Lara Temple - The Lord’s Inconvenient Vow

“I have a favor to ask...

I want you to marry me.”

Part of The Sinful Sinclairs . Samantha Sinclair was always Lord Edgerton’s complete opposite. But when Edge encounters Sam again in Egypt, it’s clear the years have changed her as much as him. So after she blurts out an impulsive, convenient proposal, Edge’s protective urge compels him to accept. Is it possible for two such different people to be together and find the happiness they both deserve?

LARA TEMPLEwas three years old when she begged her mother to take the dictation of her first adventure story. Since then she has led a double life—by day she is a high-tech investment professional, who has lived and worked on three continents, but when darkness falls she loses herself in history and romance…at least on the page. Luckily her husband and her two beautiful and very energetic children help her weave it all together.

Also by Lara Temple

The Duke’s Unexpected Bride

Unlaced by the Highland Duke

Wild Lords and Innocent Ladies miniseries

Lord Hunter’s Cinderella Heiress

Lord Ravenscar’s Inconvenient Betrothal

Lord Stanton’s Last Mistress

The Sinful Sinclairs miniseries

The Earl’s Irresistible Challenge

The Rake’s Enticing Proposal

The Lord’s Inconvenient Vow

Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk.

The Lord’s Inconvenient Vow

Lara Temple

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ISBN: 978-1-474-08952-4

THE LORD’S INCONVENIENT VOW

© 2019 Ilana Treston

Published in Great Britain 2019

by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

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To Lucas and Chase and Sam—

I’ve lived with you and loved with you

and now I have to let you go.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

About the Author

Booklist

Title Page

Copyright

Note to Readers

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Epilogue

Extract

About the Publisher

‘The Hidden City isn’t truly invisible, Gabriel. Most people are blind to what threatens their world. Life is easier thus.’

—The Sprite Queen, Desert Boy Book One

‘For heaven’s sake, Lady Samantha, come down before you fall down.’

‘Oh, go away, Sir Stay-Away-from-the-Edge.’

‘Stop calling me that.’

‘Well, Mama says I mustn’t call you Edge any longer because now that I am eighteen it is no longer proper. But I refuse to call you Lord Edward Edgerton; that is even stuffier than you are.’

He burst into laughter. He didn’t often laugh freely, but it always surprised her how it transformed his face, softening the sharp-cut lines on either side of his mouth and between his overly straight brows. With his serious grey-green eyes and hair as dark as any of her Venetian cousins he’d always appeared so adult. Or perhaps it was his insistence on dressing so properly even in the heat of the Egyptian desert.

Next to him her brothers looked like heathens or corporeal manifestations of the gods etched on the temple walls where her mother’s cousin Huxley spent all his waking hours working with Edge’s uncle Poppy. Once those two were caught in the web of their historical weaving, everyone else faded into nothingness—more ghosts in a landscape of ghosts and far less interesting.

He stopped laughing and frowned even more awfully, as if he needed to compensate for his moment of levity.

‘Proper. You have no idea what that means.’

‘Yes, I do. It means doing nothing enjoyable at all.’

‘No, it means showing respect. And it means not climbing on the antiquities.’

‘If this sphinx survived two thousand years, it will survive me.’

‘It is not a sphinx but a ram and Poppy says it is likely at least three thousand years old based on references in...never mind. In any case it should not have to suffer the indignity of being climbed upon. And barefoot, too. One day you will step on a scorpion and that will be the end of it.’

‘You have my permission to dance a jig on my grave if it is, Lord Hedgehog.’

He ignored her latest variation on his name.

‘Don’t be a fool, Sam. Besides, I hate dancing. Why the...why are you up there anyway?’

‘Come see.’

She turned away and waited. He might be as dry as a mummy, but he had his uncle’s curiosity. She wondered if he realised he’d reverted to calling her Sam as he once had. Probably not.

It took five minutes. She heard the scrape of his boots and a muffled curse. Probably something like ‘drat’ or ‘bother’; despite being such good friends with Lucas and Chase, he never participated in their cursing contests. Since his uncle and aunt had brought him to Egypt when he was only six years old he spoke Arabic better than all of them, but he rarely indulged in the very colourful epithets Lucas and Chase mined from the locals, at least not in her hearing. In fact, she sometimes wondered why he and her brothers were so close.