The Sinful Nights of a Nobleman by Jillian Hunter - Boscastle Family 05 - The Sinful Nights of a Nobleman

Author:Jillian Hunter - Boscastle Family 05 - The Sinful Nights of a Nobleman [Hunter, Jillian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Romance, Historical
ISBN: 9780345487612
Google: 7VBq9WOBrygC
Goodreads: 352586
Publisher: Ivy
Published: 2005-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

Twenty minutes later he had dressed in formal evening attire and stood guard in the hallway so that Jocelyn could sneak back up the stairs to her own room. She escaped just in time.

The castle was beginning to fill again as guests returned to their chambers to change out of their medieval attire for the sumptuous banquet in the great hall. Servants hastened to deliver clean water for washing, freshly pressed clothes, and scented billets-doux.

Lord Fernshaw’s feast marked the final event of the house party. Guests were known to stay up until the small hours and doze fitfully on the journey back to London. It was a night to flirt, to dine, to dance, to say farewell to a lover, to arrange future assignations.

And to contemplate the future.

Devon sat at the massive banquet table and sipped his wine, laughing at the jibes and ribald toasts that his presence had inspired. None of the taunts, however, touched upon his betrothal. No one at the party would openly offend Jocelyn after today. He had not only made his loyalty clear, he had proven that he would fight to defend her.

But if anyone had told him a week ago that he would leave this party engaged to be married, he would have denounced that person as a liar and trounced him on the spot.

Married.

To Jocelyn Lydbury.

The young lady whose dinner invitation he’d ignored four years ago, and look at him now. That neglected offer had come back manifold in the form of a whirlwind marriage. Lord help him. It would have been easier all the way around if he’d attended the original meal.

As it turned out, he’d be eating dinner with her for the rest of his life.

He watched her with unwilling interest, reminding himself that his country wallflower’s composed demeanor concealed quite a passionate nature. Her soft, willowy body heated his blood; the warmth and subtle charm she revealed each time they met proved perhaps even more attractive. He wondered how he was supposed to sleep beside her every night and pretend indifference to his needs.

It wasn’t possible. Nor did he intend to deny himself the pleasure of their wedding bed. But as for what else either of them could expect after they exchanged vows, he could not predict.

Their eyes met. He raised his goblet to her and drank deeply, swallowing a laugh at her faintly reproachful frown.

Yet when another toast was made in his honor, hers was the first goblet lifted in the air.

It was as if the sheer meanness of social criticism had forced them into an alliance. Complain of their plight as they may to each other, they seemed to have made an unspoken pact to put on a good show in front of their peers.

The cruel-minded or merely curious who waited to see a crack in the veneer of the scandalous couple quit the table that night disappointed. For all his appearance of negligent noblesse, Devon’s backbone had been forged of Boscastle steel—and strengthened by his father’s cane. The cavalry had made a man of him.

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