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Damian, Earl of Windermere, rues the day he drunkenly gambled away his family’s estate and was forced into marriage to reclaim it. Now, after hiding out from his new bride for a year, Damian is finally called home, only to discover that his modest bride has become an alluring beauty—and rumor has it that she’s taken a lover. Damian vows to keep his wife from straying again, but to do so he must seduce her—and protect his heart from falling for the wife he never knew he wanted.
Cynthia never aspired to be the subject of scandal. But with her husband off gallivanting across Persia, what was a lady to do? Flirting shamelessly with his former best friend seemed like the perfect revenge . . . except no matter how little Damian deserves her loyalty, Cynthia can’t bring herself to be unfaithful. But now that the scoundrel has returned home, Cynthia isn’t about to forgive his absence so easily—even if his presence stirs something in her she’d long thought dead and buried. He might win her heart . . . if he can earn her forgiveness!
Excerpt
Through the incompetent machinations of Puck, the four lovers were in a tangle and Titania was in love with an ass. Cynthia shifted in her seat and let her attention wander to the crowd in the pit.
“Not enjoying the play?” Denford asked.
“How did you know?”
“I notice everything about you, Cynthia.”
“I had never seen A Midsummer Night’s Dream acted,” she said quickly, “only read it. It’s very different on the stage.”
Despite making great strides in worldliness, she couldn’t help being a little shocked at the skimpy costumes, suggestive posturing, and outright kissing that was featured in the production. Lysander and Hermia had kissed on the lips early in the play and Titania was doing the same to Bottom now, positively devouring him beneath his ass’s head. Cynthia kept telling herself that it was only clever acting and they weren’t really behaving with such wantonness in public.
She stole a sideways glance and encountered Julian’s intense blue gaze. She lowered her eyes to his mouth and recalled the only time that she had been kissed like that, lasciviously, mouth-on-mouth, like the players on the stage.
It should have been her husband—such intimate caresses were the right of spouses—but Windermere had never kissed her thus. This man, the Duke of Denford, had introduced her to the delight. She felt guilty for kissing another man and resented that the man she’d married had not seen to the business himself. Her classmates at the Birmingham Academy for Young Ladies—ignorant girls like herself—had talked about love and marriage and kissing. The three went together, all with the same man.
“In what way do you find the play different?”
“The actors have revealed new aspects of the characters. I had not previously perceived that Lysander and Demetrius are in competition with each other. First they must both love Hermia and then, when one turns to Helena the other must follow.”
“You don’t give much credit to the intervention of the fairies.”
“I believe magic merely reinforces their own inclinations, which is that of former best friends turned rivals.”
“My dear Cynthia,” Julian said with a deep laugh. “You have grown into a woman of subtlety.”
“I hope so,” she said, not without pride. “I came to the capital a naïve provincial. I had no idea how to convey my thoughts except in the most straightforward manner. Since I quickly learned that simplicity is not appreciated in London, I could not convey them at all.”
“You know you may always speak frankly to me because I am incapable of taking offense. You can tell me what you really mean about the rivals in this play.” Julian was far too clever. And while he wasn’t always straightforward, he was never afraid to be frank. “Is that what you think?” he continued. “That I want you only because you are married to my former friend?”
“The notion has crossed my mind.”
“If you believe that your only value to me is as Damian’s bride, then you don’t know your own worth and he is a bigger fool than I thought for leaving you alone so long, and letting you think you mean nothing to him.”
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About Miranda
Since moving to Vermont, she has worked in Special Collections at Dartmouth College and as an editor and journalist on Behind the Times, a small, idiosyncratic (and now defunct) monthly newspaper. She is the owner and editor of a weekly advertiser in the Upper Valley, a job that leaves her enough time to write fiction.
Her first book, Never Resist Temptation. was published by Avon in 2009. The first two books in the Burgundy Club series will be published in 2010.
She lives with her daugher, Becca, a college student and confirmed drama queen, and two cats who are never on the right side of any door.
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