Title: The Untouchable Earl
Author: Amy Sandas
Series: Fallen Ladies, #2
ISBN: 9781492618751
Pubdate: November 1, 2016
Genre: Historical Romance
“Are you afraid?”
“Yes,” she
replied in a soft voice. “But I love the way you frighten me.”
Lily Chadwick has
spent her life playing by society’s rules. But when an unscrupulous moneylender
snatches her off the street and puts her up for auction at a pleasure house,
she finds herself in the possession of a man who makes her breathless with terror
and impossible yearning…
Though the reclusive
Earl of Harte claimed Lily with the highest bid, he hides a painful secret—one
that has kept him from knowing the pleasure of a lover’s touch. Even the barest
brush of skin brings him physical pain, and he’s spent his life keeping the
world at arms’ length. But there’s something about Lily that maddens him,
bewitches him, compels him…and drives him toward the one woman brave and kind
enough to seek to heal his troubled heart.
Excerpt
As his hungry gaze soaked up every detail of the
woman who had been haunting his thoughts, he noticed something odd in her
manner.
Her lovely gray eyes were lowered, and with her
hair shielding much of her face, she presented a perfect example of shy
modesty. The posture struck Avenell as wrong. Despite Miss Chadwick’s innocence
and quiet manner, she was not one to avert her gaze. He had observed her enough
in the preceding weeks to know she had an unnerving tendency to view her
surroundings with direct, consuming attention.
The girls on either side of her were clearly
meant to highlight Miss Chadwick’s virginal appearance by contrasting it
against their more obvious sexual lures. But Avenell noted they served another
purpose as well. Keeping their arms linked with the young woman, they were able
to subtly keep her in place as she swayed on her feet.
An icy chill swept through his blood.
Miss Chadwick had been drugged. Laudanum perhaps.
Enough to relax her muscles and dull her brain. The girl was not there of her
own free will. She was a virgin sacrifice being offered to the debauchery of
the men before her.
A sickening dread rushed through him with such
force that he thought he might be physically ill. His hands froze into fists,
and his head throbbed.
Avenell looked away from the gross display at
the front of the room and set his snifter of brandy on the table beside him as
he rose abruptly from his chair.
His cool gaze swept over the other men in the
room who had already started to shout their bids for the privilege of claiming
Miss Chadwick for their own. It was difficult to tell if anyone else had recognized
her, but it was obvious that no one intended to step forward and stop the
proceedings.
Avenell stood locked in place, knowing that if
he made a scene by dashing forward to interrupt, he would only provide more
cause for scandal and her ruination should she be recognized. His body tensed
to granite as he considered the best way to intervene.
Madam Pendragon laughed at the enthusiasm of
some while teasing others to go higher in their bids. Avenell scowled in her
direction and noticed that she sent him a sly glance in return.
As if waiting for—no, imploring—him to join in
on the bidding war.
He looked away from the madam, for the first
time not trusting the woman’s direction. He sent his gaze out over the other
patrons.
The gentlemen were practically salivating as
they competed for the opportunity to purchase the hapless Miss Chadwick. On any
other night, these men may have faced the same girl in their own drawing rooms
and would have been compelled to treat her with the highest degree of respect.
But here, she deserved nothing but their lust.
Another wave of disgust rolled through him.
He turned a hard glare toward Madam Pendragon as
he heard the bid spike into an astronomical range. Anger clawed at him, along
with an unexpected sense of betrayal. She should have known he would not be
able to stand for this type of diversion, that he would be compelled to find a
way to act and save the young girl from a ruinous fate.
Of course, she would be pleased by the income
she would garner from the spectacle, but as he watched her, he noticed signs of
tension in the supremely self-possessed woman. At that moment, the madam
glanced his way again. Her brows lifted a minute fraction of an inch as she
subtly tipped her head toward the prize.
Avenell clenched his jaw tight but finally looked
back to Miss Chadwick. There was the expected twist in his gut, the stumbling
in his chest, the thudding in his ears he had been experiencing the last couple
of weeks whenever he looked upon this particular woman.
The laudanum appeared to be wearing off. She had
managed to lift her chin, and she stared out at the room with confusion and
wariness in her eyes. She tried ineffectually to pull her arms away from the
girls on either side of her, but they held fast, making a play of rubbing their
bodies against her to disguise their forceful detainment.
Their ploy was effective, and the other men in
the room reacted to the show.
But Avenell was not fooled. He saw the fear in
Miss Chadwick’s unfocused eyes and the bright spark of rebellion.
In the next moment, Miss Chadwick’s wavering
gray gaze found him in the far reaches of the room. And when her eyes locked
with his, she refused to let go. He could no more look away from her than he
could unleash the moon from its orbit.
There was only one thing he could do.
Speaking in a loud, clear tone, he entered the
fray with a firmly stated offer that nearly tripled the last bid.
His competition turned to glare at him for how
suddenly he had brought an end to the entertainment. No one was willing to top
such an exorbitant price.
Avenell ignored them all.
He was far too busy battling an intense internal
war between disgust at what she had been subjected to and an alarming thread of
triumph.
Because no matter how they had both ended up
here, no matter how wrong this all was…the woman who had been tormenting him
for weeks now belonged to him.
Amy Sandas' love of romance began one summer when she
stumbled across one of her mother's Barbara Cartland books. Her affinity for
writing began with sappy pre-teen poems and led to a Bachelor's degree with an
emphasis on Creative Writing from the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities. She
lives with her husband and children in Wisconsin.
Social Networking
Links
Website:
https://amysandas.wordpress.com/
Goodreads:
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6217869.Amy_Sandas
Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/AmySandas/
Twitter: @AmySandas
Buy/Preorder
Links:
Amazon: http://amzn.to/2dPfGBM
iBooks: http://apple.co/2dPh2gc
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