The Duke of Morewether’s Secret Read Free

helped her down, he took another long glance at her face, a gaze that lingered so long as to be nearly rude. This time, when she held his gaze and curled her lips into a smile, Christian was charmed into thinking he could find his way into her good graces. “Until this evening, then.”
    “Ummm.” She nodded to him and waved her farewell to Anna.
    He watched her until she disappeared into the house. Sweet Jesus and all the apostles. The woman was astounding, fascinating, and he wanted to know everything about her.
    “I can’t believe it.” Anna’s voice penetrated his thoughts. “You are completely, absolutely, beyond a shadow of a doubt smitten with her.”
    Christian took the high road and ignored her. The carriage slowed to round the corner to Berkeley Square.
    “Oh you are, you are ,” she continued when he didn’t take her bait.
    “Quiet,” he told her in warning.
    “She won’t have you, you know.” Anna’s voice softened. “I know you think you’re every woman’s dream, but you’re not this one’s.”
    That was precisely his fear.

Chapter Two
    She had selected the dress carefully. Her hair looked perfect. A necklace of pearls and diamonds lay shimmering across her chest, innocently drawing the eye to the low cut of her bodice. A quick assessment in the mirror proved what she already knew. She looked stunning, and it was unendingly irritating.
    “You are a fool,” she told her reflection. Then she repeated it in Greek in case she wasn’t listening.
    Althea Eugenia Ashbrook had not come to London to snag a husband, and certainly not a husband such as the Duke of Morewether. It didn’t matter that he was tall and fit and masculine with beautiful ebony hair and brown eyes. It was of no consequence that he was charming and witty and smiled like a man who knew how to commit all the best sins. She hadn’t been lying when she said she knew him. Perhaps she didn’t know him specifically, but she surely recognized a scoundrel on sight. She could have smelled him coming a mile away. She’d heard countless gossip about him — everything from haughty grand dames warning her away to wistful young ladies sighing dreamily at the thought of a stolen kiss.
    She didn’t need a man. Not for anything. Thea reveled in the fact she was completely independent in all things. She had her own name, the one honorable thing her father left her, and her own money, and she was going to use those things to do what her father never had done. Her half-brothers deserved better than what was left to them, and she had every intention of using her father’s money to buy them a better life. This foray into London would serve to find the boys an acceptable school. Any connections she made with London’s upper class would only serve to make their lives easier.
    Unconsciously, she fingered an errant curl. She tucked it back in her coiffure and smoothed the hair at the nape of her neck.
    The Duke of Morewether’s actions could have been her father’s twenty-five years before. The duke was devilishly handsome, a fact not lost on him, of course, and he had a reputation for having seduced every female since he had left for Eton at thirteen.
    Who seduced women at thirteen?
    Absurd. Still, women could not stop talking about the man. He hadn’t even been in the city for months, and still, at every single rout, ball, or garden party where three women met, he was a topic of conversation. They discussed him in the retiring rooms. They discussed him in the fitting rooms on Bond Street. By the time she’d finally met him this afternoon, Thea was mortally tired of hearing about him.
    Still, she couldn’t deny the man was ludicrously good looking. Although, she’d been lead to believe his powers of seduction were something more impressive than she’d experienced today. It was possible he’d used the tongue-tied ploy to disarm her, but he’d seemed sincere. Even then, he’d almost lured her in, lulled her with his beauty and charming