Damian, Earl of Windermere, had to marry Lady Cynthia to
reclaim his family's estate which he so thoughtlessly
gambled away. Fleeing his new wife he spends a year in
Persia, and when he returns home he find his wife has taken
a lover. Damian vows to keep his wife from straying, and
begins to seduce the wife he never wanted. He might be
losing his heart, but will Cynthia be able to forgive him
for leaving her?
Passionate characters combine to create a pleasant story
filled with secrets and romance. Cynthia is a strong willed
heroine who strongly stands by her beliefs even if they
oppose her husband's. She's also a bit vulnerable and deep
down she only wants to do the right thing. Damian is overly
arrogant and righteous at the start of LADY WINDERMERE'S
LOVER, but his conviction to do right by his wife enables
him to grow and become a warmer, more humble character. Even
the side character, Julian, is passionate about his beliefs
and is loyal to a fault.
Miranda Neville combines secrets, romance, and
misunderstandings to create plot twists and an unexpected
ending. The storyline is unique and readers will be joyfully
turning pages to find the answer to all the mysteries. LADY
WINDERMERE'S LOVER is a pleasant read with surprising
secrets.
Hell hath no fury . . .
Damian, Earl of Windermere, rues the day he drunkenly
gambled away his family's estate and was forced into
marriage to reclaim it. Now, after hiding out from his new
bride for a year, Damian is finally called home, only to
discover that his modest bride has become an alluring
beauty—and rumor has it that she's taken a lover. Damian
vows to keep his wife from straying again, but to do so he
must seduce her—and protect his heart from falling for the
wife he never knew he wanted.
Lady Cynthia never aspired to be the subject of scandal.
Lady Cynthia never aspired to be the subject of scandal. But
with her husband off gallivanting across Persia, what was a
lady to do? Flirting shamelessly with his former best friend
seemed like the perfect revenge . . . except no matter how
little Damian deserves her loyalty, Cynthia can't bring
herself to be unfaithful. But now that the scoundrel has
returned home, Cynthia isn't about to forgive his absence so
easily—even if his presence stirs something in her she'd
long thought dead and buried. He might win her heart . . .
if he can earn her forgiveness!
Excerpt
Attending the theater with the Duke of Denford was not the
wisest way for Cynthia to spend her first evening back in
London. He’d escorted her before, to plays, the opera, and
less decorous events like masked balls at the Pantheon. But
this was the first time she’d been out with him when she,
Denford, and her husband were in the same country.
Receiving word from the Foreign Office of Windermere’s
imminent arrival from Persia, she’d pressed the horses over
winter roads from Wiltshire, thinking she’d find him already
at home in Hanover Square.
Her stomach fluttering, she had climbed down from her chaise
and up the steps into the marble hall. She found all serene:
no excitement at the presence of the master of the house, no
evidence of luggage from abroad. The Earl of Windermere
wasn’t at Windermere House. The servants hadn’t seen him or
even heard of their master’s return. The surge of optimism
that she’d maintained for two days on the road dissipated
like heat through a leaking roof. There and then, Cynthia
determined to deny that foolish hope had ever existed.
There was no reason to be disappointed, she told herself
firmly. Disappointment suggested the existence of
expectations. Cynthia would be a fool to expect anything
from Windermere. He hadn’t disappointed her, merely let her
down. During just over a year of marriage, most of it spent
apart, Damian Lewis, Earl of Windermere, had been consistent
in that regard.
Lord Windermere might not have been present to greet his
faithful wife, but the devil next door was. Not half an hour
after her arrival from the country, the Duke of Denford
stepped along the pavement from his house and welcomed her
home as Windermere had failed to do. Despite at least two
very good reasons why she should refuse, Cynthia was now
dressed in her favorite evening gown, sitting in a box at
Drury Lane with temptation incarnate.
