Seven Wicked Nights (Turner #1.5)

He let his suggestion trail off as the girls stared at him in shocked horror. Without a word they turned toward the house, although as she passed Cleo, Bridget did whisper once more, “You really ought to see the grotto!”


Cleo laughed and waved farewell. For a moment she and the duke stood and watched them go, some with steps dragging and some putting their heads together to whisper.

“So that’s why the men have congregated in the stables,” she remarked. “Not merely the lure of a top-notch phaeton.”

He cleared his throat. “I don’t know anything about that.”

Cleo laughed again.

“Although—” Wessex glanced at his sisters’ retreating figures. “—one does sympathize.”

“Frightened by a group of girls?” she asked mischievously.

A faint smile crossed his face. “When Bridget is one of their number? Yes.”

On impulse, she added, “Where is the grotto?”

The duke looked at her, his eyebrows slightly raised. For a moment everything seemed to fade away but the two of them. Cleo felt again the mixture of attraction and alarm that had tugged at her in the parlor the other day. She wet her lips. “That’s twice now that Lady Bridget has mentioned it. I’ve never seen a grotto. Is it very dark and mysterious?”

His gaze dropped to her mouth. “Yes.”

Oh no. No, no, no. She held out her hand and forced a shaky smile to her lips. “Excellent! Perhaps I shall visit it some other day, after I’ve written my letters.”

He hesitated, then handed her the writing case. The weight of it seemed to help hold her feet to the ground; she was a lowly merchant, not someone a duke would find fascinating. She would take her bills and inventory reports, and he would go back to his castle. “You might find a quiet spot by the lake. There are blankets in the boathouse.”

She nodded. “Thank you.”

He looked as though he might say something else, but after a moment he merely bowed. “Good day, Mrs. Barrows.” He turned and walked back the way they had come, without looking back.

Cleo knew, because she watched him until he disappeared from sight.





Chapter Seven





GARETH JOINED BLAIR on the way to the bowling green a couple of days later. He hadn’t planned to go when his mother told him she had planned a day of bowls, but by now he conceded that he was unable to concentrate as usual. Besides, it is the proper thing for a host to join his guests, he told himself as he caught sight of the green, some distance from the house. The ladies reposed under the awnings, enjoying refreshments. A pair of young boys were on the green, arguing over something with fingers pointed and an occasional stamp of a foot. But otherwise there was something decidedly off about the scene.

“Where are the gentlemen?” he asked.

“In the stables.”

“All of them?” exclaimed Gareth.

Blair grinned. “Willoughby’s refuge has proven enormously popular.”

“That damned phaeton.” Gareth shook his head. He knew several men had joined Jack in the stables, but they had still come to his mother’s planned entertainments—until now.

“It really is the finest thing on four wheels I’ve ever seen,” agreed Blair warmly. “And as fast as the wind, he assured us all.”

He glanced sideways at his cousin. “So you’re a member of his band of refugees?”

“I was merely investigating where all the port seemed to have disappeared to,” replied Blair with a perfectly straight face.

“He took the best spirits, didn’t he?” That explained things a bit more.

Blair just grinned again.

Gareth shook his head. “God help the woman Jack marries. She had better be made of stern stuff.”

His cousin coughed. “We cannot all be as fortunate as you, Wessex, to marry a lady as agreeable as Miss Grey.”

Gareth had nothing to say to that. Helen Grey was agreeable—perfectly, completely, alarmingly agreeable. Whatever he said to her, she agreed with. Whatever he suggested, she did. He was developing the oddest feeling that she was afraid of him. Even Withers opposed him from time to time, and Withers was his employee. He reminded himself to pay attention to her today—and then felt guilty that he was in any danger of overlooking her.

Perhaps if he had no interest in any of the women, he wouldn’t feel that way. Unfortunately, Cleo Barrows had come to the wedding, and he was not only uninterested in his actual bride, he was fascinated by her sister. It was wrong. It was almost immoral. He wanted it to stop and yet felt helpless to do so when his eyes seemed to follow her of their own volition and his ears seemed more attuned to the sound of her voice than to any other’s.

They reached the largest of the awnings, set on a gentle rise overlooking the bowling green. His mother came to meet them. “What a lovely surprise!”