Olivia Parker

“What have I done to her?" Gabriel muttered to himself as he crossed the room to crank open a window. Cool air washed over his skin. "What the devil did she do to me?”

“See. I told you I would get that boy to the alter eventually. All I had to do was pretend I was a loon.”

“He did not blame them. Because in truth, that's what he did, what he was. Seduce and dominate. Charm and manipulate. A user of women. How they would scoff, Rothbury mused bitterly, if they knew that he was secretly in love with the silly little chit, spectacles and all.”

“It took nearly a year to finish the ever-changing [marriage candidates] list, with the assistance of his sister and his aging spinster aunt, who lorded over their affairs as the self-appointed voice of cultivated reason. During this time, Gabriel struggled to convince straight-from-Oxford Tristan that he must marry, produce heirs, and maintain the family dukedom for Gabriel himself wouldn't marry. He knew he simply did not have the compulsion to inflict that sort of aggravation on a woman.”