Kindle Edition
Georgie Lee
Category:
Romance
Publisher: Harlequin Historical
ISBN-10: 0373298692
Type: Fiction
Pages: 281
Copyright: February 1, 2016
ISBN-13: 9780373298693
Price: $4.99 (eBook)
A secret carried down the aisle!
Late one night, Susanna Lambert, the illegitimate daughter of the Duke of Rockland, bursts uninvited into a stranger's carriage, turning both their worlds upside down. Suddenly, fun-loving Justin Connor finds himself forced to consider marriage!
For Susanna, marrying Justin is a chance to finally escape her cruel stepmother and forget about the rake who ruined her. But as wedding bells begin to chime, Susanna discovers she's carrying a huge secret...one that could turn to dust all promises of happiness as Justin's wife!
Excerpt
London—May 1818
'Marry you?' Helena Gammon sat back from Justin Connor, her ungloved hand stilling on his chest beneath his shirt. A horse snorted from somewhere outside his chaise where it sat parked in a long row of conveyances in front of Vauxhall Gardens.
'I'm quite serious. We get on well together, especially at night,' Justin murmured against the buxom little widow's neck. 'Soon, I'll have the resources to establish myself in the wine trade. I'll need a wife who can manage as well in my business as in my bed.'
She shifted out of his embrace and laid her hands in her lap as though they were at tea. 'There are other matters to consider.'
Her lack of enthusiasm wasn't how he'd imagined this proposal unfolding.
'Such as?' Justin leaned back against the squabs, sure he wasn't going to like what he was about to hear.
'You aren't likely to make a go of it.' She shrugged as though his failure was predetermined. 'Not after what happened with the last one.'
'The storm sank the ship.' And my business. He pulled his gaping shirt closed. He thought everyone understood that little fact. Apparently he was wrong. 'There was nothing I or anyone could have done to prevent it.'
Despite months of careful planning, researching, investing, hiring the most capable captain and the sturdiest ship, his first foray into business had dropped to the bottom of the English Channel, taking with it a considerable amount of his money. He hated ships.
'Even if you did manage to make a go of it, I'm tired of being some unpaid servant to my husband's ventures. I worked myself to the bone with Mr Gammon. Now I want to be free of such concerns.' She tugged her bodice up higher over her ample breasts. 'Mr Preston asked me to marry him this morning and I accepted.'
'You did what?' He hadn't realised the old furrier was sniffing around the widow, much less falling on his knees in front of her in infatuation.
'He's rich and has people to take care of his business for him.'
'He's well over sixty and not likely to keep you amused in the evenings.'
'That's why I'm here.' She laid her hand over the open flap of his breeches. 'I thought we could continue.'
He caught her fingers. 'After a year, you should know I won't dally with another man's wife, or help a woman break her marriage vows.'
She pulled back her hand. 'When did you become so serious about anything except Mr Rathbone's business?'
'I tend to be serious when there's the possibility of violence,' Justin growled, seeing Helena's true colours for the first time and despising them. He'd thought their convenient arrangement was based on some measure of respect and affability. He'd been mistaken.
'Well, if that's how you're going to be.' She flicked her skirt down over her calves and ankles. 'Mr Preston is waiting for me inside.'
'You'll regret marrying him.' Justin pushed open the chaise door. 'He might be making a lot of promises now, but once you're his wife, they'll all disappear.'
'You know nothing of the situation.' Mrs Gammon hopped down from the chaise and stormed off across the walk and into the gardens.
Justin slammed the chaise door shut and slumped against the squabs. It galled him to think she'd waited until he'd proposed to reveal her true impression of him, though he supposed it was better now than after the parson's mousetrap was sprung. Justin roughly stuffed his shirt back in his breeches and did up the fall, not bothering to button his coat or redo his cravat. Outside, the excited chatter of ladies and gentlemen passing too close to the chaise as they filed into the gardens filled the air.
Then the door swung open. He jerked upright, thinking Helena had come back, but it wasn't her.
A stunning woman with eyes the colour of the emeralds he'd once handled as collateral fixed her gaze on him, not with the coy calculation of a vixen, but determination. She opened her full lips as if to say something, then changed her mind, pressing them tight together. Gold earrings swung from the small lobes as she raised her foot to step inside the chaise, then paused, as she took in his partial undress and began to back away. Male voices outside the carriage caught her attention and, in a sweep of chestnut curls, she looked to the sound of the noise, then climbed inside and pulled the door shut behind her.
'Drive away, at once,' she commanded, pressing herself against the squabs and out of view of the window.
'No.' Justin pushed open the door, inviting her to leave. Whatever nuisance this was, he wasn't in the mood for it, no matter how pretty it might be.
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