The Trouble With Honor (The Cabot Sisters #1)

She looked uncertainly at Finnegan, then peered down the dimly lit hallway. “Should you not warn him?”


“If I tell him you’ve come, he might very well draw a pistol.” He smiled as if amused by that. “When you see him, you will understand. Green door,” he reminded her, turning away. “Don’t knock. It will do no good. Just enter.”

Honor clenched a fist against the swell of nerves and started down the hall. She found the green door easily enough, and when she glanced back to the foyer, Finnegan had disappeared.

Honor looked at the door. She pushed the hood off her head, smoothed her hair and considered the door handle. When she thought of all the things she’d done, of all the risks she’d taken and then laughed about, she could never recall being afraid. Not even the night she’d gone to Southwark. But tonight, her fear was almost choking her. She didn’t know how she would ever bear it if he turned her away. But she wasn’t going to marry Cleburne without hearing the truth from his lips. Either he loved her, or he had used her. The man had to tell her the truth.

She reached for the handle and slowly turned it, opening the door only partially. She put her head into the opening and looked in.

The only light in the room came from the hearth. She could see the back of George’s head over the top of a chair, his feet crossed and propped on an ottoman. One arm was draped over the side of the armchair, a snifter of brandy dangling from two fingers, the amber liquid glowing in the soft light.

She stepped in and quietly shut the door behind her.

“Damn you to bloody hell, Finnegan!” he snarled. “I’ve told you to leave me be. Do you want me to shoot you? Come round here, man, and I will happily oblige!”

Honor undid the clasp of her cloak and let it fall to the ground.

“Don’t creep about behind me,” George snapped. “Do you know that you are perhaps the worst valet in all of England? God help me to understand why I ever accepted you into this house.”

The beast in him had certainly come out to play, hadn’t it? Honor smoothed her gown and started forward.

“If I’d had half a wit, I would have turned you out as Lord Dearing did. I could have brought a goat into my house and been assured of less trouble than you give me.”

Honor cocked a brow at that. Finnegan seemed a perfectly nice man to her. She moved to stand directly behind George, debating what she would say. All of her carefully rehearsed words had flitted out of her mind.

“Get out,” George growled. “I don’t want to hear you. I don’t want to smell you. I don’t want your food or wine or whatever it is you’ve brought me now. I do well enough with my whiskey and brandy. Take a good look around this room and see what I mean. They are my friends.”

“They are not your only friends,” Honor said.

George came up so quickly at the sound of her voice that he knocked over the ottoman. He whirled around, and his eyes went wide with shock at the sight of her. His gaze scraped over her face. And then he carelessly dropped the snifter onto the carpet as he surged forward, catching Honor in his arms, burying his face in her neck, her hair. “Dear God, where have you been?” he moaned into her hair.

A tear coursed Honor’s cheek. If he hadn’t held her so tightly, she would have slapped him. “I would ask the same of you!”

He kissed her, his hands on her body, in her hair. He crushed her to him, kissing her hard and holding her tightly, as if he feared he would lose her if he let go. “My God, I have missed you.”

Honor’s fear gave way to desire. The way he was holding her, looking at her, kissing her—she’d never felt so desirable, and she would not shy away from it. She would take what she could for as long as she could.

There seemed so much to say, but it was lost in the onslaught of his passion. George sank back into the chair, carrying Honor with him. His mouth was warm and wet on hers, as tormenting as it was pleasurable. Every touch of his mouth, every caress of his hand jolted her to her marrow. She clung to him, to the strength in his arms and his torso, to the heat that radiated from him.

He groped for the hem of her gown and slid his hands up, finding her waist, lifting her and settling her on the hard ridge of his erection. A shiver of yearning shimmered down her spine, and she moved against him, gasping at the sensation of his hardness against the softest part of her. As his tongue swirled around hers, his hands caressed her sides, her torso, her breasts.