Mad
About the Major
Bachelor Chronicles #8.5
Bachelor Chronicles #8.5
By: Elizabeth Boyle
Releasing June 2, 2015
Avon Impulse
Blurb
The
pampered daughter of a duke . . .
Lady Arabella Tremont has
spent her entire life protected and overshadowed by her restrictive father. But
she is a Tremont, after all, and the morning after she is nearly ruined at a
ball by a handsome stranger, Arabella’s father demands she make an arranged
match with an heir to a dukedom. In desperation, Arabella takes matters into
her own hands.
Takes
a London holiday with the most unsuitable of chaperones . . .
Major Kingsley is in
London to avoid to his parents’ dreadful house party. To his surprise he runs
into the enticing - and unforgettable -- minx he met at a ball the previous
night. Arabella, or Birdie, as he knows her, insists he owes her three
favors-for he’s put her in a terrible pinch; Kingsley agrees, if only to delay
his trip home and because the notion of spending the day with this enchanting
bit of muslin is too tempting to resist. But all too quickly he discovers
Arabella’s requests are hardly what he expected…
Arabella blinked and tried to make sense of
what was happening. Truly, he needn’t promise such a thing. He’d already made
good on that pledge.
She was utterly surprised. No, make that
shocked.
“All that is left to do is slip off that mask of
yours, so I can see the beauty that has all of London in your thrall,” he said,
as his fingers reached behind her head to untangle the ties holding it in
place. “Tomorrow morning, after I’ve discovered every delectable, delightful
corner of your divine body, will you perhaps tell me what happened to Mr.
Spenser?”
Mr.
Spenser? There
had been a Mr. Spenser? Arabella couldn’t help herself, she smiled. That was
quite contradictory to what Lady Davinia had claimed the other day at her
mother’s afternoon in.
They
call themselves Mrs. This or Mrs. That, but there never was a “mister.” None whatsoever, Davinia had told her avid audience. And Lady
Davinia would know. Her brother was the worst sort of libertine.
At least that was what Aunt Josephine had said
at the breakfast table the next morning. She might have said more on the
subject if Papa hadn’t shushed her.
Mr. Spenser! Oh, wouldn’t it be wonderful to
steal a march on that gossipy Lady Davinia and tell her there was a Mr. Spenser.
Meanwhile, her erstwhile seducer was continuing
to outline his plans for their evening, while his fingers did their best to
untie her mask.
As he described his sensual ambitions for the
hours to come, starting with how he was going to remove her gown, Arabella’s
eyes widened and her mouth fell open.
Such things were possible? And here she’d
always thought that book Thalia Langley had passed around Miss Emery’s had been
naught but French nonsense.
Yet here was this gentleman offering to do
exactly that and more.
More so, from the look in his eye. The odd
shiver that ran down her spine all the way to that spot between her legs at the
very thought of such intimacy made Arabella realize it must be very possible.
And very
pleasurable.
In that instant, she saw the man before her
naked—well, she could imagine that.
She had, after all, seen the Elgin Marbles. But now she saw that perfect
masculine form in a new light. In the flesh, warm and hot, covering her, his
lips caressing her skin, his tongue sliding over her, leaving a heated, wet
trail, until he came right down to her …
“Oh, my heavens,” she whispered as her body
tingled with a dangerous anticipation.
He’d finished untying the knot and was slowly
working the strings away from her carefully arranged hairdo. “Come now, Mrs.
Spenser, don’t be coy with me. However can you blush so—when I have no doubt
you are as eager to see if I can hold up my end of the bargain as I am to prove
it.” With that, he caught hold of her hand and was about to place it on his …
No, not
there …
Arabella snatched her fingers back and found
her voice. “Sir! What is wrong with you? I am not Mrs. Spenser!”
Even as she said the words, he had succeeded in
freeing her mask and it fell away, leaving her face bared for him, her identity
his to discover.
Whatever he saw, whatever he’d expected to
find, it obviously wasn’t she. His eyes widened and then he hastily ripped off
his own mask to get a better look. And if the way his expression changed from
darkly smoky to shocked was any indication, he had all too quickly realized his
mistake.
“Who the devil are you?” His tone overflowed
with censure. As if this was entirely her fault.
Arabella’s temper rose as quickly as her
passions had. “Me? I can tell you who I am not. Some Incognita to be bartered
and bandied with.”
His eyes darkened and he looked back over his
shoulder toward the ballroom. “That bastard. When I get my hands on him—”
She caught hold of his sleeve and gave it a tug
to regain his attention. “I think you should be apologizing to me, not looking for someone else to
molest,” she huffed. “Why, of all the common sort of ruffians I’ve had the
misfortune to meet—”
Truly, she’d never met one, but he didn’t know
that.
Yet Arabella wasn’t done with him. “I suspect
even Mrs. Spenser would find you beneath her.”
His wolfish expression returned in a flash. “I
had had rather high hopes of finding her just so—”
Against her better judgment, she silently
finished the implication he’d made.
Beneath
me.
But it wasn’t the courtesan that Arabella saw
beneath this man, but herself. Naked and willing. His touch had left her
shivering, the brush of his lips leaving her to feel a beggar in his presence.
Take me
beneath you, a very
devilish part of her wanted to plead.
Instead, she folded her arms across her chest,
tamping her desires back into the confines where they belonged. “You, sir, are
most certainly not a gentleman.”
“If I’m not a gentleman, what does that make
you? I will point out, you came quite willingly with me. What sort of milkmaid
comes out to the gardens when a gentleman asks her to—”
“Oh, please do not repeat yourself!” she told
him. “Do not ask me such a thing ever again!”
“Oh, please do,” came another voice. A deep and
very familiar one. “I would like to know what you asked my daughter to do?”
But her swain had no time to answer, because
the Duke of Parkerton followed up his question by spinning the man around, and
then landing a hard-fisted blow that left the devilish fellow in a heap on the ground,
out cold.
Goodreads Series Link: https://www.goodreads.com/series/41561-bachelor-chronicles
Author Info
Elizabeth Boyle was an antipiracy
paralegal for Microsoft before settling down to write full-time. Her first
novel, Brazen Angel, which won Dell's Diamond Debut Award in 1996, also won the
Romance Writers of America's RITA Award for Best First Book, and was a finalist
for Best Long Historical Romance. She lives with her husband in Seattle,
Washington. She is also the author of Brazen Heiress.
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