Elizabeth Beacon - The Regency Season - Scandalous Awakening

Impossible, Chloe; he’s almost nine years older than you are and was a father and a widower before you left the schoolroom, she chided herself, yet she couldn’t get the idea out of her head that, if he’d only waited for her to grow up, everything could be so different for them now. At six and twenty to her seventeen and steady as the rock his northern eyrie stood upon, he would have been steadfast as granite when Daphne’s loneliness and need for love and approval brought the world tumbling down on the Thessaly twins. A pipe dream, she dismissed that fantasy of love and marriage with him, and did her best to see them as others would. She shivered again at the thought of the sneers and jeers that would greet the revelation they’d been closeted in this room so long and only talked of past sins, not committed a whole pack of new ones.

‘Come closer to the fire,’ he urged gently at the sight of her apparently still feeling as cold as charity.

He couldn’t know it was the temptation of him that made her seek occupation for her hands, lest they reached for him. In his pristine white linen shirt, with that simply elegant black-silk waistcoat outlining his narrow waist so emphatically by the glow of the fire he had stirred into stronger life for her, he was temptation incarnate.

How she longed to wrap her arms about him and be held until the pain and grief abated. She told herself it was nothing more than the concern he would feel for any girl left so alone that was softening his hawk-like features. He had a young daughter and felt for her plight when she faced such a stark choice between her old life and Verity’s death.

More than likely he would have opted to rescue Daphne if he’d met them in their hour of need. She was appalled by the jealousy that blazed through her at the idea of him in thrall to her sister’s angelic blonde looks and easy smiles. Apparently there was something that could make her hate her sister for being so lovely and needy after all, or rather someone.

Chloe felt ashamed that Luke Winterley meant more to her than her twin had done. Until she met Verity’s furious gaze the first time and became a mother, despite the facts, this man could have meant more to her than any man should to a girl of such notoriously rackety lineage as hers.

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