Captain Corcoran's Hoyden Bride. ANNIE BURROWS

       ‘I find it hard,’ the Captain said, ‘to believe you would flee from the prospect of becoming a countess, when you walked to my house, in the pouring rain, thinking you were about to become a mere governess.’

      Countess?

      

      ‘Not that it makes any difference now,’ he said, in a tone of chilling finality.

      

      ‘Oh, but …’ she began, but he had turned away. His shoulders stiff with affront, he stalked from the room, shutting the door behind him with the exaggerated care of a man who would have got a great deal more satisfaction from slamming it hard.

      

      Aimée rolled onto her back, thumping the counterpane at her sides. Yes, why had he gone to such lengths to get her to his house? Why had he placed an advertisement in a London newspaper that made it sound as though he wanted to employ a governess when what he really wanted was a wife?

      AUTHOR NOTE

      The Earl of Caxton has two granddaughters. One of them, Miss Aimée Peters, has grown up in exile, knowing only poverty and hardship. She is desperate to find some security. To put down roots.

      

      To the outside world the other, Lady Jayne Chilcot, has been her family’s pampered darling. But she feels suffocated by the stultifying propriety that hems her in on all sides, and longs for adventure.

      

      These cousins have one thing in common. Their mothers were proud women, who instilled that pride into their daughters, teaching them that a lady will always rise to the occasion, and to look upon adverse circumstances as a test of character.

      

      I am still writing about how Lady Jayne finds her adventure at the moment, but first you can read about Aimée.

      

      In this story Aimée goes looking for the respectability she craves in a job as a governess. What could be safer for a single woman than living quietly in the country, teaching children all the things she has learned in her so far turbulent life? She does not dream that in her new employer, Captain Corcoran, she will face the greatest challenge of all. A challenge to her heart …

      About the Author

      ANNIE BURROWS has been making up stories for her own amusement since she first went to school. As soon as she got the hang of using a pencil she began to write them down. Her love of books meant she had to do a degree in English literature. And her love of writing meant she could never take on a job where she didn’t have time to jot down notes when inspiration for a new plot struck her. She still wants the heroines of her stories to wear beautiful floaty dresses and triumph over all that life can throw at them. But when she got married she discovered that finding a hero is an essential ingredient to arriving at ‘happy ever after'.

       Previous novels by Annie Burrows:

      HIS CINDERELLA BRIDE

      MY LADY INNOCENT THE EARL’S UNTOUCHED BRIDE CAPTAIN FAWLEY’S INNOCENT BRIDE THE RAKE’S SECRET SON

      (part of Regency Candlelit Christmas anthology) DEVILISH LORD, MYSTERIOUS MISS

      Also available in eBook format in Mills & Boon® Historical Undone:

      NOTORIOUS LORD, COMPROMISED MISS

      CAPTAIN

      CORCORAN’S HOYDEN BRIDE

      Annie Burrows

      

       www.millsandboon.co.uk

       To my editor, Sally Williamson, for all your patience with me on this one, your insightful revision suggestions, but most of all for reminding me to write from the heart.

       Chapter One

       Wanted: For Gentleman’s family in Yorkshire. A Healthy Young Person from good family, to supervise education of young children. She will not be expected to dine with servants or do any menial work. Any person able to provide proofs of their pedigree, education and character may call at the Black Swan, Holborn, on Tuesday, 6th June, between the hours of three and four in the afternoon.

      Miss Aimée Peters sighed as the church clock of Beckforth chimed the half-hour. Again.

      It meant she had been sitting on her trunk in the coaching yard of the King’s Arms for well over an hour.

      Of course, no governess could expect her employers to send one of their other servants to wait for the stage to come in, and to meet her as though they regarded her as a significant member of the household. There was not a creature on earth of less significance than a governess.

      Which had been the whole point of going to such lengths to secure this position. Nobody ever looked twice at a governess. Her background and education separated her from the servants, and her status as paid employee kept her apart from the family. She would belong neither above nor below stairs.

      To all intents and purposes she would be invisible.

      Which was exactly what Aimée wanted.

      Though—she shivered as the wind skirled round the corner of the yard in which she was sitting—it was one thing to have pulled off such a successful disappearing act, but where on earth was Mr Jago?

      He had left a letter for her at the Black Swan, telling her that if she still wanted the position for which she had undergone that rather cursory interview, it was hers. All she had to do was go to the Bull and Mouth and collect the tickets he had purchased for her transport as far as this inn in Beckforth, which was the closest village to her employer’s home.

      But what if the letter she had sent, along with the requested references, to tell him she was indeed accepting the post, and would be travelling to Yorkshire immediately, had gone astray? What if nobody was expecting her to arrive today at all? She could not just sit on her trunk in this ramshackle inn yard indefinitely!

      She gripped her overnight bag, which she had kept on her lap the entire way, a little more firmly, stood up, and brushed a few stalks of dried, muddy straw from her skirts.

      It was not as though she was not perfectly used to fending for herself. Her lips twitched into a wry smile. Her willingness to travel—nay, her experience of travelling had been, she was convinced, the deciding factor in landing her this post. Mr Jago had scarcely asked anything about her pedigree, but had sat up and looked very interested once she had told him how she had spent her childhood becoming fluent in Italian and French by flitting from one European city to the next. Naturally, she had not mentioned that these moves had usually occurred at dead of night, with outraged creditors in hot pursuit.

      Mr Jago, after pursing his lips and looking her up and down with those keen blue eyes of his, had unbent far enough to tell her that his employer, the man who had placed the advertisement in the London papers and had sent him to conduct interviews, was a naval captain who was looking for a woman with backbone. Aimée had only briefly been puzzled by his choice of words, for she perceived that a naval officer would probably need to uproot his family regularly, depending on where he was to be stationed. She saw that she would adapt to a peripatetic lifestyle more readily than any of the other applicants, and so had proudly replied that she had a backbone of steel.

      Aimée picked her way carefully through the piles of droppings, refuse and puddles that made up the surface of the yard, to the half-open inn door. If Mr