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‘Would you like to kiss me goodnight?’
She knew she was taking a great risk but he did not look outraged, nor did he admonish her for her forwardness. When he maintained his silence she added softly, ‘You are a rake, are you not? And rakes always want to kiss a pretty girl.’
He stopped, frowning down at her fingers resting on his sleeve.
‘You would not be wise to pursue this, Miss Salforde.’
A tiny frisson of excitement ran along her spine as she heard the warning note in his voice. She moved a little nearer.
‘Surely it would not be improper for my guardian to call me Elyse?’
Her excitement intensified as his gaze moved to her face, so piercing that for a moment it took her breath away. She read danger in his look, but the wine she had imbibed had given her courage and she felt emboldened by the challenge. She schooled her face into a picture of innocence, at the same time leaning closer so that the lace at her breast was almost touching his waistcoat. She saw his eyes darken and felt a flicker of satisfaction.
‘You are playing a dangerous game, Miss Salforde.’
Ten years after Bonnie Prince Charlie tried and failed to reclaim the British throne for his father, Drew Castlemain returns to England to carry out his friend’s final wishes. He meets Elyse, a spirited young lady and the belle of the northern spa town of Scarborough, but events conspire to prevent him from delivering her to her fiancé and instead they find themselves falling headlong into love…
This Georgian romance is set half a century before the Regency, when it was still usual for men to carry swords and for ladies to wear heavy gowns with hoops and layers of petticoats. Travel was slower, too, with poor roads and lumbering coaches—as my hero and heroine discover to their cost.
I really loved telling Elyse and Drew’s story; they are a young couple who have to fight against the odds to win their happiness, but of course in the end they succeed, and I hope you will enjoy their journey as much as I enjoyed writing about it.
Oh, and on a final note, Drew and Elyse’s whirlwind romance blossomed over a couple of weeks. Improbable, you might think, but it can happen—I met my own hero and knew after just two weeks that he was the one for me. We have just celebrated forty-one years together, so I think I might have been right!
Never Trust
a Rebel
Sarah Mallory
To the UK’s brilliant NHS and all its dedicated staff, especially in A&E.
In particular, Dr E B-G—thanks for the (rather painful) memory!
SARAH MALLORY was born in Bristol, and now lives in an old farmhouse on the edge of the Pennines with her husband and family. She left grammar school at sixteen to work in companies as varied as stockbrokers, marine engineers, insurance brokers, biscuit manufacturers and even a quarrying company. Her first book was published shortly after the birth of her daughter. She has published more than a dozen books under the pen-name of Melinda Hammond, winning the Reviewers’ Choice Award from singletitles.com for Dance for a Diamond and the Historical Novel Society’s Editors’ Choice for Gentlemen in Question. Sarah Mallory has also twice won the Romantic Novelists’ Association’s RONA Rose® Award for The Dangerous Lord Darrington and Beneath the Major’s Scars.
Contents
Paris—1756
The Porte St Honoré was crowded with the usual mix of smart carriages, heavy wagons and tumbrils, all anxious to reach their destination before dark. Suddenly shouts and an unseemly scuffle interrupted the steady flow of traffic. A group of liveried servants surged down the Rue St Honoré, dragging in their midst two figures whose bloodied faces, muddied frockcoats and torn lace ruffles suggested that they had been seriously manhandled. When the group reached the city gate they carried the two men outside and threw them down on to the cobbles.
‘If you are wise you will not return to Paris, messieurs,’ growled one of the servants, making a great show of dusting his hands.
‘Aye, we do not take kindly to English dogs cheating our master at his own card table,’ declared a second, while several others aimed vicious kicks at the two men on the ground, before the whole group turned and made their way, laughing, back into the city. The excitement over, the traffic on the Rue St Honoré resumed its steady progress, passing on either side of the two bodies with barely a glance.
One of the men struggled to his hands and knees and stayed there for a moment, as if debating if he could get up.