Julia Justiss - Wicked Wager

Tony knew he didn’t qualify. But he couldn’t afford to be too finicky about honor. An influential City banker would be of great help in finding him an heiress to marry.

And so, despite his discomfort, he made himself say, “If the opportunity should arise, I’d like to meet him.”

“I’d be happy to arrange it. Mayhap ‘Guinea’ Harris’s papa can send some golden coins rolling in your direction!”

Tony murmured his gratitude. He ought to feel encouraged—and virtuous, that he’d made himself take this first step toward the solution everyone was recommending. A solution that was both logical and commonplace. Most men of his station married to secure alliances and fortunes.

Hadn’t he, once upon a time, urged Jenna to make just such a match—with him? Though, he recalled with a grin, the bargain had been rather one-sided: her fortune for his somewhat tarnished title. Ah, what a coxcomb he’d been!

But though he had certainly coveted her fortune, there had been something about Jenna, something beyond an undeniably strong physical attraction, that had drawn him and made the idea of marrying her compelling even to a man who scoffed at the notion of love and fidelity.

Her serenity, sense of honor and courage, perhaps, qualities that had resonated when tried by the adversities of war like the steel of the finest saber.

Qualities that drew him still.

Miss Sweet’s final legacy, he thought with a self-mocking smile. Somehow in his youth she’d managed to instill deep within him an ironic yearning for purity and valor, qualities he himself had never possessed. A yearning unlikely to be satisfied in the match between avarice and social advantage he was now contemplating.

Though he’d lately come to believe that courage, honor and fidelity were possible, he wasn’t sure he yet believed in lifelong, selfless love. Not for Anthony Nelthorpe.

So why did the notion of binding himself in a loveless marriage of convenience continue to seem so distasteful?

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