Seductive Secrets (Secrets Trilogy, Book 1) by Lynne Connolly

This will be available on June 10. I am very interested to see what you all think of it. For the most part I really liked it but it still doesn’t equal my fave of hers. Personally I just want her to write more historicals ;).

Excerpt: Seductive Secrets (Secrets Trilogy, Book 1) by Lynne Connolly

To survive, she’ll have to trust him with all her secrets.The Secrets Trilogy book 1

Nick is back.

After eight years of facing public scandal and private humiliation with her head held high, Isobel’s courage fails when the man she never stopped loving returns and asks her to marry him. Once he discovers her secret, he won’t visit her bed more than once. And she can’t bear his rejection.

Nicholas, Marquis of Cardington, is confident he can cope with the baggage Isobel carries from her first marriage. It doesn’t matter that the beautiful widow once left him to elope with another man. After all, he was partly to blame for that disaster. All that matters is he has always loved her, and now she’s free to accept his proposal.

Only on their wedding night does Nick learn the terrible secret Isobel has harbored for eight long years. To win his wife’s trust will take every ounce of tenderness he possesses—when what he really wants is to show her the passion he saved for her and her alone.

But just as Isobel begins to believe her heart is safe with Nick, the blackmailers who drove her first husband to suicide reappear. And they want their pound of flesh.

Isobel must finally trust Nick will all her secrets—and her life—or their enemies will destroy them both.

“Will you marry me?”

Isobel spun around to face Nick. Her presence struck him like a physical blow. She had the same effect on him as always, from the first time he’d met her, eighteen years ago. She remained the only woman he wanted.

Her eyes widened in surprise. “After the last time?”

A small smile quirked his lips. “Yes, even after the last time.”

In a quick, sudden movement, Isobel covered her face, her fingers trembling against her closed eyelids.

He longed to go and comfort her, but caution kept him away. She might send him away, and he couldn’t bear that. Not after all he’d gone through just to get this far. Obviously, having learned the identity of the early morning caller, Isobel had sought refuge in this shabby back parlor rather than see him, but her father, anxious to see the matter settled, had betrayed her whereabouts to Nick.

Abruptly Isobel pulled her hands away from her face, turned and went to stand at the window. Nick glanced outside. The scene looked so ordinary; a hot English summer day, a gardener moving among the roses, deadheading and pruning with methodical care. The hot sun cast heavy shadows on the grass; the bright light enhanced the pinks and creams of the roses.

She turned to face him again with a swish of light silk, impossibly fresh in this dilapidated room. “Why?”

He kept his face passive and expressionless. He’d known something was wrong when he’d seen her briefly in London but because of his position as jilted ex-fiancé, he couldn’t approach her. Her response to him then might have been awkwardness, but he didn’t think so. Isobel always exuded grace and elegance. Something else troubled her, something Nick shrewdly suspected she’d told no one. Something personal.

He moved into the room but stopped, not too close to her. She didn’t move away, but he felt the space between them crackle. He felt too big for this small room, too big for her. “Perhaps I thought we deserved another chance.”

He stared at the clock over the mantelpiece, not at Isobel. It was a perfectly ordinary clock but concentrating on the black hands and faded gold face steadied him, and helped him to quell the fierce surge of desire Isobel’s proximity always evoked in him “Where to begin?” he said softly, almost to himself. Then he turned on one heel, back to her, the skirts of his formal coat, too heavy for the sultry weather, swinging around his thighs. “Shall we be practical?”

The stillness in the room, invoked by the heat of the day, felt uncanny. So much lay between them, so much to explain and discuss. They needed to start somewhere.

“By all means.” Isobel stood with her back to the window, her features cast into shadow by the bright sunshine outside. He didn’t need to see her clearly to recall the lucid grey eyes, the tactile silk of her fair hair, her perfect complexion.

“Very well. For a start, it would rehabilitate you in society. You are notable by your absence.”

“I expected them to forget me.”

He frowned. “No, they’ve not forgotten you. The gossips drag up the old story from time to time.”

Even with her face in shadow, he saw the twinge of regret that touched her face. “Was it terrible? I’m sorry, I did think of you at the time but I had – other things on my mind.”

His smiled grimly. “Yes, it was bad. Eloping on the eve of your wedding with another man is about as juicy a morsel as you can throw to the hounds of Society. They called you a Scarlet Woman, when as far as I saw, you’d only behaved in a way true to yourself. I bore the deep sympathy of many women with marriageable daughters of their own.” His smile changed to warmth, inviting her to share in the joke.

It worked. He could always make her smile. “You fought them all off, though.”

“I managed. I swore off marriage.” An understatement. Nick’s bedroom exploits had become legendary in the last few years, but he’d avoided young, marriageable females. Nick didn’t want to marry anyone else, or raise hopes he didn’t intend to fulfill.

She moved a little, and the tense lines of her shoulders visibly relaxed. “So what changed your mind? And why me?” She made a deprecating movement with her hands, graceful even in her agitation. “I’m sorry, I’m being terribly rude but I need to know.”

“I know. And I think we’d better be honest, don’t you?”

“Yes. After the last time.”

Isobel moved to the big, shabby sofa and sat down, indicating the space next to her with a graceful gesture. With only slight hesitation, he took it.

