A Duke's Temptation by Jilian Hunter

Author:Jilian Hunter [Hunter, Jilian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Historical Romance
Publisher: Penguin Group
Published: 2010-09-20T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter 21

Samuel threw his manuscript against the wall and scowled over his wire-rimmed spectacles at the woman tied by her apron strings to the arms of an oval-backed chair. He was ready to tear out his hair. “I did not write that line. Furthermore, if I had, Juliette would not be screeching it like a rabid shrew at Sir Renwick. God.”

Marie-Elaine paused respectfully, staring down at the pages in her lap before she erupted into an impassioned disagreement. “Juliette would not be screeching or speaking to the Sir Renwick your audience has come to love and loathe if this chapter made the least bit of sense. He’s going to stick a heated sword through Lord Michael’s heart. Why does Juliette think that losing her dignity will change anything?”Samuel peeled off his spectacles. “It changes everything. Lord Michael’s goals. Sir Renwick’s revenge. Juliette’s . . . devotion. Perhaps as their political elements are revisited, it will change the course of English history.”

“Perhaps it will change the history of this house,” Emmett commented from the fireplace, where he stood with a bowl over his head, he and his twin brother, Ernest, playing two of the Roundheads waiting to kill Lord Michael.

Marie-Elaine wiggled her bound wrists in agitation. “Can you untie my apron strings? If I’m not going to give up my maidenhood, I ought to make sure that Mrs. Halford doesn’t forget the broth she put on before she went to bed with her brandy bottle.”

Samuel reached over his shoulder for a sword letter opener on his desk.

“Don’t cut the strings,” she protested. “I’ll do it myself.”

He lowered his arm, then froze, glancing up at the distinct sound of light footsteps running across the gallery of the west wing. “I told you that scream was unearthly,” he said in a disgruntled voice. “She’s going to think we are having an orgy.”

“Well, it wouldn’t be the first time,” Emmett said from the hearth. “A fictitious one, I meant, Your Grace.”

Samuel removed his broadsword from his scabbard. “That wasn’t exactly the impression I wanted to give Miss Boscastle on her first night in the house.”

Bickerstaff, the butler, started collecting pages of the scattered manuscript while Emmett and his brother hid props from the scene behind a towering chinoiserie cabinet. “She wouldn’t have had any cause for a bad impression if Marie-Elaine hadn’t shrieked to bring down the beams.”

Marie-Elaine at last succeeded in tugging her apron knots loose with her teeth. “What rational woman wouldn’t scream with a roomful of soldiers waiting to kill the man she loved? And being ravished at the same time by the other man she loves?”

Samuel stopped, halfway to the door, and stared at her. “So you’re saying that Juliette has been in love with Sir Renwick all along?”

She pushed a crop of bright curls under her cap. “Well, that’s what this chapter implies. I am only giving my interpretation.”

Samuel glanced up through the door at the darkened gallery. No one was there. He was certain he’d heard a floorboard creak.

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