The Temptations Of Lord Tintagel

When his enemy…

becomes his truly tempting ally!

Inigo’s best friend’s life was cut brutally short by his association with the lovely Audevere Brenley and her father. Now Inigo seeks justice. But never did he dream that his greatest ally would be Audevere herself. What begins as business is branded with passion as Inigo rediscovers the intrepid, determined woman he thought he knew. His most dangerous revelation? His own feelings for her!

BRONWYN SCOTT is a communications instructor at Pierce College in the United States, and the proud mother of three wonderful children—one boy and two girls. When she’s not teaching or writing she enjoys playing the piano, travelling—especially to Florence, Italy—and studying history and foreign languages. Readers can stay in touch via Facebook, or on her blog, bronwynswriting.blogspot.com. She loves to hear from readers.

Also by Bronwyn Scott

Allied at the Altar miniseries

A Marriage Deal with the Viscount

One Night with the Major

Tempted by His Secret Cinderella

Captivated by Her Convenient Husband

The Cornish Dukes miniseries

The Secrets of Lord Lynford

The Passions of Lord Trevethow

The Temptations of Lord Tintagel

And look out for the next book

coming soon!

Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk.

The Temptations of Lord Tintagel

Bronwyn Scott

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ISBN: 978-0-008-90141-7

THE TEMPTATIONS OF LORD TINTAGEL

© 2020 Nikki Poppen

Published in Great Britain 2020

by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

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To Scott, who got me through this book

as he gets me through so much else.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

About the Author

Booklist

Title Page

Copyright

Note to Readers

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Epilogue

Extract

About the Publisher

Chapter One

London —September 1824

The Jilt was getting married. Five years after her last attempt and she was going after a peer. Again. At least that was what it looked like from the society columns and they tended to have the right of it most times. Inigo Vellanoweth set aside the morning edition and took a bracing swallow of hot coffee, searing, strong and bitter, to match the news. It had been bound to happen. Perhaps the surprise was that it hadn’t happened sooner, but it did not lessen the shock of seeing it in print. Print lent a certain official quality to information. Print made rumours into facts. Inigo had been following these particular rumours all Season, every mention of her with the upstanding Viscount Tremblay buried beneath the larger twin excitements of the Season: the arrival and subsequent death of the Hawaiian King and Cassian Truscott’s courtship of Penrose Prideaux. According to The Times, the arrangement between the Jilt and Tremblay was all but done. An offer from the Viscount was expected soon. In September, when most of London was absent to protest or to raise the old rumours about her background. Did no one else see her father’s calculation in that?

A hundred different questions assailed Inigo as he read, mixed with emotions he would rather not acknowledge. He didn’t want to think about her, about the past where their lives had intersected, about his own failures when it came to her and her nefarious father. His reaction to the news was complicated to say the least. Among the myriad questions running through his mind was whether or not she meant marriage this time, or was this another opportunity to ruin a peer? She might mean to go through with it. After all, she was twenty-two now, no longer as young as she’d once been, and Viscount Tremblay, her most recent conquest, was a serious man. A good match by all standards. But the Jilt had made a good match before in Collin Truscott, second son of the Duke of Hayle—an extraordinary match for the daughter of a newly minted knight of the realm. When Sir Gismond Brenley climbed ladders, he did so with ambition and alacrity, using everything and everyone at his disposal—including his own daughter, the exquisite Audevere.

Even now, with five years of tragedy and deceit to tarnish the once-golden debutante, even when he knew to be wary of her charms, Inigo could still see her in his mind’s eye as she’d once been: her blonde head thrown back, her neck exposed as she laughed, a deep, throaty sound that made a man think of decadence and candlelight, of taking down all that carefully coiffed hair pin by pearl pin. He remembered the way her green eyes would flirt and flash, sharp with intelligence and wit, how her gaze would slide towards Collin, a secret half-smile on her lips that suggested something private just between them even though they were surrounded by a ballroom crowd.

