A Season of Seduction by Jennifer Haymore Page A

Just… please. Be patient with me.”
“I’m not a patient man.”
“It will take time for me to learn how to trust again.”
“And once I win your trust?”
A small thrill wound through her at his insistence, at the steely determination in his eyes. “Then… if it can be done… yes. I will consider marrying you.”
He squared his shoulders. His brown eyes bore into hers in direct challenge. “I will win your trust, then. It won’t take long.”
He seemed very convinced of that, but she knew herself better than Jack did. “I hope you’re right,” she said with a small smile.
“I am right. By month’s end, we’ll be at the altar.”
He seemed to relish this challenge, and his cocky confidence melted her further. Her smile widening, she pressed her body against him, looking up at him from beneath her eyelashes. “Do you think so?”
“I know it.” He lowered his lips to her brow. “I cannot wait to make you mine.”
Jack sat stiffly, his fingers clamped around his wineglass, his neck prickling. He resisted the urge to yank off his cravat. He hadn’t desired his father and brother’s presence tonight, but the duchess had invited them, and he was in no position to naysay the woman.
To his annoyance, he’d not been seated near Becky. Instead, her aunt, Lady Bertrice, who incessantly peered at him through a monocle, sat on his right. Her magnified rheumy blue eye was so suspicious it made his skin crawl, though if he were being reasonable he’d remember there wasn’t any way she could know anything. If the Duke of Calton could discover nothing of interest in his exploration into Jack’s private affairs, surely an old woman couldn’t either.
Still, he didn’t like the way that blue eye pried under his skin.
Lady Westcliff sat on Jack’s left, separating Jack from his father. Bertrand, Jack’s eldest brother, sat across from them, flanked by Becky in a glorious cream-colored silk gown and Lady Devore. Jack’s father and Bertrand behaved with an obsequiousness toward the duke and his family that made Jack’s gut churn.
Viscount Westcliff, sitting at the duke’s right, was the most affable presence at the table, deftly balancing the surliness of the duke with the fawning of Jack’s family, and it was he and his wife who kept the conversation from sinking to banality—or ceasing altogether.
After the second course was served, Jack’s father sighed and leaned back in his chair, resting one hand on his protuberant belly while the other lifted his wineglass, his little finger raised in an effeminate gesture. He spoke loudly, so his voice could reach the other end of the table. “I should like to thank you again, Your Grace, for convincing my son to take the proper course and do right by your lovely sister. I only regret that the lady has declined.”
Everyone fell silent, and Jack glanced across to Becky. The edges of her lips thinned, and she stared at the table linen beyond her plate of oyster-stuffed venison.
The duke leveled a cold stare at Jack’s father. “I convinced your son of nothing. He was the one who decided that marriage would be the best course of action.”
Jack didn’t look at his father. Not for the first time, he wondered how it was possible that anyone, much less a king of England, could have enough faith in the man to make him a privy councilor. Then again, the Right Honorable Edmund Fulton had always sunk far more effort into his political career than he would with anything related to Jack. And considering King George IV—well, perhaps not so surprising, after all. Jack had never met the current king, but from all he’d heard, the man shared many traits and habits with Jack’s father.
Jack had always been his mother’s child, his mother’s favorite. His father had showered his attention and his love on his two eldest sons, and Jack had never earned much notice from him, except on occasion as someone to vent his frustrations upon when life was not going his way.
When he was