Harlequin Historical September 2021--Box Set 1 of 2

by Christine Merrill

‘And I will not allow that,’ Michael replied, taking off his coat, as if preparing to fight. ‘Whatever she does, it will be her choice.’

  ‘I will call you out,’ Hugh insisted.

  ‘And I will let you shoot me dead in a field,’ Michael said with a shake of his head. ‘What good will it do you to have one more death attached to your name?’

  ‘That is precisely what I am trying to prevent,’ he said, looking wildly around the room.

  Liv smiled at him in sympathy. Now that he no longer had the power to frighten her, it was much easier to see a way forward. ‘The problems you are imagining have nothing to do with me. They are between you and the woman we saw at Vauxhall, and I refuse to be held prisoner by them any longer.’

  She reached out to Michael, twining her arm with his. ‘How long will it take to get to Gretna Green?’

  He grabbed his coat and laughed. ‘I do not know. I have only ever been halfway there.’

  ‘Let us find out.’ Then she pushed past her shocked brother, whistled for the dogs and they were on their way.

  They rushed together to the carriage that had brought them to her sister’s house and he all but tossed her into her seat, slamming the door behind him and signalling the driver with a single tap on the front wall that set them off. Then Michael dropped back into the seat beside her, smiling.

  She smiled back at him, happy but confused. ‘Now, what was all that fustian you were spouting about being the heir to a fortune?’

  ‘It is God’s truth,’ he said, shaking his head as if he still found it amazing. ‘I owe my mother an apology for a lifetime of doubt about my parentage. But the short of it is, John Solomon has come home and brought a sizeable fortune along with him. He is living on Grosvenor Square with my mother. They were married all along and are just as in love as the day they met. It is quite sickening, really.’

  ‘I think it is romantic,’ she said, thinking of the mischievous woman he had introduced as his mother.

  ‘Carrying on, at their age,’ he said, shaking his head in disapproval.

  She laughed. ‘And am I to take it that when you reach their age you will be beyond the pale?’

  ‘That is a different matter entirely,’ he said, shocked.

  ‘Of course,’ she said with a nod. ‘But, beyond your parents’ shocking behaviour, you have found that you are not a bastard, after all.’

  ‘A perfectly ordinary, legitimate son,’ he said. ‘I hope that does not disappoint you.’

  ‘I love you, no matter who you are,’ she said, snuggling into his side.

  ‘Then, if you do not mind terribly, I will not give up my job,’ he said. ‘It is one thing to accept money I have not earned, and quite another to change my entire life because of it. I quite enjoy what I do to make my living and suspect I would not be as happy living the idle life of a gentleman.’

  ‘I think I should find it rather interesting to be the wife of a gentleman detective,’ she said staring up at him.

  ‘That is good, because I have been imagining you as such for quite some time,’ he said, then cleared his throat as if choking on a hard truth. ‘And, given the additional information about my own life and my parents’ devotion to each other, I have had to revise certain opinions on human affection that I might have expressed to you earlier.’

  ‘Are you saying you love me?’ she asked, slipping a hand inside his coat and wrapping it around his waist.

  ‘No,’ he said, surprising her. ‘I am trying to apologise for not saying that I loved you ages ago. The truth is, I adore you and I was an idiot to deny the fact.’ He reached into his pocket then and produced a ring set with a sapphire of impressive size, took her hand and slipped it on her finger. ‘Perhaps it is not the dark blue that most buyers value. But it is the exact colour of your eyes.’

  She stared down at the stone, amazed.

  ‘It is a gift from my father, as well as from me. Apparently, I have been denied the benefits of my family for some time. I was dubious of his gifts at first.’ He stared down at the ring on her hand. ‘But I cannot deny that I enjoy treating you in the manner you deserve.’

  ‘I do not want anything more than to be your love,’ she said. ‘But the ring is very nice. And it is the only thing I have, since I left the house with nothing.’

  ‘Nothing but your dogs,’ he reminded her. ‘After we are properly married, we will appeal to your brother for the release of your other possessions. In the meantime, you have but to ask and I can provide for you.’

  ‘Anything?’ she said with a smile.

  ‘Anything at all,’ he assured her.

  ‘Then I want you to kiss me,’ she replied, wrapping her arms about his neck.

  ‘Your wish is my command,’ he said, pulling the shades on the carriage windows and settling into her arms.

