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A Duchess in Name
The Grantham Girls #1
Amanda Weaver
Releasing on January 18, 2016.
Carina Press
Victoria Carson never expected love. An American heiress and graduate of Lady Grantham's finishing school, she's been groomed since birth to marry an English title—the grander the better. So when the man chosen for her, the forbidding Earl of Dunnley, seems to hate her on sight, she understands that it can't matter. Love can have no place in this arrangement.
Andrew Hargrave has little use for his title and even less for his cold, disinterested parents. Determined to make his own way, he's devoted to his life in Italy working as an archaeologist. Until the collapse of his family's fortune drags him back to England to a marriage he never wanted and a woman he doesn't care to know.
Wild attraction is an unwanted complication for them both, though it forms the most fragile of bonds. Their marriage of convenience isn't so intolerable after all—but it may not be enough when the deception that bound them is finally revealed.
She cleared her
throat and leaned forward to set her untouched sherry on the table, but his hand
shot out to close around her wrist. Her breath stalled as he slid his fingers
down to cover hers, gently plucking the glass from her hand. He set it down for
her, and his own as well, but he didn’t lean back. The scent of his bay rum
tickled her nose, and she was close enough to see the faint dark stubble
beginning to form on his jaw. Surely, this close to her, he could hear her
heart pounding.
His hand found
her wrist again and he traced his way up to her elbow, curling his fingers
around her upper arm. She burned everywhere he touched. She should get up and
leave. His intentions were clear and the longer she sat here, the more awkward
it would become. The moment for decision was past as he slid his hand back into
her hair, holding her head gently between his palms. She wanted to push him
away and flee, but she couldn’t seem to make herself move, not when he was so
close, staring into her eyes this way.
“Victoria, we’ve
had a bad start, you and I.” His thumb caressed her cheekbone and slowly,
inexorably, he drew her face closer to his. “I’m not returning to Italy this
summer. I’m staying here. And I’d like us to start again. As a real husband and wife.”
She was stunned
into silence, absorbing his words. Staying. Invading. This was her place and he
was forcing his way into it, asking her for the impossible.
The implications
of it were still reverberating in her heart when he caught her off guard and
kissed her. The shock of it all made her slow to respond, and she didn’t push
him away when she should have. She held still long enough to notice how
different this was from the other kisses they shared. He wasn’t drunk, there
was no anger. This wasn’t a kiss to punish, this was a kiss to seduce—
And that was
when she finally found the wherewithal to move.
“No, please
don’t.”
Amanda Weaver has loved romance since she read that very first Kathleen E. Woodiwiss novel at fifteen. After a long detour into a career as a costume designer in theatre, she’s found her way back to romance, this time as a writer.
A native Floridian, Amanda transplanted to New York City many years ago and now considers Brooklyn home, along with her husband, daughter, two cats, and nowhere near enough space.
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