“I didn’t expect to see so many people in town just before
Christmas.” She leaned over the rail, peering at the sweep
of seats opposite, five tiers of them, thronged with
increasingly well-dressed patrons, ranging from clerks and
servants in the highest gallery under the roof, down to the
expensive and fashionable boxes nearest the pit. She and
Denford occupied one of the latter, the sidewalls of which
offered an illusion of privacy, despite being open to the
gaze of the world.
“What an excellent box, Julian. You know I like being near
the stage.”
“You also like being invisible to most of the gossiping
tabbies.” He knew as well as she that her flouting of
convention was largely bravado. Fewer than half the
occupants of the vast horseshoe-shaped theater could see the
inhabitants of the front boxes.
“I don’t even know why I worry about being discreet. I’m not
well-known in town.” She waved her hand to indicate the
opposite seats. “It’s quite possible that not a soul in the
place knows who I am.”
“They know me.”
“That’s because you are notorious and therefore interesting
to everyone.”
“The world is filled with fools.”
She turned to look at her companion, whose low voice dropped
to an impossibly deep bass when he was particularly amused
or especially cynical. His appearance alone was enough to
make him stand out. His tall, lean figure was habitually
clad in unrelieved black—this evening in satin breeches and
an evening coat and waistcoat of velvet embroidered in black
silk. Even his neckcloth was black. The gloom of his costume
enhanced the satanic effect of dead-straight black hair,
which he wore long and tied back in a queue with a silk bow.
He sat upright beside her with arms extended, hands resting
on the silver-chased knob of the ebony walking stick he
rarely left at home. His dependence on the elegant staff was
an affectation for a man under thirty in perfect health.
Some people, including Cynthia, found it amusing. Others
found it just one more reason to detest him. The Duke of
Denford had plenty of enemies.
“I believe you enjoy shocking people, Julian.”
Denford’s mouth curled unpleasantly, then the thin face with
the hawkish nose made one of the mercurial transformations
that fascinated Cynthia, and had sent her scuttling out of
town a few weeks earlier, terrified she would succumb to the
heady seduction of the duke’s brilliant blue eyes.
“I enjoy shocking you,” he said. A man shouldn’t be allowed
such devastating features, especially when he had the
ability to change them from ice to fire beneath her gaze.
“I’m not as easy to shock as I was when we first met.”
“No,” he said. “Thank God for that. You have become a
fascinating challenge.”
It didn’t seem possible for pure sky blue to exude heat, but
Denford’s eyes made every inch of her skin flush warm. How
did he manage it? Without moving a muscle, he examined her
face with concentrated intensity for some seconds, then his
gaze dropped to the white expanse of her bosom, the bodice
cut so low that the blue silk and lace barely concealed her
nipples. She felt them hardening, and a curl of fire kindled
in her in belly. A familiar sick panic gripped her chest at
the clash of attraction and repulsion, longing and fear.
She jerked her head toward the stage and stared at the
obstinately closed curtain. Surely it was time for the play
to begin.
“Why did you leave London?” The question was almost a
whisper, close enough to caress her ear.
“Anne wanted to go to Wiltshire,” she said with determined
nonchalance. “As her temporary chaperone, naturally I had to
go with her.”
“Was that the only reason?”
“Why else?”
It was true, in as far as it went. Her houseguest Anne
Brotherton had a reason to visit Hinton Manor, where she’d
remained. But Cynthia had seized on the excuse it offered to
escape Denford’s dangerous attentions. And Denford knew it.
“You like to accommodate your friends,” he said.
“Yes.”
“Am I your friend?”
She laughed nervously. “Of course you are.”
“I look forward to being accommodated.”
Her laugh degenerated to a titter. She grew warmer and more
panicked, torn between the competing urges of flight and
surrender. Desperate to break out of the sensual net he wove
about her, she resorted to frankness. “I’m not like this,
Julian,” she said, staring with dogged, unfocused eyes at
the mass of humanity in the crowded pit. “I am the daughter
of a clergyman. I am married. I would never break my
marriage vows.”
“Would you not?”
“I will not.”
