Free Never Surrender to a Scoundrel by Lily Dalton Page A

help but pity herself. Just hours before she’d been the toast of London, with all her dreams laid out before her. Now she must agree to marry a known rakehell, who would most likely despise her forever for chaining him to a dull and respectable life.
    She deserved no better, and had no one to blame but herself. She must be grateful to Mr. Kincraig for agreeing to marry her at all.
    She rested her head on his chest, tears spilling from her eyes. “I will do as you say, my lord. I will marry Mr. Kincraig.”
      
    “I still can’t believe this is real, that you’ll be marrying Mr. Kincraig.” Sophia sighed heavily and hugged Clarissa from behind, squeezing her as tightly as Sophia’s six-months-along pregnant belly would allow. “Tell me, Clarissa, how did this come to be?”
    All three sisters lay in Clarissa’s bed with her in the middle. Last night, they’d simply held her as she cried and said gentle things until she’d pretended to fall asleep so they wouldn’t ask her any more questions—questions she couldn’t answer, not when her grandfather had urgently sworn her to secrecy, for the sake of her child and the man who had agreed to marry her.
    Although she wanted nothing more than to share the truth with Sophia and Daphne, along with all of her anger and her pain, didn’t she owe Wolverton and Mr. Kincraig her strictest compliance after all the difficulty she had caused them and everyone else?
    “I don’t know,” she answered numbly, staring into the shadows across the room.
    She could just make out the pale pink outline of the dress she had worn last night where Sophia had lain it across her dressing room chair. What a wonderful time she and her mother and sisters had selecting the style of the gown and agonizing over the choice of fabric and trimmings. As she’d endured all the necessary fittings, she’d been filled with such hope for a happy future with the man she loved.
    Now the dress had become a symbol of her shattered dreams.
    “It just happened,” she said in a hollow voice.
    But with Lord Quinn, who had told her he loved her, not the bleary-eyed, always disastrous Mr. Kincraig…who had been kind enough not to abandon her.
    Why she couldn’t have cried on Havering’s shoulder? Kind, handsome, generous Havering, so like a brother to them all. She’d much rather be forced into marriage with him.
    That wasn’t fair of her. It wasn’t fair of her at all, not to Havering and most certainly not to Kincraig.
    Last night after her sisters had fallen asleep, she’d lain awake alone with her regrets and tears, praying it was all a nightmare she’d wake from in the morning. But now light crept through the curtains, along with the sounds of a stirring city. She simply had to come to terms; she wasn’t going to wake up and find it all a bad dream.
    She felt tender and bruised, inside and out. Bitterly angry, sad, and betrayed. She wanted nothing more than to confront Quinn, to demand an explanation, but she could not imagine herself playing the part of a cast-off and forgotten little fool. She had her pride.
    She could not help but wonder where he was now. Likely honeymooning in the arms of the new Lady Quinn.
    Did he think of her? Was he miserable too? She had most certainly made a mistake in not telling him immediately about the baby. It had been three and a half weeks since she’d missed her courses. At first she’d told herself there must be some other explanation, but then she’d started seeing the same bright spots in her vision Sophia had described early in her pregnancy and suffering a vague nausea at various times throughout the day.
    And though she had been thrilled, so thrilled at the idea of becoming a mother, she hadn’t told Quinn because foolishly she’d wanted their lives to follow the prescribed storybook pattern of romance and love, first an engagement and then marriage. Then, and only then, would there be children. The realization she was with child had thrown that