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Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
About the Author
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ABOUT THE BOOK
A fiery Lady chasing love. A dispassionate Duke chasing power. But fate has other plans…
Lady Harriet has found herself in a predicament. Between the untimely death of her father, an estate spiraling into chaos and a scheming cousin, she comes to accept a marriage of love will remain a once fanciful dream. Until she takes her chance and kisses a capricious Duke at a ball…
Edward, the cold and dispassionate Duke, knows what he wants for in his life: A high-class match for his wayward sister, and a well bred Duchess for himself. But he’s a rake first, and a gentleman second. And during a fateful ball, when he succumbs to the kiss of the virginal Harriet, his plans are thrown off course…
After a more than passionate rendezvous, Edward spends the next months determined to erase Harriet from his mind.
But when his sister turns up missing on her wedding day, the alluring Harriet returns and offers to help him find her…
CHAPTER 1
ERDINGTON ESTATE, MARCH 1814
“Oh, let’s not walk in the south gardens today, Rose. I can’t bear the view of the house at the moment,” Harriet protested.
She and Rose had just stepped out of Erdington Manor house onto broad, mossy paving. Erdington was Harriet’s childhood home. Rose had been her close friend since the two met at finishing school. That had been before the death of Harriet’s father and the entailment of Erdington to the closest male heir. The heir being Harriet’s distant cousin, Simon.
The terrace that they walked across led to wide, stone steps, flanked by carved balustrades leading down to the famous gardens. The once-famous gardens. To go with the once-famous house. But time had not been kind to either the Erdington estate or its masters.
“Nonsense, Harry. I love walking in the rose garden. The scent is incredible at this time of year,” Rose enthused.
“But the house looks so woebegone with all that scaffolding around it,” Harriet said.
“Then don’t look at it,” Rose shrugged.
She set off across the patio towards the steps. The two young women were night and day apart. Harriet was petite and fair-haired with full cheeks that flushed at a moment’s notice. Rose had straight dark hair cascading down her back and dark eyes in a pale, pretty face.
“I didn’t come all the way from Tedbury to sit indoors, Harry,” Rose said over her shoulder as she skipped down the steps.
Harriet grumbled but caught up with the other woman, leading the way down into the gardens. They were not the works of art they had once been, a century before when the manor had been in the hands of her great-grandfather. The rose beds were still spectacular, with the plants flowering in profusion and reaching across the gravel paths which were supposed to separate different beds. Statues of famous Worthinghams were splotched with mildew and becoming gradually entwined with ivy.
“Take a deep breath. Isn’t that wonderful?” Rose said.
“It is. I just don’t like the sight that I know is behind me,” Harriet replied.
Rose looked back over Harriet’s shoulder towards the house and made a sympathetic face.
“It is rather ugly. I don’t actually see any workmen though. Just the scaffolds.”
Harriet swung around despite herself. The workingmen employed by Simon had been hard at work when she had woken that morning. Their incessant hammering had actually woken her earlier than she had intended. But Rose’s arrival for brunch had been enough to forestall the ill mood such a rude awakening would usually bring about. Their time spent catching up after several months apart had taken her mind from the work completely.
