EXCLUSIVE EXCERPT: Secrets of Surrender by Madeline Hunter

Yup!  It's raining excerpts!  I have to say this is NOT the book I wanted. I know.. LE GASP! LE SHOCK! LE HORROR... but but but... I want, well really, I want THE SINS OF LORD EASTERBROOK! And lucky for us all it is coming out in this Fall. I know, no worries. I am working on getting over myself, but really until than... I do keep telling myself over and over "Syb it isn't ALL about you" and slowly I am learning to believe it.

::blink:: okay, not really but I am working up to maybe accepting it *g* ... hey I said maybe...

UNTIL then Madeline has a GRAND excerpt up on her site PLUS she has been her ever fab self and given us one of my all time favorite things...

...MORE!

First he'll learn her most intimate secrets. Then he'll arouse her deepest passions. He's the lover she's been waiting for: the man who can rescue her from her wicked past—for a price—in Madeline Hunter's tale of sin, seduction, and irresistible, impossible love.

He catches her eye across the dining room—a handsome stranger who stands out among the lewd noblemen and bawdy painted women. But their worlds are about to collide in a way Roselyn Longworth could never have imagined. For before the night is out, she will be auctioned off to the highest bidder...and Kyle Bradwell will lead her from one kind of hell to another. Yet from the moment he wins her, Kyle treats Rose with a gentleness she hasn't known since a family scandal destroyed her reputation. And when she finally learns what is really driving Kyle, it's too late. For Rose has fallen for the man who knows her most intimate secrets. Now he has stunned her with a proposal of marriage—the first step in a seduction that will demand nothing less than her complete surrender....

UNEDITED Excerpt from Secrets of Surrender by Madeline Hunter

copyright 2008

She entered the garden through the back portal. As she passed the apple tree, a vague sound penetrated her thoughts. More curious than cautious, she followed the series of little thuds and scrapes around to the side gate.

A white shirt, stark in the gray day, obscured her view of the gate. It covered a strong back and broad shoulders, and gathered at the top of fawn breeches. Arms that were far from pale, exposed below rolls of shirt sleeve, held the gate by its sides. A dark head turned, revealing a strong profile.

Mr. Bradwell did not hear her while he lifted the gate and carefully set it right on its hinges. One of those hinges gleamed shiny and new.

The soft linen of his shirt and the snug fabric of his breeches revealed his form while he moved. The wind blew his dark locks, mussing them in a most appealing way. Despite his cravat and collar, he appeared rakish and romantic and very competent.

One sound push, one heavy thump, and the gate swung easily. He tested it, then began fixing his sleeves.

He saw her then. It bothered him not at all that she witnessed him working like this. He greeted her while he dressed himself.

She walked over and examined the gate. It had been broken for years.

"I noticed that it needed repair when last I visited," he said, reaching for the coat lying in the grass.

"Thank you." She seemed to say that to him a lot. Today, for some reason, it struck her as humorous, how often their conversations began and ended with her gratitude.

"Were you in the county again, Mr. Bradwell? Just riding by?"

He slid on his frock coat and set himself right. He looked very proper now. She had rather preferred him active and half undressed.

"I rode down from London just to see you, Miss Longworth. I have information about your soil, and a message from your cousin."

He could have written with both. She suspected that he had really come about that kiss. Before this visit was over, he would probably try to kiss her again.

It was obvious now, that he wanted her. Oh, he did not leer or stare. Desire only increased the directness of his gaze and slightly darkened the vitality he exuded. This man was well practiced in hiding his hungers, but he could not control the tension his interest created and how it affected the air. And her. She was too happy today to lie to herself about that.

She should probably be insulted. Today it did not matter. Not his interest and not her response.

Maybe she would let him have that kiss. She would not even be hurt when he offered the special arrangement that she expected another kiss to presage. It would taint the memory of that night. It would show him to be less than chivalrous in the end, but that would not matter now either.

She would be gone soon. In a few weeks, Roselyn Longworth would disappear completely.

