Virginia Heath - The Disgraceful Lord Gray

A spy on a mission...

Until he meets this heiress!

Part of The King’s Elite: Miss Theodora Cranford’s learned to keep her impetuous nature locked away. She won’t be deceived by another man who can’t see past her fortune. She wants an honorable, sensible sort—not a self-assured scoundrel like her new neighbor, Lord Gray. Although she’s sure there’s more to him than meets the eye... But after that first captivating kiss, she’s certainly left wanting more!

When VIRGINIA HEATHwas a little girl it took her ages to fall asleep, so she made up stories in her head to help pass the time while she was staring at the ceiling. As she got older the stories became more complicated—sometimes taking weeks to get to their happy ending. One day she decided to embrace her insomnia and start writing them down. Virginia lives in Essex, with her wonderful husband and two teenagers. It still takes her for ever to fall asleep.

Also by Virginia Heath

The Wild Warriners miniseries

A Warriner to Protect Her

A Warriner to Rescue Her

A Warriner to Tempt Her

A Warriner to Seduce Her

The King’s Elite miniseries

The Mysterious Lord Millcroft

The Uncompromising Lord Flint

The Disgraceful Lord Gray

And look out for the last book in the series

coming soon!

Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk.

The Disgraceful Lord Gray

Virginia Heath

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ISBN: 978-1-474-08887-9

THE DISGRACEFUL LORD GRAY

© 2019 Susan Merritt

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.

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www.millsandboon.co.uk

For Claire Sayers, who gave Gray his name,

and for Trevor, my adorable, naughty Labrador,

who made the perfect hero’s sidekick.

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

Chapter Twenty-Four

Extract

About the Publisher

There was no doubt about it. Lord Fennimore was going to have his guts for garters. Especially after the unfortunate shredded underwear incident of last night. The commander of the King’s Elite had no discernible sense of humour which didn’t bode well for Gray’s newly discovered, but no less coveted ambition.

‘Trefor! Give it back. Now! ’

There was no point in chasing him. The blasted dog saw everything as a game and had been in a state of playful overexcitement ever since they arrived in Suffolk yesterday—and who could blame him, really? Aside from a few brief weeks after his birth, Trefor had always been a city dog. If one ignored Hyde Park and St James’s, vast open spaces of green were completely alien to him. But the green here was never ending, filled with flat fields to dash across, abundant trees to relieve himself against and sticks aplenty to chase with impunity. Doggy paradise. And Gray’s mischievous mutt seemed determined to reach this strange, alluring new horizon at lightning speed with curmudgeonly old Fennimore’s slipper clamped firmly between his jaws.

To tease Gray, the dog dropped the stolen booty at the boundary to their rented property and eyed him mischievously, his powerful tail wagging nineteen to the dozen, his floppy ears pricked and his enormous pink tongue lolling out of one side of his mouth like a juicy slice of ham.

Gray examined his cuffs, looked at the sky, some trees, anything but his dratted hound while he slowly edged his way forward, hoping to convince the animal he wasn’t fixated on his superior’s now slobbery shoe at all. Mere inches away he lunged like a panther, only to growl as the dog snatched up the blasted slipper again before he could reach it and raced towards the tree-lined horizon once more.

‘Trefor!’

This time Gray did give chase, not only because of his dour superior’s footwear, or because the animal had disappeared into a small wooded copse, but because a couple of sheep had also appeared in the distance and his dog had even less experience of sheep than he did wide open spaces. He needed to make a good first impression on the Viscount Gislingham. He needed to befriend him. Ingratiate himself. Be the perfect neighbour and work his way into his small, intimate social circle. More than anything, he needed to impress Lord Fennimore if he was ever going to stand a cat in hell’s chance of getting that coveted promotion. Something unlikely to happen if his out-of-control canine injured one of the flock and the Viscount banned him from entering the grounds; the mission shot in the paddock before it had even started.

Not that Trefor was violent; he was a licker, not a biter. He adored everyone and everything and loved them enthusiastically. Something the dim-witted sheep would not know as he came bounding towards them intent on saying hello. Why had he insisted on bringing his dog along? All his lofty claims that a proper country gentleman would have at least one loyal hound at his side seemed to be doomed to be ruined by the said hound from the outset because, while Trefor was exceedingly loyal, he was also completely untrainable.

The dog failed to materialise out of the clump of trees, their trunks so densely packed Gray had to skirt around them before he encountered the unexpected steep bank of a deep yet narrow stretch of water which cut through the flat pasture.