A Seduction in Winter

By Carolyn Jewel

He’s an artist and a duke’s heir. She’s sheltered and scarred. Can he show her by Christmas that love can be theirs to share?

As the holidays approach, Lieutenant Leoline Marrable, now Lord Wrathell, travels to London where he’s expected to fulfill longstanding expectations and propose to his former commander’s daughter. Wrathell longs to ease the strained relationship with his ducal father.  The key may be an unfinished portrait of his late brother.

Honora Baynard has a terrible facial scar as a result of a childhood injury. She has never forgotten Leoline, who came to her defense when other children tormented her. Now, her over-protective artist father keeps her indoors, creating the beautiful detail work that makes his paintings so sought after.  

As Wrathell and Honora spend more time together, mutual interest becomes mutual attraction. Can Wrathell convince Honora that for Christmas, he’d like to give her not only passion and pleasure, but his heart to keep for her own?

A Seduction in Winter is a holiday novella and appeared in the historical romance anthology Christmas in Duke Street. If you like sensual romance, complex characters, and witty dialogue, you'll love Carolyn Jewel's latest refreshing Regency tale.

Buy A Seduction in Winter to experience the passion today!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Carolyn Jewel
• Release date: Apr 5, 2016
• ISBN: 9781937823443

Carolyn Jewel

Carolyn Jewel is an award-winning author who writes historical romance for Berkley Books and paranormal romance for Grand Central Forever. She is the author of "The King's Dragon" for Heroes and Heartbreakers. She lives in northern California and eats too much chocolate. She also bakes pies and cakes and feeds them to friends and family.

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Acknowledgments

My thanks go out to my agent, Kristin Nelson, for her unwavering support of my career. Carolyn Crane, thank you so much for your early and emergency reading. As ever thanks to my son Nathaniel and my sister Marguerite and my nephew and nieces, Dylan, Lexie, and Hannah. Also, thanks, Bella, for not eating any of my shoes. Recently.

Chapter One

‡

He was here. Honora reread the list again to be sure she’d not conjured his name from hopes and wishes. She hadn’t. The Monarch, with Lieutenant Lord Leoline Marrable on board, had arrived from Bombay one week ago today. After seven years in the navy and three years employed with the East India Company, he was in England again. In London. Not that their paths would cross, but London!

The door behind her opened and then closed. Honora slid the paper under the collection of pages that took up most of the desk where she sat. When she was not working one of the pages or creating a new one, she kept the lot of them in a wooden box, at present set away on the top section of her desk.

Papa. Her father removed his hat and coat. A good morning’s work?

Indeed yes. He unwound his scarf and draped that over the back of a chair. I’ll warrant there will be snow tomorrow.

Thanks to the increase in commissioned work and in other paintings sold over the last two years, they had better quarters at the Morin Hotel than for their previous stays in London. Two bedchambers, naturally, but a larger parlor and a dining room for meals if they brought them upstairs. They were on the fourth floor this year—a savings of two flights.

Yes, Papa. In addition to the record keeping and accounts, she did much of the detail work for his commissioned projects. Shall I send Gilman to fetch our luncheon, or did you eat downstairs? The tavern attached to the hotel made an excellent roast beef and an even better duck. Both were favorites of her father’s.

I’ve eaten thank you. He came into the parlor where she spent most of her day when she was not at the studio with him. He wandered to the table where she’d left the newspapers she’d read front to back. She took care not to turn her face too much toward him. He picked up the morning Times she had carefully refolded earlier in the day and brought it to a chair by the fire. I shall dine out tonight.

Noted. She slid her secreted page from underneath the others. He kept a mistress at another hotel on Manchester Square. Papa supposed her to be unaware of this fact. You are at home until then?

He snapped open the paper. Yes, I think so.

She picked up her scissors and cut the notice from the paper, to be added to her album of clippings about Lord Leoline. She’d kept track of and recorded the ships to which he’d been assigned and the actions and battles he’d seen while he was in the navy. She’d gathered all the descriptions of engagements involving those ships she could locate and transferred the information to her project. Over the years, she had amassed a thick stack of neatly clipped articles and hand transcriptions of his naval battles, interspersed with illustrations of her own in pen and ink or watercolor. Some of her drawings were inventions of her imagination; others came to life on the page from facts gleaned of his battles and the ships he’d sailed on.

The project, born of idle hands and no particular goal, had become absurdly elaborate. She would be the first to admit that. Illustrating or decorating the pages had become a way of passing the time. She ought to put away the pages for good now that he was back in England. There was little reason for him to remember her, if he remembered her at all, but she would never forget the day he’d come to her rescue. To him, she could only be a child who had briefly intersected with his life. She, however, had grown attached to her private homage to his bravery.

She pasted the section containing the notice of the Monarch’s arrival onto a fresh sheet of paper and beneath that wrote The Hon. Lieutenant Lord Leoline Marrable, Lord Wrathell.

