A Proposal to Protect His Lady, page 1
It would solve the problem for her, she decided with a wistful sigh.
Struck by a sneaky spark of hope, she stopped rocking and sat bolt upright on her perch.
Temptation whispered that even the smallest chance Max would marry her to save her girls enduring a life as an unwanted duty to their grandfather for the next ten or fifteen years was worth a try. A platonic marriage with the one man she could trust not to force his repellent needs on her could get her children away from Edgar’s family for good. Did she have enough gall to ask such an impossible thing of an old friend? Yes, for her girls’ sake, she would do anything she had to if it meant she could keep them safe.
She hated dragging Max into this mess as well, but if only he would say yes, she could stay at Holdfast for a while, pretend she could not endure the country, and they could live a few hundred miles apart for most of the year. She could spend a few weeks in Northumberland with him every summer, and he could spare one or two every now and again to keep up appearances in London. It was a last desperate throw of the dice, and it probably wouldn’t work, but she was still going to try it.
Author Note
Sometimes an idea for a book comes to me after a lot of thinking and hoping and rejecting the wrong ones, and sometimes one just turns up and demands to be written. When Max appeared in my last book, Secrets of the Viscount’s Bride, to give his brother Zachary someone to talk to before his wedding, I knew Max must have his own story. He watched his brother pace with nerves and impatience to marry his heroine and said, “I am never going to get married.” And he was only twenty, so I had to know why.
This is my answer to a question I often get asked: Where do you get your ideas from? Sometimes I have to work hard to find ones that will work, and sometimes they simply drop into my lap. Thank you, Max, for dropping in like that. I have loved working with you and here’s hoping that my wonderful readers love you, too!
ELIZABETH BEACON
A Proposal to Protect His Lady
Elizabeth Beacon has a passion for history and storytelling and, with the English West Country on her doorstep, never lacks a glorious setting for her books. Elizabeth tried horticulture, higher education as a mature student, briefly taught English and worked in an office before finally turning her daydreams about dashing piratical heroes and their stubborn, independent heroines into her dream job: writing Regency romances for Harlequin Historical.
Books by Elizabeth Beacon
Harlequin Historical
A Rake to the Rescue
The Duchess’s Secret
Falling for the Scandalous Lady
Lady Helena’s Secret Husband
Secrets of the Viscount’s Bride
A Proposal to Protect His Lady
The Yelverton Marriages
Marrying for Love or Money?
Unsuitable Bride for a Viscount
The Governess’s Secret Longing
A Year of Scandal
The Viscount’s Frozen Heart
The Marquis’s Awakening
Lord Laughraine’s Summer Promise
Redemption of the Rake
The Winterley Scandal
The Governess Heiress
Visit the Author Profile page
at Harlequin.com for more titles.
Contents
Prologue
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
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Epilogue
Excerpt from The Secret She Kept from the Earl by Sophia Williams
Prologue
January 1810
Waiting in a wood at dawn, Max Chilton shifted from one cold foot to the other and wished he was fighting neglect at Holdfast Castle in Northumberland instead of meeting a woman who had buried her husband yesterday. It was his own fault. If he hadn’t gone to Mynham after the funeral to catch a glimpse of the widow, she could not have slipped him a note saying to meet her at this godforsaken hour.
Georgia had stolen his heart when they were both eighteen and three years on he wasn’t sure he had got it back yet. His childhood partner in mischief had turned into a luminously beautiful young woman between one day and the next and watched him with puzzled eyes whenever he tried to court her in such a clumsy, tongue-tied way that he almost blushed when he thought about it even now. Then she went to London to make her debut in polite society and he followed her like a devoted puppy.
He winced at the memory of his brother taking him back to their native Yorkshire after he was beaten by a gang of thieves on his way back to his lodgings one night. He was still recovering when Georgia’s marriage to Lord Edgar Jascombe was announced. What else could he do after that except bury his nose in his books and study for a degree when kicking up larks to forget that he loved her didn’t work.
Now he was about to start a new life as the owner of neglected Holdfast Castle and estate in another county. But all the way here he had tried not to wonder when Lady Edgar Jascombe would stop mourning her late husband and realise Max wasn’t an overgrown schoolboy any more. Then he saw her, so remote and pale in her widow’s weeds yesterday, and was ashamed of himself. She still slipped him that note, though, so what did she want and where the devil was she?
He had a long, hard ride ahead of him and she should have better things to do than meet him when the sun was barely up and it was so damned cold his fingers and toes ached. Suddenly there she was, stepping out of the shadows as if she was part of them, and she looked so fragile and so very different from the merry, headlong girl he once knew.
‘What is it, my lady?’ he said when she was close enough for him to see dark shadows under her eyes as she pushed up her veil.
‘My lady?’ she echoed, as if she disliked the distance he was trying to put between them. ‘I had to see you, Max,’ she added.
