Danice Allen Read online

  Jack shook his head with a beleaguered sigh and gave her a slight shake. “You goose! I asked you to trust me, and you said you did! What happened to all that trust, Amanda?”

  “I do trust you, Jack. But I don’t trust Robert Hamilton. If he’d … he’d hurt you, I was going to kill the little sod!” She stepped back a pace, pulled a pistol out of her greatcoat pocket, and waved it in the air.

  Jack was so shocked and surprised by her use of vulgar language and her brazen brandishing of a firearm, he laughed out loud. “Amanda! Do you even know what a ’sod’ is, sweetheart? But before you answer, give me that gun just in case it accidentally goes off.”

  She shrugged and relinquished the pistol without argument. Jack laid it on the grass with the other weapon. “I don’t know exactly what sod means, Jack,” she admitted. “All I know is it’s something quite despicable. Robert is a sod, isn’t he, Jack?”

  “And a coward into the bargain,” Percy Mingay said, stepping forward. “Is anyone interested in hearing what Rob wrote in the note?”

  “What note?” exclaimed Amanda. “Didn’t he show up?”

  “No, and I don’t expect any of us will ever see him again,” Percy remarked with unfeigned satisfaction. “The note reads, ‘Got an offer I couldn’t refuse. Crossing the channel at four-thirty. Won’t be back. Sorry for the inconvenience, Percy. Rob.’ ”

  “An offer he couldn’t refuse?” Jack repeated, frowning and turning to face Julian. “That’s odd …. Do you think someone threatened him? The moneylenders from the gaming hells, perhaps?”

  “Why would they try to force him out of the country, Jack, if he still owed them money?” Amanda wondered.

  “You can’t get blood out of a turnip, Miss Darlington,” Julian observed coolly.

  “Who knows what happened to him, and who cares?” said Percy, tossing the note over his shoulder. “He has more enemies than I do! He’s gone, that’s all. And good riddance, I say. Only wish he’d let me know his plans last night. I could have slept to my usual hour this morning instead of rising with the bloody chickens.”

  “Watch your language around my fiancée, Percy,” Jack growled.

  Percy raised his brows. “Sorry. Forgot she was female in those clothes and … er … with her colorful vocabulary and all. Apologize sincerely,” he added for good measure. He bowed low, then turned to go, apparently eager to flee before he found himself replacing Rob as Jack’s duelling opponent.

  “Send the doctor away,” Julian called after Percy as he strode away through the diminishing fog, then muttered, “Rattle.”

  Jack turned back to Amanda and slipped his arms around her waist. “And a blind rattle at that. I don’t know how he could ever forget you’re female, Amanda,” Jack said, eying her slim thighs and deliciously rounded derriere encased in tight buckskin breeches. “Especially in those togs. Makes me want to—”

  “Good Gawd,” Julian interrupted, managing to look bored and offended at the same time. “I have no desire to see the two of you coo and kiss. What you do in private is your concern, but please spare me from being privy to your ’sweet nothings.’ Take her home in the carriage, Jack. I’ll ride the horse. You don’t want anyone to see her dressed like that. If she’s to be your wife, you might want to maintain a modicum of respectability.”

  Jack grinned. “You’re right brother, as you so frequently are. I envy you your wisdom and perspicacity … not to mention your splendid sense of style. In fact, I’d say you were the luckiest man alive if”—he stopped abruptly and turned back to Amanda, his grin softening to a tender smile—”if I didn’t already hold that distinction. Even with all my faults, I’m the luckiest man alive.”

  Jack looked into Amanda’s beautiful blue eyes. They glowed with love. Long moments passed while they basked in the warmth of their hard-won happiness.

  “Don’t you agree, Julian?” Jack asked at last, turning for his brother’s corroboration. But Julian had vanished.

  “He moves like a cat,” Jack said with grudging respect. “And he has impeccable timing.”

  Amanda smiled impishly and blushed. “Your timing’s not so bad, either.”

  “You minx,” he murmured, growing painfully aroused. “Just wait till I get you alone.”

  He bent to kiss her, but she pressed her fingertips against his lips and drew back. “Aren’t you forgetting something, Jack?”

  He raised a brow. “My memory has had some recent lapses,” he admitted slyly. “What am I forgetting now, Amanda?”

