Stuck In Books is so excited to participate in Berkley Bookmas and we're hosting Anne Grace and excerpt from Marry in Scandal today!
Berkley Bookmas is chock full of exclusive content from authors like exclusive excerpts, deleted scenes, author recipes and more! Check out the calendar of events below:
Shy young heiress, Lady Lily Rutherford, is in no hurry to marry. She dreams of true love and a real courtship. But when disaster strikes, she finds herself facing a scandal-forced marriage to her rescuer, Edward Galbraith, a well known rake.
Despite his reputation Lily is drawn to the handsome Galbraith. In the gamble of her life, she agrees to marry him, hoping to turn a convenient marriage into a love match.
As heir to a title, Galbraith knows he must wed, so a convenient marriage suits him perfectly. But there is a darkness in his past, and secrets he refuses to share with his tender-hearted young bride. All Lily's efforts to get close to him fall on stony ground, and in desperation she retreats to his childhood home—the place he's avoided for nearly a decade.
Must Lily reconcile herself to a marriage without love? Or will Galbraith realize that this warm-hearted, loving girl is the key to healing the wounds of his past—and his heart?
Marry In
Scandal ~ Anne Gracie
London, 1818
“I have secured a duke for the opera
tonight,” Agatha, Lady Salter announced with an air of triumph. Bone thin and
immensely elegant, her steely silvery hair intricately coiled, piled high and
bound into a kind of turban, she fingered her lorgnette with long fingers and
eyed her three nieces with a critical gaze.
Lily
Rutherford, Lady Salter’s youngest niece, swallowed. She sat with her sister
Rose on the chaise longue
facing the old lady. George, technically a great-niece rather than a niece,
lounged casually on the armrest of a nearby chair.
“Do dukes
sing?” Rose idly twirled her fan. “I had no idea.”
“Don’t be facetious, Rose,” Aunt Agatha
snapped. “You know very well why I have arranged this opportunity—it’s for you
in particular.” She added, “As well, he is bringing two friends, one of whom—”
She broke off,
her eyes narrowed. Lily tensed as the old lady raised her lorgnette. It was a
warm day and Lily’s thighs were sticking together, but she didn’t dare move. Aunt
Agatha despised fidgeting.
But her gaze
came to rest meaningfully on George, who gave the elderly dowager a bland smile
in return and stayed where she was, one leg swinging in an unladylike manner.
“Georgiana! Are you wearing breeches under that habit?”
George
shrugged, entirely unrepentant. “We’re
just back from our morning ride.”
The old lady
closed her eyes in a ‘heaven-help-me’ expression, muttered something under her
breath, took a deep breath and continued, “As I said, the duke is bringing two
of his friends, and one of them might be interested in you, Georgiana—though
not if you sit like that! Or wear breeches. No gentleman of taste—”
“And one of
them might be interested in Lily.” Rose smiled warmly at her sister.
Aunt Agatha
glanced at Lily. “Perhaps,” she said dismissively. She raised her lorgnette and
raked it critically over the person of her youngest niece.
Lily, knowing
what was coming, sucked in her stomach and held her breath. But it did no good.
“I see you
have failed to follow my advice about the diet that was so effective for Lord
Byron, Lily. You’re as fat as ever.”
“Lily isn’t
fat,” Rose flashed angrily. “She’s lovely and rounded and cuddly. But not fat!”
“And besides,
she did try that dreadful diet,” George said. “For two whole weeks and
it made her quite sick for no result. Potatoes drenched in vinegar? Ghastly.”
“A small
sacrifice for the sake of beauty,” Aunt Agatha said with all the complacence of
a woman who had never had to diet in her life.
“Lily is
beautiful as she is.” Rose squeezed her sister’s hand comfortingly. “We all
think so.”
Aunt Agatha
snorted.
“Better to be
sweet-natured and cuddly than a nasty, well-dressed skeleton.” George gave a
meaningful glance at Aunt Agatha.
Lily tried not
to squirm. She hated this, hated people quarreling over her, hated it when Aunt
Agatha examined her through her horrid lorgnette—as she did every time she
visited. Under that cold, merciless gaze, Lily always felt like a worm—a fat,
unattractive, stupid worm. And she couldn’t bear another evening of it.
“I’m sorry but
I can’t come to the opera tonight,” she found herself saying. “I have a—a
previous engagement.”
There was a
short, shocked silence. Rose and George blinked and tried to conceal their
surprise.
Aunt Agatha’s
gaze, her eyes horribly enlarged through the lens of her weapon of choice,
bored into Lily. “What did you say, gel?”
Lily swallowed
but held her ground. “I said, I have a prior engagement.” She pressed her lips
together. She was hopeless at arguing;, she always gave in eventually, so it
was better to say nothing.
Aunt Agatha
gripped her carved ebony stick in a bony grasp and stamped it on the floor. The
floor being covered by a thick Turkish rug, the effect was rather lost. “Did
you not understand me, you stupid gel? A duke and two of his friends have
agreed to join our party at the opera. A duke! And two other
eligible gentlemen. And you say you can’t come? What nonsense! Of course
you will come!”
Lily eased her
fingers out of her sister’s grasp. Now her hands were sweaty, as well as her
thighs. She wiped them surreptitiously on her skirt and said with as much
dignity as she could muster, “I was under the impression you had issued an
invitation, Aunt Agatha, not an order.”
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Thank you so much for featuring my book, Marry In Scandal. All the very best to you and your readers for the festive season — and for this amazing new thing, the Bookmas. ;)
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