A Colonel's Sinful Dilemma, page 1
A Colonel's Sinful Dilemma
A REGENCY ROMANCE NOVEL
HENRIETTA HARDING
Copyright © 2020 by Henrietta Harding
All Rights Reserved.
This book may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form without the written permission of the publisher.
In no way is it legal to reproduce, duplicate, or transmit any part of this document in either electronic means or in printed format. Recording of this publication is strictly prohibited and any storage of this document is not allowed unless with written permission from the publisher.
Facebook: Henrietta Harding
Table of Contents
A Colonel's Sinful Dilemma
Table of Contents
Free Exclusive Gift
A Colonel's Sinful Dilemma
Introduction
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Epilogue
Private Affairs of a Wicked Duke
Introduction
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Free Exclusive Gift
Sign up for my mailing list to be notified of hot new releases and get my latest Full-Length Novel “The Lord's Favourite Game” (available only to my subscribers) for FREE!
Click the link or enter it into your browser
http://henriettaharding.com/diana
A Colonel's Sinful Dilemma
Introduction
Ever since she was a child, the unconventional Helena Grey has wanted to see the world more than anything. When her beloved brother, Lysander, accepts a position in India, she is more than eager to follow him on this exciting journey. A few years later, Lysander has mended his ways and old gambling habits and is engaged to the beautiful and kind Rose, with the future looking bright for all three of them. However, the last thing Helena expected was that Rose’s brother would be so irresistibly tempting... As soon as she lays eyes on him, her heart is set on a fire that can’t cool down. Will this dazzling Lady surrender to her burning desire and capture the Colonel’s body and spirit?
After learning about his sister's engagement, Colonel Reginald Wrencrest, takes leave and returns to London for a brief stay. Inclined to approve of Lysander, Reginald is soon undeniably attracted to his eccentric sister. However, Helena’s mysterious affection towards her brother makes Reginald curious and, soon after, leads him to discover Lysander’s rakish past. Appalled, Reginald pressures Rose into breaking this embarrassing engagement, but he gets confronted by the fiery Helena, for his inflexibility and lack of faith in one’s ability to change. His fury at Helena is only worsened by the undeniable attraction he feels for her. Will he manage to tame his growing feelings, or will he succumb to her sinful seduction?
When Lysander disappears, Helena puts all of her hope in Reginald to help her find him. The task is anything but simple though, and before long, Helena finds herself in the midst of the Napoleonic War. With every passionate kiss sparking hotter desire, will Helena and Reginald's love stand a chance? If only they could find their way through the endless conflicts that divide them and back into each other’s comforting embrace… Could this battle be lost once and for all or will the power of love conquer everything in the end?
Prologue
March, 1814
London
The townhouse of the Fourth Baron Popett looked unassuming on its outside, but within, it had become infamous as a house of gambling and dissolute pastimes.
Helena Grey, as a proper young lady of the gentry, should never have known a thing about it, of course. But concern for her brother Lysander had brought her to a revelation of knowledge quite scandalous to her.
Now as she stood before the baron’s London home, she mustered her courage.
‘I beg your pardon,’ someone said.
Startled, Helena whirled to see a gentleman in red—an officer, accompanied by several more military men. For a brief moment, she was frozen as if by a spell.
He was the most handsome man she had ever laid eyes on, with black hair and eyes almost as dark, fine features, and a strong stance that spoke of unyielding bravery. Something in his expression conveyed cleverness and intensity.
He gave her a puzzled look, and with a gesture, indicated his intention to pass by on the pavement—a reasonable request given the street’s busy nature. With haste, she moved aside, and the gentleman tipped his plumed shako with its polished bronze badge in her direction and then went on his way.
Helena caught her breath and gave herself a moment to close her eyes and turn her thoughts back to the matter at hand. Then with a resolute sigh, she faced the door again.
Helena’s eldest brother, Oberon, had made a nominal search for Lysander over the fortnight, but his efforts did not meet Helena’s satisfaction. She took it upon herself at several dinners she attended with her family to press Lysander’s friends and acquaintances until one finally confessed that he was most likely here.
Further prodding had resulted in a reluctant description full of euphemism and obscure phrasing so that Helena could only conclude the baron’s townhouse was hardly better than a house of ill repute. The word ‘opium’ had been uttered before she was forced to end the interview when her mother showed herself too interested in what was being discussed.
