiah, and Payne than I’ve ever heard from your lips. Tell me—would you have ever mentioned you had a sister unless I had made a mistake about the nature of your relationship?”
“How was I to know her husband’s regiment was coming home? We do not keep in touch…”
“I shall take that as a no. Because talking about her would mean talking about your complicated emotions concerning your father, and why would you entrust anybody with anything meaningful when it’s easier to keep everything superficial! Then blame your Standish blood for everything else.” She exhaled slowly, shaking her head. “It makes me wonder what else you haven’t told me?”
“Nothing of importance.”
Bitter bile rose in his throat at the lie. He still hadn’t told her about her father despite Payne’s daily remonstrance. But how would it help her to know her sire had been within arm’s reach at all times but had ignored them for his own selfish reasons? Or that he had uncovered more unsavory details on the wastrel since he had started digging? Besides, if he confessed he had paid the man off, she would assume he had done it to save his own skin, and admitting otherwise would involve having to tell her again he had done it out of his deep affection for her.
Deep affection?
Perhaps he truly was afraid of real honesty, because he knew in his bones affection probably wasn’t this painful nor was it this all encompassing. He had a deep affection for Payne—it was nothing like what he felt for Minerva.
“You are exhausting, Hugh! And I am tired of it.”
The floor tilted beneath his feet. “What are you saying?”
“That we cannot continue this awful ruse indefinitely. Not when it has run its course and it’s making us both utterly miserable.” She paused, her fingers going to the heavy ruby necklace as she glanced across the room to his mother and his father’s favorite mistress. “The banns are being read again tomorrow. I shall sit through those but I will not allow them to be read for the third and final time next Sunday. Which gives us exactly a week … to either enact the final scene in your story or to face the music.”
Her eyes were troubled, angry, the unfathomable green depths swirling with bitter regret that cut deep. But not as deep as her parting words. “Either way, by this time next Saturday, I shall be gone, Hugh. It is long past time we said goodbye.… In truth, I bitterly regret we ever said hello.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Because her tears were about to imminently fall, Minerva excused herself and rushed to the retiring room. After ten minutes and the hasty repair of her face, she left it shaky—but outwardly calm at least. She took a deep breath, intending to return to the relative safety of Olivia’s side, but found her feet taking her toward the door instead, craving fresh air for a few moments before she pasted on her mask again.
She hadn’t lied. Being his Minerva was exhausting. Every day threw up new challenges she was ill equipped to cope with. Rubies, wedding gowns, drunken actresses, secret sisters, her own crushed heart. Was it any wonder she was at her wits’ end? Or that tears were never far from the surface? She had been lured here by the promise of greener grass and had found herself waist deep in a field of nettles instead.
She embraced the brisk winter chill as she wandered past the waiting carriages, toward the dark village square, needing to be alone.
“When did you learn to dance?” The voice chilled her more effectively than the December night could.
“Father?” Her head whipped around from left to right, trying to find him in the blackness, until a brief flash illuminated him leaning against a wall as he lit one of the foul-smelling cigarillos she had always hated.
“Landed on your feet, haven’t you? Engaged to an earl no less.”
She felt sick, knowing his convenient presence after such a long time could only signal one thing.
Trouble.
“What are you doing here?”
“No tearful reconciliation for your long-lost father?”
“I hoped you had died in a gutter somewhere years ago.”
He took a long drag, then slowly blew out the smoke. “You always were a cold one, Minerva.”
“Answer my question! What are you doing here?”