When Marrying a Duke...

When Marrying a Duke...
Helen Dickson

Three golden rules for this season’s debutantes: Three golden rules for this season’s debutantes: 1. Ensure that you have appropriate instruction in etiquette2. Flirting is acceptable if done with decorum3. Your future husband must be of honourable intentBut unconventional Marietta Westwood has already broken all the rules! Her suitor, the enigmatic yet charmingly irresistible Duke of Arden, has long been intriguing the ladies of the ton. And he’s the same man whose dangerous kisses have been scandalously burnt into Marietta’s mind…

She couldn’t believe her eyes when she recognised Max Trevellyan approaching her.

Their eyes met and locked for a moment. Then Marietta’s opened wider and wider as she experienced astonishment and incredulity before brusquely recollecting herself. He was dressed in a well-worn tweed jacket and the pale sunlight fell across him, touching his thick dark hair. His silver-grey eyes were clear and alert.

For one dreadful moment she panicked, feeling an urgent desire to turn and run. For heaven’s sake—she was Marietta Westwood, afraid of nothing and no one. She almost did turn and run, but the fierce resolve with which she had been born and which had developed inside her since she was a child kept her rooted to the spot.

‘It’s you,’ she said frostily, on a calmer note—though her heart, for some bewildering reason, was beating quickly.

About the Author

HELEN DICKSON was born and lives in South Yorkshire, with her retired farm manager husband. Having moved out of the busy farmhouse where she raised their two sons, she has more time to indulge in her favourite pastimes. She enjoys being outdoors, travelling, reading and music. An incurable romantic, she writes for pleasure. It was a love of history that drove her to writing historical fiction.

Previous novels by Helen Dickson:

THE DEFIANT DEBUTANTE

ROGUE’S WIDOW, GENTLEMAN’S WIFE

TRAITOR OR TEMPTRESS

WICKED PLEASURES

(part of Christmas By Candlelight) A SCOUNDREL OF CONSEQUENCE FORBIDDEN LORD SCANDALOUS SECRET, DEFIANT BRIDE FROM GOVERNESS TO SOCIETY BRIDE MISTRESS BELOW DECK THE BRIDE WORE SCANDAL DESTITUTE ON HIS DOORSTEP SEDUCING MISS LOCKWOOD MARRYING MISS MONKTON BEAUTY IN BREECHES MISS CAMERON’S FALL FROM GRACE THE HOUSEMAID’S SCANDALOUS SECRET* (#ulink_fe73d42d-c62e-579c-9185-9601ae153849)

* (#ulink_b34dd236-0822-57ab-b4c7-357316ac040c)Castonbury Park Regency mini-series

And in Mills & Boon

HistoricalUndone!eBooks:

ONE RECKLESS NIGHT

AUTHOR NOTE

I loved writing WHEN MARRYING A DUKE …, detailing the trials and tribulations of my heroine, creating a larger than life hero and the woman who loves him. It is a love story, and the hard and fast rule of a romance writer—which is carved in stone—is that there must be a happy ending.

Reading is a tremendous joy to me—I read anything from historical romance and family sagas to thrillers and fantasy. I love to absorb myself in the stories, and feel a real sense of discovery with each new book. Foreign shores rarely feature in any of my books, so using Hong Kong as the location in the opening chapters of WHEN MARRYING A DUKE … was an unlikely setting for me to choose. I enjoyed researching this fascinating island.

While the setting of Hong Kong and the issues of the time are real, my characters are entirely fictitious.

When Marrying

a Duke…

Helen Dickson

www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)

Prologue

Waking shortly after midnight and unable to go back to sleep, thinking a glass of milk might help to settle her, Marietta padded from her room. Yang Ling, her Chinese nurse, was asleep in a nearby bedroom, dreaming of the Chinese New Year that was upon them, and the visit she would make to her family to wish them well and good fortune in the year to come.

The night was moonless, a black quilt shrouding the hills of Hong Kong, but by the nuances and textures of the dark the girl was drawn towards the stairs. She moved quietly so as not to wake her parents, for she was ever conscious that her mother needed her rest. Ever since she had miscarried yet another child—three in total—her parents had slept in separate rooms, so Marietta was surprised to hear muffled voices coming from her mother’s bedroom. Something had changed. Marietta sensed it and shivered. Concerned because her mother was sobbing, thinking she might be ill, she paused, straining her ears to listen.

‘Leave me be, Monty,’ she wept. ‘You promised me there would be no more children.’

‘Don’t deny me, Amelia,’ her father’s pleading voice said. ‘Not now—not again. I can’t stand it.’

‘No, Monty. Don’t ask me to go through it again. When our last baby was born dead you gave me your word … that you wouldn’t …’

Her mother’s frantic pleas must have fallen on deaf ears because, apart from the creaking of the bed, there was silence. There was no one to see the swift shadow dart along the landing, the agile shape that fled silently back to her room. Scrambling into bed, Marietta pulled the covers up over her head to shut out any sounds she might hear. Confused by what she had heard and at nine years old still too innocent to understand what went on between a husband and his wife—only that whatever it was they did resulted in pain and suffering for her mother and another dead baby—afraid for her mother and desperately sorry for her father, she wept.

