Louise Allen - Convenient Christmas Brides - The Captain’s Christmas Journey / The Viscount’s Yuletide Betrothal / One Night Under the Mistletoe

Title Page Convenient Christmas Brides The Captain’s Christmas Journey Carla Kelly The Viscount’s Yuletide Betrothal Louise Allen One Night Under the Mistletoe Laurie Benson www.millsandboon.co.uk

Copyright ISBN: 978-1-474-07419-3 CONVENIENT CHRISTMAS BRIDES The Captain’s Christmas Journey © 2018 Carla Kelly The Viscount’s Yuletide Betrothal © 2018 Louise Allen One Night Under the Mistletoe © 2018 Laurie Benson Published in Great Britain 2018 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

Praise Praise for the authors of Convenient Christmas Brides CARLA KELLY ‘A lovely, whimsical tale with unforgettable characters and richly detailed prose.’ —RT Book Reviews on ‘Captain Grey’s Christmas Proposal’ in Regency Christmas Wishes LOUISE ALLEN ‘Allen writes Regency romances that always become favourites.’ —RT Book Reviews on The Earl’s Practical Marriage LAURIE BENSON ‘Delightfully unexpected plot twists, with lively dialogue and witty repartee […] a charmer.’ —RT Book Reviews on The Unexpected Countess

The Captain’s Christmas Journey The Captain’s Christmas Journey Carla Kelly

Dedication To my parents.

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

The Viscount’s Yuletide Betrothal

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

One Night Under the Mistletoe

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Extract

About the Publisher

The Captain’s Christmas Journey

Carla Kelly

To my parents.

Chapter One

‘Buck up, Captain Everard,’ he told his reflection in the mirror. ‘You promised you would do this, so to Kent you will go.’

Joseph Everard, post captain, Royal Navy, turned around to stare hard at Lieutenant David Newsome’s paltry heap of personal effects on his desk, wishing he could make it go away. It remained there unmovable, another sad testament to the fleet action now called Trafalgar. That one word was enough to convey all the horror, the pounding and the fire, which combined to create the most bittersweet of victories, with the well-nigh inconceivable loss of Vice Admiral Sir Horatio Nelson.

Had anyone been interested, Joe could have explained his reluctance to deliver David’s effects in person. It wasn’t because his second luff had done anything amiss, or behaved in any way unbecoming an officer and a gentleman. True, he was young, but weren’t we all, at some point?

Joe had done this sad duty many times before, whenever possible. He should have been inured to the tears, the sadness and the resentment, even, when a mother, father or wife had stared daggers at him, as if he was the author of their misery, and not Napoleon. Left to his own devices, Joe Everard would happily have served King and country patrolling the seven seas and engaging in no fleet actions whatsoever. He had never required a major, lengthy war to prove his manhood.

They were all puppets in the hands of Napoleon. Now that war had resumed, after the brief Peace of Amiens, Joe saw no shortcut to victory for years.

Something worse explained his reluctance for this distasteful duty, something Lord St Vincent, or as he had been then, Captain John Jervis, had described one night.

They had come off victorious in some fleet action or other—they tended to blur together—and Captain Jervis and his men were moping about in the wardroom. The wounded were tended and quiet, and the pumps in the bowels of the ship had finished their noisy job.

‘Look at us,’ Captain Jervis had remarked to his first lieutenant, an unfortunate fellow who died the following year at Camperdown. ‘There is nothing quite as daunting as the lethargy that victory brings.’

No doubt. Trafalgar, a victory as huge as anyone in the Royal Navy could ask for, dumped a full load of melancholy on Joe Everard’s usually capable shoulders. Why one man should die and another should not was a mystery for the ages, and not a trifling question for a mere post captain who had done his duty, as had every man aboard the HMS Ulysses , a forty-eight-gun frigate. He and his crew of well-trained stalwarts had babied the Ulysses through the storm the next day, limped into Torbay and remained there waiting a final diagnosis from the overworked shipwrights.

He and his officers had travelled from Torbay to Plymouth to sit in the Drake and drink. They talked, played whist and cursed the French until they were silent, spent and remarkably hung over. Joe couldn’t release anyone to return home to wives, but the wives could come to Plymouth.

More power to you , he thought, as he had listened to bedsprings creaking rhythmically and wished he had found the leisure, or perhaps the courage, to marry.

After a week, the verdict was a month to refurbish and repair in the Torquay docks. He released his officers to their homes for three weeks and cautiously gave his crew the glad tidings, wary that some might not return and truth to tell, hardly blaming them if they did not. His sailing master, a widower with children in Canada, had no objection to staying in Torquay for the repairs. Such a kindness gave Captain Joseph Everard no excuse to avoid the condolence visit to Weltby, Kent, where Second Lieutenant Newsome’s parents and one spinster sister resided.