  EPILOGUE

  Hugh Bethune, Duke of Scofield, stalked to his carriage, signalling the coachman with a single word. ‘Drive.’

  ‘Home, Your Grace?’

  ‘No!’ What would be the point of that now? ‘Somewhere. Anywhere. It does not matter.’ He climbed into the body, slumping in his seat, hand over eyes as the vehicle set off into an uncertain future.

  God, he felt weak, so tired that he could barely hold himself upright. It was as if he had been coiled like a spring, ratcheted tight for two long years, a slammed door against the inevitable. And now someone had released the tension, picked the locks and he had no energy left in him to fight.

  He had failed.

  When they had been younger, a simple warning of propriety had been enough to hold both of his sisters in the house. A knitted brow and a frown, along with a firm reminder that they were in mourning was all it had taken to keep them out of society and away from trouble. But as the months had passed and the death of Scofield senior had grown distant, their thoughts had turned to marriage, just as if they were ordinary girls and not the unpredictable creatures he had known them to be.

  He had resorted to shouting, then lies, and finally guards, and in the end none of it had mattered. They’d both escaped to marry men who saw nothing but pretty young victims of a dictatorial older brother. They probably thought of themselves as knights rescuing distressed damsels and not further victims of the Scofield curse.

  But he had been in the house the night his father had died, just as they had. He knew he’d not killed the old man, though it had been easier for the sake of the family to let the world assume that he had. After repeated questioning, the Runners had assured him that there was but one servant in the house that could not be accounted for at the time of the murder.

  When he’d discovered the body of their maid in the garden, he’d told no one. The servant who had helped him carry the body to the river might have guessed the truth, but he had been paid well to keep his mouth shut and was on his way the next morning, just as horrified at the truth as Hugh had been.

  He laughed at the memory, scrubbing his face with his hands, as if it were possible to wipe away the fears of what might happen to those two poor, unsuspecting idiots who were now his brothers by marriage. One of them, or perhaps both of them, would soon find out what he had known for years: madness ran in his family, and no one who loved them was safe.

  * * *

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  ISBN-13: 9780369711137

  Lady Olivia’s Forbidden Protector

  Copyright © 2021 by Christine Merrill

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

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  “What in the devil is happening?”

  Beatrice looked toward the open study door and felt...everything shatter. It was not merely her brother and a few colleagues; it was a house tour. Complete with some of the sharper-tongued gossips of the ton.

  And then she looked up, up at the man who held her in his arms, to see familiar blue eyes. Far too familiar.

  The stars. The sun.

  Briggs.

  His hand was still planted firmly on her buttocks, and suddenly the warmth of his body became an inferno, the strength of his hold a revelation.

  She could not breathe.

  You can breathe. No man is allowed to steal your breath.

  Even so, the fact remained...

  She had flung herself at Briggs. And her brother had walked in just in time to see it.

  Author Note

  Beatrice and Briggs’s story has been in my head in some form or another for quite a long time. I loved the idea of a woman setting out to ruin herself—only to be ruined by the wrong man...who turns out to be the right one. But further to that, the idea of a sheltered young lady and a rather dominant duke fitting together just perfectly is something that’s been sitting there in my imagination for a while, waiting for the right moment. Bea and Briggs were definitely the right moment.

  I have always loved dukes. I don’t know what it is about them. Perhaps it’s the same reason I love a billionaire hero in a contemporary. I love a man with seemingly endless power brought down by the love of a woman who might—for all the world—seem so much less powerful. Yet, in the end, his heart beats for her. And that makes her the most powerful of all. Because love is the most powerful of all. More powerful than dukes, or society, or scandal.

  I hope you enjoy this story as much as I enjoyed writing it.

  Marriage Deal with the Devilish Duke

  Millie Adams

  Millie Adams has always loved books. She considers herself a mix of Anne Shirley (loquacious but charming and willing to break a slate over a boy’s head if need be) and Charlotte Doyle (a lady at heart, but with the spirit to become a mutineer should the occasion arise). Millie lives in a small house on the edge of the woods, which she finds allows her to escape in the way she loves best—in the pages of a book. She loves intense alpha heroes and the women who dare to go toe-to-toe with them (or break a slate over their heads).

  Books by Millie Adams

  Harlequin Historical

  Claimed for the Highlander’s Revenge

  Marriage Deal with the Devilish Duke

  Millie Adams also writes for Harlequin Presents.