‘Why?’
She hesitated, as if wondering whether to say what she had come to say or go away again without doing it. ‘Because you are a good man,’ she said shakily.
Was he and why did she need him to be one? Horror swept over him as he suddenly saw the truth behind Georgia’s splendid society marriage. She didn’t look as if she hadn’t slept or eaten for days because she was mourning her husband; she was guiltily relieved that Jascombe was dead.
‘The cur you married wasn’t a good one, was he?’ he asked as gently as he could with so much fury and guilt and this old, frustrated love still raging inside him.
‘No, he was a vile brute. I had to pretend I was happy in public or it would be worse for me later. When Millie was born I was afraid he would lash out at her because he hated being the father of a mere girl. Then there was a new one to be frightened for and he was even more furious she was born.’
She paused as if struggling to control emotions she had kept to herself too long. ‘Oh, Max, I can’t tell you how many times I have wished Edgar dead. What if I cursed him to die like that?’
‘He would have died harder and a lot more slowly if wishing was all it took,’ he told her grimly. He wanted death to have come slowly and painfully to the cur now he knew Jascombe was one.
No, calling him a cur was too good for him and a quick, clean death from a broken neck was too kind for Lord Edgar Jascombe. Georgia’s mouth trembled as if she wanted to cry because Max believed in her and of course he did. He cursed the louse for putting shadows in her glorious eyes and he could see her hands were shaking.
It felt as if she would break if he pushed for facts, but why had she kept Jascombe’s wickedness quiet for three years? She pushed a russet-gold curl off her face with an unsteady hand and his rage at a dead man nearly came out in a bellow of anguish because she had suffered and he hadn’t known.
‘I just wanted him gone,’ she whispered.
‘Did you try to kill him?’
‘No, I didn’t have the courage,’ she said bleakly and met his eyes as if she was confessing to a terrible crime.
‘You would have done if he went for your girls. I know you would fight for them with your last breath,’ he said. He was so proud of her, but so frustrated she hadn’t told him when the brute was alive. He cursed aloud because his rage felt so huge he couldn’t keep it inside any longer. ‘Not you, him,’ he said when she flinched.
‘I know,’ she said, ‘you were always on my side.’
‘That’s why you didn’t tell me, isn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ she said with a great sigh and walked into his arms.
He had often dreamt of her doing so, but never like this. He felt helpless and furious and such wrenching, frustrated pity for the violence and loneliness of her married life. She had finally let her guard down and he spared a little pity for himself because he knew he still loved her and it was even more hopeless than it was last time.
‘A stern old god could have listened,’ she said wildly.
‘Someone wou
‘The Duke did say the huntsmen shouted warnings, but Edgar said they were a pack of old women. His poor horse had to be shot, you know? I felt sorrier about that than Edgar’s death, so I must be wicked.’
‘He was the wicked one and you can dance on his grave if you like, but don’t you dare feel guilty when he treated you so badly. I hope he roasts in hell for eternity.’
‘He was the father of my children, though, Max, and I sat by his coffin the night before last and couldn’t shed a tear.’
‘Which proves you are already living better without him,’ he said and wished it was true. She was so gaunt and pale, felt so fragile in his arms, he wondered if she would ever recover from three years of abuse by her own husband.
‘Even after seeing him still as a waxwork I couldn’t believe it was over, Max, but maybe I will now I have told you; I might stop feeling my life is a lie.’
‘How long have you been keeping his nasty little secrets, then?’
‘He hit me now and again from the outset, except when I was with child. He never came near when I was enceinte, but he certainly didn’t hold back after Millie was born. Little Helen is only six weeks old, so I had to be churched after he died and at least he hasn’t been near me like that for months now.’
She gave a great shiver and hid her face in his riding jacket and Max folded the front of his greatcoat around her and prayed she wasn’t as broken as she seemed. He felt so guilty about staying away now, as if he had stood and watched the brute attack her and held his coat. He had been so busy protecting his own jealous, aching heart that he had never stopped to wonder if she was truly happy with her brilliant social catch.
‘I’m so sorry, Georgia,’ he told the top of her prickly dark bonnet.
He wanted to untie its grim ribbons, throw the dratted thing away and make sure she never had to wear mourning for Jascombe again, but how would she explain losing it? She didn’t need whispers that she had met a lover the day after she buried her husband. He could almost hear Jascombe’s mocking ghost say she would never want another man after him, but this wasn’t about Max hating a dead man, it was about her.
‘You have nothing to apologise for,’ she whispered, refusing to look up. Maybe she was crying; she needed to after holding so much in for so long. ‘I refused to see evil under Edgar’s charm and he was the son of a duke, you see? Mama had always wanted me to marry well and the other debutantes were so jealous.’
