Secrets of Surrender (Rothwell, Band 3) - Softcover

Hunter, Madeline

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0440243955 ISBN 13: 9780440243953

Verlag: Random House Publishing Group, 2008

Inhaltsangabe

First he’ll learn her most intimate secrets. Then he’ll arouse her deepest passions. He’s the lover she’s been waiting for: the man who can rescue her from her wicked past–for a price–in Madeline Hunter’s tale of sin, seduction, and irresistible, impossible love.

He catches her eye across the dining room–a handsome stranger who stands out among the lewd noblemen and bawdy painted women. But their worlds are about to collide in a way Roselyn Longworth could never have imagined. For before the night is out, she will be auctioned off to the highest bidder…and Kyle Bradwell will lead her from one kind of hell to another. Yet from the moment he wins her, Kyle treats Rose with a gentleness she hasn’t known since a family scandal destroyed her reputation. And when she finally learns what is really driving Kyle, it’s too late. For Rose has fallen for the man who knows her most intimate secrets. Now he has stunned her with a proposal of marriage–the first step in a seduction that will demand nothing less than her complete surrender.…

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Madeline Hunter is a nationally bestselling author of historical romances who lives in Pennsylvania with her husband and two sons. In a parallel existence to the one she enjoys as a novelist, she has a Ph.D. in art history and teaches at an East Coast university.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Chapter One


Roselyn Longworth contemplated her damnation.  

Hell was not fire and brimstone, she realized. It consisted of merciless self-awareness. You learned the truth about yourself in hell. You faced the lies that you had told your soul in order to justify doing the wrong thing.

Hell was also eternal humiliation, such as she was suffering at this country house party.

All around her Lord Norbury's other guests laughed and played while they awaited the call to dinner. Upon arriving yesterday in Lord Norbury's coach, she had discovered that the guest list was not what she expected. The men were all members of polite society, but the women—

A loud screech interrupted her thoughts. A woman in a garish sapphire dinner dress playfully fought with a man who had grabbed her. The other men shouted encouragement to the fellow. Even Norbury urged him on. After a display of mock resistance, his captive surrendered to the kind of embrace and kiss that no one else should see.

Roselyn surveyed the painted faces and extreme attire of the other women. The men had not brought their wives with them. They had not even brought their refined mistresses. These women were common prostitutes imported from London's brothels. She suspected a few could not even claim that pedigree.

And here she sat among them.

She could not hide from the stark implications. The other men had brought their whores, and Lord Norbury had brought his.

How could she have misunderstood the events of the last month so badly? She tried to put her mind back to the day of Lord Norbury's first flatteries and overtures, but the memory was gone now, burned to ashes by the ruthless fire of reality during the last twenty-four hours.

The lover in question strolled among his guests, coming toward her. With each step the lights in his eyes brightened a bit more. She had thought those were the flames of love and passion. She now saw them as reflections off ice.

She had been pathetically stupid.

"You are very quiet, Rose. You have been all day." He sidled closely, looming beside her chair. A day ago she would have welcomed his closeness and found his attention romantic.
Stupid, stupid woman.

"I begged you to allow me to leave. I am in this drawing room only because you demanded that I come down for dinner, so do not complain that I do not engage in your party's games. I do not care for the company or the free behavior being shown." Over in the corner the embracing couple were lost to the world, but the world could watch their groping all the same.

"My, you are proud. Far more proud than you should be." His mutter carried a cruel edge. Her nape prickled.

He alluded to more than her disapproval of his house party. She had refused him things last night. She had not even understood what he wanted at first, and had not hidden her shock when he explained.

In the span of minutes the affectionate and generous lover had become the angry and spurned patron. Cold. Hard. Mean. He transformed into a man who had paid more than he ought for a possession, only to discover that he had been defrauded.

Her face warmed at the memory of the sordid scene in her bedchamber before he left. She had thought she was his beloved, his paramour. He had made it clear that he considered her a common whore. His scathing words had been so many slaps, wakening her from an illusion created out of her own hopelessness and loneliness.

"If I am too proud, call for the carriage and allow me to leave. Show the kindness of permitting me to retain what little of that pride remains."

"I would be alone without female company then. I will look a fool in my own home."

"We will say I became ill. We will say—"

His hand came to rest on her shoulder, silencing her. He grasped firmly, hurtfully. She tried to suppress a shiver of revulsion at the sensation of his palm on her skin.

"We will say nothing. You will go nowhere. I expect you to continue showing your gratitude for my generosity. If you please me, our arrangement can continue. You like the dresses and ensembles, Rose. You want the comforts and niceties that your family's fall denied you."

Her throat tightened. She blinked back the first tears of the day. "You misunderstood."

"You gave me your aging innocence and your favors. You took my gifts. I misunderstood nothing."

He bent down so his face was mere inches from hers. She fought the instinct to veer away from the ruddy complexion and pale eyes and tawny hair that once belonged to a man she respected. She had even convinced herself that he was handsome.

"We understand each other now at least, don't we?" He made it a demand. "There will be no more childish delicacy tonight."

Her stomach lurched. "There have been too many misunderstandings and I fear they continue. I have asked to leave all day because there will be nothing tonight."

His mouth formed a line so hard that she was grateful others were in the chamber. The hand on her shoulder gave a painful squeeze. "You do try a man's patience, Rose."

The prickling returned on her nape and scurried down her spine. She searched his expression for signs of the jovial man she had so recently thought loved her. She could find none. Of course not. That man had never existed.

A mild disturbance broke their silent battle of wills. The butler eased through the drawing room. Norbury took the card being borne on a silver salver. He read it and walked away.

He opened the doors that led into the library. Before the door closed she glimpsed a tall, dark-haired gentleman waiting in there.

Ill ease sloshed in her stomach. She fought to contain the panic that wanted to pour through her.

She had been stupid again. Ignorant and blind. What she endured now was nothing. Tonight would be the true descent into hell.


Norbury appeared angry when he entered the library. Kyle caught a glimpse of the drawing room before the doors closed.

"Bradwell. I expected you earlier."

"The surveyors took longer than expected." Kyle gestured toward the drawing room. "You are entertaining. I can return tomorrow."

"Nonsense. You are here now. Let us see what you have." Norbury's face creased into a smile intended to be reassuring.

Kyle surmised that the annoyance was not with the hour of his call, but something else. Like most men of his station, Viscount Norbury, son and heir to the Earl of Cottington, did not take disagreement well. He expected all but his peers to assume that whatever he did or said was correct. It looked as if someone in the drawing room had not conformed to those rules.

Kyle unfurled a large roll of paper on the desk. Norbury bent over it. He scanned the map closely, then stuck a finger on a blank section near a stream. "Why have you left this empty? We could fit another estate here. A good-sized one too."

"Your father does not want another house visible from the back of the manor house. With the stream, there is no way to use that land without positioning the new house—"

"He is of no mind or condition to make such decisions now. You know that. It is why he handed management of his affairs to me."

"It is still his land, and he spoke his wishes to me directly."

Norbury's anger was definitely directed at Kyle now. "How like him. He has agreed to carve up one of our properties into these small estates for the likes of your parvenu friends, but then he worries about the prospects from the old manor house. We never use it, so why should he care? I am telling you to put...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Random House Publishing Group
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2008
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0440243955
• ISBN 13: 9780440243953
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Auflage: 1
• Anzahl der Seiten: 400
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: gpsr@libri.de; gpsr@libri.de; ; Europaallee 1; Bad Hersfeld; 36244; Deutschland