  Visit the Author Profile page

  at Harlequin.com.

  Contents

  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

  Epilogue

  Historical Note

  CHAPTER ONE

  1818

  There were not many things a woman could control in the world. Her life determined not so much by the winds of fate as the whims of men.

  But there was a point where Lady Beatrice Ashforth decided that while she could not be the ultimate queen of her own existence, she could be the architect of her own ruin.

  And in the end it would amount to very much the same thing.

  Her brother, Hugh Ashforth, the Duke of Kendal, might have control over many things, but only so long as she behaved.

  She was through with behaving. The life that Hugh wanted her to live stretched out as grey and unending as a mist on the fields of the Bybee House grounds, the house she would never leave if her brother had his say.

  She would never have a Season. She would never...

  Marriage, he had decreed, was not something she need concern herself with.

  For she was taken care of.

  Her brother had consulted a physician—the one who had cared for her in her childhood—on her continued good health, and it had been the opinion of the doctor that childbearing would be the death of her.

  That had been all her brother had needed to hear to decree that she should stay beneath his protection.

  Beatrice was concerned with her freedom.

  She had spent her childhood shut up in the walls of Bybee House. Everything from fresh air to rain to too much sunlight was deemed the enemy of her health.

  When her father had died, the responsibility for her health had fallen to Hugh. Hugh did nothing by half measures.

  He cared a great deal for her happiness. He brought her sweets from London whenever she wished, new dresses, beautiful bobbles for her hair.

  That was precisely why she’d come up with her scheme. One she had told no one—not even Eleanor, her brother’s ward—about.

  Well, she had told one person. Her accomplice in the plan.

  But she trusted James. His family had purchased a country manor within proximity to Bybee House four years earlier and the two of them had fallen into a strange sort of friendship.

  She had never expected to befriend a man. She knew it was somewhat unseemly for a young lady. But Beatrice was accomplished at sneaking out. It had been the only way she could ever have fun as a child. The only way she could leave her bedchamber.

  More than that, she had sensed that...it was where she might find her strength. Lying in bed, endlessly bled by physicians, confined to rooms with low light. She felt as if she were withering away. A flower starved for the earth, the rain and the sun.

  Out there she had found strength she hadn’t known she’d possessed. It was how she had met Penny, who had once been destined to be her sister-in-law, until the engagement to Beatrice’s brother had been broken. And ultimately, she had found James, and a deep friendship with him.

  That friendship had led to conversations about marriage. He was having issues around the subject as well. He did not want a wife, in truth, and though he had not been able to explain it all to her—he had stumbled over his words and in the end asked if she could simply believe him—they had discussed a potential solution for them both.

  She would have freedom. She would have a life, a real life. A lif
e as a woman, rather than simply as her brother’s shut-in sister for the rest of her life.

  At least tonight the party was at the house, which meant she would be permitted to be in attendance. Though, she was not treated as a real guest. She did not dance. Or have a dance card. Had not made her debut in society.

  For after all, what was the purpose?

  Hugh did not wish her to marry. And so, he did not have any plans to bring her out. It all made her feel so desperately sad. So desperately lonely. As a married woman she would be permitted to attend balls. She knew she was playing a very dangerous game. That her reputation would be poised on the edge of a knife, and the wrong interpretation of the moment, the wrong strain of gossip, the wrong timing, could damage her in a way that made things quite difficult. But she was invisible as it was, and she would rather be ruined than non-existent.

  ‘You look beautiful,’ Eleanor said.

  Her friend was lounging on the settee in the corner, dressed in a delicate silver gown covered in glittering stars. Eleanor was to debut this Season. She would not be formally presented in court, as her father had not been part of the aristocracy. Bea didn’t know the full circumstances surrounding Hugh’s connection with Eleanor’s family, only that he had been named her guardian and she was now his responsibility.

  Well, Beatrice was his responsibility as well, and he had made decisions about her life that were far too high-handed for her to endure.

  ‘Thank you,’ Beatrice said, looking at herself in the mirror.

  She liked the dress that she was wearing, but she did not look beautiful in the way that Eleanor did. For Eleanor was allowed to look like a woman.

  And Beatrice still... She was not in a sophisticated ball gown, not in the way that Eleanor was. Her hair was not pinned up in the same fashion. But it did not matter. For Beatrice was going to make her own way. Her brother was a duke, and he was powerful. And he prized propriety above all else.