Eleanor's heart gave a jolt when she looked up to find Damon's face at her open bedroom window.
Her jaw dropping, she watched in disbelief as he eased his broad shoulders through the window and hauled himself inside, then lowered his feet to the carpet.
He was still dressed in formal evening wear, Eleanor noted distractedly, but that wasn't what held her speechless. It was the fact that he had climbed up two stories to a lady's bedchamber, after midnight, bold as you please.
“Damon!” she exclaimed, her voice a high, breathless rasp. “What the devil are you doing here?”
“I believe we left our conversation unfinished,” he said coolly, crossing the room toward her bed.
“To Romance A Charming Rogue is Nicole Jordan at her finest! Sexy, sensual, and sparkling with wit, this book is a complete charmer!” -KAREN HAWKINS, New York Times bestselling author of To Catch a Highlander
The bold games of passion play out with delicious consequences in this fourth novel of Nicole Jordan's seductive new series, The Courtship Wars.
Two years ago, lively beauty Eleanor Pierce spied her dashing betrothed, Damon Stafford, Viscount Wrexham, with his former mistress and furiously ended their engagement. Now the charming rake is back in London, meddling in Eleanor's affairs, bent on thwarting her new suitor. And when Damon's intoxicating kisses rekindle her deepest longing, Eleanor loses her heart... again. But as she has no intention of allowing history to repeat itself, she embarks on a plan of tantalizing seduction, vowing to tame the rogue before she surrenders to his wicked, willful desires....
Determined to stop another man from wooing and winning the woman he loves, Damon knows that claiming Eleanor's heart is all that matters. But this scandalously bold beauty means to beat him at his own game of romance - a game he is ready and willing to lose.
Nicole Jordan
To Romance a Charming Rogue
With heartfelt thanks to my readers-
the best inspiration a writer could have.
This one's for you.
Never appear to be too captivated by a gentleman, particularly if it is true. Revealing your weakness for him will give him the upper hand, and a woman needs all the power she can muster if she is to triumph. -An Anonymous Lady,
Advice to Young Ladies on Capturing a Husband
“Eleanor, my dear, the worst has happened! Wrex-ham is here.”
Her heart leaping at her aunt's disconcerting news, Lady Eleanor Pierce froze on the sidelines of the crowded hall. “Here? Tonight? At Carlton House?”
“Indeed. His arrival was just announced.” Elea nor's proper aunt and chaperone, Lady Beldon, made a sour face. “The nerve of him! He should have the decency to respect your sensibilities.”
Eleanor agreed that Damon Stafford, Viscount Wrexham, had a great deal of nerve. In truth, Damon was the boldest man of her acquaintance. But she had braced her sensibilities against the impact of seeing him again-or so she'd believed until just this moment.
Eleanor smiled in an effort to pretend composure and to slow her all too rapid heartbeat. “I daresay Lord Wrexham has a right to attend Prinny's fete, Aunt Beatrix. No doubt he was invited, just as we were.”
George, Prince of Wales and currently England's Regent, regularly entertained at Carlton House, his garishly grand London residence. And Lady Beldon was sometimes included on the guest list, since her late husband had been an intimate of the pleasure-loving Regent's set.
Tonight the overheated mansion was filled with a crush of elegant gentry and aristocrats. Yet a surreptitious glance around the thronged hall told Eleanor that the charming rake who had once won her heart and then trampled on it was nowhere in sight.
“You make too much of the matter,” Eleanor murmured, hiding her relief. “Wrexham is perfectly at liberty to move about society as he pleases.”
Her Aunt Beatrix gave her a piercing stare. “Surely you do not mean to defend him? After he treated you so abominably?”
“No, certainly not. But I am resigned to meeting him again. It must happen eventually. He has been in London for a sennight, and we move in similar circles.”
Lady Beldon shook her head in disgust, then studied her niece more closely. “Perhaps we should take our leave, Eleanor. I will tender our excuses to Prinny-”