Dedication
To my husband, John.
While my heroes exist primarily in my head,
my imagination is far more vivid when I am with you.
Acknowledgments
LIKE MANY DEBUT authors, I owe an amazing debt of gratitude to an entire herd of people. Not just those who helped me with this, my first published book, but those who have helped me on the entire journey, which spanned three years and five completed manuscripts.
First and foremost, I want to thank my supportive family, without whose love and assistance I could have never conceived of writing a book, much less completed one. My husband, John, deserves a special thank you and probably a three-week vacation for everything the spouse of an obsessed writer must endure. I am grateful for my mom, who made that all-important parenting decision that if I was old enough to sneak her historical romances under the covers, I was old enough to read them. Thanks to my sister Julie Hensley, who provided early critical feedback as I sorted out the business of being a writer, and who isn’t afraid to tell her literary genre colleagues I write “those books.” Thank you to my beautiful girls for bringing me such joy. I love you dearly, but don’t assume every book deal = another new pony.
I owe a very loud shout-out (more of a shriek, really) to Georgia Romance Writers. I value every one of the friendships I have formed in this wonderful writing community and cannot say enough good things about how much they support emerging authors. Thank you to early beta readers—Stacy Heilman, Allyson Reeves, Angie Stout, Colleen Wolpert, Anna Steffl, Laura Disque, Kristina McElroy, Daphne Ross, Terry Brock Poca, Noelle Pierce, Helene B. Chandler Rosencrantz, and Emery Lee—who read some truly awful stuff. Thank you, as well, to published authors Meredith Duran, Courtney Milan, and Vanessa Kelly, who offered charity critiques I was lucky enough to win and smart enough to study.
No writer can succeed without amazing critique partners, and I owe a huge thank you to Romily Bernard, Sally Kilpatrick, Tracy Brogan, Kimberly Kincaid, and Alyssa Alexander. These ladies always tell me when I get it right and never fail to point out when I write something too stupid for words. Thank you to Tony Bernard (a.k.a. Boy Genius) for the gift of my beautiful website. To Sarah MacLean, who gave me the loveliest cover blurb on the planet: thank you for your wild excitement and your heartfelt advice; it means the world to me. I want to express my sincere appreciation to the most patient agent on the face of the planet, Kevan Lyon, and to the amazing Esi Sogah and the entire team at Avon Books for making me feel wonderfully welcome. Here’s hoping I fulfill your faith in me!
Contents
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
An Excerpt from Brighton Is For Lovers
About the Author
By Jennifer McQuiston
Copyright
About the Publisher
Chapter 1
Somewhere in Britain, 1842
THOUGH SHE WOULD never admit it to polite Society, Lady Georgette Thorold hated brandy almost as much as she hated husbands. So it was the cruelest of jokes when she awoke with nary a clue to her surroundings, smelling like one and pressed up against the other.
As she reluctantly came to her senses, unwelcome scents and fears crowded out lucid thought. In all her twenty-six years, Georgette had never even raised a glass of the amber liquid, much less slept in sheets that smelled as if they had been washed in a distillery. She was used to a feeling of comfort on waking, or at least familiarity. But judging by the stained wallpaper in her bleary line of vision, she was not in her bedroom, and there was nothing of comfort in the pounding of her head.
And, more to the point, her husband had been dead for two years.
A man’s warm body was stretched against her back, and she could feel the telltale press of an erection knocking against the base of her spine. She stared down at the muscled forearm that lay across her shoulders, noting its possessive, sinewy strength. For the briefest of moments she considered closing her eyes and going back to sleep in the appealing cage of this man’s arms. But clarity punched its way through her murky confusion.
She was in bed. With a stranger.
Heart pounding, she wiggled her way free and leaped from the tangled covers, dodging a gauntlet of broken glass and articles of clothing as she scrambled for safety. She sucked in a roomful of air, trying to escape the panic perched on her shoulders.
There were feathers everywhere. On the floor. On the ceiling. On her. Horrified by her lack of hygiene and the fear that somewhere in this room there might be a slaughtered goose, she closed her eyes, praying that when she opened them again it would all disappear. But the lack of eyesight proved ill-advised in the mess of the place. She tripped and stumbled against a wardrobe that looked to have survived the Jacobite Risings only to now sit ruined, one door hanging off its hinge.
Despite her graceless clattering, the man in the bed snored through it all. Georgette scrubbed a fist across her eyes, as if she could banish the sight of him, then lowered her hand to cover her mouth. The smell of brandy hovered there on her skin. Had she bathed in the vile stuff? What on earth had she done?
Dear God, she was in a strange room with a strange man, smelling of the same spirits her former husband had consumed to lethal outcome—what hadn’t she done?