She sensed him retreat, lean back in his chair. Julian had
always been clever that way. He would press her so far, then
withdraw before she became alarmed and ran away. Except that
one time. The one kiss. Which had resulted in her fleeing
London and the temptation to sin.
Because she was, despite everything, a married woman and she
would not betray her husband, however much he might deserve
it. Besides, she wasn’t sure of Denford’s motives.
He desired her. She did not believe that his carnal interest
was feigned. But he had also once been her husband’s best
friend.
The Earl of Windermere dined at Grosvenor Square with Sir
Richard Radcliffe. …Claiming pressure of work, Radcliffe
asked Damian to escort his wife to the theater. Lady Belinda
did not believe in arriving at the theater early. “They
always start late. Besides, no one worth looking at ever
arrives on time,” she said, and pressed another glass of
brandy on him, giving him an excellent view of her bosom
draped in red silk embroidered in gold. As he remembered
well, Her Ladyship wasn’t bashful, either in private or in
public. No one in the theater would miss that scarlet gown.
When they entered the Radcliffes’ box at Drury Lane,
naturally in the best part of the house, Titania was waking
up to find herself in love with an ass. Damian didn’t
particularly like A Midsummer Night’s Dream. It disturbed
him how the fate of humans was dependent on the whims of
fairies, which seemed akin to the turn of the card or the
fall of the dice. So he listened with half an ear to Lady
Belinda’s commentary on the wardrobe choices of the audience
and wished her husband had come with them.
Hard to believe that six years earlier, as a very junior
diplomat, he’d had a massive tendre for the worldly hostess.
She cultivated young followers from the better families, and
her much older husband, ever occupied with the affairs of
state, encouraged it. Damian sometimes wondered how much his
advancement owed to the pleasure of his patron’s wife.
Pleasure indeed. For a single month, once Lady Belinda had
made it blatantly clear that her husband demanded only
discretion, Damian had been her satisfied and ultimately
exhausted bedmate. He’d been tossed aside for a newer, even
younger candidate. A mission to Prussia beckoned, and
frankly the Germans had been a bit of a relief after the
exigencies of life as Lady Belinda’s lover.
A satin-gloved hand touched his knee, and stayed there. “I
have heard, Damian,” she said, her voice a low purr, “that
the Levant is home to many exotic practices.”
“I don’t know about that,” he said. “What seems exotic to us
is normal to them. The game of Chowgan, for example, is no
more or less thrilling than cricket is to us. It’s played on
horseback with sticks to hit a ball. It’s very fine sport
and demands a high degree of skill.”
“I’m always interested in sports that demand skill.” Her
rich gardenia perfume tickled his nose as she leaned in to
whisper. “Do the Persians not have seraglios, like the
Turks?”
“Certainly. But male visitors, especially foreign ones, are
not permitted to enter the zenanas. The women are well-
guarded.”
“My poor Damian! Does that mean you have been alone for a
full year?”
As a matter of fact it did. His bollocks roiled at the
proximity of a woman who would, if he gave the sign, skip
the play and put him through his paces for the rest of the
night.
It was tempting. Very tempting.
Then he thought of his wife, who had been stranded in the
country a full year. Though she hadn’t appealed to him in
the past, long deprivation might make her desirable. With
some regret he pretended to turn his attention to the stage.
Belinda hadn’t given up. “Gentlemen talk. Even if you lacked
the opportunity to play exotic sports, I’m sure you learned
the rules.”
“As a matter of fact I did play Chowgan.”
“Damian,” she said with an impatient edge. “I am not talking
about games that are played on the back of a horse.”
It was stupid to encourage her, but he couldn’t resist. “I
am astonished you never experienced that particular
pleasure.”
She enjoyed that. “Will it surprise you to learn that I have
tried? I thought to give new meaning to the rising trot but
it proved impracticable.”