  She toyed with his neck cloth, stroking the smooth linen with absentminded sensuality. “I haven’t yet received a proper proposal of marriage from you, Lord Durham,” she told him coyly. “That being the case, all this cooing and kissing—as Lord Serling so aptly phrased it—is quite improper.”

  Jack grabbed her hips and pulled her flush against him. Her playfulness and the look of her in breeches was making him as randy as a rooster. But he loved her … oh so much! And he’d give her exactly what she wanted … which was exactly what he wanted, too.

  “Amanda, darling, will you marry me? Will you stay with me and love me even when I’m toothless and gray, when I repeat myself constantly and forget where I’ve put my slippers even when they’re on my feet?”

  Amanda looped her arms around his neck and stared up into Jack’s mesmerizing amber-brown eyes. “Yes, I’ll marry you,” she said with quiet intensity and a dazzling smile. “And, yes, I’ll stay with you and love you even when you’re a decrepit old man. But promise me something, Jack—”

  “Anything, Amanda.”

  “Promise me that no matter what else you forget”—she paused, pouted, and poked him in the chest with her finger to underscore each word—“never”—poke—“forget”—poke—“you love me!” Poke, poke, poke.

  He threw back his head and laughed; then he sobered fast and dipped his head till their lips were nearly touching. He looked into her eyes and said, “That’s an easy promise to make and keep, Amanda, darling, because you are my love”—he kissed her forehead—“my life”—he kissed the tip of her nose—“and you are quite simply … unforgettable.”

  His breath spilled warm against her lips, and Amanda’s eyes fluttered shut in anticipation. They kissed, forgetting everything and everyone but each other.

  Riding past on Amanda’s horse, Julian saw the happy couple embracing. He smiled. He was glad for Jack, but he envied him, too. How would it be to find true love?

  He leaned back in the saddle and considered pretty, auburn-haired Charlotte Batsford. So serene, so controlled, so well-educated. Was it possible to stir up that sweet girl’s passions like Jack had stirred up Amanda’s? Could he make himself fall in love with her … and she with him … or did true love just … happen?

  It was an interesting thought, deserving of much rumination. But in the meantime, Julian had a far more pressing challenge at hand. Sam, that hoydenish, kittenish, noisy, and charmingly mobcapped child must be made into a silk purse by spring. He’d turn her into a diamond of the first water if it killed him, then foist the little brat onto some unsuspecting man blinded by her glitter.

  Oh course, he’d make sure the man was kind to her and loving. He wouldn’t want her to be unhappy. But even so, thought Julian with a rueful grin, he pitied—and halfway envied—the man who got himself shackled to Sam. The poor devil would certainly never be bored, now, would he?

  More from Danice Allen

  Arms of a Stranger

  The lure of intrigue leads a young woman down a path of danger and into the passionate embrace of a daring stranger.

  Bored with the dull suitors and shallow admirers of London, Anne Westin sets out for New Orleans in search of a new kind of man. She finds what she’s looking for in the form of a brave stranger who helps a family of slaves escape—before pulling Anne into the shadows to steal a kiss.

  Lucien Delocroix, the careless, lazy son of a wealthy plantation owner, is more concerned with the cut of his coats than the running of his
estate. And yet, Anne knows there is more to the charming dilettante than meets the eye, and that he’s willing to risk everything for what he knows to be right.

  Swept into the secret life of a daring rogue, Anne finds herself drawn to the excitement of danger—and the fervor of passion.

  The Perfect Gentleman

  He is supposed to be teaching her the ways of the world, but she may teach him the ways of love instead.

  Samantha Darlington is the illegitimate daughter of a respected man. Her father’s deepest shame and darkest secret, she has spent all of her seventeen years hidden away on a remote island. But when her half-sister, Amanda, discovers the truth of her existence, Samantha is rescued from her life of exile and thrust into a new world to be polished and educated. With the help of Amanda and the dashing and mysterious Julian Montgomery, Samantha will claim her rightful place in society.

  When Julian agreed to tame the rebellious Samantha in order to find her a suitable husband, he hadn’t anticipated that Samantha already had eyes for only one man—Julian himself. Now Samantha, determined to make Julian her own, is stirring up a frenzy in his elitist world—and his impenetrable heart.

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  Table of Contents

  Remember Me

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  More from Danice Allen

  Connect with Diversion Books