It crossed Helena’s mind to tell Oberon and wait for him to take the matter in hand, but so great was her frustration with him that she could not bring herself to trust him with an errand of such grave importance. And, she had told herself, it was no great risk to pay a visit to a baron, no matter how licentious he may be, for he was a peer. The only danger, Helena assured herself, was that she might give offence, for of course she had not been introduced, nor was likely to be.
It quite took her aback to imagine Lysander had developed a friendship with a nobleman, come to that, as it was unusual for members of the gentry to mingle with the noble peerage. Helena Grey had never been one to let societal convention stand in her way, however. If Lysander was at Baron Popett’s, that was where Helena must go.
Nonetheless, she could not go alone, for such an action taken by an unmarried young lady would be cause for shock and scandal. Helena took her lady’s maid, Keene, and swore her to secrecy.
A firm knock on the townhouse’s door led to a white-haired butler in timeworn livery opening it and glaring at Helena and Keene.
‘And whom am I to announce, My Lady?’ the fellow asked without preamble. His disdainful expression contrasted with the threadbare patches on the elbows of his coat.
‘Miss Helena Grey,’ said the lady, somewhat surprised at his brusqueness. ‘But I have not come to call on his lordship the baron. I am searching for my brother, Mr Lysander Grey. Is he here?’
The butler’s eyes drifted upward and then came to focus on Helena again in a display of taciturn contempt. ‘If you please, do follow me, Miss.’
And so she did.
The smell of tobacco smoke permeated the air with an underlying, unsettling tang of sick. Helena resisted the urge to take Keene’s hand as she looked about her, the otherwise mundane furnishings, with mahogany predominating, provoking within her sensations she associated with the reading of Gothic stories.
The walls of the corridor the butler led them through had been painted a dark hunter’s green sometime in the past—the distant past, if she had her guess, for it peeled here and there. There was nothing overtly frightening, and yet her heart rattled in her chest.
They ascended the central staircase, and the butler took them to a door of the first-floor hall. Inside it was a drawing room.
Helena only now began to wonder at the butler’s willingness to see her in. He seemed unsurprised that she would seek her brother and accustomed to delivering unexpected visitors to persons within. There appeared to be no expectation of her greeting the baron or his wife—if he had a wife. As she stepped into the drawing room, she began to understand why.
In the centre of the room, there was a table where four gentlemen sat playing cards and speaking rather loudly and uncouthly to one another. They had several crystal decanters on the table with them, and Helena wrinkled her nose as the scent of spirits wafted over.
Beyond, there was a sofa, with a gentleman reclining on it, and he did not wear a neckcloth. Helena was quite unaccustomed to seeing a gentleman in such a state of undress, and her feet froze in place. Many years ago, she mightn’t have found such a sight so arresting, but her coming out in society had made her more sensitive to such niceties.
‘Perhaps I should have told Oberon,’ she muttered.
‘Perhaps, Miss, but now that we are here ...’ Keene whispered back.
Of course, her maid was in the right. There was no sense baulking now.
Beyond the sofa stood a large vase with palm fronds that quite obscured the rest of the drawing room
For a moment, she was seized with the urge to shout his name, but this she suppressed. Such an instinct would have suited her when she was a girl living on her family’s estate in Westmorland, as she had run a bit wild in those days. But she had been living in London for nearly three years now and had learned to comport herself with decorum.
Now, she squared her shoulders, and with a glance at Keene, marched into the room.
‘Look here, look here,’ declared one of the four card-players, a middle-aged man with receding brown hair and drooping eyelids. ‘Bless that Baron Popett; he’s invited some ladies to entertain us.’
Helena’s steps hesitated. What did he see when he looked at her and Keene? She knew herself to be pleasant-looking, with dark blonde curls and large blue eyes, but her pelisse and walking dress were of simple design—nothing to suggest she was some sort of wanton woman, as this rake seemed to think. And Keene was dressed similarly, in a dress that had once been Helena’s.
The other three men all leered at Helena without any attempt to disguise their unseemly thoughts. Their mouths were open. One licked his upper lip with his tongue.
Helena faltered, but she knew her destination to be beyond the vase and pressed on.
At least the gentleman on the sofa has shown no interest in me.
