Elizabeth Beacon - The Winterley Scandal

Under the gaze of the ton!

As the daughter of wild Pamela Winterley, Eve has always lived in the shadow of scandal. Society watches her every move, waiting for Eve to prove she is just as wayward as her mother...

Ever since his father’s scandalous affair, Colm Hancourt has lived life on his own terms. But then he comes face-to-face with Eve, the daughter of his father’s mistress! It may have begun with a kiss that set tongues wagging, but could the latest Winterley scandal be the start of something special?

He was so strung out with hot curiosity that he broke first.

He bridged the final gap between them with a kiss that healed and yet burned like wildfire at the same time. Haste, heat, fury, excitement and a pinch of doubt roared through him in a heady tangle he couldn’t begin to sort out. Then she kissed him back, and that wild rush of feelings melted into just her…just them.

‘Closer,’ he urged, and they shifted together so the back wall of the summerhouse stopped them.

He braced against it to keep her from the cold hardness, and now they were locked together as if they might dissolve walls and pillars and damp December with their own version of summer heat—never mind hard angles, chilly marble and the ever more ferocious storm outside.

Author Note

Welcome to The Winterley Scandal. Eve Winterley first appeared in The Viscount’s Frozen Heart, the first book of my A Year of Scandal quartet, and even then I knew she would need a book of her own one day.

Five years on from that fateful year of scandal, Eve has been ‘out’ for three years. She is determined not to let her notorious mother’s reputation taint her—but then she meets the son of Pamela Winterley’s last lover and must choose between keeping her spotless reputation and risking everything with this gruff, battle-scarred young man she shouldn’t fall in love with but somehow can’t forget.

I do hope you enjoy Eve and Colm’s story, whether you have read any of the other Winterley stories or not, and thank you for being such wonderful and loyal readers.

The Winterley Scandal

Elizabeth Beacon

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ELIZABETH BEACONhas 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 and independent heroines into her dream job: writing Regency romances for Mills & Boon Historical Romance.

Books by Elizabeth Beacon

Mills & Boon Historical Romance

A Year of Scandal: Spin-Off

The Winterley Scandal

A Year of Scandal

The Viscount’s Frozen Heart

The Marquis’s Awakening

Lord Laughraine’s Summer Promise

Redemption of the Rake

Linked by Character

The Duchess Hunt

The Scarred Earl

The Black Sheep’s Return

Stand-Alone Novels

A Less Than Perfect Lady

Captain Langthorne’s Proposal

Rebellious Rake, Innocent Governess

The Rake of Hollowhurst Castle

Courtship & Candlelight

‘One Final Season’

A Most Unladylike Adventure

Candlelit Christmas Kisses

‘Governess Under the Mistletoe’

Visit the Author Profile page at millsandboon.co.ukfor more titles.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Introduction

Author Note

Title Page

About the Author

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

Extract

Copyright

Chapter One

It’s so hot tonight I am only wearing my new rubies as I write. The stones are glorious, but the settings—oh, my diary—so old fashioned I could scream. Still, only the diamonds to coax out of Lord Chris now—and how his brother the Duke of Linaire will gobble with rage when he sees me wear them.

No, I shall wear every last one of Lady Chris’s jewels, ancient settings and all, the day I get hold of the lot. The Duke of Linaire wants them for his fat mistress, whatever he says about them belonging to his nephew. He doesn’t even like the boy—and how dare he threaten to have me whipped at the cart tail because his little brother loves me to distraction?

Chris’s plain wife is dead and the jewels her vulgar father showered on her never looked half so well on her anyway. The truth is the Duke hates Chris for being young and handsome and having me. After marrying that plain heiress the old Duke insisted one of his sons wed when Lord Horace ran off to the Colonies with that odd female who paints, rather than shackle himself to a nabob’s daughter.

Chris deserves some fun. He endured that low-born creature in his bed for so long it must be bliss to share it with me—and his son can’t wear the jewels, can he? So what use are diamonds of the first water to the horrid brat?

Colm Hancourt carefully put down the expensive notebook lest he throw it across the room and let out the breath he hadn’t known he was holding in an uneven gasp. As the horrid brat in question, he could argue for a hundred better uses for a fortune in gold and jewels than decorating a vain and adulterous demi-rep with them all. The fortune she had been busy spending had been his as well—or it would have been if his father hadn’t stolen it before Colm was old enough to argue. Whatever Lord Christopher Hancourt had done with his son’s fortune, inherited from Colm’s fabulously wealthy maternal grandfather Sir Joseph Lambury, those jewels should be in the bank, waiting for Colm to take a wife. So here was proof, if he needed it, they were long gone. Colm’s maternal grandfather might have left his entire fortune to his only grandson, but that hadn’t stopped Lord Chris from spending it all before Colm was old enough to go to school.

He bit back a curse as the shock of that betrayal hit anew. All the wishing and cursing in the world wouldn’t make his lost fortune reappear and he should know; he’d tried every one when he was younger and seething with fury about the hand life and his father had dealt him. Rage and hurt fought to rule him even now, after eight years of soldiering and learning self-control at the charity school his eldest uncle sent him to before that. So how could he not curse his father for putting this heartless woman ahead of his children? That was the real question he had to answer if he was ever going to be content with what little he had left.

One thing he did know was that he should never have agreed to come here to Derneley House and meet the past head on like this. Pamela had grown up here, under the so-called care of her sister and brother-in-law, and reminders of the wretched female were everywhere. Portraits of the infamous Pamela seemed to jeer at him from far too many walls and it almost felt as if he might catch her and his besotted father up to something disgraceful if he turned round fast enough at times, although they had both been dead these fifteen years and more.