Infamous Lords and Ladies by Virginia Heath

Author:Virginia Heath
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2024-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWELVE

Rumours abound, Gentle Reader, that the unlikely romance between the charming new Marquess of T. and the feisty Miss H. from Bloomsbury has definitely cooled as nobody has seen them out and about together in weeks. I am reliably informed, however, that this popular young lady has been more than adequately entertained in the meantime by the smitten but very married Lord J. instead...

Whispers from Behind the Fan

July 1814

The brisk walk around Bloomsbury Square had done nothing to improve her odd mood. The wretch had said two weeks, which in Hope’s book was fourteen days—fifteen at a push if one allowed for leeway—but as he had been gone for twenty days already with not so much as a letter of explanation, her poor nerves were shot to pieces.

There were urgent things which she needed to discuss with him which she couldn’t confide in anybody else. Like the gushing request from Mr Cooper himself, from Cooper and Son, to have the rest of Phantasma sent to him by express because the three chapters H. B. Rooke had sent from Whitstable were, according to him, the best and most intriguing opening of a novel he had read in years.

Or how his mother had coped with his absence and how he had coped with the potential aftermath. Were things dire or were they on an even keel and she was being unnecessarily anxious? His awful rendition of his mother’s illness, the neglect she had suffered by his father and the atrocities the poor woman had endured at his brother’s hand, and then the struggles they had both had to get her well again had played on her mind for the duration of his absence, to such an extent it now seemed like her burden too. Emotionally invested yet a frustratingly impotent bystander who could do nothing but wait for news. That Luke had had to deal with it all alone for so many years, had had to work and struggle to pay for it all when the Thundersleys had so much, and had done so stalwartly, with such love and compassion had done something odd to the way she felt about him.

After much soul searching, and twenty interminable restless nights, she was now prepared to concede that, despite his vexing and smug manner and his charming overconfidence, she had had some affection for the dratted man before he had bared his soul. Undeniably, there had been some unfortunate attraction too which she had done her best to ignore, even though that had proved to be impossible. Now that he had entrusted her with everything and exposed himself in all his flawed but noble glory, the ground had shifted. And because she couldn’t stop thinking about him, and because most of those thoughts weren’t all occupied with friendly concern but superficial nonsense like the way he smiled or the way he looked at her or the way that he tasted, she was also prepared to concede there was something else at play.

She missed

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