The Desperate Love of a Lord: A Free Novella. Jane Lark
Читать онлайн.| Название | The Desperate Love of a Lord: A Free Novella |
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| Автор произведения | Jane Lark |
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| Издательство | |
| Год выпуска | 0 |
| isbn | 9780008115876 |
The Desperate Love of a Lord
A Free Historical Romance Novella
JANE LARK
A division of HarperCollinsPublishers
HarperImpulse an imprint of
HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London, SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by HarperImpulse 2014
Copyright © Jane Lark 2014
Cover images © Shutterstock.com
Jane Lark asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Ebook Edition © October 2014 ISBN: 9780008115876
Version 2016-02-17
Digital eFirst: Automatically produced by Atomik ePublisher from Easypress.
Contents
“Jane Lark has an incredible talent to draw the reader in from the first page onwards.”
Cosmochicklitan Book Reviews
“Any description that I give you would not only spoil the story but could not give this book a tenth of the justice that it deserves. Wonderful!”
Candy Coated Book Blog
“This book held me captive after the first 2 pages. If I could crawl inside and live in there with the characters I would.”
A Reading Nurse Blogspot
“The book swings from truly swoon-worthy, tense and heart wrenching, highly erotic and everything else in between.”
“I love Ms. Lark’s style—beautifully descriptive, emotional and can I say, just plain delicious reading? This is the kind of mixer upper I’ve been looking for in romance lately.”
Devastating Reads BlogSpot
Looking from the window of the dingy hotel room, Lady Violet Rimes gathered her courage. She knew what the physician was about to say. She could not quite believe she had trapped herself in this dreadful muddle. She was a grown woman, a widow who knew the way of the world and she had always been cautious before, but this time …
“I presume, Ma’am, you know you are with child?”
“How far gone? When is it due?” Her bleeding had stopped weeks ago, though she’d pretended it was not happening. She had spent the last weeks half hoping it was true and half wishing it were not.
“I would think February, Ma’am.”
February? It was already October.
The physician hesitated. “I know of … If you … There is a woman who can help with such things –”
“No.” She wanted the child. She had wanted a child by her husband. But none had come. Since then unless she’d married again, caution was the only choice. She’d avoided conception as best she could. But now fate had made her choice she was neither going to give up the child or allow it to be condemned by scandal. She would keep the child. It was her life which must change.
“No, thank you. I will manage.” She faced him, the heat of a blush creeping over hers skin as she remembered how he’d examined her alone in this room, moments before. He’d left her to straighten her clothing and then returned to share his judgement. He must have surmised she had no husband, and her voice probably labelled her as wealthy, even though she’d taken a dress from her maid’s closet, to help hide the fact.
This whole thing made her feel sordid and guilty. She’d been hiding her condition from the world for weeks and now she was hiding herself.
Violet’s heart raced as she looked at the doctor as though he could provide an alternative answer, but she must find her own answer. She felt cold inside, in her stomach and in her limbs, but yet her heart was warm, with longing. I am with child.
Her heartbeat pounded in her ears. How could she be a mother? “Thank you, Dr Rivers, but, no,” she said with more control, “I do not wish for any help, not in that way. I will have the child. Is it healthy?”
“Everything