The christmas widow, p.9
The Christmas Widow, page 9
A very familiar hard mouth Emma realized with a sinking sensation in the pit of her stomach. A hard mouth that had softened when – in a moment of pure and utter lunacy – she had allowed herself to be kissed in the snow and the shadows by a very inappropriate suitor. If one could even call him a suitor.
Rake was probably a better term.
Lord William Prescott’s reputation as a notorious womanizer and a known blackguard proceeded him wherever he went. He was accepted by polite society solely because of his title, and the title he would one day inherit when his father passed and he became the seventh Marquess of Ware.
And he kissed me, Emma recalled, searching through the blurry vestiges of her memory as her cheeks turned a bright, fiery red and her heart began to pound. Or at least I think he kissed me. Perhaps I kissed him.
Although if his naked chest and arrogant smirk were any indication, they had done far more than kiss…
“I wondered when you were going to get up.” Lord Prescott’s voice was husky from sleep. Sitting up on his elbows he peered down at her, thick eyebrows drawing together beneath a dark slash of tousled hair. “Feeling a little worse for wear, are we? I expected as much.”
Emma pinched her eyes shut as hard as she could before dragging the covers up and over her head. A dream, she told herself as her heart beat frantically against her chest and the back of her neck went cold and clammy. It’s just a horrible, horrible dream. When I wake up I shall be alone and Lord Prescott will be passed out below stairs or in one of the maid’s bedrooms or wherever scoundrels go when they have indulged in too many glasses of brandy.
Which only begged the question: where did proper young ladies find themselves when they indulged in too many glasses of elderberry wine?
In bed with a rake, or so it appeared. For no matter how much Emma wished it otherwise there was no escaping the fact that she wasn’t in a dream and the incorrigible Lord Prescott really was in her bed and her life as she knew it was completely and utterly ruined.
A RAKE IN WINTER
Lady Emma Sterling has always been the perfect lady. Which is why no is more shocked than Lady Emma herself when she accidentally indulges in a bit too much elderberry wine and wakes up the next morning in bed with none other than Lord William Prescott, England’s most notorious rake!
Humiliated and ashamed, Emma would like to pretend the whole thing never happened. Unfortunately, Will isn’t about to let her go that easily. Enchanted by her deep blushes and scandalized glances he’s as determined to pursue Emma as she is to avoid him.
When they are trapped together during a winter storm Emma is left with no choice but to finally confront her conflicted feelings for the handsome rogue who has been slowly stealing her heart. But will their Christmas affair end in love… or disaster?
Jillian Eaton, The Christmas Widow
