Only Rakes Would Dare by Charlie Lane

Author:Charlie Lane [Lane, Charlie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: WOLF Publishing
Published: 2022-08-24T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirteen

Griffin found Xavier in the barn, checking on a newborn colt. He squatted near the baby and glanced up at Griffin’s approach. “You’re formally dressed for a day in the country.”

A suit of armor to protect against Edith’s heated glances. He’d retreated to his bedchamber and changed after the apple grove. Smelling of wind and apples and Edith, he could not think. She’d looked at him long and lusty on the lake with no attempts to hide her admiration, her glances a constant heat on his walls of ice. He’d felt them drip, drip, drip until he stood in a puddle as big as the lake itself. Edith had the power to melt him through to his very core.

In the apple grove, she’d stripped him bare, unmade him entirely with her kisses and her trust and her confessions.

His only armor remained his clothing—proper, starched, and layered thick.

The entire affair was dangerous.

Wasn’t it?

There lay the issue. The more he melted under Edith’s sun, the more he wanted to melt, to take her warmth into himself and give it back to her, too. The emotions she brought to life within him did not scare him as they should.

They seduced him.

Was that why so many men became rakes? Seduced by emotion?

He needed the starched cravat and stiff waistcoat, the jacket, breeches, and boots to keep it from happening again. He’d kissed her like he’d intended to never stop. He wouldn’t do it again.

Griffin entered the stall and leaned a shoulder against a wall.

Xavier never looked up, rubbing his hands up and down the foal’s legs. “I’m not angry.”

“Interesting way to greet a fellow. Tell me. What aren’t you angry about?”

Xavier stood and left the stall. He grabbed a cloth off a hook and swiped at the sweat on his face. “You almost kissing my sister in the middle of the lake two days ago.”

“Ah. That.” Griffin could pretend he’d been trying to brush a fly from her face, but why? Their goal was to present a convincing picture of young love.

Xavier grabbed a bucket and returned to the stall. “You’re engaged. Why should I care?”

That made Griffin want to kick a barn door down like a damned horse himself, snorting with anger. “What if she hadn’t wanted to be kissed? You should care about your sister’s happiness and well-being.” Why’d he even come to speak with Xavier? Ridiculous notion. But with Edith throwing daggers at him since the apple orchard that morning, he needed an answer to this new equation between them. And fast, before she hit her target with a lethal blow.

“You keep saying that, but I’m not standing in the way of your alliance with her. Even though I know you’re both lying. You’re not in love.”

“We are—”

“You’re not. But I don’t care because Father’s determined she must be wed, and you’re her best option. Don’t say I don’t care about her happiness.”

Griffin swallowed his ire. “Women exist in impossible circumstances.” His own mother had been married off to a rotten man for money she never saw or benefited from.

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