Gossip about his support of the French revolution. The rumours about why he’d been denied the income from his estates cut pretty deep. The hearsay about the unsavoury source of his income to support his privileged and idle bachelor life, whispers of him gulling green ’uns at the gambling tables or, worse, cheating, rolled off his shoulders. Not that he’d cared, since he had no intention of marrying for years. A poverty-stricken marquess wasn’t worth the time of day. The first to turn their backs had been the matchmaking mamas who had plagued his early years. He’d suffered enough of that when details of his father’s will had surfaced. He did not let his impatience or frustration show. His father was dead and Gabe’s rebellion against his father’s autocratic rule had made him who he was now. Had been shocked when he understood how deep their differences of opinion had gone, to the point where his father considered him a traitor to the family name and to his country. He and his father had never seen eye to eye about a great many things-politics, the treatment of tenants, the bullying of his mother-but Gabe never expected his father’s outright mistrust. He’d given up everything he had to make sure it did not. How would these carefully coiffed heads look in the basket at the foot of a guillotine? It was where they would end up if Britain became a satellite republic of France. The myriad candles reflected in gilt-edged mirrors threatened blindness as he gazed at his fellow peers.
Did they have no idea of the danger facing their country? Did they not see the disillusion of the common man on their estates, in their cities and towns? If they did, they didn’t show it. Gabe D’Arcy, the recently gazetted Marquess of Mooreshead, eyed the occupants in the over-hot marble-columned ballroom with a sense of despair. The widowed Rowena MacDonald has been entrusted to his care, and Drew must do all he can to protect her.īut Drew's honour is about to be tested - because there's something in Rowena's dove-grey eyes which awakens a flame long extinguished.When Napoleon amassed an army twenty-two miles away on the other side of the English Channel, what should an English peer of the realm do? Attend Lady Heatherfield’s summer ball, naturally. Reeling from betrayal, the once devastatingly handsome Andrew Gilvry has returned to Scottish shores to fulfil a promise made to a dying man. The only question is to what end? He's never met such a captivating woman - and he's determined to enjoy every seductive second she spends as his very willing captive!
Gabe knows the countess has been sent to seduce him. With such sensual games at play and such strong sensations awakened, suddenly Nicky's dangerously close to exposing her real identity. Nicoletta, the Countess Vilandry, is on a dangerous mission - to lure fellow spy Gabriel D'Arcy into bed and into revealing his true loyalties.
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