Oh, how he’d envied Collin Truscott, his friend—one of his best friends—in those early days! Deep in his heart, Inigo had wanted that for himself: a woman who looked at him the way Audevere had looked at Collin; a woman who could make him laugh with her wit, who had intelligence and who wasn’t afraid to use it, unlike the usual debutante thrust in the path of eligible dukes’ heirs. Inigo pushed back from the table and began to pace, his body and mind agitated by memories. But Jermyn Street bachelor quarters didn’t leave much room to outrun the truth.

In his darker, more honest moments, Inigo admitted it wasn’t that he’d wanted a woman with whom he could share such moments. He’d wanted her. He’d wanted Audevere, his friend’s fiancée. It had shamed him then and it still shamed him now, because she was not innocent in all her father’s ruthless schemes; she bore her share of responsibility for Collin’s death. Only his fantasies held back that truth. In them, she was an unwitting accomplice, unaware of the depth of her father’s corruption, sometimes even a victim, forced against her will to aid her father’s plots. He’d fallen into the habit years ago of making excuses for her and for himself.

No matter how often he’d told himself that such coveting was a sin, that jealousy was poorly done of him, he’d not been able to shake the wanting of her. It was petty of him, he knew. He was the heir and son to the Duke of Boscastle. He was a man who had wealth galore and Midas’s own touch for turning a respectable accumulation of money into wealth unimaginable. He had everything and yet he’d been jealous of Collin, a man who would never inherit a title, who would always walk in the shadows of others and who had no business sense at all; a man who had only his good looks and winning personality to recommend him and who would always be reliant on his family’s connections and wealth for his own livelihood.

But that logic had held little sway with a twenty-five-year-old in desperate, secret love. He’d been privately envious of Collin right up until the day Collin had swum out to the Beasts off the shores of Porth Karrek and promptly drowned, one week to the day after Audevere had broken their engagement and two weeks after Collin’s latest business venture with Audevere’s father had failed dramatically, costing people homes and jobs they couldn’t afford to lose. Collin’s family had called it death by misadventure, but those closest to Collin knew better. Between them, father and daughter, the Brenleys had broken him.

And they would pay for it. Inigo had vowed the night of Collin’s death to bring Brenley down so that no one else would fall prey to such corruption, such scheming. That had been the beginning of his investigation, five years of piecing together a dirty trail of money that followed Gismond Brenley everywhere he went if anyone cared to look closely enough. Most did not. Did it matter? Brenley was careful. He did nothing illegal, just distasteful, depending on one’s politics.

Inigo’s pacing halted in mid-thought. Did Tremblay know to look close enough to be suspect of his impending father-in-law? Did Tremblay know to look behind the scenes of the glorious heroics in the Napoleonic Wars that had led to Brenley’s knighthood? Or to the sudden acquisition of wealth when Brenley’s properties benefited from Parliament’s decision to put roads through certain villages and not others? Did Tremblay understand the importance of pushing Brenley off the board of the Blaxford Mining Corporation last year before he could establish a monopoly on Cornish mining? Did Tremblay know all these things and simply not care? This seemed unlikely to Inigo, given the type of man Tremblay was—conscientious and civically minded. Or was Tremblay walking in blind, as Collin had? Blinded by Audevere’s beauty, willing to overlook the common antecedents of her pedigree and all the dirtiness that went with it?

Inigo’s pacing started anew with a different line of agitation to pursue. His mind tried to reason that there was no call for extreme alarm. Surely, Tremblay’s solicitors would have done some investigating of their own. But Inigo was uncomfortable relying only on assumptions. He’d assumed Collin would be all right once, too. That was another question raised by the morning’s news. Should he warn Tremblay?

It would require the airing of dirty laundry not his own—sharing the secrets of the Truscott family. Inigo was protective of his friends. He would not willingly cause them pain by bringing up a death they’d taken great care to attribute to an accidental drowning. Perhaps there was a way to warn Tremblay without exposing the Truscotts to resurrected scandal? He owed Tremblay full disclosure. The Viscount was a friend. Not to speak up when he had the power to make a difference would be to serve that friendship poorly and it ran antithetical to the code of honour held by the Cornish Dukes—the seven men he admired most in this world and the next.

