Seven Wicked Nights (Turner #1.5)

He answered her with a quick kiss.

“Well, then. When can we be married?” Brooke directed his question to Portia.

“Married!” Blushing furiously, Portia made a dismissive gesture with both hands. “Why, I’m only just learning to enjoy being a widow. I don’t want to be married. I want to write scandalous novels and take dozens of lovers.”

Brooke raised an eyebrow. “Can that be negotiated to lover, singular?”

“That,” she said, giving him a coy smile, “would depend on your skill at negotiation.”

“What an evening you’ve had, Portia,” Cecily said. “A brush with death, a proposal of marriage, an indecent proposition… Surely you have sufficient inspiration for your gothic novel?”

“Too much inspiration!” Portia wailed, gesturing toward her bandaged foot. “I am done with gothics completely. No, I shall take a cue from my insipid wallpaper and write a bawdy little tale about a wanton dairymaid and her many lovers.”

“Lover, singular.” Brooke flopped on the divan and settled her feet in his lap.

“Oh,” she sighed, as he massaged her uninjured foot. “Oh, very well.”

Luke tugged on Cecily’s hand, drawing her toward the doorway. “Let’s make our escape.”

As they left, she heard Denny say in his usual jocular tone, “Do me a favor, Portia? Model your hero after me. Just once, I should like to get the girl.”

Cecily and Luke tumbled into the corridor, hands still linked.

“I’m sorry,” he said, twirling her to a stop and backing her against the wall. “I didn’t have a chance to ask for your hand properly, but…you don’t have an objection, do you?”

She paused a moment to savor the endearing vulnerability in his expression. Then she kissed him soundly, threading her fingers into his hair and pressing her body to his. “There,” she said finally. “Does that feel like an objection?”

He smiled and planted a light kiss between her eyebrows before resting his forehead against hers. Between them, their hands made a tight knot of fingers and thumbs.

“I’ll leave within the hour,” he said, “to go speak with your father. I cannot expect even Denny to be so generous as to continue hosting his rival in this house. And I couldn’t spend another night here without having you in my bed.”

“As if I would find that objectionable.”

They kissed again, and he pressed her against the wall, his hips grinding deliciously against hers. “We must have”—kiss—“a very brief”—kiss—“engagement.”

“Can we not just elope? I could pack a valise in a trice.”

He laughed softly into her hair, and she thought it the most beautiful sound in the world.

“Cecy,” he whispered against her ear, “tell me this is not a dream. Are you truly mine at last?”

“Oh, Luke.” She slid her arms about his waist and gripped him tight. “I always have been.”





About Tessa



Thanks for reading!

I hope you enjoyed How to Catch a Wild Viscount!

If you’d like to learn more about me or my books, please visit www.TessaDare.com, or sign up for my e-mail newsletter to be notified whenever I have a new release. You can also follow me on Twitter at @tessadare, or like my Facebook page at http://facebook.com/tessadareauthor.

Tessa Dare is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of eleven historical romance novels and four novellas. Her books have won numerous accolades, including Romance Writers of America’s prestigious RITA? award and multiple RT Book Reviews Reviewer’s Choice Awards. Booklist magazine named her one of the “new stars of historical romance,” and her books have been contracted for translation in more than a dozen languages.

A librarian by training and a booklover at heart, Tessa makes her home in Southern California, where she lives with her husband, their two children and a big brown dog.





Other Books by Tessa





Castles Ever After series


Romancing the Duke



Say Yes to the Marquess — releases December 30, 2014





Spindle Cove series


A Night to Surrender



Once Upon a Winter’s Eve



A Week to be Wicked



A Lady by Midnight



Beauty and the Blacksmith



Any Duchess Will Do





Not part of a series


The Scandalous, Dissolute, No-Good Mr. Wright





Stud Club trilogy


One Dance with a Duke



Twice Tempted by a Rogue



Three Nights with a Scoundrel





Wanton Dairymaid trilogy


Goddess of the Hunt



Surrender of a Siren



A Lady of Persuasion





Chapter One





March 13, 1813, the rear lawn of Doyle’s Grange, Somerset, near the Exmoor hills, England