Bile, thick and bitter, rose in the back of her throat. This could not be happening. This was not who she was. Her now-dead husband had been the rake and libertine. She had been the wife who turned a blind, tortured eye. She abhorred the thought that in one night, she appeared to have sunk to the level of debauchery her husband had embraced during their brief marriage.
Nay, she had sunk below it. Because while such behavior was permitted among the men of the ton, she was a lady. And ladies did not wake up in strangers’ beds, without a clue of how they had come to be there.
She took a step backward, certain her circumstances couldn’t get any worse. The wall scorched the bare skin of her shoulders with all the subtlety of a branding iron. Air clawed at her lungs, demanding entrance. Apparently, her circumstances could get worse. Because in addition to waking beside a man whom she didn’t know, she was undressed.
And the only thing Georgette hated more than brandy and husbands was nudity.
Her heart tripped along in her chest as if she had awakened from a bad dream. Only this was no dream. Dream men didn’t snore. Her former husband had taught her that, if nothing else. And dream or no, she needed to locate her clothes and her sanity, both of wh
ich seemed as absent as her memory.
She grabbed the nearest item of clothing she could find, which turned out to be the sleeping man’s shirt, and shook tiny bits of glass and feathers from it before clasping it against her bare chest. The shirttails came down to her calves. The rustling of fabric released a not unpleasant fragrance, clean soap underlaid with a hint of horse and leather. She felt an answering, instinctive tug in her body’s most intimate places. How could she be so brazen? She didn’t know this man. She didn’t want to know this man. Her stomach churned in confusion and embarrassment, and she cursed her body’s traitorous response.
Evidence of her bed partner’s own state of disarray peeked out from beneath the covers, hinting at their interactions of the previous evening. A muscled calf, scattered with a dusting of dark hair, flexed alarmingly. The sheets shifted as he turned over, revealing a head of brown hair. He sported a full beard that no young man in London would have suffered without a wager first being laid down, but it did not hide the patrician slope of his nose or the sensual slide of his lips. In sleep, his face looked peaceful. Appealing in a masculine sort of way.
And terrifyingly unfamiliar.
“Dear God, what have I done?” she whispered. Clasping the shirt tighter against her body, she picked her way closer and studied his features, trying to jog her memory for some hint of what he meant to her, or she to him. He looked to be in his early thirties. His hair showed a tendency to curl at the edges, and the brightening light of dawn caught the glint of red in his dark beard. His eyelashes lay like a smudge against his lightly weathered cheek, making Georgette’s pale, pampered skin feel insipid by comparison. No slice of recognition accompanied her perusal, though standing this close to him brought a rush of heat to her limbs.
Beneath the man’s head she could see sheets that looked none too clean. The thought of fleas niggled at her, and her skin jumped beneath an imaginary assault. If she had chosen this room, what had she chosen in him?
“Please, please, at least be a gentleman,” she muttered, trying to decide if the sleeping man looked more like a footman or a peer. The shirt she held against her was of fine cotton lawn. But most gentlemen of her acquaintance weren’t quite so . . . muscled.
She spied her dress in a graceless heap on the floor and stooped to pick it up, then dropped to her knees to look under the bed, searching for her shoes. Shards of glass and rough-hewn floorboards scraped at her knees, and above her the man gave another rattling snore. A thought struck her with blinding horror. If her partner in sin was a gentleman, he might insist on marrying her after what she presumed must have taken place.
And if there was one thing she was determined to avoid, aside from word of this reaching London’s scandal sheets, it was another loveless marriage to a man with a penchant for women and drink.
She rose to her feet and yanked her wrinkled gray silk over her head, not even bothering to try to find either her corset or her chemise. A shifting on the mattress sent her panic to new heights, and she abandoned her haphazard efforts to button the bodice and dashed for the door with no thought in her head other than to put some distance between herself and this anonymous, offensive stranger. But the dirt and glass-strewn floorboards sucked at her slippers, and the latch seemed to snag on her hand.
Then she saw it.
The ring on her left hand glittered in a skein of sunlight that snaked its way between the room’s lace curtains. Horrified, Georgette twisted her hand, peering at the bit of gold. The symbolic weight of it was as heavy as the weight of her worst fears. She wore a signet ring emblazoned with a family crest, one she did not recognize.
And judging by its position on her hand and the circumstances of her morning, she appeared to be married.
Disbelief settled in her bones. It was not possible. A wedding took planning. A posting of the banns, or a special license, at least. And the logistics of the matter aside, she couldn’t have done this. Not now, when she was finally shaking off the manacles of two years of mourning. Not now, when she was finally poised to taste the freedom long denied her.
She whirled back to look at the man again. No matter how handsomely proportioned the stranger in that bed might be, no matter how the sight of his muscled calf sent a flutter of expectation in her abdomen, she was certain she could never have wanted this.