He crossed his legs, trying and failing to dislodge her
hand. Instead it moved upward, warm against his satin-clad
thigh. “Not even a horse can keep up with you, let alone a
travel-weary man,” he said, hoping she would take the hint
and accept that the delights of the evening would not extend
beyond the thespian. As long as her hand didn’t travel any
farther, she wouldn’t know that his cock hadn’t got the
message about being too tired for action. Thank goodness the
box was shadowy.
“Women talk when they are disappointed.” There was no
question in his mind that the remark was a veiled threat.
Not a direct one. Talking about his bedroom prowess, or lack
of the same, wouldn’t accomplish anything, but Lady Belinda
held a good deal of influence in the circles where his
future ambitions lay and was ruthless about getting what she
wanted. She had the power to make life difficult for him and
needed to be placated.
“I have something you will enjoy, once all my luggage
arrives. Certain miniature paintings that I cannot display
in my wife’s drawing room.” He kept his eyes on the stage,
but a sharp intake of breath told him he’d intrigued the
sensual magpie.
“And shall you demonstrate the poses?”
“Alas,” he said with what he hoped was a note of finality,
“I leave for Oxfordshire in a day or so.”
“You should wait for my Christmas dinner party. A week or
two won’t make much difference.”
“My wife may beg to differ. I have not seen Lady Windermere
in over a year.”
“Is that so?” Now her voice held a note of amusement. “In
that case I will importune you no more. I look forward to
seeing the paintings.”
She removed her hand from his thigh and they sat side by
side with perfect decorum, pretending to watch the play. If
there was a single member of the audience less interested in
A Midsummer Night’s Dream than he, it was Lady Belinda.
“Isn’t that Denford?” she asked, as a chorus of fairies in
flimsy costumes cavorted on the stage. “Perhaps you haven’t
heard, but the infamous Julian Fortescue has turned
respectable. Or rather he inherited a dukedom, which had the
same effect without him having to go to the trouble of
changing his habits.”
His stomach clenched. He’d ignored Julian for the best part
of seven years and he fervently wished he could continue to
do so. But he had a mission. “Where? Has he changed his
style of dress since being raised to the purple?”
“Opposite side, third box in from the stage.”
It was about as far across the expanse of the theater as was
possible, but the tall, lean figure in black leaped
instantly to the eye. Once he’d known Julian as well as
anyone in the world and he could still pick him out of a
crowd without the least difficulty. The years of
disappointment and enmity slipped away and he felt the joy
of seeing his best friend after a long absence. But only for
a moment; then the old bitterness flooded his organs. Though
he wished he could continue to pretend that Julian Fortescue
didn’t exist, he had to reopen relations with the Duke of
Denford. Duty demanded it.
“Still in black,” he said. “Has he cut his hair?”
“He believes he is Samson.”
“You are probably better acquainted with him than I. Now.”
There was a hint of a question in his statement. If Julian—
Denford—was one of Belinda’s lovers, wouldn’t Grenville have
given her the task of persuading him to sell the paintings?
She never made a secret of her affaires, and Sir Richard’s
complacency, even complicity, was well-known.
“We are on nodding terms, that is all.” The pique in her
voice told him that she wouldn’t mind playing Delilah, and
he concluded that Julian had rejected her advances.
There was one other occupant of the box, a blond woman in
blue, too far away to identify. He had the impression of a
fashionable beauty, but her general mien struck no chord. It
was unlikely that Damian knew her. She raised a lorgnette
and looked around and he fancied they came under her
scrutiny. Then she turned back to Denford, his black head
contrasting with her fair one. Denford appeared engrossed by
his companion and Damian couldn’t blame him. Even at this
distance he could tell that she was exquisite. He wondered
if her face matched her air of elegance.
“Perhaps I should go and congratulate him on his elevation,”
Damian said, pondering the advantage of making initial
contact in a public place He had no illusions about the
difficulty of the task he’d been set. The last time he and
Julian had spoken—ironically about a very different
collection of pictures—had seemed to preclude their ever
being on cordial terms again.
“I’m sure he won’t mind being interrupted.”
“Who is the lady?”
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