Sharon Page - An American Duchess

At the height of the Roaring Twenties, New York heiress Zoe Gifford longs for the freedoms promised by the Jazz Age. Headstrong and brazen, but bound by her father’s will to marry before she can access his fortune, Zoe arranges for a brief marriage to Sebastian Hazelton, whose aristocratic British family sorely needs a benefactor.

Once in England, her foolproof plan to wed, inherit and divorce proves more complicated than Zoe had anticipated. Nigel Hazelton, Duke of Langford and Sebastian’s austere older brother, is disgraced by the arrangement and looks down upon the raucous young American who has taken up residence at crumbling Brideswell Abbey. Still reeling from the Great War, Nigel is now staging a one-man battle against a rapidly changing world—and the outspoken Zoe represents everything he’s fighting against. When circumstances compel Zoe to marry Nigel rather than Sebastian, she does so for love, he for honor. But with Nigel unwilling to change with the times, Zoe may be forced to choose between her husband and her dreams.

www.millsandboon.co.uk

This book wouldn’t exist without the influence of my mother,

who, years ago, introduced me to the 1920s through The Great Gatsby

and Agatha Christie’s mysteries. She fostered my lifelong passion

for the era and also encouraged my love for reading and writing.

These are gifts that last forever.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text At the height of the Roaring Twenties, New York heiress Zoe Gifford longs for the freedoms promised by the Jazz Age. Headstrong and brazen, but bound by her father’s will to marry before she can access his fortune, Zoe arranges for a brief marriage to Sebastian Hazelton, whose aristocratic British family sorely needs a benefactor. Once in England, her foolproof plan to wed, inherit and divorce proves more complicated than Zoe had anticipated. Nigel Hazelton, Duke of Langford and Sebastian’s austere older brother, is disgraced by the arrangement and looks down upon the raucous young American who has taken up residence at crumbling Brideswell Abbey. Still reeling from the Great War, Nigel is now staging a one-man battle against a rapidly changing world—and the outspoken Zoe represents everything he’s fighting against. When circumstances compel Zoe to marry Nigel rather than Sebastian, she does so for love, he for honor. But with Nigel unwilling to change with the times, Zoe may be forced to choose between her husband and her dreams.

Title Page An American Duchess Sharon Page www.millsandboon.co.uk

Dedication This book wouldn’t exist without the influence of my mother, who, years ago, introduced me to the 1920s through The Great Gatsby and Agatha Christie’s mysteries. She fostered my lifelong passion for the era and also encouraged my love for reading and writing. These are gifts that last forever.

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EPILOGUE

Acknowledgments

Copyright

1

OFF THE ROAD

May 1922

The Estate of Brideswell Abbey, Hertfordshire

Normally, Zoe Anastasia Gifford was a spectacular driver. Now she found herself with her rear wheel stuck in a muddy rut on a positively medieval road somewhere in rural England.

A flock of bleating sheep surrounded her, attempting to eat her skirt. Zoe shooed the stubborn animals. Her car was unharmed, but the wheel was up to its axle in mud.

“What are we going to do?” wailed her mother from the passenger seat.

Zoe stood, tugged the end of her tasseled scarf away from a black-nosed sheep and tossed it over her shoulder. “Unless you plan to push out the car while I steer, Mother, we are going to walk.”

Her mother’s face crumpled and she began to cry.

Perhaps she was being a bit harsh, but it was Mother’s fault she had to marry in haste, and she felt a distinct lack of sympathy. If they had not needed almost immediate access to her trust fund to sort out Mother’s disastrous debts, she would have had time to actually mourn her lost fiancé before she’d had to find a new one and marry to get at her trust fund to save Mother from disaster.

It was sheer luck she’d met Lord Sebastian. She was an heiress who needed a quick marriage to access her fortune; he was an impoverished aristocrat. The perfect ingredients for a marriage of convenience that would end in a divorce almost before the ink dried on the license. A marriage that would cost her a relatively small settlement to Sebastian for his trouble.

Now she had an abbey to find. That was the name of Sebastian’s home—Brideswell Abbey.

Zoe plucked her raccoon coat from the rear seat and slipped it on. Ever since the Olympic had docked in Southampton, she had been frozen stiff. And this was May.

“You can stay here if you wish,” she informed her mother. “I’m going to walk. There was a farmhouse behind us and I’ll bring someone to pull us out.”

“That stone house, do you mean?” Mother looked distraught, staring behind the car in utter panic. “It was miles back there. I didn’t see an automobile there at all. No one in this country has a vehicle. It’s simply uncivilized.”

“Wait here, then. It’s not going to take hours.”

“I should hope not. We’ll be late for dinner. Really, Zoe, if we’re going to have to suffer this journey, I wish you were at least marrying the duke.”

Mother, I am doing all of this for you. But she didn’t say that. In truth, it wasn’t all for her mother. Once she had decided to make this marriage to free her trust fund, she had got rather excited for her upcoming independence. She wanted to manage her money her own way, spend it how she wished, invest it as she saw best. She wanted to be autonomous—a prize now available to a modern woman.

The truth was, she simply wasn’t going to fall in love again. After her trust fund was released and her divorce settled—when she knew Mother was safe and she could finally breathe again—then she would take up her airplane, and she would drink a toast to Richmond in the sky with a bottle of champagne. She would finally, properly, say goodbye to him. And when she landed she would cry until she could do it no more.

“Mother,” she said, “I have never met the duke.”

“Well, you are going to meet him now, honey. Why in heaven’s name did you agree to marry his brother before you met him? You would have been a duchess.”

“According to Sebastian, his brother is scarred, reclusive, emotionless and thoroughly dislikes American women.”

Mother gave a sly look. “I bet you could change his mind about that, Zoe.”

“Sebastian has said his brother has vowed to never marry.”

“Never marry?” Mother echoed. “Then his brother...” A cunning smile lifted her mother’s lips. “You will be the duchess.”

“In a country you just called uncivilized.”

Her mother’s large violet-blue eyes gleamed. “There are a lot of sacrifices that could be endured for a coronet—”

“Mother, Consuelo Vanderbilt just ran away from hers. Apparently it’s not as great a treasure as so many heiresses have been led to believe. And I’d better go if I’m to get us out of this muck before dark.”

Mother flicked open her compact and painted on a new scarlet mouth. “Just think, Zoe, we will even be presented at court. All those snobs in New York can stick that in their pipes and smoke it.”