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  Twelve sets of dancing eyes settled on him as he made a tinkling sound against his crystal glass. The delicate noise was quite beautiful.

  Richard Pratter, who sat at the end of the table with his fiancé, lifted his glass. “After a year of marriage, have you finally an announcement of the next heir to the Delaney fortune?”

  The crowd burst into a happy murmur and I wrenched my hands under the table. Giving Daniel a son would be wonderful, but he hadn’t visited my bed in months, and even when he’d done so before that, I was quite convinced we were doing everything wrong. No, there was no child growing in my belly to announce.

  Daniel laughed but it sounded forced with an edge of cruelty. “No, something much better is happening.”

  Richard’s deep set eyebrows turned down. “Well, tell us, Delaney. What could be better than an heir?”

  He looked down at me and smiled vacantly. “Right now, at this very moment, I have a team of lawyers working on a divorce between my wife and I.”

  A few of the ladies at the table laughed. “Oh, Daniel’s just putting us all on again,” one of them mumbled behind a gloved hand.

  The Count said, “Here, what’s this about divorce, Delaney? It’s hardly a joking matter to utter that word in mixed company.”

  Something had grown cold and dark within me at the shame he’d brought by joking about it in front of me. In front of anybody, really. Divorce wasn’t talked about in society. It just wasn’t done.

  “The law clearly states a divorce can be granted in the presence of impotence in the marriage. And if a man can be divorced for impotence, then Lorelei can be divorced for leaving my bed cold and wanting. She’ll never grant me an heir as is her wifely duty, and so the proceedings have begun long before now.”

  Different flavors of horror sat upon everyone’s face. The only sound was the kitchen door opening, but the servant holding a tray of food froze when she laid eyes upon the table of silent highborn. Heat, burning and telling, crept up my neck and landed in the very tips of my ears until I had to stifle the urge to cover them with my cold, clammy hands for comfort.

  “What is this?” The Countess whispered. Under the table she clasped my hand in a steely grip. “The disrespect you’ve shown your good wife in this joke is insurmountable. I’ve never witnessed anything so crass in my life. Give us the punch line and be done with this conversation, sir.”

  Daniel’s mouth set in a grim and somber line. “No punch line, I’m afraid. I deserve better than the person I married.”

  The Whitten’s and Ash’s stood as one, throwing their embroidered napkins onto their dinner plates with fire in their eyes. Without a word they left the room, quickly followed by Richard and his betrothed.

  I couldn’t move. Every angry glare was a lance across my heart. My friends stood and left one by one until only a few endured to witness the remainder of my plummet from society. The Count waited by the door for his wife, and the Countess stood over me with a poisonous glare for Daniel.

  Her delicate nostrils flared as she said, “You’ve ruined her with what you said in here tonight. News of her cold bed will reach even the darkest crevices of Boston by morning.”

  “That was the plan. It’s the only way my lawyers will be able to win my case. It has to be common knowledge that she is an undeserving wife,” he said dryly before he downed his champagne.

  “She’s a McGregor,” the Countess fumed. “You’ve just spat on generations of good breeding for the chance to elope with one of your whores.” She turned and with a whoosh of deep, red silk skirts, she disappeared through the door after her husband.

  “Why?” I asked in a small, trembling voice.

  “I’ve already told you. You don’t please me in bed. You bore me, like the flavor vanilla or the sight of yet another brown horse.”

  The tears that built in my eyes made dual rivers of warm water down my burning cheeks. “I want my dowry back.”

  He sat heavily in the chair beside me and poured more champagne until his glass was filled to the brim. “Your dowry was spent in the first few months of our marriage, I’m afraid. You’ll have nothing and no one from society will call on you after this scandal. Your best bet is to borrow money from your family and move away. The farther the better.”

  White hot anger boiled inside of me until surely I’d explode into a million broken pieces. “I hadn’t any idea you hated me so much, Daniel.”

  He made a clucking sound with his mouth. “Poor naive Lorelei. Your problem has always been that you’re too sweet for your own good. I don’t hate you. I just never loved you. We married because my family line benefited by being tied to the McGregors, but now, I don’t care about all of that so much. I’ll remarry and this scandal will be old news by next season. At least for me it will be.” His eyes were cool and emotionless, like some slithering serpent. “I’ve arranged for a carriage to take you to an inn. You may gather your most personal possessions, but I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to leave the valuables here in my care. Go now. I’d like to eat my dinner in peace.”

  The palm of my hand itched to slap him across his smirking face, and if I were lower born and able to get away with such behavior, I would’ve. Instead, I covered my mouth to hide my treacherous sobs and ran from the room. He didn’t deserve to see how much he’d hurt me.

  Divorce! That was the foulest word you could dare to utter, and he’d thrown me under a carriage in front of the most prominent members of society with it. The Countess was right. I was ruined—utterly, unerringly, and devastatingly ruined.

  No man would ever touch me after such a scandal. I’d die cold in my bed, alone and without the comfort of a husband, or of children. He’d cursed me to an existence beneath everything I knew.

  Mariel Loche flitted across my mind and my heart sank in terror. I didn’t know anyone else in the living world who’d weathered divorce except for Mariel Loche. Her husband divorced her and left her nothing but a meager living to eat on. When that had been spent, she’d fallen further and further and last I’d heard, she was working in a brothel in the worst part of town. Whoring and making coins by selling her body to survive. That would be my fate.

  No. I was still a McGregor. I could borrow money, surely, and eventually some man would overlook my scandal and marry me. I shook my head in devastation. What man would ever want a woman who’d been so cold in bed, she’d pushed her husband into divorce?

  Shame filled my veins until I was filled to bursting. I hadn’t known how to fix that part of my relationship, so I just let it go. How could every other woman manage to please their man but me? I’d bare this humiliation like a heavy metal chain around my neck for the rest of my life. My fists clenched until my nails dug into the skin and the smell of moist iron hung faintly in the air. I’d never marry a man for anything but necessity ever again. I’d loved Daniel and look where that got me. Men were harsh and unfeeling creatures, incapable of receiving love, incapable of giving love.

  As long as I breathed, I vowed my heart would never be touched by another again.

  RED SNOW BRIDE

  Coming November 2014

  Bear Shifter Romance Series

  KDP All-Star Series – Bestselling Series

  Bear Valley Shifters - Complete Series - Available Now

  The Witness and the Bear (Book 1)

  Devoted to the Bear (Book 2)

  Return to the Bear (Book 3)

  Betray the Bear (Book 4)

  Redeem the Bear (Book 5)

  Hells Canyon Shifters

  Call of the Bear (Book 1)

  Fealty of the Bear (Book 2)

  Avenge the Bear (Book 3)

  About the Author

  T. S. Joyce

  T.S. Joyce is devoted to bringing hot shifter romances to readers. Hungry alpha males are her calling card, and the wilder the men, the more she'll make them pour their hearts out. Experienced at handling an alpha male of her own, she lives in a tiny town, outside of a tiny city, and devotes her life to writing b
ig stories. Foodie, bear whisperer, ninja, thief of tiny bottles of awesome smelling hotel shampoo, nap connoisseur, movie fanatic, and zombie slayer, and most of this bio is true.

  Bear Shifters? Check

  Smoldering Alpha Hotness? Double Check

  Sexy Scenes? Fasten up your girdles, ladies and gents, it's gonna to be a wild ride.

  For more information about T. S. Joyce and her work, visit her website here.

  Contents

  Other Books in This Series

  Copyright

  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

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Epilogue

  Other Books by T. S. Joyce

  Newsletter Sign-Up

  Sneak Peek

  Bear Shifter Romance Series

  About the Author