Bronwyn Scott - One Night With The Major

One daring encounter

Binds her to his marriage bed!

Part of Allied at the Altar: In England, innocent tea heiress Pavia Honeysett has always been judged for her face or her fortune. She would much rather return to her uncle’s palace in India. So to escape marriage to the aged man her father has chosen, she will ruin herself! But her red-hot night with Major Camden Lithgow changes everything . Suddenly, this stranger will become her husband...

BRONWYN SCOTTis a communications instructor at Pierce College in the United States, and the proud mother of three wonderful children—one boy and two girls. When she’s not teaching or writing she enjoys playing the piano, travelling—especially to Florence, Italy—and studying history and foreign languages. Readers can stay in touch on Bronwyn’s website, bronwynnscott.com, or at her blog, bronwynswriting.blogspot.com. She loves to hear from readers.

Also by Bronwyn Scott

Russian Royals of Kuban miniseries

Compromised by the Prince’s Touch

Innocent in the Prince’s Bed

Awakened by the Prince’s Passion

Seduced by the Prince’s Kiss

Allied at the Altar miniseries

A Marriage Deal with the Viscount

One Night with the Major

Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk.

One Night with the Major

Bronwyn Scott

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ISBN: 978-1-474-08881-7

ONE NIGHT WITH THE MAJOR

© 2019 Nikki Poppen

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

For all those who were told they couldn’t,

but found a way anyhow.

Dream big because we’re dreaming already.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

About the Author

Booklist

Title Page

Copyright

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

Epilogue

Extract

About the Publisher

Pavia Honeysett needed a man and she had her sights set on that one in the corner, the one in the navy-and-gold uniform with his back to the wall, perhaps out of a soldier’s habit, his eyes fixed on his ale, but she could tell even at a distance he wasn’t seeing it. His thoughts were far from here.

She studied him from behind the taproom’s kitchen door, amid the chatter of the other dancing girls who would be performing tonight. She took in the breadth of his shoulders, the straightness of his jaw. In a boisterous taproom, eagerly awaiting the night’s entertainment, he remained apart from the group in all ways: in bearing, in appearance, his clean-shaven jaw and golden hair a sharp contrast to the rough-hewn, home-spun male camaraderie around him. He was alone and he was perfect. It had taken her three nights of dancing in the taverns from Yorkshire to London just to find him. Now she only had to reel him in.

Pavia adjusted the gossamer fabric of her dancing veils one last time and swallowed hard. Now that the moment had come, she was nervous. She reminded herself she should feel lucky, not anxious. This was what she wanted—a chance to claim her own freedom. She’d planned for it since the moment the summons to London had arrived at Mrs Finlay’s Academy for Excellent Girls. She’d spent her pin money bribing the Academy grooms for the names of likely taverns where she could dance. This one, the Tiger’s Tooth, on the outskirts of the city, was supposed to be her best chance. It hosted nightly dancing entertainments featuring girls of all sorts of backgrounds from all parts of the British Empire. It had been easy to blend into the colourful milieu of dancers gathered in the kitchen waiting their turns to perform.

Applause erupted from the taproom for a dancer who claimed to be Persian. Pavia doubted the authenticity of that claim, but not the girl’s appeal. Men would not care with breasts like that. Pavia looked down at her own more modest ‘charms’ and hoped they’d be enough. One more girl to go and then it would be her turn. Unless... Unless she lost her nerve and slipped out the back door.

No, she wouldn’t think such things. It had to be tonight, or it would be too late. Tomorrow, she would be in London and under her father’s thumb, a pawn to be used in her father’s bid for social advancement. Pavia’s pulse began to race anxiously with all that meant. She was to be a virgin sacrifice in marriage to the Earl of Wenderly, a man old enough to be her grandfather. Both the men were rich, although her father liked to point out that he was richer by far, but Wenderly had a title and her father, for all the tea in China, quite literally, did not. Her father might be Oliver Honeysett, founding partner of Honeysett and Crooks, the largest importers of English tea, outstripping even the legendary Twinings Company, but he was still a Cit, still nouveau riche, one of the nabobs who’d made his fortune in India. In short, a man who’d worked for his money, a man who could rise no higher in the world without a title and it galled him.

She was to be his way into those lofty ranks of the peerage, the guarantee that if he did not possess a title, by God his grandchildren would. They would be the sons and daughters of an earl. But she didn’t want to marry Wenderly. She wanted something different for her life. She wanted adventure, to see the world, to live among her mother’s people again in India where she could be wanted for herself. The colour of her skin mattered not at all in the palace of her uncle, the Rajah of Sohra. Here in England, it was the only thing that mattered, the one thing men were willing to overlook in exchange for her father’s money or, in Wenderly’s case, her virginity. Wenderly was desperate for it, in fact, and that worried her a great deal, especially coupled as it was with the rumours whispered about him behind lace fans at deportment class. It was common knowledge among the girls at Mrs Finlay’s Academy who were scheduled to come out that no decent woman would have him. Then eyes would slide her way and the girls would nod to one another knowingly. No decent English girl, that was. But the Indian girl would do nicely. The implication was clear. In their minds, to be Indian in England was to be indecent.