Louise Allen - Contracted As His Countess

From a recluse secluded in a castle…

…to his countess!

Cloistered away in a castle since birth, Madelyn Aylmer must now fulfill her eccentric father’s dying request: wed nobleman Jack Ransome! She has what Jack needs—land—and so he accepts their marriage of convenience and vows to introduce this sheltered innocent to society. But what Madelyn hadn’t expected was the way her body reacts to Jack, especially to his promise of a union filled with unbridled passion!

LOUISE ALLENloves immersing herself in history. She finds landscapes and places evoke the past powerfully. Venice, Burgundy and the Greek islands are favourite destinations. Louise lives on the Norfolk coast and spends her spare time gardening, researching family history and travelling in search of inspiration.

Also by Louise Allen

Marrying His Cinderella Countess

The Earl’s Practical Marriage

A Lady in Need of an Heir

Convenient Christmas Brides

Least Likely to Marry a Duke

Lords of Disgrace miniseries

His Housekeeper’s Christmas Wish

His Christmas Countess

The Many Sins of Cris de Feaux

The Unexpected Marriage of Gabriel Stone

Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk.

Contracted as His Countess

Louise Allen

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ISBN: 978-1-474-08958-6

CONTRACTED AS HIS COUNTESS

© 2019 Melanie Hilton

Published in Great Britain 2019

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.

By payment of the required fees, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right and licence to download and install this e-book on your personal computer, tablet computer, smart phone or other electronic reading device only (each a “Licensed Device”) and to access, display and read the text of this e-book on-screen on your Licensed Device. Except to the extent any of these acts shall be permitted pursuant to any mandatory provision of applicable law but no further, no part of this e-book or its text or images may be reproduced, transmitted, distributed, translated, converted or adapted for use on another file format, communicated to the public, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.

® and ™ are trademarks owned and used by the trademark owner and/or its licensee. Trademarks marked with ® are registered with the United Kingdom Patent Office and/or the Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market and in other countries.

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Version: 2020-03-02

Before you start reading, why not sign up?

Thank you for downloading this Mills & Boon book. If you want to hear about exclusive discounts, special offers and competitions, sign up to our email newsletter today!

SIGN ME UP!

Or simply visit

signup.millsandboon.co.uk

Mills & Boon emails are completely free to receive and you can unsubscribe at any time via the link in any email we send you.

This ebook contains the following accessibility features which, if supported by your device, can be accessed via your ereader/accessibility settings:

Change of font size and line height

Change of background and font colours

Change of font

Change justification

Text to speech

For AJH for being a rock.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

About the Author

Booklist

Title Page

Copyright

Note to Readers

Dedication

Author Note

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

About the Publisher

An interest in a revived Gothic style, harking back to the pointed arches and rich ornamentation of the Middle Ages, developed in the later eighteenth century as an element of the Romantic movement and as a reaction to the cool perfection of the Classical style.

Horace Walpole’s Gothic revival Strawberry Hill House in Twickenham was begun in 1749. William Thomas Beckford, the wildly eccentric art collector and author of Gothic novels, built his Fonthill Abbey—an enormous mansion in the style of a medieval abbey—between 1796 and 1813, and landowners began to litter their grounds with follies resembling ruined castles or monasteries.

I have based Madelyn’s father, Peregrine Aylmer, on some of the more eccentric Gothic enthusiasts of the time, although he would probably have had most in common with the Thirteenth Earl of Eglinton, whose wildly ambitious Eglinton Tournament cost him between thirty and forty thousand pounds in 1839. Despite the contestants training with lances for up to a year beforehand, the tournament was widely mocked and suffered from dreadful weather.

More soberly, the Gothic style flourished in the Victorian age as the most ‘suitable’ style for churches, and was the chosen architecture for both the rebuilt Houses of Parliament—completed 1870—and Tower Bridge—1894.

Peregrine Aylmer would have approved of both, I am certain.

Jack Ransome reined in his horse on the crest of the rise and looked down at a vision of the fourteenth century transported to the age of the Hanoverians. England was still littered with castles, large and small. Some were ruins, some were converted long ago into more or less comfortable houses, but none still fulfilled the function for which they had been built. Except, apparently, this one.

It helped, of course, if you were wealthy and more than slightly eccentric as the late Peregrine Aylmer had been. Then you could pour thousands of pounds and a lifetime of scholarship into creating your fantasy world.

Castle Beaupierre seemed to bask as it lay in the sunshine that reflected off the polished slate of the roofs, the walls of creamy, perfect stone. Jack tried to estimate the cost and time involved in cleaning and repairing those walls and roofs and failed utterly.

From the centre tower a great black flag stirred and lighter pennants fluttered, red and blue and gold, around it. The encircling moat, full of water, was home to perhaps a dozen swans gliding in pristine white formation past the drawbridge. Which was raised.