At breakfast the following morning, Monty Westwood experienced a sudden feeling of unease as his eyes met the steady gold-tinted green eyes of his young daughter sitting as still as a statue across from him. For one discomfiting moment it seemed that she was staring into the very heart of him, noting his faults and failings and measuring his guilt. Shifting uncomfortably in his seat, he reached for some toast, glancing down to spread it with butter. But he could not control the flush that rose to his cheeks, nor the slight trembling of the hand holding the knife. He was like a man caught red-handed in a felonious act.

Monty adored his daughter. She was vibrant and spirited, but now her eyes had a cold and knowing glint as she stared steadily back at him. She was accusing him without opening her mouth. She knew he had spent the night in her mama’s bed. She knew, even at her age, what might follow as a consequence of his lust for his wife—for any woman who was willing to accommodate him.

Five months after that night and pregnant yet again, Marietta’s mother went into labour. Everyone was too occupied to notice Marietta peering tentatively round the partly open door of her mother’s room. What she saw caused her heart to sink and her stomach to convulse. The bed was soaked with a quantity of blood around her mother’s body. Marietta knew she was dead. She was motionless, her face ashen, her eyes fixed for ever in a state of death.

Marietta took a backward step, her face blanching, her hand to her mouth, faltering so that she almost tripped over her own feet. Then she turned and fled the scene. Her mind had closed up, shutting itself against the sight of her mother. Her face was as blank as an unwritten page, all emotion having been driven deep within her, where it would fester for a long time to come.

Chapter One

With the sun shining out of a sky as blue as blue could be, a small, isolated knot of boisterous young people gathered to enjoy themselves at the horse racing at Happy Valley on the island of Hong Kong, which was a major trading post of the British empire. They were the sons and daughters of businessmen, merchants and bankers, all enjoying the freedom and entertainments to be had on this tiny island, the Sovereign British Territory off the Chinese coast populated by Westerners and Chinese immigrants.

‘I honestly swear that if I have to sit and talk to those frumpish old tabbies I shall die of boredom,’ Marietta declared sharply, observing the group of stiff-backed ladies all sporting a colourful array of flowered and feathered hats and bonnets on their coiffed heads seated on a veranda overlooking the racecourse. Young married women who no longer mixed with their unmarried friends, being excluded from the excitement and demure flirtation, were seated in chairs beneath the shade of the trees. ‘Promise me, Oliver, that if such a thing should occur, you will have the goodness to rescue me.’ Smoothing her skirts, she sighed in a way that displayed a very fetching dimple. ‘I beg of you if you value our friendship.’

Glancing down into Marietta’s wide olive-green eyes flecked with golden lights, Oliver Schofield would have forfeited both his feet to do her bidding. ‘I give you my word,’ he replied adoringly. ‘You know perfectly well I would do anything you asked me to do, Marietta.’

Oliver Schofield was a good-looking young man, just one of several who hung around the group of pretty girls. They were like a cloud of bright butterflies beneath light and colourful parasols. Their fashionable wide skirts of palest pink, light-blue, lemon and creamy white, pleated and flounced in delicate tulle and chiffon and muslin, swung and swayed and dipped to reveal their shoes and the lower part of their white stockinged legs.

With a gay and uncritical nature, Marietta Westwood outshone all the other girls and was the most sought after among these bright young things. Having spent a great deal of her time with her father and allowed to do very much as she pleased, at seventeen she possessed an active mind, a lively wit and an amazing tendency to think for herself.

As a child, as soon as she had stepped off the ship she had been enchanted with the tiny island of Hong Kong. She loved life in the colony—the picnics, regattas and parties, where she waltzed and polkaed the night away. She was just one of a civilised society, if one could ignore the heat and humidity of the South China seas and the suffocating stuffiness of the Europeans. Sporting their beards and whiskers and top hats and waistcoats and woollen suits as if they were in London, they would never dream of succumbing to the natural elements of the colony—unlike her father, who favoured wide-brimmed hats and cool linen suits, which gave him a crumpled air.

Marietta moved towards Oliver with the lightness of step of a fawn. She was naturally cautious, like one who suspects there is a delightful danger ahead, but is prepared nevertheless to enjoy it. She smiled at him beautifully.

‘I know I can rely on you, Oliver—always the gallant one and so sweet, that’s what you are.’ Taking his arm, she drew him to one side, leaning forwards so that only he could hear what she said. ‘You haven’t forgotten our outing tomorrow, have you? You said you would take me with you to the native quarter.’

His face fell. ‘No, Marietta, I can’t.’

‘But you promised!’

‘I’ve changed my mind.’

Her lips forming a petulant pout, Marietta gave an indignant toss of her head. ‘Then I’ll never speak to you again. I swear I won’t.’