The Missing Marchioness. Paula Marshall

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      “Think of the fun we could have,” urged Marcus, still retaining her hand in his.

      “If you agreed to relax your principles a little. One thing you may be sure of, and that is my word is my bond. I would take good care never to betray or hurt you in any way.”

      “Except,” said Louise hardily, “in the most fundamental way of all. I am not of the class of women who my lord Angmering, the Earl of Yardley’s heir, is likely to marry.”

      “Ah, but,” said Marcus, kissing her hand again, “my lord Angmering, the Earl of Yardley’s heir, does not wish to marry anyone of any order of women at all—either high or low—and he does not choose his belles amies lightly.”

      The Missing Marchioness

      Paula Marshall

       www.millsandboon.co.uk

       PAULA MARSHALL,

      married with three children, has had a varied life. She began her career in a large library and ended it as a university academic in charge of history. She has traveled widely, has been a swimming coach and has appeared on University Challenge and Mastermind. She has always wanted to write, and likes her novels to be full of adventure and humor.

      Contents

      Chapter One

      Chapter Two

      Chapter Three

      Chapter Four

      Chapter Five

      Chapter Six

      Chapter Seven

      Chapter Eight

      Epilogue

       Chapter One

      Autumn 1812

       ‘H o hum,’ said Marcus, Lord Angmering, in his usually bluffly cheerful manner. ‘Marriage, it’s all a nonsense! Don’t know why anyone goes in for it! Everything is much simpler with an accommodating ladybird who doesn’t interfere with your life outside the one she shares with you.’

      ‘What about an heir for the title?’ drawled his new acquaintance, Jack, who claimed to be a distant relative of the vast Perceval family. ‘Only possible within the law—and that means marriage.’

      ‘Good God,’ said Marcus, still in his teasing mode, ‘with two younger brothers waiting to grow up there can be no problem there, so why should I marry? Let other men acquire a leg shackle—I prefer to be free.’

      He didn’t add that the lack of success of most marriages didn’t exactly offer much encouragement to a fellow to get hitched. So far as he was concerned, all that went without saying. It was only when he was half-foxed, as he was at the present moment, that he indulged in such mad bursts of honesty.

      Not that he often drank too much, far from it, but he and his friends had been celebrating a marriage, that of a fellow member of their set, Nick Cameron, to his clever beauty, Athene Filmer.

      ‘Everyone’s getting hitched these days, never a season like it,’ Marcus continued, taking another great gulp of port, a drink he usually avoided. ‘And now there’s m’sister getting turned off at Christmas, and you’d think that it was a coronation we were preparing for, what with all the fuss it’s creating. Can’t think why everyone’s so enthusiastic about it all, it must be catching. Well, it’s not going to catch me.’

      ‘Care to bet on it?’ drawled Jack.

      ‘Why not? Easy pickings if I do.’

      ‘Very well. Waiter,’ Jack bellowed at a passing flunkey, ‘bring me pen, paper and ink, if you would—and quickly, before my friend here changes his mind.’

      ‘No chance of that,’ proclaimed Marcus, looking down his long nose at him. Damn the fellow for thinking that he would change his mind every time the wind blew in another direction! He didn’t know Marcus Cleeve very well if he believed any such thing.

      His tormentor was still grinning knowingly at him, as though he had a private glimpse of the future which no one else shared, when the harassed waiter arrived with his order.

      ‘Now,’ said Jack, dipping the quill in the ink pot, his grin widening as he did so, ‘the only question is, how much? Five hundred guineas? To bet that you’ll not marry before a year from now? The money to be handed over to me if you do?’

      Marcus was not so over-set that he contemplated the possibility of throwing five hundred guineas down the drain, even if he were bound and determined to live and die a bachelor. Who knew what might happen? He wouldn’t put it past his father suddenly to make his future inheritance conditional on his marrying an heiress. In fact he had half-hinted at that already, muttering something to the effect of ‘It’s time you settled down, Marcus. Marriage tends to steady a man.’

      ‘Oh, I think I’m steady enough without it,’ he had returned lightly, not wanting to start a discussion on the matter which might end in an argument.

      So: ‘A fellow isn’t made of money,’ he pronounced as gravely as drink would allow him to—he was to think dismally the following morning that it was only the excessive amount of alcohol he had swallowed which had caused him to throw his money about so carelessly. All in all it was a pity he hadn’t fallen unconscious under the table before he had begun to brag about his fortunate state.

      ‘It’s not,’ he added solemnly, ‘as though I am usually a gambling man.’

      ‘Time you began then,’ announced Jack, who was one, with all the good cheer he could summon. ‘Don’t play the skinflint, Angmering, we all know that your pa made a fortune in India.’

      ‘True, but I’m not my father. Make it two hundred and fifty, and leave it at that.’

      He couldn’t refuse to gamble out of hand—that would not be the act of a gentleman, to say nothing of a nobleman.

      ‘Three hundred,’ offered Jack hopefully. For some reason which he couldn’t really have articulated, he thought that a fellow who was shouting the odds about the joys of the bachelor state so loudly might really be in grave danger of relinquishing it.

      ‘Two hundred and fifty—or nothing,’ said Marcus stubbornly, ‘or else the wager’s off.’

      ‘Very well.’

      Jack scrawled down the details of the bet, signed his name, and swung the paper round for Marcus to sign it, too, before handing it on to the others present who drunkenly scribbled their names as witnesses to it.

      ‘That’s that, then. Who’s for the Coal Hole now?’

      ‘Not I,’ said Marcus, who had had enough of Jack for one night. ‘Couldn’t walk there,’ and he laid his head on the littered table and began to sleep—or appeared to at any rate.

      It wasn’t totally make-believe to cut the evening short, for an hour later the waiter who had fetched the writing materials woke him up, helped him to the door, and called a cab to drive him home. The word was perhaps an exaggeration—it was merely the house in Berkeley Square, his father’s home in London—a place which he rarely visited and where he was always unsure of his welcome.

      Once there he fell into bed and didn’t rise until noon, when his valet woke him to remind him that he had promised to drive his sister, Sophia, to Hyde Park later that afternoon. They had arranged to meet the Duke of Sharnbrook, her betrothed, who was escorting an elderly aunt there in order to meet his fiancé and her brother for the first time.

      His valet brought him breakfast in bed and a salver with a glass and a decanter on it: the decanter was full of the hair of the dog which had bit him. Marcus drank the port, grimacing, but that and the