Days of Rakes and Roses by Anna Campbell

Grenville Berwick. It was too late to repair the mistakes of her youth. “I want to go home.”
    “No, you don’t.” He shifted to sit beside her, ignoring how she stiffened in disapproval. “And don’t tell me you want me to stay over there in the cold.”
    “It’s not cold.”
    “Feels like it.” He grabbed her hands and refused to release them when she tugged. “Every time you open your mouth, the temperature drops another five degrees.”
    “Let me go.” Her demand emerged as a thready plea. She could hardly blame him for ignoring it.
    “I’ve tried to be strong, Lydia.” His voice was hoarse and his grip firmed to the verge of bruising. “But keeping away from you is more than mortal flesh can bear. I feel like I haven’t touched you for a century.”
    “We’ve danced together,” she said unsteadily.
    “Under a thousand eyes.”
    “Stop it.” She pressed into the corner, but he still felt too near. Her heart raced so fast, she felt dizzy. Or perhaps that was the effect of Simon’s scent of soap and healthy male. Still so familiar, still so fiendishly alluring. “I’m engaged to another man.”
    “Whom you don’t love.” With daunting efficiency, he stripped the gloves from her hands.
    The close darkness added a fraught edge to her dilemma. Occasionally since his return, Lydia had deceived herself that Simon was the gentle, protective boy from her childhood. Now she woke sharply to the fact that he was a fully grown man with a fully grown—and very worldly—man’s desires.
    The perception should terrify her. Instead the energy throbbing between them made her feel alive for the first time since she was seventeen.
    “If you persist, I will throw myself out of this carriage.” Thank goodness, this time her voice sounded like it belonged to a woman in control of her destiny.
    “No, you won’t.” His tone lowered to vibrant urgency. Neither commented on Lydia’s lack of response to Simon’s statement that she didn’t love Grenville. “It’s impossible to sit here without kissing you.”
    He’d said something similar just before he’d turned her life upside down, then consigned her to crippling loneliness. She snatched her hands back. “Control yourself.”
    “Why are you marrying that overbearing windbag, Lydia?”
    “He’s a good man.”
    “No, he’s not. He’s a self-satisfied bully who will crush every spark of spirit from you.”
    “You don’t know him.”
    “I know the type. Your father was exactly like that.”
    Horror suffocated her. Dear God, Simon couldn’t possibly be right that she’d settled on Grenville because he reminded her of her father. Just the suggestion made the gorge rise in her throat.
    She pressed back against the seat to evade the words. “No.”
    “Yes.” He paused. “Are you marrying Grenville to make up for disappointing your father, Lydia? It won’t work, even if his late grace wasn’t dead and roasting in hell.”
    “Stop it.” This time she meant it without shillyshallying. “You have no right to talk about my father that way.”
    “Yes, I do. He damn well destroyed my life. And he came close to destroying yours. I wanted to kill him when he called you a slut.”
    She winced. Back then, she hadn’t wanted to kill her father. Instead his withering contempt had made her want to die. She still had nightmares about the disgust in the duke’s voice when he’d wrenched her away from Simon and flung her viciously against the hayshed wall.
    It was ironic that her father had died of heart trouble. As far as she knew, he’d never had a heart to begin with. Which hadn’t stopped her pursuing his approval with a desperation that still made her cringe. When he’d died without sparing her a kind word, she’d told herself she’d fought a losing battle from the first.
    The late duke had been a cold man, cold to the bone. She could never forgive her mother for breaking her marriage vows, but she could understand what had driven the duchess