Anger flooded her chest, filling the space where fear and uncertainty once held ground. She stepped closer. She needed to wake him, to find an explanation, but the thought of touching him made her fingers curl in trepidation. Cursing her lack of a weapon, Georgette scanned the room. She grasped the nearest object she could find, then turned back to face her still-sleeping bed partner. Hefting the thankfully empty chamber pot on one hip, she reached out a hand and thumped it against his bare shoulder.
“Open your eyes,” she hissed in a voice she barely recognized.
The man in question rolled over, stretched, and blinked up at her. Sleepy green eyes the color of apothecary glass focused on her. A seductive smile curled the edges of his lips, revealing even, white teeth.
“Good morning,” he said, his voice a rustic, rumbled burr. “I dinna ken why you have left, but I wish you would come back to bed.”
His uncultured accent told Georgette as clear as any map where she was, and her heart squeezed tight in her chest. A snippet of memory settled over her shoulders like a heavy woolen mantle. She was in Scotland, where an irregular sort of marriage could indeed be had on a whim.
She remembered now, at least some of it. She remembered planning a holiday, and her hopes for a rebirth of spirit after the terrible circumstances of her husband’s death and the endless cycle of mourning. Her cousin had come north to study the fauna of Scotland, hoping to write a treatise on his work, and he had invited her to visit. She remembered thinking, Scotland is the place, with its breathy pine forests and pastoral summer scenes and, most importantly, its distance from London’s Season. She needed that distance, needed time to collect herself and prepare for the pitying stares that would no doubt accompany her return to polite Society.
Only, never in her wildest imaginings had she considered that return would occur as a married woman. And try as she might, she still could not remember the circumstances that brought her here, to what had to be a public inn, or to this man.
The necessary words, dry as the burnt toast she could smell wafting up from some lower level of the building, stuck in her throat. She forced herself to choke them out. “Who are you?”
A surprised chuckle escaped the man as he shifted and sat up. “Now you ask? It didn’t concern you last night overmuch.”
The slide of the sheet pulled her eyes in a far too southerly direction. His abdomen was a washboard of muscle, layers defined as precisely as a scalpel’s blade. She swallowed. This was no gentleman, and probably no mere footman either. Not with a physique like that. The sight of his bare chest brought heat licking against the edges of her body, and the warmth settled with terrible surety between her legs. She was attracted to this man. Shame in her body’s inappropriate reaction screamed in her ears.
“What are you?” she pressed, her voice a strangled knot.
He chuckled. “What a daft question to ask, after the service I have provided you.” He nodded in the direction of her hand, and his smile shifted to a smirk. “I am your hero husband, milady. And you owe me another kiss.”
Another kiss? Dear God, she couldn’t remember the first one, though a primitive, distant part of her regretted the loss. And though she had suspected it, the confirmation of their circumstances twisted her panic to new, dizzying heights. “Husband?” She licked her lips, desperate for a moment’s clear thought.
This man, with his uncultured consonants and eye-pleasing musculature, was clearly a commoner. She was the widow of a viscount. If she chose to marry again—which she would not—it would not be to a man who looked as if he made his living at indecent labor. No matter
what this scoundrel thought he had gained, and no matter what manner of shocking intimacy she had forgotten, she would never have done this.
“Do you know who I am?” she demanded, trying to intimidate this man who sent her heart bounding in fear but her body inexplicably leaning toward him.
“I ken you as well as any man can know a woman.” He crooked his finger at her and beckoned in a playful, possessive display. “Now bring yourself back, my lady wife, and let us get reacquainted.”
His voice was teasing, but his words were damning. This was why she had sworn to never marry again. How dare he summon her that way? How dare he presume? His words flung her body to motion. The chamber pot’s trajectory was more instinctive than calculated. A certain resolve burrowed beneath her skin even as the sound of crockery on bone sent her feet to flight.
She was no one’s plaything, not anymore.
And she would be no one’s wife.
Chapter 2
GEORGETTE RUSHED DOWN the dark stairwell of the ramshackle inn, past the public room with its gut-wrenching smells of coddled eggs and smoked kippers, past even the shocked innkeeper, who did no more than call out after her as she plunged through the front door.
The cacophony of the street outside was an assault on her mind and body, as if a giant’s hand had flung her against a stone wall. The sun’s low-slanting rays hinted at the morning’s early hour, perhaps no more than seven o’clock, but the jostling of street vendors and the noise from the nearby market told her the citizens of this modest Scottish town took their mornings seriously. The smell of frying dough wafting from the street corner made her head pound and her stomach turn over in objection, but she tamped down the urge to vomit. Her body’s complaints about her raucous night were not chief on her list of things to sort out this morning.
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