He gazed at her, holding his desire under steely restraint. He’d stopped denying to himself how much he loved her some time ago but perhaps he should hide it from her a little longer. She shied off at any mention of the personal. “Why did you do it, Isobel?”

She bit her lip, pausing for a moment. “I fell instantly in love with Harry Thoroughgood, or I thought I did,” she said, staring at her hands clasped in her lap. Her knuckles gleamed white with strain. She glanced up at his face. “I was afraid, too. You showed me a degree of – of passion I wasn’t ready for, not at eighteen.”

Nick cursed under his breath. He’d contributed to it, then. He remembered the day when, no longer able to control his youthful ardor, he’d tried to make love to her. That day cost him dear. “I was too young and too eager. I didn’t know it would drive you off. I knew I’d behaved badly but when I came to apologize, you’d already gone.”

She moved as though to touch him, but withdrew her hand. “It wasn’t your fault. That wasn’t the only reason I left. Mama never stopped reminding me I’d be a marchioness, what it would mean and how I should behave. I felt so hemmed in by all the rules and conventions, I felt stifled by them.”

He sighed. “My mother wouldn’t have helped you. She’s acutely aware of her station.” Isobel’s excuse didn’t wash, not completely. She knew how to run a household, even one as large as his. What was she hiding? Why did she shy off from all physical contact? He loved her, and once he’d admitted that to himself, he thought he’d conquered all his demons. Society would have to learn to live with the fact that he’d come back after eight years to court the woman he’d nearly married before. Isobel was as suitable as ever, perhaps more so. A childless widow, of enough maturity to help him run the large estates he was responsible for, beautiful, well born, and now, thanks to her late husband, possessed of a reasonable competence, more than she’d had when he first courted her. Not that he cared for that, but it might make matters easier in the eyes of the sanctimonious world.

“Yes! I felt trapped.”

When she looked at him directly, the intervening years seemed to slip away. Nothing else mattered. Whatever else troubled her they would overcome it together. His love was enough to sustain both of them. He’d not let her turn him down. “Do you feel trapped now?”

She shook her head. “No, I don’t think so. I’m six and twenty now, not eighteen, and my view of the world is more realistic. I could cope.”

He grimaced, a wry turn of his mouth. “I’m sorry you didn’t confide in me at the time. I thought something of that nature was happening but I wasn’t sure. I should have asked. I could have reassured you.”

Her next words came out in a rush. “Then Harry showed an interest, more than flirtation. He was charming – you remember how charming he was! I thought I loved him. It seemed easier to run away than to face things.” She looked up at Nick’s face, hiding nothing, tearing his heart apart with her frank confession. “I was wrong.”

A slight spasm crossed his face, which he immediately controlled. “The only consolation for me at the time was the thought of your happiness. I told myself at least one of us had our heart’s desire.” He bit his lip. “How soon did it go wrong?”

Isobel twisted her hands together in her lap. He badly wanted to hold her, but it might scare her off. She behaved like a skittish colt, not at all the warm, loving girl he’d known before her marriage. Had Harry Thoroughgood mistreated her? He wanted to strangle the man, for all he’d been in his grave for the last three years.

“Not long after we married. He wasn’t a happy man, Nick, and he didn’t find whatever he was looking for in me. When it became obvious to both of us that we’d made a mistake, we decided to make the best of things and went to London. I believed we’d live the elopement down, and we started to, didn’t we?” New understanding lit her eyes. “Did you have anything to do with that? Our acceptance back into society?”

He shrugged, trying to make light of it. “I told anyone who listened that I held no grudges, and I’d receive you if I met you anywhere.” A reminiscent smile curved his lips. “We did meet once. Do you remember?”

A fraught moment, taken out of ordinary time when they’d come face to face in a country-dance in a ballroom. After a second, he held out his hand, she placed hers in it and they continued the measure. He still recalled the shock her touch brought him, the moment he realized he still loved her. None of the other women he’d been with mattered. He hadn’t forgotten her, and the feelings he suppressed returned in force.

“Yes I remember. I was very grateful you acknowledged me. I started to believe everything was going to be all right.”

“It wasn’t all right.” His face went still again, the strong mouth firming.

“Yes, it all went wrong again. I don’t know why Harry killed himself, or why he did it in such a way.” Her voice shook. “Not really.”

There was something else. The brief hesitation before her last words made him sure of it. No longer able to fight the urge to touch her, Nick placed his hand gently on hers. She allowed it and he let out the breath he’d been unaware of holding.

“I wanted to do something to help after his death, but there was nothing. Your husband left you reasonably well off, and you seem to have kept your fortune out of the clutches of your father, so what could I do?”

Isobel swallowed. “I fell into disgrace again when he died. The stigma of suicide, added to the shame of my earlier elopement branded me a scandalous woman, and a dangerous one.” She looked neither dangerous nor scandalous now, dressed as simply as any squire’s wife, eyes holding honesty and hurt.

She took a couple of breaths, and lifted her face to Nick’s, meeting his still, quiet look with one of her own. “So we come to it. Why, Nick? Why do you want me? I’m a social outcast. I’m not a beauty. I don’t know if I can give you children. My portion is respectable but not so staggering the fashionable world in the drawing rooms of Grosvenor Square will welcome me warmly. So why?”