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       In The Regency Ballroom Collection

      Scandal in the Regency Ballroom –Louise Allen

      April 2013

      Innocent in the Regency Ballroom –Christine Merrill

      May 2013

      Wicked in the Regency Ballroom –Margaret McPhee

      June 2013

      Cinderella in the Regency Ballroom –Deb Marlowe

      July 2013

      Rogue in the Regency Ballroom –Helen Dickson

      August 2013

      Debutante in the Regency Ballroom –Anne Herries

      September 2013

      Rumours in the Regency Ballroom –Diane Gaston

      October 2013

      Rake in the Regency Ballroom –Bronwyn Scott

      November 2013

      Mistress in the Regency Ballroom –Juliet Landon

      December 2013

      Courtship in the Regency Ballroom –Annie Burrows

      January 2014

      Scoundrel in the Regency Ballroom –Marguerite Kaye

      February 2014

      Secrets in the Regency Ballroom –Joanna Fulford

      March 2014

      To Aidan, my own hero,

      for always believing in me.

      I wouldn’t have been able

      to do this without you

       Chapter One

      Lady Hester Cuerden did not wait for anyone to answer the kitchen door of Beckforth’s vicarage. After thumping on it with her clenched fist a couple of times, she just pushed it open and marched straight in.

      Caught in the act of hiding a book under her skirts, Emily Dean, the vicar’s daughter, looked up from her chair beside the fire in guilty shock. Her eyes widened when she realised that Hester was visibly trembling.

      ‘Whatever is the matter?’she asked, forgetting to conceal the worthless novel from her closest friend as she got to her feet.

      Hester pulled off her gloves as she headed for the warmth of the kitchen fire. ‘C…cold…’ she said through chattering teeth. ‘And w…wet…’

      ‘And absolutely filthy!’ Emily grabbed Hester’s gloves before they had a chance to contaminate the freshly scrubbed deal table on which she had been about to deposit them, and ran with them instead to the sink in the adjacent scullery.

      With numbed white fingers, Hester fumbled the buttons of her overcoat undone. Emily came back in time to see her drape it over the back of the chair she had just vacated and stretch her hands out towards the fire.

      ‘Where’s your bonnet?’ Emily asked as Hester tucked a wayward coil of her distinctive vibrant auburn hair behind her ear. ‘You came out in this weather without one?’

      ‘Of course not,’ Hester said. ‘I was prepared for any eventuality when I set out. I had a bonnet, and a shawl wrapped over it to keep the wind off, and a basket full of provisions over my arm. You want to know where they all are now? In the bottom of a ditch, that’s where.’

      Emily blinked at the circle of greenish slime that was dripping on to the flagged floor from the uneven hem of Hester’s skirt.

      ‘The only eventuality for which I was not prepared,’ Hester continued through gritted teeth, ‘was that I should step out of the lodge gates at the exact same moment when his Lordship, the high and mighty Marquis of Lensborough, happened to be rounding the bend in the lane at breakneck speed. That reckless, foul-mouthed…’ she struggled to find an epithet black enough to express her wrath, coming up eventually with ‘Marquis!’ as though it were the lowest form of insult she knew ‘…was going too fast to stop, and clearly deemed it imprudent to take evasive action. He might have injured his horses, mightn’t he, if he had veered towards the ditch, or scratched the paintwork of his shiny curricle against the park wall if he had tried to swerve the other way. Do you know what he chose to do instead?’ She continued before Emily even had a chance to draw breath. ‘He swore at me for flinging myself under his horses’ hooves. I’ve never heard such language.’

      Emily found it hard to believe anyone was capable of exhibiting such callous behaviour. ‘Didn’t he make any attempt to stop?’

      ‘I was too busy diving into the ditch myself to notice.’ Hester shifted from one foot to another, drawing Emily’s notice to the greenish sludge that was oozing out between the uppers and the soles of her ancient walking boots.

      ‘You must get those boots off at once,’ Emily said, promptly dropping to her knees so that she could untie the sodden laces.

      ‘They’re done for,’ she pronounced as the mud-clogged sole peeled away in her hand as she tugged one boot from Hester’s foot.

      Hester shivered violently, then sank abruptly on to Emily’s chair. ‘At least I’m not,’ she said, passing a shaky hand across her mud-streaked face. Her mind had been so preoccupied by the news that had sent her scurrying from the house as soon as she could slip away unnoticed, that she hadn’t paused to check for traffic before stepping out into the rutted lane. She didn’t know what had made her glance up. She certainly hadn’t heard the curricle approaching over the noise of the wind that was buffeting

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