* * *

"Please come in and give me this news." She led the way into the house.

She appeared much happier today. And very beautiful. Always beautiful.

He spied sprigs of grass on her cloak as he followed her. She had laid the cloak down out there in the hills. Since it was cold, he suspected she had been inside it when she did.

He pictured her in her isolation, a solitary figure stretched on the grass under the sky. He could understand why she might look up to the boundless expanse above. This was a nice house, but it was still a prison.

"I fear that I do not have any pie to offer you today." She slid off the cloak and shook the grass away. "In truth I have nothing to offer you."

"Your cousin sent some things. The basket is outside the front door. If you will permit me..."

She nodded while she added a little fuel to the fireplace in the drawing room. He fetched the basket. She sat on one of the wooden chairs and poked through the gifts, lifting each in turn while she smiled with delight.

She set the boxes of tea and biscuits on the little table. She lined up the bag of coffee, the bottle of wine, and the jar of honey.

"What is this down at the bottom?" She poked at the broad, wrapped form there.

"I think it is some cooked fowl. Duck or goose, I believe."

She laughed. He had never heard her do so before. Not outright like this. It was a lovely laugh. Melodic. Angelic.

Watch yourself, Kyle lad. You'll be writing bad poetry like an idiot soon.

"How like Alexia. Luxuries, but practical ones. You must join me in eating the fowl and drinking the wine, Mr. Bradwell. We will share a feast."

"It might be best if you saved it all for yourself."

"Nonsense." She set the basket on the floor beside her. "Now, what news have you about my soil?"

He sat on another chair with the little table between them and the fire warming their shoulders. "The experiments done are theoretical, you must understand. However, they appear to show that the soil is depleted. Did your brothers never require the tenants to rotate their crops? It is recognized now as useful. In the least the old system of leaving fields fallow every third year should have been required."

"My father collected rents, nothing more. His interests were in town, not here. After his death, no one truly managed the property. We assumed, wrongly it appears, that farmers would know how to farm and would not do so in ways that made the land less productive."

"An extra field of crops is tempting. There are those who will exhaust the land and move on."

She shrugged. "Apparently so."

That shrug was her entire reaction. He had brought very bad news that would affect her meager income, but she appeared not to care.

Her eyes sparkled while she ran her elegantly tapered finger down the edge of the box of tea. He watched that distracted caress and imagined it on himself, sliding slowly down his side. He clenched his teeth to control what the little fantasy did to him.

He was glad she was not sad today, but she appeared almost drunk instead. He did not flatter himself that her big smiles and bright eyes were due to his visit.

"You are a bad liar, Mr. Bradwell. Alexia did not give you this basket. I think that you bought these items yourself."

"What makes you think so?"

"Alexia would have sent a different company's tea, and a different kind of biscuit. She also would have included soaps and hairpins and other practical luxuries that a woman cannot eat." She grinned mischievously. She was definitely in high spirits today. Vivacious. Almost flirtatious.

"You have found me out, Miss Longworth. I hoped to avoid awkwardness by saying it came from your cousin."

"Is this gift because of that kiss? There must be at least ten shillings worth of goods here, and that kiss was barely worth one. Then again, perhaps you hope for nine more."

Now she was getting reckless. "The basket has nothing to do with the kiss, but with my concern for your health and lack of comforts. And perhaps to help you feel less sad about the implications of what I learned about your land."

"Of course. My apologies for impugning your motives." Her eyes mocked her serious words. She began setting the items back in the basket. "Let us sit to a proper meal. If you share it with me, the reasons that you brought it will not signify. Although, in a manner of speaking, nothing does anymore."

He took the basket from her arms when she rose. He followed her into the kitchen. Her manner flattered him. It also stirred him. His desire had flared like oil touched by a torch.

However, her demeanor disturbed him too, and not because she spoke too frankly and had lost her cool grace. She acted like someone who had made a decision, one that rendered all proprieties irrelevant.

He wondered what she had been thinking out there while she lay in the grass under the gray sky.

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