Lovers and Ladies by Jo Beverley

Author:Jo Beverley [Beverley, Jo]
Language: eng, eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Penguin Group USA, Inc.
Published: 1993-09-25T22:00:00+00:00

DEIRDREAND DON JUAN

1

THE NEWS OF HIS WIFE’S DEATH caught the Earl of Everdon in his mistress’s bed. He knew most of the world would consider this unremarkable for a man generally known as Don Juan, but he could only see it as a social solecism. Even as he read the disturbing letter, he directed a few choice epithets toward his thick-skulled secretary. What had possessed young Morrow to send it here?

After all, he’d not clapped eyes on his wife for close to ten years, so this travel-stained record of Genie’s demise could surely have waited until he returned home.

Noblesse obliged, however, and he detached himself from Barbara Vayne’s demanding fingers, swung out of bed, and began to pull on his clothes.

He was a tall, handsome man of thirty, who had inherited a distinctly Latin cast to his features from his Spanish mother. His skin had a yearlong darkness unusual in England; his eyes were a deep velvet brown under smooth, heavy lids; his brows and lashes were richly dark. His hair, however, had been touched by his English heritage, and showed sherry gold lights in the afternoon sun. This merely served to emphasize the darker cast of his skin.

“Don, what’s the matter?” his abandoned lover demanded plaintively, pouting her lush lips.

He fastened his pantaloons. “A family crisis.”

Barbara threw off the covers and arched. “Something more important than this?”

He tried never to be unkind to a woman, so he paid her the homage of a hot, regretful look, but didn’t halt his dressing. His mind was on other things.

There were disturbing aspects to this situation.

Ten years of freedom were over.

He had married Iphegenia Brandon when only twenty, and just down from Cambridge. In retrospect, it had not been wise, and the subsequent disasters had been excruciatingly embarrassing, but he had grown accustomed. In time, he had even discovered that there were advantages to being an abandoned husband.

For the past ten years the Matchmaking Mamas had regretfully ignored him. He had been able to behave with remarkable rashness without any possibility of being forced to the altar. His only brother’s death the year before had caused him to investigate the possibility of divorce, but he had intended to select a bride with great care well before he was known to be available.

Now, however, he was fair prey in the matrimonial hunt. Absurd though it was, once this news broke, even someone like Barbara—the wanton widow of a highly disreputable infantry captain—might think she had a chance of getting Lord Everdon to the altar.

He didn’t neglect the courtesy of a heated farewell kiss, but he first imprisoned Barbara’s hands above her head, just to be sure he escaped her bedroom safely.

Then Mark Juan Carlos Renfrew, Earl of Everdon and lord of a score of minor properties, walked through the streets of Mayfair feeling vulnerable for the first time in his adult life.

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