She drew a border and curlicues around his name. He was a marquess by courtesy. The new Debrett’s was published and contained the recent amendments to the line of succession for the dukedom of Quenhaith. She did not dare clip pages from their copy of the peerage, but she’d copied the text pertaining to the Marrables onto pages of her own, suitably decorated with the family motto and coat of arms.

Pages of the Times rattled, and she sent her father a questioning glance. He coughed once and said, I’ll need you at the studio tomorrow to finish off Mrs. Rosen.

Of course. Some years ago, after he’d been accepted into the Royal Academy, he’d made arrangements for the use of a fellow artist’s studio in the other Duke Street, which arrangement had brought them to London every winter since, for the stated purpose of exhibiting his work and obtaining and finishing commissions. While they stayed in Town, he found it convenient to have his mistress across the street instead of the other side of Bury St. Edmunds.

She evened out the curlicues around Lord Leoline’s name. They had been born on the same day five years apart, on December the twenty-fourth, a fact she had discovered from Debrett’s. He had been born in Lincolnshire at Marrable Gate, his family’s country seat, whilst her birth had occurred in Elderford, the village attached to the ducal estate.

Papa, she said when he put down the paper. Did you know Lord Leoline is in London? She amended that quickly. I mean, Lord Wrathell.

No. He nodded with approval. Lord Leoline had always been a favorite of his.

Since he was sitting to her right, a fortuitous arrangement of the parlor, it was easy to prop her left elbow atop the desk and lean her cheek against her forearm.

I suppose it’s to be expected given the tragedy of his brother, her father said.

Yes. She recognized his restlessness. He would stay an hour or so longer before he made an excuse that would take him to the other side of Manchester Square. She wished she’d left more work on Lord Wrathell’s papers, for she would have an evening alone to do exactly as she liked.

There’s a young man who’s made a good account of himself. His gaze lingered on her, and she made sure not to move. His pity made her heart ache. The disgust she sometimes saw in his face when he caught a glimpse of her pierced her heart through. When did he arrive, do you know? I ought to pay my respects.

From the notice, a week ago Tuesday. Because she rarely went out except for solitary walks, she filled the hours of her day with reading, sewing, and writing letters to the editor that she tore up as soon as she had fashioned a suitably scathing reply. If she wasn’t at her father’s studio, she was here reading every newspaper, magazine, or book to be found. Gilman collected broadsheets and pamphlets for her enjoyment. She had an excellent collection of them. There was little she did not know about London, or politics, or much of anything to appear in the papers.

A week, you say. Well. He fiddled with his watch. I wish him well. I truly do.

From necessity she was expert at keeping herself at angles that did not disturb him. When they dined together, she often ended those meals having eaten nearly nothing. He’s in residence in Queen Anne Street, not Marrable House.

He tapped a finger on the table beside him. No reconciliation between him and his father?

I do not know.

Pity if not.

She shrugged one shoulder. Lord Leoline—Lord Wrathell, she must remember that—had joined the navy against his father’s wishes. Their estrangement was the stuff of legend, and—in a strange twist of fate—she was likely the only person besides Wrathell himself who knew that the rift with his father was due to an altercation between Lord Leoline’s elder brother and him.

They must reconcile now he’s the heir.

I suppose they must. The duke did not know the true reason for the disagreement between the brothers. Lord Leoline would never have betrayed his brother. Nor her. He would never have mentioned her to his father.

She wondered if he was still handsome. Perhaps the beauty of his youth had not survived maturity. His elder brother had not retained his good looks. He’d gone to fat and lost a great deal of his hair. Lord Leoline had been fair to his brother’s striking dark hair, though both possessed the same piercing gray eyes. Whatever Lord Leoline looked like now, she would always remember him as tall and handsome, forever eighteen years old, and the bravest man who ever lived.

Chapter Two

‡

On his way home after luncheon in St. James’s, Wrathell took a wrong turn, went too far in the wrong direction and ended up on Duke Street. Not, alas, the Duke Street he wanted. He stopped to get his bearings, obtained them and saw he’d stopped in front of a bookshop. The name of the establishment was the Duke Street Bookshop, which stood to reason. What did not stand up to scrutiny was why some wag had painted On the Shelf above the lintel. Equally puzzling was why no one had troubled to remove the defacement.

Through the windows, he could see a woman wrapping up a customer’s purchase. The wind whipped along the street again. He shivered because his coat was not warm enough. He could be wearing ten coats, and he’d not be warm enough. Bloody London in winter was an abomination. While he stood on the street thinking fond thoughts of warmer climes, a customer exited the shop, package under his arm. The gentleman tipped his hat as a waft of warm air blew in Wrathell’s direction.

Without thinking, he grabbed the door before it closed. Warm air was all that registered on his frozen brain. In he went to books and welcoming warmth. The proprietor, God love whoever it was, had not stinted on the coal in the stove in the opposite corner. He removed his hat and nodded to the pretty woman behind the counter. Good day, ma’am.

Three young ladies in a