Kasey Michaels - How to Beguile a Beauty

Praise for USA TODAY bestselling author KASEY MICHAELS

“Kasey Michaels aims for the heart and never misses.”

— New York Times bestselling author Nora Roberts

“Michaels’ new Regency mini-series is a joy…You will laugh and even shed a tear over this touching romance.”

—RT Book Reviews on How to Tempt a Duke

“Known for developing likable characters and humorous situations, Michaels adds an element of danger and suspense to this sexy romp.”

—RT Book Reviews on Dial M for Mischief

“Michaels has done it again…Witty dialogue peppers a plot full of delectable details exposing the foibles and follies of the age.”

—Publishers Weekly, starred review, on The Butler Did It

“Michaels can write everything from a light-hearted romp to a far more serious-themed romance. [She] has outdone herself.”

—RT Book Reviews on A Gentleman by Any Other Name (Top Pick)

“A hilarious spoof of society wedding rituals wrapped around a sensual romance filled with crackling dialogue reminiscent of The Philadelphia Story. ”

— Publishers Weekly on Everything’s Coming Up Rosie

“Have you noticed, Tanner, that we’re alone here together? You and I. Nobody else is in this room with us.”

He lifted her hands in his, slowly kissing first one, then the other as he looked down into her face. “If this room were filled to the rafters with other people, along with the shades of a thousand more, I would see only you. May I kiss you, Lydia?”

She swallowed, the action almost painful. Her mouth had gone suddenly dry. She could only look at him.

“I’m sorry. It’s still too soon. I apologise–”

He didn’t say anything else because she had gone up on her tiptoes and pressed her mouth to his.

His arms went around her, making her feel small but not fragile. Instead, she felt real, perhaps for the first time in her life knowing who she was. She was Lydia. She was a woman. She was alive…

by

www.millsandboon.co.uk

USA TODAY bestselling author KASEY MICHAELSis the author of more than ninety books. She has earned three starred reviews from Publishers Weekly, and has been awarded the RITA® Award from Romance Writers of America, the Romantic Times Career Achievement Award, the Waldenbooks and BookRak awards, and several other commendations for her writing excellence in both contemporary and historical novels. There are more than eight million copies of her books in print around the world. Kasey resides in Pennsylvania with her family, where she is always at work on her next book.

Available from Kasey Michaels and Mills & Boon

THE BUTLER DID IT

IN HIS LORDSHIP’S BED

(short story in The Wedding Chase)

SHALL WE DANCE?

IMPETUOUS MISSES

MARRIAGEABLE MISSES

A RECKLESS BEAUTY

LORDS OF NOTORIETY

LORDS OF SCANDAL

HOW TO TEMPT A DUKE

HOW TO TAME A LADY

and in the Beckets of Romney Marsh series

A GENTLEMAN BY ANY OTHER NAME

THE DANGEROUS DEBUTANTE

BEWARE OF VIRTUOUS WOMEN

A MOST UNSUITABLE GROOM

THE RETURN OF THE PRODIGAL

BECKET’S LAST STAND

To Jacob Edward Seidick

Welcome to the world, Jacob!

THE SUN SHONE BRIGHTLY as the traveling coach with the gold Basingstoke crest discreetly painted on its doors moved away from the flagway and out into Grosvenor Square. The magnificently liveried driver, a pair of similarly clad grooms hanging on to the rear rails for dear life, deftly swung the equipage about, and the team of fine black horses and the four accompanying outriders pranced their way toward the end of the Square, to the streets of London, and off to a great wide world of excitement and newfound love.

Harnesses jingled. The sharp sounds of iron-clad shoes striking the cobblestones sent up the message, Farewell—fare thee well.

The moment was a picture, really, a fine portrait set into motion. Adventure Awaits would make a fine title. Especially if the artist could capture the laughing Lady Nicole Daughtry, her bonnet discarded so that the sun fell fully on her face, as if the gods themselves had wished a closer look at her fresh, young beauty. Leaning rather precariously out the off-window, she continued to wave and blow exuberant kisses back toward the mansion until the coach reached the end of the Square and disappeared from sight.

And that was that. There was nothing more to see. Even the sun, which had deigned to appear amidst a Season noted most for damp and rain, withdrew behind a cloud, and the world turned grey once more.

Lady Lydia Daughtry pushed down the sash and backed away from the window on the second floor of Ashurst House to seat herself on the tufted light blue velvet padded bench in front of her bed. She sat with her back ramrod straight, her hands, else they tremble and betray her, neatly folded in her lap. Another portrait, yes, but one entirely without the fire and light she had just witnessed. After a few minutes of thus imitating a statue, she quietly sighed, her bosom rising and falling almost dramatically, before she resumed her quiet, even breathing.

To the casual observer, she was, as always, an island of calm. No one would think that her heart was pounding furiously, or that she felt perilously close to indulging in what her former governess would have condemned as a tantrum.

Not that the Lady Lydia ever had tantrums (if you threw something fragile against, for instance, a nearby wall, and it broke, you’d only have to clean up the pieces. So, really, what was the point?).

Her twin, however, the newly absent Lady Nicole, had manufactured any number of tantrums as a young child. The most memorable remained the last, the day their mother had wed her third husband and then immediately shuffled off her three children once more to Ashurst Hall. Children were not, it seemed, important once there was a new man in Helen Daughtry’s life. But if Nicole wasn’t to be deemed important, she would at least be noticed, most especially when she’d loosed a heavy silver vase at her new stepfather’s head.

The man really should have ducked.

Lydia smiled at the memory. Nicole did, with such marvelously dramatic flair, all the things the stick-in-the-mud, cautious Lydia only dreamt of doing.

And now Nicole was gone. Her sister, her twin, her heart-mate, was off on her way to meet the mother of her fiancé, Lucas Paine, the Marquess of Basingstoke. And life for neither Lydia nor Nicole would ever be the same.

Lydia had never in her eighteen years known a day without Nicole by her side. The laughing Nicole. The adventurous Nicole. Nicole, who could find excitement anywhere, and manufacture some on her own if none was to be found.

In the Ship of Life for the twins, Nicole had been the wind in the sails. Lydia, as she often thought of herself, had been the anchor. Her sister had pooh-poohed that, saying Lydia was the rudder, the one who steered them both along the straight and narrow and kept Nicole from making an entire cake of herself with her mad starts. But Lydia knew that Nicole was only being kind.

Because, as everyone else well knew, there wasn’t an ounce of excitement in Lady Lydia Daughtry’s entire body. She was quiet, pleasant, obeyed all the rules, never caused anyone so much as a modicum of trouble. To her own mind, she imagined doorstops were more adventuresome. And definitely more interesting, even if the only time anyone noticed one of them was when they tripped over them and stubbed their toes.