He’s
controlled.
Meticulous. Immaculate. No one would expect the proper Duke of
Westmead to be a member of London’s most illicit secret club. Least
of all: his future wife. A marriage to a duke has never been such fun
in THE DUKE I TEMPTED by Scarlett Peckham
About
THE DUKE I TEMPTED
Having
overcome financial ruin and redeemed his family name to become the
most legendary investor in London, the Duke of Westmead needs to
secure his holdings by producing an heir. Which means he must find a
wife who won’t discover his secret craving to spend his nights on
his knees—or make demands on his long scarred-over heart.
Poppy
Cavendish is not that type of woman. An ambitious self-taught
botanist designing the garden ballroom in which Westmead plans to woo
a bride, Poppy has struggled against convention all her life to
secure her hard-won independence. She wants the capital to expand her
exotic nursery business—not a husband.
But
there is something so compelling about Westmead, with his starchy
bearing and impossibly kind eyes—that when an accidental scandal
makes marriage to the duke the only means to save her nursery, Poppy
worries she wants more than the title he is offering. The arrangement
is meant to be just business. A greenhouse for an heir. But Poppy
yearns to unravel her husband’s secrets—and to tempt the duke to
risk his heart.
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Read
and exclusive excerpt from THE
DUKE I TEMPTED:
Poppy sat at a round table in the corner, surrounded by piles of
drawings. She still wore her gardening clothes, and her eyes were
heavy lidded. She looked intense and flushed and disheveled.
Beautiful.
No.
He must stop doing that. Must chasten his reactions to her.
Hardworking.
She looked tired from her labors.
He
cleared his throat. “Poppy. You’re still awake.”
She
looked up at him with a guilty expression. “Your Grace. Yes. And it
seems I have invaded your study — I’m so sorry. The others were
playing whist in the library and I thought to finish my work in the
quiet. I’m just finishing — I’ll leave you.”
“Never
mind. Stay. Please. Show me what it is you’re sketching.”
She
hesitated. He felt her eyes linger on his face, like she was trying
to discern something about him. No doubt, her downcast expression had
something to do with his invasion of her bedchamber the previous
evening. He needed to address that. No woman who’d been raised in
Grove Vale would be ignorant of the stories about his father. He
could not have her think that he expected similar liberties of her.
He had taken far too many as it was.
“Poppy,
last night — I hope I didn’t alarm you. I apologize for
intruding. I would not normally disturb a lady’s privacy, and I
hope I gave no offense. I was concerned. You seemed quite
distressed.”
Her
face flickered. “It was only a nightmare,” she said finally. “I
shan’t disturb you again.”
“I
was not disturbed,” he said quickly.
She
smiled. “When I awoke this morning I wondered if I had dreamt you.”
“No,”
he said, drinking in her languid eyes.
She
reached up and touched his face above his cheekbone. “No,” she
agreed. “Here you are. Real indeed.”
Damn
him, but he caught her hand and dragged it down to his lips and
placed a kiss inside her palm.
Her
mouth parted. Perhaps in shock. Perhaps in something closer to the
feeling surging behind his sternum, overriding his judgment, his
propriety, his will to be the kind of person he had spent a decade
refashioning himself into.
“Forgive
me. I am not myself tonight,” he forced himself to say, releasing
her. He looked into her green eyes and told her the truth of it: “You
should leave me.”
He
meant it.
And
yet.
And
yet.
He
hoped she wouldn’t listen.
Author
Bio:
Scarlett Peckham fell
in love with romance novels as a child, sneaking paperbacks from the
stash in her grandmother's closet. By the time she came of age
she had exhausted her library's supply and begun to dream of writing
one of her own.
Scarlett studied
English at Columbia University and built a career in communications,
but in her free hours always returned to her earliest obsession:
those delicious, big-hearted books you devour in the dark and can
never bear to put down. Her steamy historical romances about alpha
heroines have been finalists for the Golden Heart® Award four times.
Her debut book, THE DUKE I TEMPTED, will be out July 31, 2018.
Scarlett splits her
time between London and Los Angeles. When not reading or writing
romance she enjoys pretending to know about wine, discussing The
Real Housewives, and cooking enormous pots of soup.
Scarlett is
represented by Sarah Younger at the Nancy Yost Literary Agency, and
spends far too much time on Instagram
and Twitter.
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