Desired by Nicola Cornick Page B

theworld,” she said crossly. “I just want to know what to say to Tess.”
    “There were no brothels in the parts of the world Owen and I were exploring,” Alex said. He bent his head and kissed her softly. “As for Owen and Tess, it is nobody’s business but their own, Joanna. Leave them to sort it out themselves.”
    “But—” Joanna started.
    Alex kissed her again with more deliberation this time, and her thoughts scattered, her body rising to the demand in his touch. By the time he lowered his head to her breast she had forgotten Tess’s marriage completely in the pleasure of rediscovering her own.
     
    O WEN FLATTERED HIMSELF THAT his great-aunt Lady Martindale already had a soft spot for him even though they had known one another for no more than a year. Lady Martindale had been the previous Lord Rothbury’s eldest sister. She was a childless widow who was habitually squired about town by some distant family connection called Rupert Montmorency, whom she treated rather as she would a pet dog. Rupert, Owen had quickly discovered, was not the sharpest wit in the family tree, a rather vacuous dandy who nevertheless seemed a good sort. Lady Martindale’s tolerance of him, Owen suspected, said a great deal about the kind nature beneath her rather formidable manner.
    When he had first met his great-aunt, Lady Martindale had walked around him, examining him through her quizzing glass as though he were an exhibit in afreak show, then she had announced that she had heard he was a scoundrel and that she liked that, and had told him bluntly that he would see not a penny of her fortune unless he married to oblige her.
    Over the past few months he and Lady Martindale had started to build a wary regard for one another. Owen admired Lady Martindale’s wisdom and her tenacity. With her, he felt a sense of family and a fierce residual loyalty to his British connections.
    This morning, however, he could see that her good opinion of him had come crashing down. Perched on the overstuffed sofa in the lemon drawing room, tall and thin, clutching her reticule in one sharp claw of a hand, her dark eyes snapping with fury, she looked like an angry bird of prey. Beside her, Rupert, resplendent in a brightly embroidered waistcoat that made Owen’s head ache just to look at it, fidgeted as though he were seated on hot bricks.
    “No refreshment for me, thank you,” Lady Martindale had snapped when Owen had offered, “and nothing for Rupert either.”
    “Brandy?” Rupert had said plaintively.
    Lady Martindale ignored him. “I hear you have offered marriage to Lady Darent,” she said. She enunciated each word as though it had a full stop after it. She spoke in the sort of tone that suggested that Owen had committed some unforgivable social blunder. “Why would you do such a thing?”
    “Splendid little filly,” Rupert put in helpfully. “I likeLady Darent. Frightfully tempting. Brandy?” he added with a hopeful lift of the brows.
    “Be quiet, Rupert,” Lady Martindale said. “You do not understand. Gentlemen do not marry women like Lady Darent.”
    “I would,” Rupert said longingly.
    “Three gentlemen already have done,” Owen pointed out.
    “Two gentlemen and a rogue,” Lady Martindale corrected. “Brokeby was no gentleman. Well?” she added impatiently. “You have not answered my question. Whatever possessed you?”
    “He wants to marry Lady Darent so that he can s—” Rupert broke off as Owen shook his head sharply, and subsided back against the sofa cushions like a deflating balloon.
    “It is a business arrangement,” Owen said smoothly. “Lady Darent requires the protection of my name for herself and her stepchildren. She is in some financial and personal difficulty and I have offered to help her.”
    “Capital,” Rupert said, brightening again. “Nice work, Rothbury, generous to a fault. Plus you will get to s—”
    “To strengthen an alliance with the Grants and the Farne Dukedom,” Owen said