CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright & License
A Gift For You
Scandalous Brides
New York Times and USA Today Bestselling Annette Blair, with Cheryl Bolen, Lucinda Brant, and Brenda Hiatt present bewitchingly scandalous brides and their dashing grooms in this boxed set of four full-length bestselling Regencies.
A Sprigleaf Publication
SCANDALOUS BRIDES by Annette Blair, Cheryl Bolen, Lucinda Brant, and Brenda Hiatt
First published, January 2014
Art, design and formatting by Sprigleaf
eISBN 9780987375285
2014 Kindle edition: ASIN B00FPQHK48
UNFORGETTABLE ROGUE 2002, 2012 Annette Blair
First published in paperback by Kensington Publishing
Cover art 200620012 Calista Taylor
A LADY BY CHANCE 2011 Cheryl Bolen
Cover art 2011 Cheryl Bolen
SALT BRIDE 2010 Lucinda Brant
Cover art 2010 Sprigleaf
To suit this edition the original prologue has been removed.
SCANDALOUS VIRTUE 1999 Brenda Hiatt
First published in paperback by HarperPaperbacks, a division of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.
Cover art 1999 Brenda Hiatt
Except for brief quotations embodied in articles and reviews, no part of this ebook may be reproduced in any printed or electronic form without prior permission from the publisher. Please purchase only authorized editions; do not encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of an authors rights.
This is a work of fiction; names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Resemblance to persons, businesses, companies, events, or locales, past or present, is entirely coincidental.
LICENSE: This work is licensed for your personal enjoyment only and may not be given away to others. If you would like to share this book please purchase an additional copy for each reader. If you are reading this ebook and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of these authors.
This title has received a QED seal for quality in eBook design. It can be read easily on screens both large and small.
Cover
Dedication
Beginning
Bonus Preview
About Annette Blair
CHAPTER LINKS
Prologue 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28
With Love to Gail Bryson.
In fond memory of our time and travels together,
Especially our trip to St. Albans, England,
Where I set this book.
I love being a writer, but I miss working with you.
The first time you walked into my office,
I knew we would be friends.
After twenty-five years,
I believe I was right.
PROLOGUE
HAWKESRIDGE AT DEVILS DYKE
ST. ALBANS, ENGLAND, MARCH 1815
BRYCESON WAKEFIELD stood less than a breath away from becoming the Fifth Duke of Hawksworth.
His father moaned. In life, I have failed.
No man should die, or live, Hawk knew, calling himself a failure. No Father, he said, Do not believe it.
The old man grasped his hand with more strength than Bryce thought possible. What do I leave behind? he asked.
Me! Bryce wanted to shout. You leave me! But he said nothing. His sire voiced no pride in an only child, though neither did he repeat his litany of disappointments. How does one deal with a parent who had not so much as touched ones hand for all of a lifetime and now clasped it to his heart?
One attempts, Bryce decided, to invoke the smallest spark of kinship. You leave me behind, Father.
Fervor brightened his sires gaze. You, Bryce, you will make me proud?
God knew he had tried. I like to think I will.
Hawks hope for approval waned with the weakening of the old mans grip. I will; of course I will. Tell me what I must
Fight Bonaparte! Obsession flared in the old mans eyes for one bright moment. Bring honor to my name. I would die proud.
A fathers last words: He would be proud if
ONE
LONDON, SEPTEMBER 1816
BRYCESON WAKEFIELD, the Fifth Duke of Hawksworth, stood at the mouth of hellnot on the field of battle, but in the vestibule of a church, gothic and empty of guests.
There, he saw from afar, his wife, a bride with her bridegroom standing before a priest and there, Hawk knew that living, again, just might kill him.
Thrice on his way to this improbable place, he had ordered the carriage turned around, and thrice he had turned it back.
Even now, he wanted to leave, rather than face Alexandra with the dreadful sight of him, scarred and battered by war, but her very presence drew him up that aisle like a beacon in a night-dark storm.
~ ~ ~
SMILE, Alexandra Wakefield told herself, as she turned to face her bridegroom, her attention captured, instead, by the bearded derelict making his lone way up the aisle, the tap of his cane a desolate echo in the vaulted church.
His bearingtall, sturdy and wide-shoulderedas he took the front pew, and the sharp, intense gaze he directed her way, sent a shiver of startled awareness through her. He made her think, absurdly, of her late husbandnot the first time Bryce came to mind todaybut the brooding stranger watching her, as if he might devour her, looked nothing like him.
Bryceson Wakefield, the Fifth Duke of Hawksworth, a rogue by nature, swarthy, charming and handsome as sin, had enraptured every female who beheld him.
Alexandra had been no exception.
Beauty and his beast, some slyly called them, but Hawk was the beauty. The day he asked for her hand in marriage had been the happiest of her life. Then she learned the real reason he married her, and it hurt.
It hurt enough for her to say yes to Chesterfields proposal of marriage, one year to the day, after Hawksworth died at Waterloo.
At the memory, a sob rose in Alex, until the Vicar cleared his throat, snapping her back to reality with a hot rush of embarrassment. Do you, Alexandra Huntington Wakefield, he was forced to repeat, take Judson Edward Broderick, Viscount Chesterfield, as your lawfully wedded husband?
Panic gripped Alex, grief, soul-deep, but she had no time to regard it, as the brooding stranger stood, his jaw rigidly set, and tapped his cane on the floor. You will pardon the intrusion, he said, his husky and familiar voice swamping her in a miasma of yesterdays, but my wife must decline.
Bryce? Alex cried, but no sound emerged from her throat, none save the sob that had been trapped there. Then the chapels ceiling tilted, and dipped, and she kissed its floor.
Hawk hastened awkwardly to his wifes side and ignored the agony of kneeling, aware that he would have the devil of a time rising again. But at that moment, he cared for nothing, no one, save Alexandra. Give us a minute, he enjoined the beleaguered Vicar, because warning her hovering bridegroom away, with even a veneer of civility, would be impossible.
I object, Chesterfield said, revoking the need for civility.
What? Hawksworth snapped. You think I will abduct her from the altar? You would have no say, even if I did.
His old adversary hissed and bared his teeth, like a hound after a bone.
She is my wife, Hawk said, as much to affirm his responsibility as to stake his claim. Mine.
Gentlemen, remember where you are, the Vicar admonished, as he took Chesterfields arm and urged him up and toward the sanctuary, nodding for the unknown groomsman to follow.
Hawk lifted and supported his wifes head and shoulders, drinking in the sight of her like a man parched, shocked that the vision before him was not the hoyden he remembered. Ah, my funny-faced minx, he said, a rasp in his voice. What were you thinking, while my back was turned, to go and blossom into a beauty, and to accept Chesterfield, of all people?
Next page