Duke du Jour by Petie McCarty

Author:Petie McCarty [McCarty, Petie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Romance, Historical, time-travel, regency
Publisher: The Wild Rose Press
Published: 2017-11-17T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirteen

“The two brothers will have to stay together…”

Jared heard the words, but it took a couple seconds for his brain to fully comprehend he would be sharing a room with Ari tonight. His heart squeezed with excitement right before the blanket of dread dropped to his shoulders. This was not the twenty-first century where men and women spent the night together after only a few dates—or no dates. Hell, men could not even ask a woman to dance in this century without a formal introduction by an appropriate person. His libido may jump for joy at the prospect, but spending the night in the same room with Ari had disaster written all over it—his.

“Have you lost your mind?” Jared hissed, careful to keep his voice low with the inn’s paper-thin walls.

“No, and we must make doubly sure everyone in this inn thinks Lady Ariana is a young boy,” Dexter went on as though Jared had not exploded. “No room for mistakes or—”

“—she will be ruined,” Jared finished glumly.

“Well, thanks to your heroics in the taproom below, every eye in this inn is on the four of us now.”

“What would you have had me do? Let the drunken arse strike Ariana?”

“Lady Ariana, and of course not,” Dexter said, refusing the bait. “You had to step in, but in doing so, our situation has altered. We must change our plans accordingly.”

“So you have decided Ari and I must stay together in this room for the night,” Jared said angrily.

“I’m standing right here.” Ari stepped between them and glared at Jared. “So you can stop discussing me as if I were not. I won’t let anyone discover I am a girl.”

“And if they do?” he snapped at her.

No help for it, he was angry. He wanted Ari away from here and safe. He should have left her behind at Wakefield, but if the earl was right about the highwaymen…Hell, the bastards had admitted to having people in his own county watching Haverly. He groaned inwardly. What if the bastards had watched the four of them depart Wakefield this morning?

She swallowed hard. “Then I deal with the consequences.”

“Your ruination, you mean,” Jared retorted.

“Quite,” Dexter added, “and then someone will have to marry her to salvage her reputation.” He gave Jared the nineteenth-century version of the stink-eye.

Good Lord!

He glanced up at the beamed ceiling, took a deep breath, then eyed Dexter.

I can’t afford to antagonize him at this juncture. I need him. Nor can I offer to marry Ari since I’m headed back to the twenty-first century the first chance I get.

The only thing worse than ruination by scandal in the Regency era was a husband deserting a wife, never to be seen again. And yet the idea of deserting her made a sharp pain stab right near his heart. Worse still, the idea of marrying Ari held merit. Why the bloody hell had he finally found a woman he could live with happily, only two hundred years too soon?

He took a chance and glanced at Ari.

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