Scandalous Love by Brenda Joyce Read Free Book Online Page B

Regardless, Nicole is
quite an eccentric, or so they say. She is even more reclusive than you. She
spends most of her time at Dragmore, rarely venturing out into society. And who
can blame her? I saw myself how cruelly she was cut after that scandal. Have
you ruined her, Hadrian?"
    He was in shock. He was
appalled at the terrible mistake he had almost made. He had come dangerously
close to ruining a young lady. Yet she had responded to him as if she
were a woman of experience, but now he could recall only too clearly those
moments when her blushes and her confusion had made her seem uncertain and
innocent. But how could he have known? She had attended the masque unescorted
and daringly costumed, and hadn't she flirted with him? Or had he misread her
every nuance? Had she purposefully led him on— or had he been the
indiscriminate predator? "I have not ruined her," he said stiffly,
and then he stalked from the room.
    Nicole wished that her
best friend Martha Huntingdon, the Viscountess Serle, would return from London,
for she had no one to confide in about the Duke. It was so very nearly
unbelievable. That she, too tall and gawky, a dismal failure when she had come
out, then ruined by the scandal, should be courted by the charismatic, handsome
Duke of Clayborough! For wasn't that what he was doing? He had invited her to
his home, not once, but twice. And he had kissed her. He had told her that she
was beautiful. Wasn't he as powerfully affected by her as she was by him?
Didn't all of his actions indicate that he was courting her?
    Nicole knew that she was
highly inexperienced when it came to men, but she was almost certain that he
would ask her to marry him, and soon. She dreamed of how he would propose, she
dreamed of being his Duchess. She saw herself with his child in her arms, and
saw him smile affectionately as he watched her and the baby.
    And the small doubt she
had, the tiny seeds of confusion, the dim memory of his sardonic smile and cool
tone, she shoved into the recesses of her memory.
    Her father and Chad
returned that evening from France, having concluded their business. Ed, her
younger brother, attended Cambridge, where he was studying the law. She greeted
the Earl and Chad with a beaming smile and hugs, startling them both with her
exuberance.
    "What's happened to
you?" Chad asked, his handsome face wearing a suspicious frown. "What
are you up to now, little sister?"
    Chad was almost thirty,
with dark hair like their father, although he had inherited his fair coloring
from his mother, the Earl's first wife. He was very handsome in a thoroughly
patrician way, while the Earl's appeal was darker, more dangerous. Nicole
scowled at him. "I am up to nothing, brother," she retorted.
"After all, I am not the one who goes out in the evenings and does not
return until well after dawn!"
    "You are not a
man," Chad pointed out blithely.
    "Enough," the
Earl said mildly, his gaze roving over his daughter with warmth. "You are
glowing, Nicole. Is there something you want to tell me?" He posed the
question casually.
    Her father knew her too
well. She was his first child with the Countess Jane, and she had spent more
time on his knee than any other of her siblings. She was closer to him than
either Chad, Ed or Regina. There was a bond between them that was hard to
explain, although her mother had teased that it could be explained by the
savage blood in both of their veins and the disregard for convention that ensued
from it. Nicole had thought it a joke and had been amused by her mother's wit,
but the Earl had seemed somewhat exasperated with his wife for her bald
comment.
    She had always been the
apple of his eye and she knew it. He knew her too well, and he was too clever,
besides. Nicole was certainly not ready to tell anyone in her family that she
had a suitor, much less that it was the Duke of Clayborough. She dared not
question herself too closely as to her motivations in keeping this affair a
secret, when she had never