Lover Be Mine: A Legendary Lovers Novel by Nicole Jordan

caught in his lungs and lowered his hand
     from her mouth. “I will see you on Tuesday at your aunt’s country home in Berkshire.
     For now I must have a word with Skye and arrange for my cousin Traherne to handle
     some of my affairs while I am away.”
    Then Jack stepped back and turned away, taking a measure of comfort in the disappointment
     he’d seen in Sophie’s eyes.

    It had become a Wilde family tradition to gather for Sunday dinner as often as possible,
     a custom initially started the summer following the tragic loss of their parents.
     Lord Cornelius had hoped to drum civilized manners into the five hooligan youngsters,
     and they had complied in order to please their long-suffering, much-loved uncle. Over
     the years, however, the dinners had evolved into a way to remain involved in one anothers’
     lives.
    At the end of that long-ago summer, the cousins had gone their separate ways—Ash and
     Quinn to university, the girls to a boarding academy, while then-seventeen-year-old
     Jack had remained behind at Beauvoir with Uncle Cornelius for another year. But the
     bonds of love and family had never been broken, as Jack thought they might be. In
     fact, their ties had actually been made stronger, for their separation had only made
     them cherish one another more.
    Normally Jack relished their clan gatherings—except when he was the prime focus of
     attention, as he knew he would be now. Thus, he’d delayed arriving at the Beaufort
     mansion in Grosvenor Square until the last minute. When he finally sauntered into
     the drawing room, he found three Wilde ladies assembled there, sipping sherry, along
     with his elderly, bespectacled uncle.
    Of course Ash and his new wife Maura were absent, having retired to the Beaufort family
     seat in Kent in search of privacy as a blissfully wedded couple. Quinn was missing
     as well—no doubt off somewhere applying his brilliant mind to his latest scientific
     inventions. A boon, Jack decided, since cool-headed, cynical Quinn would rag him unmercifully
     aboutbeing bear-led by the girls and surrendering to their romanticism.
    But the rest of the family was there. Skye looked fresh as a rose, her pale-blond
     fairness a contrast to the darker coloring of the others. Kate was an auburn-haired
     beauty who at four-and-twenty had attracted countless beaus, but who had never found
     the true love she’d sought since coming out of short skirts. Hence, her obsession
     with matchmaking for her kin.
    Their aunt by marriage, Lady Isabella Wilde, had raven hair like Jack, the result
     of her Latin heritage. The daughter of a Spanish nobleman and an Englishwoman, Isabella
     had taken Cornelius’s younger brother Henry for her third husband. Now widowed once
     more, she was as vivacious as any of the Wildes, although she was in her middle forties—nearly
     the same age as the Duke of Dunmore, as it happened.
    Aunt Bella divided her time between her homes in London, Cornwall, and the Isle of
     Cyrene in the Mediterranean, but had returned to London last month at Ash’s request
     to aid him in his courtship of Maura.
    Jack bent and kissed Lady Isabella’s smooth cheek just as his Uncle Cornelius complained
     about his tardiness.
    “You are late, my boy,” said the scholar, who valued punctuality.
    “I beg your pardon, sir,” he replied. “I had some unavoidable details to attend to.”
    Bracing himself to be quizzed about his romance with Sophie by his female relatives,
     he crossed to the side table to pour himself a glass of sherry.
    “Well?” Kate demanded before he could take his first swallow.
    “Well, what, dear sister?”
    “We want to know about Miss Fortin.”
    “A gentleman never kisses and tells,” Jack quipped as he returned to settle in a wing
     chair.
    “Then you have kissed her?”
    “That, my sweet, is none of your business.”
    “I should think it is very much my business, since I was the one who found your Juliet
     for you. The least you could do is