A Wedding to Stop a Scandal by Virginia Heath

Author:Virginia Heath
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2023-10-11T11:53:12+00:00

Chapter Twelve

Bloody hell!

A rose for a blasted Rose!

What the blazes had he been thinking?

It was midnight on Christmas Day, snow was again coming down so thick and fast he could barely see the road ahead, and instead of concentrating on it as the weather demanded, Sam was still kicking himself for those wholly inappropriate and flowery words.

Who did he think he was?

Wordsworth?

Blasted Shakespeare?

Or, God help him, Romeo? Besotted and ready to woo!

And he had been so keen to show it all off too, and had basked in her approval. Patting himself on the back for getting things just right when in fact she was right! It was a ludicrous amount of effort for just three months. And, despite his hasty denial, sourcing all those things had been an effort.

He hadn’t lied when he’d claimed to have been at a loose end, because he had been. During those first few days after their engagement, when the news of it hadn’t spread the length and breadth of his practice and he had still been considered a libertine, a scoundrel and a cad, he had had too many empty hours to fill. He hadn’t lied when he’d said that he had just been passing the pottery, because stopping to purchase the rose-covered washbowl and jug had been more by whim than design. But once he’d had it he had become a man on a mission to find the perfect things to go with it.

At the time, he had thought that he was being decent, because he genuinely did not want to make her short stay at his house any more awkward than it needed to be. However, with hindsight, he had been so obsessed with getting it right for her that he hadn’t given much thought as to how that would look. He had lied about the shopkeeper choosing it all too, because not one of the dozen specialised merchants he had visited had suggested anything remotely suitable.

Everything had been too fussy, too frothy and too frilly for Rose’s bold but understated elegance. So it had been he who had chosen the linens and the furniture. He who had matched the blanket and had the rug made to match the dark crimson of the lovely evening gown she had worn while they had waltzed on the infamous night of the blizzard, when he had been the envy of the room.

What the blazes had he been thinking, to treasure that memory enough that he’d instantly been able to pick the precise shade? He was supposed to be dead inside—had worked damn hard to be dead inside—and wasn’t supposed to care about anyone like that. Yet he had cared then that she would like it, and to his horror he still cared now that she did.

He had tossed and turned all night, imagining her dark hair fanned out on those snow-white pillows, and she had invaded his dreams with a vengeance.

Worse than she ever had before.

He’d blamed the fact that she was sleeping directly across the hall, which was disconcerting enough for one used to being alone.

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