Jo Beverley - [Rogue ]

An Unwilling Bride

The Company of Rogues

Book Two

by

Jo Beverley

New York Times & USA Today

Bestselling Author

AN UNWILLING BRIDE

Awards & Accolades

Romance Writers of America RITA Award, Winner

Best Regency Romance, Romantic Times

Golden Leaf Award, Historical

"Miss Beverley is a storyteller par excellence whose vivid and mesmerizing characters totally engage all of the reader's emotions. Top notch Regency reading pleasure."

~Romantic Times

"Spending time reading about these two intelligent, strong people was such a treat, I'm dreading starting a new book. It can't possibly make me smile, laugh, or root for its characters the way I did for Beth and Lucien."

~All About Romance

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

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Chapter 1

April, 1815

"Hell and damnation."

The words were muttered rather than shouted but were sufficiently shocking to cause Gerald Westall, secretary to William de Vaux, Duke of Belcraven, to look over at his employer. The duke sat behind his massive, carved desk attending to the day's correspondence. His spectacles, only ever used for reading, were perched on his long straight nose as he reread the missive which had caused the exclamation.

Mr. Westall, a long, thin gentleman who gave the impression of being stretched—like a figure in an el Greco painting—pretended to return to his own work, but his mind was all on the duke. Had those words been a sign of shock? Or anger? No, he thought. Amazement. The young man waited impatiently for his assistance to be sought so that he would learn the cause of it all.

He was to be disappointed. The duke put down the letter and rose to walk over to one of the long windows which overlooked Belcraven Park, seat of the family for three hundred years. Fifteen years ago, to celebrate the new century, hundreds of acres surrounding the great house had been brilliantly landscaped in the picturesque style by Humphry Repton. Four years ago, as part of the grand celebrations which had marked the majority of the heir to Belcraven, the Marquess of Arden, the lake had been enlarged. At the same time it had been further improved by the addition of an island, complete with a Grecian temple from which fireworks had been exploded. It was all very beautiful, but it was familiar, and Mr. Westall's employer was not in the habit of studying his estate.

There was little to be learned from the duke's posture. He stood straight with little trace of his fifty-odd years in his lean body. His unremarkable features as usual told no secrets. The Duke of Belcraven was, in his secretary's opinion, a cold fish.

As the duke's thoughtful silence continued, Mr. Westall grew concerned. If disaster had overtaken the house of de Vaux, would he fall along with the rest?

But that was ridiculous. The duke was one of the richest men in England, and Gerald Westall was in the best position to know his employer was not given to chancy investments or gambling. Nor was his beautiful duchess.

His son, though?

Mr. Westall was not taken by Lucien Philippe de Vaux, Marquess of Arden, a Corinthian Buck who had been born in silk, as the saying goes, and feared nothing and nobody. On his rare visits to the Park, the marquess ignored Westall's existence and treated his father with a formal courtesy which was as good as an insult. The secretary pondered the strange fact that fathers and sons of high degree seemed unable to rub along. Look at the king and the Regent—before the king went mad, that is. Perhaps it was because the heir was forced to wait on the father's death for his own real life to begin, and the father was all too aware of that fact.