Inigo strode into the small room that served as his study and pulled a set of journals off the shelves which contained the results of his investigation. His mind was determined. He had failed Collin. He would not fail another friend. He would meet with Tremblay, perhaps invite him to drinks at White’s, and warn him away from a disastrous choice before history could repeat itself.

‘I expect Tremblay will want to discuss marriage when we meet this afternoon at Tattersall’s.’ The words washed over Audevere Brenley, cold and relentless as the Cornish sea in winter. Her father was too confident about his edict for her tastes and that frightened her with good reason, although she gave none of that fear away. It was too early in the day for that. Fear and breakfast did not mix.

‘Shouldn’t he be discussing marriage with me? After all, you’re not the one he wishes to wed.’ She sipped her morning tea—a strong Ceylon black—with all the nonchalant sangfroid she could summon. She had been here before, metaphorically speaking. Here at this critical juncture, a pawn advanced in a king’s gambit and now it was time for the trap to fall, for the pawn to be sacrificed in fulfilment of her service. She did not want to be here in London, bait once more in her father’s attempt to secure a title for the Brenley line. A title his grandchildren could inherit and, until then, a title he could manipulate in Parliament. She wanted to be in Cornwall, away from marriage proposals she didn’t want from unsuspecting men who had little idea what a disaster marriage to her would be; men who only saw the beautiful Audevere, the heiress named for an ancient sixth-century Merovingian queen. Her money was nouveau; her name was old.

Her father dismissed her remark with a casual wave of his hand. ‘Tremblay knows the real business of matrimony is conducted with the father. Asking you is just ceremonial window dressing.’

‘What a lovely notion.’ Audevere speared him with a sharp tone and a sardonic gaze that conveyed all she thought of such an arrangement. ‘Why should my opinion matter? It’s only the rest of my life that is being arranged.’ He’d been arranging men for her since she was sixteen. It should have been the first sign of his corruption, but she’d been too naive and too flattered at the beginning to understand, desperate as she had been back then to earn her absent father’s approval. He’d been at sea most of her life and suddenly he was the only family she had.

‘Damn right, gel.’ Her father pointed the tines of his fork at her. ‘A life that is being arranged to great satisfaction. You will be a lady, the Viscountess of a peer of the realm. Not bad for a man who only made his money a few years ago. Look how far and how fast we’ve risen. Have I not done well?’ Her father flung his arms outwards as if to embrace the room and every last one of its expensive, if not tasteful, trappings.

‘Yes, you’ve done well,’ Audevere offered a polite smile. There was no use arguing with him when he was like this—obstinate and confident, assured of his own inviolability. He had achieved much in just seven short years since acquiring his knighthood, but at what cost? Five years ago, her first fiancé, Collin Truscott, second son of the Duke of Hayle, took his own life in the wake of her father’s avarice. Now, a viscount was in her father’s sights, waiting to be devoured in the same way—through a marital alliance. History was repeating itself and it was time for it to stop.

‘Look what five years have bought us, Daughter.’ Her father refilled his plate. No matter how much money he had, he still ate like a man who wasn’t sure where the next meal was coming from. ‘Perhaps this is Providence’s recompense for losing the Duke’s son. Truscott was never going to have a title, but Tremblay is already in possession of his. A viscount is a much better trade than a duke’s second son. Of course, my own title was new back then. Truscott was the best we could have hoped for back then, but now we’ve attained even better.’

Audevere pushed her plate away, her appetite dampened by her father’s callous disregard for Collin and for her own feelings. She’d cared for the young man. She’d genuinely mourned him. She still remembered with vivid accuracy the day she’d heard the news. Cassian Truscott, the heir, had ridden to Truro in the wind and the rain to tell them the news. She’d been summoned to her father’s office where Cassian had waited, drenched, water streaming in rivulets from his greatcoat on to her father’s expensive carpet, his expression devastated as he told her.

‘Collin is dead. He drowned off the shores of Porth Karrek.’

Cassian had imparted the words with a stern, condemning stare which she had understood implicitly. Collin had drowned deliberately. She’d broken with her fiancé and he’d taken his own life. This was her fault. No one went swimming alone in the cold Cornish seas in April. Cassian left shortly after. The moment the door closed behind him, she’d broken into tears, but her father had cursed. ‘Damn it all, a Season wasted. We’ve lost the Duke.’

