The Housemaid’s Scandalous Secret. Хелен Диксон

       Castonbury Park

       A Regency Upstairs Downstairs

       Survival of the fittest is fine, so long as you’re the one on top … but the family that has everything is about to lose it all …

      The Montagues have found themselves at the centre of the ton’s rumour mill, with lords and ladies alike claiming the family is not what it used to be.

      The mysterious death of the heir to the Dukedom, and the arrival of an unknown woman claiming he fathered her son, is only the tip of the iceberg in a family where scandal upstairs and downstairs threatens the very foundations of their once powerful and revered dynasty …

      August 2012

       THE WICKED LORD MONTAGUE – Carole Mortimer

      September 2012

       THE HOUSEMAID’S SCANDALOUS SECRET – Helen Dickson

      October 2012

       THE LADY WHO BROKE THE RULES – Marguerite Kaye

      November 2012

       LADY OF SHAME – Ann Lethbridge

      December 2012

       THE ILLEGITIMATE MONTAGUE – Sarah Mallory

      January 2013

       UNBEFITTING A LADY – Bronwyn Scott

      February 2013

       REDEMPTION OF A FALLEN WOMAN– Joanna Fulford

      March 2013

       A STRANGER AT CASTONBURY– Amanda McCabe

      Duke of Rothermere

       Castonbury Park

       Dear Ross,

       Nephew, I hesitate to ask, because I know you are busy and your life is currently in India, but I would really appreciate your calm head and guidance at this trying time. As you know, we have been led to believe that my dear son Jamie is dead, but to complicate matters I have just this morning received a letter informing us that Jamie was married, and that his new wife and young son are in the grounds of Castonbury Park. The truth is yet to be determined, for I thought I knew my son better. But, Ross, I would be most grateful if you could return to help your family and use your persuasive nature to discover what this woman wants and what indeed did happen. I believe she may be able to shed some light.

       But please, however, be discreet. We cannot afford any more scandal to be unearthed whilst you are here.

       Yours,

       Rothermere

      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 the same author:

      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

      And in Mills & Boon^® Historical Undone! eBooks:

      ONE RECKLESS NIGHT

      Did you know that some of these novels are

       also available as eBooks?

       Visit www.millsandboon.co.uk

      The

       Housemaid’s

       Scandalous Secret

      Helen Dickson

       www.millsandboon.co.uk

      MILLS & BOON

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      For my husband, George, with love—

      he has provided unconditional support and

       encouragement throughout.

       Prologue

      Cholera had killed Lisette’s parents. Suddenly, at nineteen years old, she found herself homeless, penniless, with no family and no purpose in life. She was adrift but she would survive. She could survive anywhere, but she belonged nowhere.

      Unable to remain in her beloved India, she was to travel to Bombay, where she hoped to work her passage on board a ship bound for England.

      Lisette had enjoyed living in an Anglo-Indian society in Delhi. Her father had been an eccentric academic, a linguist and a botanist, working for the University of Oxford in India. It was through her father’s friendship with the Rajah Jahana Sumana of the state of Rhuna that she had met and become a close friend of the Rajah’s daughter, Princess Messalina.

      Messalina was being escorted to her wedding in Bhopal and suggested Lisette travel part of the way with her as one of her attendants. Not wishing to draw attention to herself Lisette was dressed as a native girl, for to travel openly as an unescorted English girl was unthinkable.

      Lisette had parted from her friend when the rains came. It was a light sprinkling at first that washed the dust from the air. Then, as the lightning pranced closer in a flashing, sizzling display of the storm’s power, a torrential downpour marched across the land, turning the roads to mud and causing the rivers to overflow. The people Lisette was travelling with reached the banks of a wide, fast-flowing river at the only point of safe crossing for twenty miles upstream and down. Usually the banks here were lined with dhobis busy with piles of washing, mahouts bathing their elephants and children playing and splashing in the shallows.

      The rain had stopped some time ago. The last rays of the sinking sun catching the river glittered on the rushing water