How to Catch a Wild Viscount

by Tessa Dare

The man possessed a cutting wit, and used it to draw blood. Some gentlemen angled trout while on holiday; others shot game. Arthur Brooke made it a sport to disenchant—as though it were his personal mission to drive fancy and naiveté to extinction.

“That’s it. I shall put aside my novel for the evening and work on my list instead.” “Your list?” Denny asked. “What kind of list?” “My list of potential lovers.” Cecily coughed. “Portia, surely you don’t . . .” “Oh, surely I do. I am no longer in mourning. I am a widow now, financially and otherwise independent, and I intend to make the most of it. I shall write scandalous novels and take a dozen lovers.” “All at once?” Brooke quipped. “Perhaps in pairs,” she retorted, without missing a beat.

“Because you are so madly in love?” Cecily gave a despairing sniff. “Please. Because we are cousins of some vague sort, and we can reunite the ancestral fortune.” She stared up at the gilt ceiling trim. “What else would people assume? For what other earthly reason would I have remained unmarried through four seasons? Certainly not because I’ve been clinging to a ridiculous infatuation all this time. Certainly not because I’ve wasted the best years of my youth and spurned innumerable suitors, pining after a man who had long forgotten me. No, no one would ever credit that reasoning. They could never think me such a ninny as that.”

“You are a cad.” Cecily wrenched her hand away and balled it into a fist. “An arrogant, insufferable cad.” “Yes, yes. Now we come to the truth. Shall I give you an honest answer, then? That I kissed you that night for no other reason than that you looked uncommonly pretty and fresh, and though I doubted my ability to vanquish Napoleon, it was some balm to my pride to conquer you, to feel you tremble under my touch? And that now I return from war, to find everything changed, myself most of all. I scarcely recognize my surroundings, except . . .” He cupped her chin in his hand and lightly framed her jaw between his thumb and forefinger. “Except Cecily Hale still looks at me with stars in her eyes, the same as she ever did. And when I touch her, she still trembles.”

“You see? You can marry anyone or no one. But you’ll always be mine.”

“I will put you out of my mind forever. You are not so very handsome, you know, for all that.” “No, I’m not,” he said, chuckling. “And there’s the wonder of it. It’s nothing to do with me, and everything to do with you. I know you, Cecily. You may try to put me out of your mind. You may even succeed. But you’ve built a home for me in your heart, and you’re too generous a soul to cast me out now.”

She’d always worn melancholy well. She was rather like the moon that way: a fixture of bright, alluring sadness that kept watch with him each night.

He’d been prowling this bedchamber every night, driven wild by the knowledge only two oaken doors and some fifty paces of wainscoted corridor lay between him and the woman he’d crossed a continent to hold.

She stayed like that, staring up at a slice of cloudy sky visible through the branches, until the pummeling blows stopped and the boar wheezed its last rattling breath.

And if this “werestag” had eclipsed the memory of their kiss with his gory midnight rescue . . . Luke just would have to do it one better, and give Cecily a new memory to occupy her thoughts. An experience she could never forget.

He wanted to possess her mouth, her body, her mind and heart. To touch every deep, soft and secret part of her: the tender arch of her palate, the vulnerable curve beneath each breast, the snug corner of her heart where his memory lived.

“I’m out here chasing you, you idiot!” She buffeted his shoulder with her fist. “You’re the one I love.”

“Listen to me. I admire you. Adore you. Hell, I’ve spent four years constructing some twisted, blasphemous religion around you. And you must know how badly I want you.” He slid a hand to the small of her back and crushed her belly against his aching groin, then kissed her again, to stifle his unwilling groan. “But I can’t love you, Cecily, not the way you deserve.”

“Well, then. When can we be married?” Brooke directed his question to Portia. “Married!” Blushing furiously, Portia made a dismissive gesture with both hands. “Why, I’m only just learning to enjoy being a widow. I don’t want to be married. I want to write scandalous novels and take dozens of lovers.”