Annette Blair - Scandalous Brides

CONTENTS

Title Page

Copyright & License

A Gift For You

Scandalous Brides

New York Times and USA Today Bestselling Annette Blair, with Cheryl Bolen, Lucinda Brant, and Brenda Hiatt present bewitchingly scandalous brides and their dashing grooms in this boxed set of four full-length bestselling Regencies.

A SprigleafPublication

SCANDALOUS BRIDES by Annette Blair, Cheryl Bolen, Lucinda Brant, and Brenda Hiatt

First published, January 2014

Art, design and formatting by Sprigleaf

eISBN 9780987375285

2014 Kindle edition: ASIN B00FPQHK48

UNFORGETTABLE ROGUE ©2002, 2012 Annette Blair

First published in paperback by Kensington Publishing

Cover art ©2006–20012 Calista Taylor

A LADY BY CHANCE ©2011 Cheryl Bolen

Cover art ©2011 Cheryl Bolen

SALT BRIDE ©2010 Lucinda Brant

Cover art ©2010 Sprigleaf

To suit this edition the original prologue has been removed.

SCANDALOUS VIRTUE ©1999 Brenda Hiatt

First published in paperback by HarperPaperbacks, a division of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.

Cover art ©1999 Brenda Hiatt

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This is a work of fiction; names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Resemblance to persons, businesses, companies, events, or locales, past or present, is entirely coincidental.

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Cover

Dedication

Beginning

Bonus Preview

About Annette Blair

— CHAPTER LINKS —

Prologue 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28

With Love to Gail Bryson.

In fond memory of our time and travels together,

Especially our trip to St. Albans, England,

Where I set this book.

I love being a writer, but I miss working with you.

The first time you walked into my office,

I knew we would be friends.

After twenty-five years,

I believe I was right.

PROLOGUE

HAWKESRIDGE AT DEVILS DYKE

ST. ALBANS, ENGLAND, MARCH 1815

BRYCESON WAKEFIELD stood less than a breath away from becoming the Fifth Duke of Hawksworth.

His father moaned. “In life, I have failed.”

No man should die, or live, Hawk knew, calling himself a failure. “No Father,” he said, “Do not believe it.”

The old man grasped his hand with more strength than Bryce thought possible. “What do I leave behind?” he asked.

“ Me !” Bryce wanted to shout. “ You leave me !” But he said nothing. His sire voiced no pride in an only child, though neither did he repeat his litany of disappointments. How does one deal with a parent who had not so much as touched one’s hand for all of a lifetime and now clasped it to his heart?

One attempts, Bryce decided, to invoke the smallest spark of kinship. “You leave me behind, Father.”

Fervor brightened his sire’s gaze. “You, Bryce, you will make me proud?”

God knew he had tried. “I like to think I will.”

Hawk’s hope for approval waned with the weakening of the old man’s grip. “I will; of course I will. Tell me what I must—”

“Fight Bonaparte!” Obsession flared in the old man’s eyes for one bright moment. “Bring honor to my name. I would die… proud.”

A father’s last words: He would be proud if …

ONE

LONDON, SEPTEMBER 1816

BRYCESON WAKEFIELD, the Fifth Duke of Hawksworth, stood at the mouth of hell—not on the field of battle, but in the vestibule of a church, gothic and empty of guests.

There, he saw from afar, his wife, a bride with her bridegroom standing before a priest… and there, Hawk knew that living, again, just might kill him.

Thrice on his way to this improbable place, he had ordered the carriage turned around, and thrice he had turned it back.

Even now, he wanted to leave, rather than face Alexandra with the dreadful sight of him, scarred and battered by war, but her very presence drew him up that aisle like a beacon in a night-dark storm.

~ ~ ~

S MILE , Alexandra Wakefield told herself, as she turned to face her bridegroom, her attention captured, instead, by the bearded derelict making his lone way up the aisle, the tap of his cane a desolate echo in the vaulted church.

His bearing—tall, sturdy and wide-shouldered—as he took the front pew, and the sharp, intense gaze he directed her way, sent a shiver of startled awareness through her. He made her think, absurdly, of her late husband—not the first time Bryce came to mind today—but the brooding stranger watching her, as if he might devour her, looked nothing like him.

Bryceson Wakefield, the Fifth Duke of Hawksworth, a rogue by nature, swarthy, charming and handsome as sin, had enraptured every female who beheld him.

Alexandra had been no exception.

Beauty and his beast , some slyly called them, but Hawk was the beauty. The day he asked for her hand in marriage had been the happiest of her life. Then she learned the real reason he married her, and it hurt.

It hurt enough for her to say yes to Chesterfield’s proposal of marriage, one year to the day, after Hawksworth died at Waterloo.

At the memory, a sob rose in Alex, until the Vicar cleared his throat, snapping her back to reality with a hot rush of embarrassment. “Do you, Alexandra Huntington Wakefield,” he was forced to repeat, “take Judson Edward Broderick, Viscount Chesterfield, as your lawfully wedded husband?”

Panic gripped Alex, grief, soul-deep, but she had no time to regard it, as the brooding stranger stood, his jaw rigidly set, and tapped his cane on the floor. “You will pardon the intrusion,” he said, his husky and familiar voice swamping her in a miasma of yesterdays, “but my wife must decline.”

“Bryce?” Alex cried, but no sound emerged from her throat, none save the sob that had been trapped there. Then the chapel’s ceiling tilted, and dipped, and she kissed its floor.

Hawk hastened awkwardly to his wife’s side and ignored the agony of kneeling, aware that he would have the devil of a time rising again. But at that moment, he cared for nothing, no one, save Alexandra. “Give us a minute,” he enjoined the beleaguered Vicar, because warning her hovering bridegroom away, with even a veneer of civility, would be impossible.

“I object,” Chesterfield said, revoking the need for civility.

“What?” Hawksworth snapped. “You think I will abduct her from the altar? You would have no say, even if I did.”

His old adversary hissed and bared his teeth, like a hound after a bone.

“She is my wife,” Hawk said, as much to affirm his responsibility as to stake his claim. “Mine.”

“Gentlemen, remember where you are,” the Vicar admonished, as he took Chesterfield’s arm and urged him up and toward the sanctuary, nodding for the unknown groomsman to follow.