Not Wicked Enough by Carolyn Jewel

circumstances of the offense. He regularly reminds me of all of mine, and there were many.” She looked up at the duke. “I am now more than a quarter of a century old, and he has held a grudge against my mother’s relations since before I was born. I can only marvel, sir, at his tenacity. My maternal grandfather is no longer living, and my father cannot and, I assure you, will never forgive any relative of the man who disowned my mother for marrying him.”
     
    “Ah.”
     
    “I could not tell him my mother had maintained a secret correspondence with my great-aunt any more than I could confess I’d carried on as she did. If he had known, he would have forbidden it, and I would know nothing of my mother’s life.”
     
    “And he would never forgive you.”
     
    “No. He would not. And does not.” She crossed her arms and tapped one finger on her upper arm. “Even so, I was betrayed. After a fashion.”
     
    “How so?”
     
    “She meant me no harm, you understand. Quite the opposite. But when Aunt Lily passed on, she left me Syton House. My father was furious. That I had been rewarded for my treachery only made it worse, you see.”
     
    His expression stayed thoughtful. “Her legacy to you cost you your father. The only family you had left.”
     
    The enormity of his understanding shook her. No one, not even Ginny, had understood what it had meant to lose her father, even though he’d never been the sort of loving family she knew Ginny had grown up with. All she could do was nod.
     
    “Syton House.” Mountjoy rubbed one cheek. “Quite a legacy, I’d say.”
     
    “The disaster was total. She left me everything and destroyed Camber’s hopes of combining her fortune with his.”
     
    “Everything?”
     
    She sighed. “Eighty-six thousand pounds and two estates besides Syton House. One in Scotland, a castle near Edinburgh, and another estate in Kent.”
     
    His eyebrows rose.
     
    “They are leased with fifty more years remaining. I make a tidy sum on them both. I don’t have any expectation that I will be forgiven for that from any quarter. I do believe my father would be a happier man if I were reduced to living under a tree.”
     
    “Why would you ever go home to him? Why not travel the world until he passes to his reward? Let him live in another of your houses.”
     
    She shrugged. “He is my father, and the only person I know who remembers my mother. Sometimes he’ll even tell me about her. Things I never knew because I can hardly remember her. When he does, I begin to understand why she married him, for he loved her beyond life. There was room for only one love in his life; my mother. Just as Greer was the only love for me.”
     
    Mountjoy cocked his head and, after considering her a moment, said, “Shall I ask Lord Fenris to leave? Or would you prefer I take you home?” He put a hand on her shoulder, and Lily’s senses focused on that contact between them. Hisfingers curved over her, touching her gown and bare skin, too. Her heart beat too fast. “To Bitterward, I mean.” She faced him, and in so doing, his hand fell away from her. He meant nothing by that casual touch. They were close enough to touch again. But neither of them moved. “What are you thinking?” Mountjoy asked.
     
    She could not remember a time when any man had made her so relentlessly aware that she was a woman. The man made the back of her knees positively weak. “Nothing.”
     
    He laughed, and her belly tightened. “Wellstone. The day you are thinking of nothing is the day the world ends.”
     
    “Very well.” She shook her head, amused by him. “I am imagining myself calmly telling Lord Fenris that I am indeed his cousin and that if he chooses to withdraw from High Tearing on account of my being an unwanted connection, that is his choice to make. He will leave, mortified and secretly happy with his narrow escape, and that will be that.”
     
    “Begging your pardon, but that does not sound like you.