Free A Season for Love by Blair Bancroft

glowering dark brows
gave him hope, for his betrothed’s face was less set into a marble
mask than it had been a moment earlier. He had caught her
interest.
    “ This is not easy to say . . . Jen,” he
told her. “I realize my news may be cause for dismay. I can only
hope, however, that you will rejoice with me.” His lady’s
flickering spark of animation turned to wide-eyed speculation, her
cold fury apparently swallowed up by curiosity. “Caroline came to
tell me that after leaving London eight years ago, my wife bore a
son. An heir. He is seven years old now . . . and called Laurence.”
Anxiously, Marcus examined the face of his betrothed. “I swear it
is true,” he added. “He is my image at that same age. And his birth
is attested by the doctor and the local vicar.”
    Years earlier, Jenny had been thrown from her
horse onto the hard-packed Spanish plain, the air rushing out of
her in a great whoosh that left her stunned and bleeding. The
duke’s news was no less of a shock.
    Longville wished to marry her to get an
heir.
    He now had an heir.
    Ipso facto , he
no longer had any need of Jenny Wharton.
    “ Jen!” The duke’s urgent voice was much
too close for comfort. She discovered him beside her on the settee.
Incredibly, his arms seemed to be about her shoulders. “Ah,
Sayers,” the duke declared, as the butler answered his ring. “Some
brandy for Lady Eugenia. She has suffered a shock.” The butler
hastened off, but not before shooting the Duke of Longville a
killing glance.
    “ I am quite all right,” Jen said,
straightening her shoulders. Dratted man, he didn’t let go. His
proximity was keeping her insides in turmoil, preventing her from
displaying that her pride could be as stiff and arrogant as
his.
    When the brandy had been duly administered
and the duke had come to the belated realization that he should
return to the curved leather of the klismos chair, Lady Eugenia
managed to don a semblance of her customary calm and collected
façade. “You are entirely correct, Your Grace,” she informed her
betrothed. “This is indeed joyous news. My felicitations. I assure
you I understand perfectly. I will have papa send a notice to the
newspapers immediately. To anyone who dares to ask, I shall simply
say I decided we would not suit.”
    “ But you can’t!” Marcus roared.
“Besides, I’m sure Worley will never stand for it,” he added
righteously. “Is this all our marriage means to you, then? Are you
so shallow that if you cannot provide the heir, you wish to cry
off? Truly, Eugenia, I had thought better of you.”
    Jenny stared. “You do not wish to cry
off?”
    “ Are you mad? I’ve just become the
father of two, why in the devil would I wish to cry off? If ever a
man needed a wife . . .” The duke trailed off, glaring.
    “ Oh.” They stared, each close to the
teeth-baring stance of two cats about to engage in a territorial
dispute. “Forgive me,” Jen suddenly gasped, ducking her head. “I am
usually more articulate.”
    “ As am I,” the duke groaned. “If you
could but picture four days on the road with a seven-year-old with
a tendency toward travel sickness . . .”
    A giggle bubbled in Jenny’s throat, only to
be ruthlessly repressed. Obviously, the Duke of Longville was not
in a humorous mood. That he still wished to marry her was
astonishing, even if his reasons were still all the wrong ones.
    He needed a wife. And Jenny Norville Wharton
did not need the scandal of a broken engagement or the friction of
living forever in her mother’s establishment, which was all her
current financial means would provide. Therefore, she was still in
want of a husband.
    Yet, had there been a niggling sense of
relief somewhere inside her when she had been so sure he wished to
cry off? Relief that she would not be trapped in a hopelessly
one-sided marriage—loving a man who had never shared himself with
another, not even, she suspected, with his first wife?
    Perhaps. But the overwhelming