The Lord's Inconvenient Vow

“I have a favor to ask...

I want you to marry me.”

Part of The Sinful Sinclairs. Samantha Sinclair was always Lord Edgerton’s complete opposite. But when Edge encounters Sam again in Egypt, it’s clear the years have changed her as much as him. So after she blurts out an impulsive, convenient proposal, Edge’s protective urge compels him to accept. Is it possible for two such different people to be together and find the happiness they both deserve?

Author Note

There’s been a shadowy entity lurking throughout the Sinful Sinclair series—the Desert Boy novels, a fictional series of novels telling the story of Leila, queen of a realm of desert sprites, and Gabriel, the young man who stumbles into her world. These fictional tales within a fictional tale are set in Egypt, where the Sinclairs spent much of their childhood. They’re a mix of fantasy, Egyptian mythology and, of course, romance. I’ve had a grand time spinning them in my mind and introducing tidbits from them into my stories. In The Rake’s Enticing Proposal they are part of Chase Sinclair’s quest to fulfill his cousin’s last wish. In The Lord’s Inconvenient Vow my hero and heroine are the author and illustrator of these successful series and their lives and the fictional worlds they create are intertwined. As this series comes to a close I’ve realized I’m not only saying goodbye to my three Sinful Sinclairs and their partners but also to Leila and Gabriel’s magical world. Perhaps one day I will miss them enough to write their story, as well...

Prologue

‘The Hidden City isn’t truly invisible, Gabriel. Most people are blind to what threatens their world. Life is easier thus.’

—The Sprite Queen, Desert Boy Book One

Qetara, Egypt—1814

‘For heaven’s sake, Lady Samantha, come down before you fall down.’

‘Oh, go away, Sir Stay-Away-from-the-Edge.’

‘Stop calling me that.’

‘Well, Mama says I mustn’t call you Edge any longer because now that I am eighteen it is no longer proper. But I refuse to call you Lord Edward Edgerton; that is even stuffier than you are.’

He burst into laughter. He didn’t often laugh freely, but it always surprised her how it transformed his face, softening the sharp-cut lines on either side of his mouth and between his overly straight brows. With his serious grey-green eyes and hair as dark as any of her Venetian cousins he’d always appeared so adult. Or perhaps it was his insistence on dressing so properly even in the heat of the Egyptian desert.

Next to him her brothers looked like heathens or corporeal manifestations of the gods etched on the temple walls where her mother’s cousin Huxley spent all his waking hours working with Edge’s uncle Poppy. Once those two were caught in the web of their historical weaving, everyone else faded into nothingness—more ghosts in a landscape of ghosts and far less interesting.

He stopped laughing and frowned even more awfully, as if he needed to compensate for his moment of levity.

‘Proper. You have no idea what that means.’

‘Yes, I do. It means doing nothing enjoyable at all.’

‘No, it means showing respect. And it means not climbing on the antiquities.’

‘If this sphinx survived two thousand years, it will survive me.’

‘It is not a sphinx but a ram and Poppy says it is likely at least three thousand years old based on references in...never mind. In any case it should not have to suffer the indignity of being climbed upon. And barefoot, too. One day you will step on a scorpion and that will be the end of it.’

‘You have my permission to dance a jig on my grave if it is, Lord Hedgehog.’

He ignored her latest variation on his name.

‘Don’t be a fool, Sam. Besides, I hate dancing. Why the...why are you up there anyway?’

‘Come see.’

She turned away and waited. He might be as dry as a mummy, but he had his uncle’s curiosity. She wondered if he realised he’d reverted to calling her Sam as he once had. Probably not.

It took five minutes. She heard the scrape of his boots and a muffled curse. Probably something like ‘drat’ or ‘bother’; despite being such good friends with Lucas and Chase, he never participated in their cursing contests. Since his uncle and aunt had brought him to Egypt when he was only six years old he spoke Arabic better than all of them, but he rarely indulged in the very colourful epithets Lucas and Chase mined from the locals, at least not in her hearing. In fact, she sometimes wondered why he and her brothers were so close.

She waited for him to say something unpleasant about her occupation, but though he cast a shadow over her sketchpad he said nothing. She twisted to look at him, but all she could see was a dark shape haloed by the sun.