Ann Lethbridge - Regency Proposal

Regency Proposal

The Laird’s Forbidden Lady

Haunted by the Earl’s Touch

Ann Lethbridge

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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Cover

Title Page Regency Proposal The Laird’s Forbidden Lady Haunted by the Earl’s Touch Ann Lethbridge www.millsandboon.co.uk

About the Author In her youth, award-winning author ANN LETHBRIDGE re-imagined the Regency romances she read—and now she loves writing her own. Now living in Canada, Ann visits Britain every year, where family members understand—or so they say—her need to poke around every antiquity within a hundred miles. Learn more about Ann or contact her at www.annlethbridge.com . She loves hearing from readers.

The Laird’s Forbidden Lady

Dedication Lots of people are involved in getting a story on to the shelves or up on line, and I am grateful for all their hard work. This book I am dedicating to my amazing editor, Joanne Grant. Thank you for your patience and for your invaluable guidance with this project. Without you it would never have come to fruition.

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

Haunted by the Earl’s Touch

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

Epilogue

Copyright

In her youth, award-winning author ANN LETHBRIDGEre-imagined the Regency romances she read—and now she loves writing her own. Now living in Canada, Ann visits Britain every year, where family members understand—or so they say—her need to poke around every antiquity within a hundred miles. Learn more about Ann or contact her at www.annlethbridge.com. She loves hearing from readers.

Lots of people are involved in getting a story on to the shelves or up on line, and I am grateful for all their hard work. This book I am dedicating to my amazing editor, Joanne Grant. Thank you for your patience and for your invaluable guidance with this project. Without you it would never have come to fruition.

Scotland—1818

Why had she ever thought returning to Scotland a good idea? Lady Selina Albright eyed the wrought-iron candelabra suspended from ancient oak beams and the grey stone walls covered with ragged tapestries, great swords and rusting pikes, and suppressed the urge to flee.

Having run from two eminently eligible bridegrooms, one more would put her beyond the pale. Not even her father’s considerable influence would prevent her from being gazetted a jilt.

And besides, this one was her choice. Finally.

All around her, dark-coated gentlemen and sumptuously gowned women, their jewels flashing with every movement, filled Carrick Castle’s medieval banqueting hall.

‘I hadn’t expected it to be such a squeeze,’ observed Chrissie, Lady Albright, her father’s wife of only a year and the reason Selina had agreed to this trip.

Not that she would ever have been so unkind as to tell Chrissie the truth.

‘He must have invited every member of the Scottish nobility,’ Selina said. ‘At any moment I expect to see Banquo’s ghost or three witches hunched over a cauldron.’ A shiver ran down her spine. ‘I should have waited in London for the end of Algernon’s tour of duty.’

She glanced across the huge chamber to where Lieutenant the Right Honourable Algernon Dunstan, conversed with another officer in front of the enormous hearth decorated with stag antlers. Fair-haired and slender, he looked dashing in his red militia uniform. Not quite the brilliant catch her father had expected, but he was a young man of good family with a kindly disposition. The kind of man who would make a pleasant husband.

He caught her eyeing him and bowed.

She inclined her head and smiled. He was the reason she was here: to bring him up to the mark and get her out of her father’s house, where she felt decidedly underfoot.

‘I think it is all very romantic,’ Chrissie said, looking around her with wide-eyed appreciation. ‘I feel as if I have been transported between the covers of Waverly. Is Dunross Keep equally enchanting?’

‘Dunross is about as romantic as an open boat on the North Sea in winter.’ It was hard to imagine she’d fallen in love with the keep when she first saw it some ten years before. She’d been a foolish impressionable child, she supposed. ‘Nowhere near as grand as this and as cold and damp in summer as it is no doubt freezing in winter. Did Father tell you the local people hate us because we are English? They think of us as usurpers, you know.’ For some obscure reason her father, the lord of the manor, wished to visit there next—something he had not told her before they left London and the real reason she was regretting her agreement to accompany him. Dunross was the last place in the world she wished to visit.

‘Oh, my word,’ Chrissie gasped. ‘Who is that?’

Selina followed the direction of her gaze.

A hard thump of her heart against her ribs was a painful recognition of the tall man in Highland dress framed within the stone arched entry. Ian Gilvry. The self-proclaimed Laird of Dunross.

The reason she hated Scotland. A knot formed in her stomach and made it hard to breathe as her gaze took him in.

He was not the gangling youth she remembered, though she would have known him anywhere. He was virile and brawny and, despite his green-and-red kilt, exceedingly male.

His features were far too harsh and dark to be called handsome in the drawing rooms of London, and the frill of white lace at his wrists and throat did nothing to soften his aura of danger. The raw vitality he exuded drew and held every female eye in the room. Including her own.

He was the last man she had expected or wanted to see at Lord Carrick’s drum. Hopefully, he wasn’t here to make trouble.