Twice the Temptation by Suzanne Enoch

If everything goes as I hope, I’ll file my intention to sit for next year’s session. I would like to do my duty by my country.” He sighed, taking another puff on his cigar. “Family does come first, however.”
     
      “Of course. If I may say, you’ve raised a lovely daughter.”
     
      A shadow crossed the viscount’s face. “Yes, thank you. Just like her mother, she is.” He cleared his throat. “You find her amenable, then?”
     
      Connoll snorted. He couldn’t help himself. “Amenable? No. But forthright and witty. It’s refreshing, despite the blows to my pride. I’m…fawned over quite a bit, generally.”
     
      “Hm. Interesting.”
     
      “Why is that?”
     
      “Oh, nothing. Just an old father musing to himself.” The viscount pulled out his pocket watch and clicked it open. “I should go see how they’re faring.”
     
      From what Connoll had overheard, the viscountess didn’t want her husband anywhere near them. Obviously Munroe had some opinions about things, and just as clearly he had no intention of expressing them to a man he’d only just met. If an extended acquaintancewas what it took to enable him to decipher Evangeline, so be it. Whatever she’d done to him that morning didn’t seem to be waning.
     
      “I’ll go with you,” he decided, crushing out his cigar on the carriage’s wheel rim. “I suppose I need to assess my competition.”
     
      “You’re sincerely in pursuit of Gilly, then, are you?” her father asked. “With honorable intentions, I presume?”
     
      “I wouldn’t be talking with you if they were otherwise, my lord.” A few days ago forming that sentence would have sent him screaming into the night. Perhaps Gilly was a witch. If he was under a spell, though, it was an odd one, since a love spell generally meant that the conjurer was attracted to the conjuree. Miss Munroe had several times looked at him as though she would like to throw him through the nearest window. He grinned, then quickly hid the expression. A better explanation was that he’d simply gone mad. “And to clarify, yes, my intentions are honorable.”
     
      “Perhaps you should call me John, then.”
     
      “Only if you call me Connoll.”
     
      “Agreed, Connoll. I have to say, it’s pleasant to have another gentleman about for me to converse with. A household of females, you know, requires a certain restraint.”
     
      Where the Munroe household was concerned, the level of restraint seemed extraordinary. He declined to comment on that, at least for the moment.
     
      The sight of Gilly standing before Lord Redmond, though, set him back on his heels again. As he watched, she giggled behind her fan, then playfully cuffed the old man with the ivory-ribbed confection.Good God . Who was this chit? If that had been him standingthere, she would have attempted to remove his head with that fan.
     
      “We’ve returned to see whether you require anything, my dears,” the viscount intoned, smiling at his wife.
     
      “We’re quite well,” Lady Munroe said, her jaw clenching. “Lord Redmond, are you acquainted with Lord Rawley?”
     
      The earl shuffled his feet around to face Connoll. “Indeed I am. Welcome back to London, Rawley. I’d heard you had embarked on some expedition or other.”
     
      Damnation. “Oh, you know me,” he said nonchalantly. “I like to wander. It keeps me out of trouble—for the most part.”
     
      Redmond chuckled, then began wheezing. “For the…most part…Very good, Rawley.”
     
      Sending a glare at Connoll, Gilly offered her arm to the earl. “Goodness, my lord. Shall I have someone fetch you a drink?”
     
      “John will go,” the viscountess broke in. “Go get the earl a lemonade, John.”
     
      With a shallow bow, Munroe vanished. Redmond’s coughing fit continued.
     
      “Perhaps you might take a seat, Redmond,” Connoll suggested, beginning to wonder whether he’d killed the old fool.