Louise Allen - The Piratical Miss Ravenhurst

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Louise Allen

as she explores the tangled love-lives of

Those Scandalous Ravenhursts

First, you travelled across

war-torn Europe with

THE DANGEROUS MR RYDER

Then you accompanied Mr Ryder’s sister,

THE OUTRAGEOUS LADY FELSHAM, on her quest for a hero.

You were scandalised by

THE SHOCKING LORD STANDON

You shared dangerous, sensual adventures

with

THE DISGRACEFUL MR RAVENHURST

You were seduced and swept off your feet by

THE NOTORIOUS MR HURST

Now meet

THE PIRATICAL MISS RAVENHURST

After five Ravenhurst love stories it is time to meet the youngest and most distant of the cousins. Clemence lives a life of privilege and comfort at the heart of Jamaican society until circumstances force her to make a choice—marriage to the despicable Lewis Naismith or flight.

Clemence has a plan—Ravenhursts always do—but it does not include running straight into the clutches of the most feared pirate in the Caribbean. There doesn’t seem any way out, unless she can trust both her instincts and the enigmatic navigator Nathan Stanier.

I knew Clemence would have the courage and wits to survive on the Sea Scorpion , but what is a young lady to do when she is comprehensively ruined in the process?

I do hope you enjoy finding out as much as I did. I felt sad to write the last word in the chronicles of Those Scandalous Ravenhursts, but perhaps one day I can return to their world and explore the life and loves of some of the other characters I met along the way.

Louise Allenhas been immersing herself in history, real and fictional, for as long as she can remember, and finds landscapes and places evoke powerful images of the past. Louise divides her time between Bedfordshire and the Norfolk coast, where she spends as much time as possible with her husband at the cottage they are renovating. With any excuse she’ll take a research trip abroad—Venice, Burgundy and the Greek islands are favourite atmospheric destinations. Please visit Louise’s website—www.louiseallenregency.co.uk—for the latest news!

Recent novels by the same author:

THE BRIDE’S SEDUCTION

NOT QUITE A LADY

A MOST UNCONVENTIONAL COURTSHIP

NO PLACE FOR A LADY

DESERT RAKE

(in Hot Desert Nights )

VIRGIN SLAVE, BARBARIAN KING

THE DANGEROUS MR RYDER*

THE OUTRAGEOUS LADY FELSHAM*

THE SHOCKING LORD STANDON*

THE DISGRACEFUL MR RAVENHURST*

THE NOTORIOUS MR HURST*

*Those Scandalous Ravenhursts

MILLS & BOON ®

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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For Nathan Oakman

who is sure to grow up to be a hero

Jamaica—June 1817

‘I would sooner—’

‘Sooner what?’ Her uncle regarded Clemence with contempt. ‘You would sooner die?’

‘Sooner marry the first man I met outside the gates than that .’ She jerked her head towards her cousin, sprawled in the window seat, his attention on the female servants in the torch-lit courtyard below.

‘But you do not have any choice,’ Joshua Naismith said, in the same implacably patient tone he had used to her in the six months since her father’s death. ‘You are my ward, you will do as I tell you.’

‘My father never intended me to marry Lewis,’ Clemence protested. She had been protesting with a rising sense of desperation ever since she had recovered sufficiently from her daze of mourning to comprehend that her late mother’s half-brother was not the protector that her father had expected him to be when he made his will. Her respectable, conservative, rather dull Uncle Joshua was a predator, his claws reaching for her fortune.

‘The intentions of the late lamented Lord Clement Ravenhurst,’ Mr Naismith said, ‘are of no interest to me whatsoever. The effect of his will is to place you under my control, a fitting recompense for years of listening to his idiotic political opinions and his absurd social theories.’

‘My father did not believe in the institution of slavery,’ Clemence retorted, angered despite her own apprehension. ‘Most enlightened people feel the same. You did not have to listen to what you do not believe in—you could have attempted to counter his arguments. But then you have neither the intellectual capacity, nor the moral integrity to do so, have you, Uncle?’

‘Insolent little bitch.’ Lewis uncoiled himself from the seat and walked to his father’s side. He frowned at her, an expression she had caught him practising in front of the mirror, no doubt in an attempt to transform his rather ordinary features into an ideal of well-bred authority. ‘A pity you were not a boy—he raised you like one, he let you run wild like one and now, look at you—you might as well be one.’

Clemence hated the flush she could feel on her cheekbones, hated the fact that his words stung. It was shallow to wish she had a petite, curvaceous figure. A few months ago she had at least possessed a small bosom and the gentle swell of feminine hips, now, with the appetite of a mouse, she had lost so much weight that she might as well have been twelve again. Combined with the rangy height she had inherited from her father, Clemence was all too aware that she looked like a schoolboy dressed up to play a female role in a Shakespeare play.

Defensively her hand went to the weight of her hair, coiled and dressed simply in the heat. Its silky touch reminded her of her femininity, her one true beauty, all the colours of wheat and toffee and gilt, mixed and mingling.

‘If I had been a boy, I wouldn’t have to listen to your disgusting marriage plans,’ she retorted. ‘But you’d still be stealing my inheritance, whatever my sex, I have no doubt of that. Is money the only thing that is important to you?’

‘We are merchants.’ Uncle Joshua’s high colour wattled his smooth jowls. ‘We make money, we do not have it drop into our laps like your aristocratic relatives.’

‘Papa was the youngest son, he worked for his fortune—’

‘The youngest son of the Duke of Allington. Oh dear, what poverty, how he must have struggled.’

That was the one card she had not played in the weeks as hints had become suggestions and the suggestions, orders. ‘You know my English relatives are powerful,’ Clemence said. ‘Do you wish to antagonise them?’

‘They are a very long way away and hold no sway here in the West Indies.’ Joshua’s expression was smug. ‘Here the ear of the Governor and one’s credit with the bankers are all that matter. In time, when Lewis decides to go back to England, his marriage to you may well be of social advantage, that is true.’