Marriage Made In Hope. Sophia James

      

       The Penniless Lords

       In want of a wealthy wife

      Meet Daniel, Gabriel, Lucien and Francis. Four lords, each down on his fortune and each in need of a wife of means.

      From such beginnings, can these marriages of convenience turn into something more treasured than money?

      Don’t miss this enthralling new quartet by Sophia James

      Read Daniel, Gabriel, Lucien and Francis’s stories in

       Marriage Made in Money

       Marriage Made in Shame

       Marriage Made in Rebellion

       Marriage Made in Hope

      All available now!

       Author Note

      I’ve loved writing The Penniless Lords series. Each of the four lords has his own particular set of problems, and Francis St Cartmail, the damaged Earl of Douglas, is no exception.

      Hounded by his past, and lonely with it, Francis finds his world turned around when he saves a woman from drowning in the Thames.

      Lady Sephora Connaught is suffocating in life even before she falls into the river, and when a stranger pulls her from certain death it’s as if she has crossed a threshold and everything has changed.

      Christine, who is Lucien’s sister, is next. I have written her story as a novella for a forthcoming Christmas anthology.

      Marriage Made in Hope

      Sophia James

       www.millsandboon.co.uk

      SOPHIA JAMES lives in Chelsea Bay, on Auckland, New Zealand’s North Shore, with her husband, who is an artist. She has a degree in English and History from Auckland University and believes her love of writing was formed by reading Georgette Heyer in the holidays at her grandmother’s house. Sophia enjoys getting feedback at sophiajames.co.

      Contents

       Cover

      The Penniless Lords

      Author Note

       Title Page

       About the Author

      Chapter One

      Chapter Two

      Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

       Chapter Six

       Chapter Seven

       Chapter Eight

       Chapter Nine

       Chapter Ten

       Chapter Eleven

       Chapter Twelve

       Chapter Thirteen

       Chapter Fourteen

       Chapter Fifteen

       Extract

       Copyright

       Chapter One

      London—1815

      Lady Sephora Connaught knew that she was going to die. Right then and there as the big black horse bucked on the bridge and simply threw her over the balustrade and down into the fast-running river.

      Her sister screamed and so did others, the sounds blocked out by the water as she hit it, fright taking breath and leaving terror. She exhaled from pure instinct, but still the river came in, filling her mouth and throat and lungs as the cloth of her heavy skirt drew her under to the darkness and the gloom. She could not fight it, could not gain purchase or traction or leverage.

      Ripping at her riding jacket, she tried to loosen the fastenings, but it was hopeless. There were too many buttons and beneath that too many stays, too much boning and layers and tightness, all clinging and covering and constricting.

      This was it.

      The moment of her end; already the numbness was coming, the pain in her leg from hitting the balustrade receding into acceptance, the light from above fading as she sank amongst the fish and the mud and the empty blackness. It was over. Her life. Her time. Gone before she had even lived it. Her hands closed over her mouth and nose so that she would not breathe in, but her lungs were screaming for air and she couldn’t deny them further.

      A movement above had her tipping her head, the disturbance of the water felt more than seen as a dark shape came towards her. A man fully dressed, his hand reaching out even as he kicked. She simply watched, trying to determine if he could be real, here in the depths of the Thames, here where the light was failing and all warmth was gone.

      * * *

      God, the girl had simply given up, floating there like a giant jellyfish, skirts billowing, hair streaming upwards, skin pale as moonlight and eyes wide.

      Why did the gentlemen of the ton not teach their daughters to swim, for heaven’s sake? If they had, she might have made a fist of her own salvation and tried to strike out for the surface. Anything but this dreadful final acceptance and lack of fight. His mouth came tight across her own as he gave her breath, there in the dark and cold, the last of his air before he kicked upwards, fingers anchored around her arm. At least she did not struggle, but came with him like a sodden dead weight, the emerald hue of a riding jacket the only vivid thing about her.

      And then they were up into the sun and the wind and the living, bouncing like corks in the quick-cut current of the river, her legs wound about his like a vice, one hand scratching down the side of his face and drawing blood as she tried to grab him further.

      ‘Damn it. Keep still.’ His words were rasped out through shattered breath and lost in open space.

      But she would not calm, the flailing panic pulling him under, her eyes wide with terror. Swearing again, he jammed her hard in against him and made for the bank whilst keeping with the current, glad when he saw others running down the pathways to reach them in the mire of sludge and slurry.

      The mud from Hutton’s Landing came back in memory, falling across him, pulling him down, thick as molasses, heavy as oil, and he began to shiver. Violently. It was everywhere here, too, around his legs, across the stockings on his feet, staining the full skirts of the girl, her body pinned to his own like a well-fitting glove and taking any last remaining warmth.

      He needed to be gone, to be home, away from the prying eyes of others and the pity he so definitely did not want. She was retching now violently, water streaming from her mouth as oxygen took the place of the putrid contents of the Thames. She was shaking,