The Truth About Lord Stoneville (Hellions of Halstead Hall) by Sabrina Jeffries

Author:Sabrina Jeffries [Jeffries, Sabrina]
Format: epub
Tags: General, Fiction, Fiction - Romance, Romance, American Light Romantic Fiction, Romance & Sagas, Romance: Historical, Romance - Historical, Historical, American Historical Fiction
ISBN: 9781439167519
Publisher: Pocket
Published: 2010-01-18T09:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fifteen

Oliver hurled his book across the room. His brothers and sisters were determined to keep her from him. It was not to be borne!

He’d spent the past week in an agony he was unaccustomed to enduring. He’d expected his family to charm her; instead she had charmed them with her frank and unusual opinions, and her habit of saying exactly what she meant. He was ignored and relegated to keeping Freddy from harm, while his sisters fawned over her, and his brothers—

A murderous scowl knit his brow. If he saw Jarret flirt with her or Gabe make her laugh even one more time, he was liable to throttle them both. Jarret had probably told Gabe about her fortune, and now the two were competing for her favors, figuring that if one of them secured her for himself, he could solve some of the family’s problems. And since Oliver had made it clear that he would not marry her . . .

He balled his hands into fists. His brothers couldn’t have her. Hyatt couldn’t have her. He wouldn’t allow it!

And in a flash, he knew why. Because he was jealous. God preserve him, he was jealous of his brothers.

He’d seen his friends suffer jealousy, watched his mother languish away because of it. He’d always thought them mad for letting it affect them so. No woman had ever roused the spurious emotion in him; he’d assumed he was immune.

To discover that he wasn’t, that Maria held such astounding power over his feelings, terrified him to the bone. He couldn’t deny it, for it ate at his gut worse than cheap liquor. He would have to find a way to deal with it. And keep his brothers away from her.

How will you do that? They at least offer her a respectable connection. You offer her only disgrace.

Therein lay his problem. If he offered her more, he would be sentencing her to the same hell his mother had suffered. But if he offered her less and she accepted, then he was sentencing her to an even worse fate.

The only way to win was to let her go unscathed. But that meant he had to stand by and watch her either marry someone else, or inherit her fortune and return to America. He didn’t want either one.

He scrubbed his hands over his face, tired beyond words. This mad obsession consumed his energies at a time when he had more important concerns. Like the ever-present worries about money. In town, he’d been able to turn a blind eye and let himself sink into debt without thinking of the consequences.

But here he was constantly reminded that he wasn’t sinking alone. His family sank with him, as did the servants and his tenants. It was this damned house—it dragged him down into remembering the life he’d deliberately left behind.

He’d spent his boyhood being schooled by his father in how to run the estate, how to govern his tenants, how to make sure that their money was well invested .

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