Helen Dickson - The Housemaid’s Scandalous Secret

Castonbury Park

A Regency Upstairs Downstairs

Survival of the fittest is fine, so long as you’re the one on top … but the family that has everything is about to lose it all …

The Montagues have found themselves at the centre of the ton ’s rumour mill, with lords and ladies alike claiming the family is not what it used to be.

The mysterious death of the heir to the Dukedom, and the arrival of an unknown woman claiming he fathered her son, is only the tip of the iceberg in a family where scandal upstairs and downstairs threatens the very foundations of their once powerful and revered dynasty …

August 2012

THE WICKED LORD MONTAGUE– Carole Mortimer

September 2012

THE HOUSEMAID’S SCANDALOUS SECRET– Helen Dickson

October 2012

THE LADY WHO BROKE THE RULES– Marguerite Kaye

November 2012

LADY OF SHAME– Ann Lethbridge

December 2012

THE ILLEGITIMATE MONTAGUE– Sarah Mallory

January 2013

UNBEFITTING A LADY –Bronwyn Scott

February 2013

REDEMPTION OF A FALLEN WOMAN–Joanna Fulford

March 2013

A STRANGER AT CASTONBURY–Amanda McCabe

Duke of Rothermere

Castonbury Park

Dear Ross,

Nephew, I hesitate to ask, because I know you are busy and your life is currently in India, but I would really appreciate your calm head and guidance at this trying time. As you know, we have been led to believe that my dear son Jamie is dead, but to complicate matters I have just this morning received a letter informing us that Jamie was married, and that his new wife and young son are in the grounds of Castonbury Park. The truth is yet to be determined, for I thought I knew my son better. But, Ross, I would be most grateful if you could return to help your family and use your persuasive nature to discover what this woman wants and what indeed did happen. I believe she may be able to shed some light.

But please, however, be discreet. We cannot afford any more scandal to be unearthed whilst you are here.

Yours,

Rothermere

HELEN DICKSONwas born and lives in South Yorkshire, with her retired farm manager husband. Having moved out of the busy farmhouse where she raised their two sons, she has more time to indulge in her favourite pastimes. She enjoys being outdoors, travelling, reading and music. An incurable romantic, she writes for pleasure. It was a love of history that drove her to writing historical fiction.

Previous novels by the same author:

A SCOUNDREL OF CONSEQUENCE

FORBIDDEN LORD

SCANDALOUS SECRET, DEFIANT BRIDE

FROM GOVERNESS TO SOCIETY BRIDE

MISTRESS BELOW DECK

THE BRIDE WORE SCANDAL

DESTITUTE ON HIS DOORSTEP

SEDUCING MISS LOCKWOOD

MARRYING MISS MONKTON

BEAUTY IN BREECHES

MISS CAMERON’S FALL FROM GRACE

And in Mills & Boon ®Historical Undone! eBooks:

ONE RECKLESS NIGHT

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also available as eBooks?

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The

Housemaid’s

Scandalous Secret

Helen Dickson

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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For my husband, George, with love—

he has provided unconditional support and

encouragement throughout.

Cholera had killed Lisette’s parents. Suddenly, at nineteen years old, she found herself homeless, penniless, with no family and no purpose in life. She was adrift but she would survive. She could survive anywhere, but she belonged nowhere.

Unable to remain in her beloved India, she was to travel to Bombay, where she hoped to work her passage on board a ship bound for England.

Lisette had enjoyed living in an Anglo-Indian society in Delhi. Her father had been an eccentric academic, a linguist and a botanist, working for the University of Oxford in India. It was through her father’s friendship with the Rajah Jahana Sumana of the state of Rhuna that she had met and become a close friend of the Rajah’s daughter, Princess Messalina.

Messalina was being escorted to her wedding in Bhopal and suggested Lisette travel part of the way with her as one of her attendants. Not wishing to draw attention to herself Lisette was dressed as a native girl, for to travel openly as an unescorted English girl was unthinkable.

Lisette had parted from her friend when the rains came. It was a light sprinkling at first that washed the dust from the air. Then, as the lightning pranced closer in a flashing, sizzling display of the storm’s power, a torrential downpour marched across the land, turning the roads to mud and causing the rivers to overflow. The people Lisette was travelling with reached the banks of a wide, fast-flowing river at the only point of safe crossing for twenty miles upstream and down. Usually the banks here were lined with dhobis busy with piles of washing, mahouts bathing their elephants and children playing and splashing in the shallows.

The rain had stopped some time ago. The last rays of the sinking sun catching the river glittered on the rushing water in a haze of gold. The bridge creaked and swayed with the pull of the current. It was almost dark, but rather than wait until morning by which time the bridge could have been washed away or become impossible to cross, the travellers decided not to postpone their crossing.

There were so many people and conveyances and bullocks milling about the bridgehead that Lisette was in danger of being crushed to death. Panicking she tried to turn back but she was carried forward by the frenzied crowd. She saw the red uniforms of British soldiers trying to bring some kind of order to the chaos but to no avail. One of them, an exceedingly handsome and masculine British officer, was familiar to her, although they had never been introduced. He and his orderly had ridden part of the way with the rajah’s procession—the presence of British soldiers had provided added protection against marauding bandits.

Trying to keep his horse from bolting from the melee ahead, Colonel Ross Montague watched the unruly multitude push onto the bridge. Light was fading fast but when he caught sight of a star-spangled bright pink sari he was transfixed. He recognised it as belonging to one of Princess Messalina’s attendants. He could just make out her slender figure crushed against the rails and trying desperately to hang on. What she was doing there he did not stop to wonder at, for at that moment she was in serious danger of falling off the bridge that was dipping precariously under the weight of the crowd.