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.**
“Minerva, it wasn’t…” She pushed him again, putting all her weight into it.
“You did whatever you thought was necessary to maintain your convoluted and selfish charade!” Another push. He made no attempt to defend himself. No attempt to stop her. “You are a liar, Hugh Standish! A lying, self-centered, untrustworthy, two-faced scoundrel! And I want nothing more to do with you!”
She ran then, not caring that his jacket fell from her shoulders into the mud, not caring that every carriage driver in the long line of them waiting outside the assembly rooms could see her in this state, dashing back to the sanctuary of the retiring room and bolting the door behind her in case he had the poor sense to follow, then sinking to the ground in a heap.
At least she expected no less from her father. He was a wastrel. Morally moribund and terminally hideous. She had hated him all her life but had always known where she stood. But Hugh …
He had manipulated her with charm and played her like a fiddle. She’d fallen for his story and agreed to lie for him. Fallen for every supposedly well-meant good deed. Fallen for every honeyed falsehood that had dripped out of his practiced seducer’s mouth. Fallen for him. All of him. Completely.
Fallen in love.
With the worst sort of scoundrel.
What the hell was she going to do?
Chapter Twenty-Seven
“She said to put it in writing, my lord.”
Hugh gaped at his butler. “Writing?”
“Yes, my lord. I am sure you are familiar with it. It requires pen and ink and paper. There is some in your dressing room. Shall I fetch it?” Payne deposited the glass of brandy on his nightstand. “I did tell you to tell her about her father.”
“Thank you, Payne. What I really need at this moment is another sanctimonious ‘I told you so.’”
“You are most welcome, my lord. I do try my best. Will there be anything else?”
“Go back to the blasted woman’s bedchamber and tell her I demand an audience!”
“Of course, my lord. I am sure my knocking for the third time at this late hour will garner more a favorable result than the previous two.” The outspoken servant bowed with little enthusiasm and disappeared again out of the door.
A blasted letter! Outrageous. When he had tried repeatedly to apologize to her and explain his reasoning. He had tried last night, when a stony-faced Minerva had finally emerged from the ladies’ retiring room, where he had been waiting, but she had glided past him into the ballroom as if he were invisible. Then she proceeded to attach herself to his mother’s side for the rest of the evening. Back home, she used her sisters as her bodyguards.
He had said “Good night, my love” at the top of the stairs.
“Sleep well, my love.”
He ensured that the “my loves” were enunciated with particular emphasis in case she had forgotten their code, yet she left him to pace the length of the portrait gallery for two painful hours before he accepted she wasn’t coming.
Nor did she appear the following morning either. He could say that with absolute certainty because after a night of torturous insomnia he had returned to the gallery promptly at five, watched the sun rise, and heard the house wake, only to be greeted by the deadpan face of Payne, who had been sent by his mother to tell him if he didn’t eat breakfast in the next fifteen minutes, he could go to church on an empty stomach.
Church had been another delight. She had ignored him in the carriage. Ignored his attempt to trail behind the others as they arrived, and then sat next to him stiffly. Exactly like an iceberg. Staring resolutely at Reverend Cranham as the banns were read again before bolting out the door on Jeremiah’s arm.
Hugh had tried again in the afternoon, only to be shooed away by his mother because Minerva was in the midst of being measured by Madame Devy for a blasted wedding gown and trousseau. A task that apparently took several hours and one that caused him to watch the sun go down as he paced his study, and any plans he had had to intercept her before or after dinner were thwarted because she never bothered to arrive. Minerva had been struck down by a sudden headache, and thanks to her hawk-eyed, hovering sentry Diana, he’d had to abort his forlorn attempt to lay siege to her bedchamber.
Clearly she was determined to make him suffer. And it was working. He’d never felt more wretched in his life.
Listlessly, he stared out the window, swirling the amber liquid in his glass. Maybe he should write her a blasted letter. As much as she didn’t want to hear him, he had much to say. Most of it groveling. He was sorry for practically everything. For dragging her into his mess, shamelessly using her obvious need for money for his own gain. He was sorry for upending her life and dragging her across the country, making all his problems her problems, foisting Lucretia and his mother on her, causing friction between her and her sisters, hiding her father’s return, hiding his unpalatable truths from her and …
And most important of all, he was sorry for not being good enough.
Because he absolutely understood all the reasons she was furious at him and why she wanted to be permanently shot of him.
The sad truth was, he could probably write all that much better than he could say it. He did have a way with the written word. It was his innate talent at letter writing that had got him into this predicament in the first place. But a letter was so impersonal, and he needed the personal now more than he ever had before. He needed to look into her eyes. Needed to see if she felt as wretched as he did. To see if she cared enough to gift him with just a kernel of hope.
Payne came back in without knocking. His bland face said it all.
“I am to tell you that you are a brute. A beast…” He ticked the insults off on his fingers. “A big fat liar. A child who needs to grow up. A vile, sweet-talking seducer.” The butler scowled at that. “If you will excuse the interruption in the message, my lord—shame on you!” He skewered Hugh with a glare, his lip curled in distaste. “Have you no morals?”
“I didn’t seduce her … not completely. We kissed … twice.” Not that it was any of Payne’s bloody business! “And, for the record, on both occasions she kissed me back.”
“Did you give her a choice?”
“Do you want me to kick your insubordinate arse down the stairs? Of course I gave her a blasted choice! What do you take me for? Get back to reciting your bloody message. I could see you were enjoying it.”
“A vile, sweet-talking seducer…”
“We have established that.”
“A coward.”
“That’s a bit harsh.”
“Who is not very nice.” That one hurt. “And a snob.”
“‘A snob’? Are you sure?”
“I queried it myself, sir, as there is no denying you are many, many dreadful things … but I have never once known you to resort to condescending aristocratic airs and graces with anyone.”
“I do believe that is the most gushing praise I have ever received from you, Payne.”
The butler acknowledged this with a curt nod. “But she was adamant. She said you were—and I am directly quoting here rather than paraphrasing—‘a cowardly snob who shamelessly uses his dead ancestors to untangle yourself from unsavory entanglements.’”
The familiarity of the unusual phrase sparked something in his memory. She’d said exactly the same thing last night—but he had been too stunned she thought he had romantic feelings for Sarah, of all people, to pick up on it.
“What does that even mean, Payne?” Because clearly for Minerva it mattered enough to warrant repeating.