The fellow who had spoken stood unsteadily from his chair and put himself in her way.
‘Devil it, y’wench, where d’you think you’re going in such haste?’
A stench of whisky-breath struck Helena with force.
Another of the card-players gestured at the man collapsed on the sofa, whom Helena was approaching as she had to pass it by before reaching the vase. ‘He is quite insensible, you know.’
Helena, distressed, turned to look for the butler, but he had disappeared after bringing her as far as the drawing room doorway.
‘I beg your pardon, sir, for you have misconstrued my purpose in coming here,’ Helena said to the jackanape blocking her way. She attempted evading him, to no avail.
‘Now, now, what’s your hurry?’ he asked, taking her chin in his hand with an unexpectedly strong grip. ‘She’s got a dimple in her chin, Mitchell.’
The odour of his breath was not improving with prolonged exposure.
Her heart was hammering fit to burst from her chest, but Helena had grown up wrestling siblings and dogs, and she knocked the man’s arm aside roughly. ‘What a shocking want of gentility!’ she exclaimed. ‘I shall ask that you restrain yourself from any further handling of my person, sir. Now, stand aside if you please.’
Her eyes flashed, and she raised her dimpled chin, but inside she quailed with fear. What if he refused to stand aside? What if he attempted to touch her again?
What a terrible mistake it was to come here all on my own.
The horrid man caught hold of her waist and tugged her towards him.
‘Unhand me! Odious slouch!’ Helena cried and slapped the man’s face. Beside her Keene was protesting as well and grabbing the man’s hand closest to her.
‘Alright then, Sheffield, that’s quite enough,’ said one of the other card-players, a younger gentleman with thick brown eyebrows over pale grey eyes.
All at once, she was free. Helena stumbled away and scowled at her assailant. The latter rolled his eyes and slumped back into his seat.
‘You never let me have any fun,’ he grouched at the one who had spoken.
‘You’ve had too much whisky,’ the latter said. ‘You haven’t eyes enough to see she’s a gentlewoman? Though what she’s doing here, one can only guess.’
Helena smoothed her pelisse and composed herself. With a nod at the one who had assisted her, she said, ‘I thank you for your intervention, Mr—?’
‘Mitchell,’ said he. He stood and gave her a curt bow. ‘Bertram Mitchell, at your service.’
Helena was all confusion, for she had no wish to introduce herself to any of the denizens of this hive of disgrace. However, the gentleman had intervened on her behalf, so she said, ‘Thank you, sir. I am Miss Helena Grey, lately of Cavendish Square.’
‘How delightful to make your acquaintance,’ he said, and Helena had the strong sense that he was mocking her.
This is a detestable place. By heaven, I do hope I shall find Lysander in short order and be on my way. And I dearly hope never to darken its door again!
She gave the gentleman a cold, tight-lipped smile and nod and turned away. Keene followed closely as they moved past the vase.
Helena was unsurprised to see another sofa and a chaise longue as she passed the palm fronds. Lysander lay on the latter.
Oh, how ill he looks.
He was sleeping—or insensible. His eyes appeared sunken in his face, dark bruising surrounding them. His brown curls looked unwashed and greasy, and his waistcoat was undone.
Pressing the back of her glove to her mouth, Helena suppressed a cry of dread. She hastened to his side, crouching to take his hand in both of hers.
‘Lysander,’ she said, hoping to rouse him easily. He did not respond. ‘Lysander, dearest, pray open your eyes.’
Glancing at Keene, she saw her maid’s pallor, and it worsened her alarm.
‘Lysander, I beg you, pray awaken at once.’
Smoothing a gloved hand over his forehead, she was gratified to notice his eyelids twitch in response.
‘That’s it,’ she murmured. ‘That’s the way. Good afternoon, Lysander. Do open your eyes.’
A moment later he did, his green eyes meeting her blue. ‘Helena?’
‘Indeed, it is I, brother mine.’
For a brief time, he blinked and seemed confused, then his expression changed to one of alarm. ‘Helena! Here? The Devil confound it! How can this be?’
Helena ignored his swearing. ‘I came to find you, dearest. You have been missing these ten days.’
Lysander struggled to bring himself upright, soon sitting on the chaise instead of remaining prone. ‘Lena, ’pon my soul, I never would have desired you to come into such a place—’
