Christine Merrill - The Wedding Game

The engagement escapade!

This season, all eyes are on biddable, well-connected Lady Belle. And for ambitious Benjamin Lovell, she’s the perfect candidate for a convenient marriage. First, though, he must contend with her fiercely protective sister, Lady Amelia Summoner.

Amy is determined that only the right man will win her sister, and rakish Benjamin is certainly not that. Every move he makes, she’ll be one step ahead! Until the games get out of hand...and Amy realizes she’s broken her own rules and fallen for Ben herself!

CHRISTINE MERRILLwanted to be a writer for as long as she can remember. During a stint as a stay-at-home-mother, she decided it was time to ‘write that book.’ She could set her own hours and would never have to wear tights to work! It was a slow start but she slogged onward and seven years later, she got the thrill of seeing her first book hit the bookstores. Christine lives in Wisconsin with her family. Visit her website at: www.christine-merrill.com

Christine Merrill

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ISBN: 978-1-474-05326-6

THE WEDDING GAME

© 2017 Christine Merrill

Published in Great Britain 2020

by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

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Cover

Back Cover Text

About the Author

Title Page

Copyright

Note to Readers

Dedication

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

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

About the Publisher

To 2017.

You are still bright and unspoiled.

Please be more gentle and loving to us all than last year was.

As they always were at the height of the London Season, Almack’s Assembly Rooms were crowded to the point of overflowing. Amelia Summoner circled the edges of the main room, watching the marriage-minded throng unobserved. It was easy to do when one knew the place and people in it as well as she did.

She had not missed a Wednesday in the three years her family had had vouchers. In that time she had watched three crops of debutantes arrive, parade and depart on the arms of the gentlemen who married them. She had made her own come-out the first year and, after a brief splash, she had sunk through the waters of society, forgotten.

Now she moved about the place like a fish in the deep, invisible until the moment she chose to be otherwise. Unlike other unattached girls of her age, she viewed this more as a freedom than a failure. It was more relaxing to dance, speak or flirt only when one felt moved to do so, instead of obsessing on each social interaction as if it was to be a life-changing event. If one simply wished to watch others, it was much better to be that Summoner girl.

No. Not the pretty one. The other one. The odd one.

After her first few balls, she had known that she was not going to be a major success. She had been classified by the patronesses as an ‘unconventional beauty with an excessively sharp wit’. Any other girl would have been hurt by such a damning compliment. It did not take a bit of Amy’s vaunted intelligence to know that only her desirable family name kept her from being labelled ‘plain and opinionated’. A connection by marriage to Lord Summoner could make a young man’s future, in politics or society. But even those men were hoping for a wife who was conventional in all ways and excessively pretty, rather than excessively sharp.

But it was Amy’s intention to remain just as she was. Thus far, her character had been formed without compromise and she was satisfied with the result. She’d yet to meet a man for whom she was willing to change. In the face of her stubborn refusal to aid in their ambitions by marrying them, even the most stalwart of suitors had given up wooing her ages ago. This Season, if a gentleman wished to dance with her, she knew it was out of pity.

More likely, it was because he wanted to be seen as the nice sort of fellow who bestowed his friendship evenly about the family, and was willing to stand up with her quiz of an older sister if it would make Miss Belle Summoner smile. This year, London buzzed with talk of Lord Summoner’s younger daughter, the most celebrated beauty of the decade. Tonight, as she moved through the crowd, Amy had overheard more than a few men sighing that a single smile from that delicate beauty, Belle, would be worth any sacrifice up to and including being nice to Miss Amelia, the spinster.

No one had dared to try it yet and Amy had no intention of being an easy target for their cheap flattery. She moved through the crush with a purposeful step that hinted a destination in mind and no time for interruption. When she sat, it was in a corner, with her fan raised, scanning the crowd as if looking for someone other than the people in the immediate vicinity. She kept her acquaintance limited, knowing that people would not dare to speak to her without an introduction. If she did not deign to know them, then they could not use her as a conduit to meet Belle.