That day she’d seen him plain, for the first time in his entirety, for what he truly was: an unscrupulous opportunist, ready to rise on the back of anyone who could lift him higher. Even his own daughter. She’d known it in her heart for a few years, but had not wanted to admit it. What daughter did? Life was not sacred to him and in the wake of Collin’s death she had hated him for it and had taken no pains to hide it, prompting his disclosure of a secret that devastated what remained of her life.

A secret that would keep her tethered to him.

A secret that meant she would never be free as long as she stayed.

She’d come to understand in hindsight that his damning disclosure had been revealed out of fear she would run. Now she not only hated him, she feared him. In truth, she hated herself for letting that fear rule her, for being powerless to change that fear, powerless to stop him; for being afraid of what would happen to her or anyone she was close to if she tried. But no more. It was time to set aside her fear and take her chances.

‘Might I be excused, Father?’ A footman came to hold her chair and she rose. ‘I have correspondence to see to. So many people are not in London these days.’ It was a subtle reminder that for the truly fashionable, the Season had closed long ago, and they ought to be at the town house in Truro.

Her father waved her off and she escaped up to her rooms, gladly shutting her bedroom door behind her. She could have written letters in the lady’s parlour at the back of the house, but she felt safer up here, away from the prying eyes of the servants who were instructed to watch her every move, away from her father who endlessly plotted his social ascent, and away from the ‘gentlemen’ who called on him for business. Out of sight was out of mind and she preferred to be as far from her father’s thoughts and friends as possible—although today’s news about Tremblay proved that there was nowhere far enough from her father’s machinations.

The years since Collin’s death had bought her time, but not much else. During her second Season, his death had been a protective shield. No one had approached her out of respect for her mourning and there’d been nothing her father could do about it without looking like a cad. Her third Season had been clouded by rumours of her father’s underhanded business dealings regarding the Blaxford Mining Corporation in Cornwall. He’d clashed with the Cornish Dukes and come out the lesser for it. No one had been interested in courting her then, much to her father’s chagrin. But tonnish memories were short. This year, she’d caught the eye of Viscount Tremblay and her father had entrenched, running roughshod over her efforts to quell the Viscount’s attentions, knowing full well that she would be worth less to him next year. A girl in her fifth Season was as good as on the shelf; everyone would be wary of a girl who hadn’t taken yet.

Audevere sat at the delicate, white writing desk at her window overlooking the town house gardens. She closed her eyes and rubbed her temples, the beginnings of a headache starting to take root as the blood in her veins thrummed another urgent tattoo: time to go, time to go. It was past time to put a stop to her father using her in his manoeuvrings. Time to stop doing his bidding. She was twenty-two years old, no longer a seventeen-year-old girl whose youth and naivety could excuse her for not having acted sooner. Time to stop being helpless. No one was going to ride to her rescue. She would have to rescue herself.

If she meant to act, the time was certainly now, before another man fell victim to her father. If she did nothing, she’d be married to Tremblay by New Year and, perhaps worse than that, she’d be complicit in her father’s schemes this time, knowing full well ahead of time how he intended to use her. But how could she stop her father, when he had a list of men in his pocket who owed him favours, another list of men who feared blackmail, when he had ruthlessly amassed favours and fortunes that no one dared contest?

The answer was that one person alone could not. There was no hope there. She had done all she could to put Tremblay off without her father finding out, but it seemed he was intent on proposing. She could do nothing there, so she would have to prevent the wedding itself. One could not marry what was not there to be wed. If she were gone, Tremblay at least would be saved. And—a desperate part of her reignited the forlorn hope—you would be free. At last.

Freedom would come at a cost, though. Where would she go? There was no one to turn to, no safe place to go. On the one hand, the world was her oyster; she could go anywhere, be anyone, do anything. On the other, the world was a dangerous place for a woman alone with limited resources, a woman who would have to give up everything—even her name—and disappear. She supposed she could give the servants the slip. She could go for a walk and never come back. She could slide out into the world with nothing more than the clothes on her back and whatever she could shove into her pockets. But that was an ominous beginning that begged for failure.