Never mind a pack of giddy girls, Georgia’s mother was keen to tell anyone who would listen that her genteel family fortunes had sunk so low she was forced to marry money. It said more about her than her husband, in his opinion, and Max had always liked Georgia’s gentle father more than her pushy mother.
Right now he almost hated the silly woman for raising her only child to believe a fine society marriage and title were essential to her happiness. At eighteen Max had been the second son of a viscount without any hope of the tumbledown castle and estate that he was about to begin work on and he wasn’t good enough for Mrs Welland, even if Georgia had loved him back and, sadly, she didn’t.
‘It wasn’t your fault,’ he said fiercely. ‘Hurting you, expecting you to cover it up in public wasn’t your wrong, it was his. He was the lowest of the low and never mind whose bed he was born in.’
‘But I was such a fool, I should have married—’
‘There’s no point looking back at paths you didn’t take,’ he interrupted since he didn’t want to know who she wished she had married instead.
He could almost feel her fighting for the steely poise it must have taken to pretend she was happy in public and endure the rat’s violence in private. He felt her lose the battle and felt helpless as he held her as she cried, as if all the fear and confusion pent up inside her had finally found a way out. He cursed the fates for not killing Jascombe before he could hurt a hair on her head and whispered whatever comfort he could think of.
‘I shall never marry again,’ she told him. She finally drew away and scrubbed her eyes dry with his handkerchief, then handed it back because her maid might find it and wonder whose it was. ‘What do you live for, Max?’
‘My family and a tumbledown castle in Northumberland that nobody else wants.’
‘You always did pick up waifs and strays,’ she said with such a gallant attempt at a smile he almost cried, too. ‘Thank you for meeting me, Max. It was kind of you to listen to my woes and let me cry all over you like a weeping willow.’
‘I will always listen if you need me to, Georgia. I shall be at Holdfast Castle, trying to make order out of the chaos its last owner created if you need to talk about it again.’
‘When your mother wrote to me she said you were deciding whether to take it on. She doesn’t sound very happy about the idea,’ she said as if she needed to make small talk.
Max shoved his hands in his greatcoat pockets to hide his clenched fists because she was setting him at a distance again. ‘She thinks my paternal grandmother’s obsession with her ancestral home has already cost her much too dear,’ he said. ‘But never mind that sad old story, promise you will come and see me there if you need to talk about him again, Georgia?’ he insisted with three years of wilful ignorance prodding at his conscience.
‘I will—now goodbye and God speed. Thank you for proving me right,’ she said and walked back into the shadowy wood as if he had imagined her.
Right about what? Ah, yes, Max the good man—what a lie he was.
Chapter One
Summer 1815
‘It’s only going to be for six weeks, Georgia,’ Miss Leonora Haverstock, her children’s governess, said, but it felt like for ever.
‘How does my father-in-law think taking my girls back to Mynham will help me get better from the influenza, Leonora? Missing them and worrying about them living under their grandparents’ roof for the next month and a half will make me feel worse.’
‘He is right, though. You are still pale and you have lost weight and as you were feverish for nearly a fortnight even I was worried about you,’ Leonora replied cheerfully. But Georgia suspected she was dreading six weeks at stiff and stately Mynham with two lively young pupils to keep out of the Duke and Duchess of Ness’s way.
Edgar had named his father as his children’s guardian in his will so Georgia had to give in when the Duke refused to be talked out of this plan for her to recover in peace, as if it would be anything of the kind. Edgar’s last cruelty against her stung afresh as she had no choice but to go along with the Duke’s ridiculous idea for her to convalesce alone.
‘I was feeling so much better when the Duke called on his way back from Brussels with news of the Allied victory at Waterloo, but then I started to cough and couldn’t stop. He seems to think I will be a permanent invalid if he doesn’t interfere, but I’m as strong as an ox.’
‘Maybe you are, but you don’t look it right now. You probably do need to breathe clean air and get plenty of rest.’
‘Perhaps,’ Georgia conceded with a glance out of the window at the usual haze over the city, which gave it a yellowish tint even on a fine day, ‘but not without my girls. I will just worry about them under the Duke’s roof without me.’
‘I don’t suppose he knows how a true mother feels about her children, Georgia, since the Duchess doesn’t strike me as the maternal type, although everyone says she doted on your late husband so maybe I am misjudging her.’
‘No, she could hardly ignore her elder son and spoil the younger one if she cared about them, but I suppose you’re right and the Duke truly doesn’t realise I love my children dearly,’ Georgia said with a sigh. ‘He is always accusing me of spoiling them, but you know how careful I am not to do so. I’m so afraid he will decide I am an unfit mother and not give them back to me.’
‘Oh, for goodness sake, Georgia, stop imagining the worst and concentrate on getting better so you can convince him you must have us all back here soon. In the meantime Nanny and I will care for them as if they are our own and the weeks will fly by. It makes sense for you to leave the city until it is cooler and the air is cleaner.’
