скачать книгу бесплатно
Contracted As His Countess
Louise Allen
From a recluse secluded in a castle… …to his Countess! Cloistered away in a castle since birth, Madelyn Aylmer must now fulfil her eccentric father’s dying request: wed nobleman Jack Ransome! She has what Jack needs – land – and so he accepts their marriage of convenience, and vows to introduce this sheltered innocent into Society. But what Madelyn hadn’t expected was the way her body reacts to Jack, especially to his promise of a union filled with unbridled passion!
From a recluse secluded in a castle…
…to his countess!
Cloistered away in a castle since birth, Madelyn Aylmer must now fulfill her eccentric father’s dying request: wed nobleman Jack Ransome! She has what Jack needs—land—and so he accepts their marriage of convenience and vows to introduce this sheltered innocent to society. But what Madelyn hadn’t expected was the way her body reacts to Jack, especially to his promise of a union filled with unbridled passion!
LOUISE ALLEN loves immersing herself in history. She finds landscapes and places evoke the past powerfully. Venice, Burgundy and the Greek islands are favourite destinations. Louise lives on the Norfolk coast and spends her spare time gardening, researching family history and travelling in search of inspiration.
Also by Louise Allen (#u2e7deece-38d2-5542-abce-1c0e78dfa9f3)
Marrying His Cinderella Countess
The Earl’s Practical Marriage
A Lady in Need of an Heir
Convenient Christmas Brides
Least Likely to Marry a Duke
Lords of Disgrace miniseries
His Housekeeper’s Christmas Wish
His Christmas Countess
The Many Sins of Cris de Feaux
The Unexpected Marriage of Gabriel Stone
Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk).
Contracted as His Countess
Louise Allen
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
ISBN: 978-1-474-08958-6
CONTRACTED AS HIS COUNTESS
© 2019 Melanie Hilton
Published in Great Britain 2019
by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 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 (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Note to Readers (#u2e7deece-38d2-5542-abce-1c0e78dfa9f3)
This ebook contains the following accessibility features which, if supported by your device, can be accessed via your ereader/accessibility settings:
Change of font size and line height
Change of background and font colours
Change of font
Change justification
Text to speech
For AJH for being a rock.
Contents
Cover (#u1274324d-3871-5dd3-be1a-00316b83cee0)
Back Cover Text (#u11da5724-bdf0-5bf3-ab33-00195fda9ddd)
About the Author (#ubda96d89-b4b9-5d92-b64d-941cf12c39d4)
Booklist (#u381b4412-5ccd-5391-b281-6e99291104c1)
Title Page (#ua1876b4b-e399-5db1-9ad7-eb56d8da126e)
Copyright (#u4240a736-4c30-5508-aae0-76ad706caa17)
Note to Readers
Dedication (#u8ea1ba22-0506-5581-a098-ab089cdfbbc8)
Author Note (#u6ad03972-f589-5baf-85b6-1d78661d9289)
Chapter One (#u4e57fef4-9924-5252-9e5e-5f09cc0d693f)
Chapter Two (#u8ce42a85-d64a-56a5-92f6-560907f36fc2)
Chapter Three (#u10ba8618-372d-5691-bf90-a349465df0aa)
Chapter Four (#u8c824fc6-6dd6-5821-ad49-dbb6a505a43c)
Chapter Five (#u57533839-0098-5540-8866-9cef0c1faacd)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nineteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-One (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Two (#litres_trial_promo)
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
Author Note (#u2e7deece-38d2-5542-abce-1c0e78dfa9f3)
An interest in a revived Gothic style, harking back to the pointed arches and rich ornamentation of the Middle Ages, developed in the later eighteenth century as an element of the Romantic movement and as a reaction to the cool perfection of the Classical style.
Horace Walpole’s Gothic revival Strawberry Hill House in Twickenham was begun in 1749. William Thomas Beckford, the wildly eccentric art collector and author of Gothic novels, built his Fonthill Abbey—an enormous mansion in the style of a medieval abbey—between 1796 and 1813, and landowners began to litter their grounds with follies resembling ruined castles or monasteries.
I have based Madelyn’s father, Peregrine Aylmer, on some of the more eccentric Gothic enthusiasts of the time, although he would probably have had most in common with the Thirteenth Earl of Eglinton, whose wildly ambitious Eglinton Tournament cost him between thirty and forty thousand pounds in 1839. Despite the contestants training with lances for up to a year beforehand, the tournament was widely mocked and suffered from dreadful weather.
More soberly, the Gothic style flourished in the Victorian age as the most ‘suitable’ style for churches, and was the chosen architecture for both the rebuilt Houses of Parliament—completed 1870—and Tower Bridge—1894.
Peregrine Aylmer would have approved of both, I am certain.
Chapter One (#u2e7deece-38d2-5542-abce-1c0e78dfa9f3)
Castle Beaupierre, the Kent countryside—10th July, 1816
Jack Ransome reined in his horse on the crest of the rise and looked down at a vision of the fourteenth century transported to the age of the Hanoverians. England was still littered with castles, large and small. Some were ruins, some were converted long ago into more or less comfortable houses, but none still fulfilled the function for which they had been built. Except, apparently, this one.
It helped, of course, if you were wealthy and more than slightly eccentric as the late Peregrine Aylmer had been. Then you could pour thousands of pounds and a lifetime of scholarship into creating your fantasy world.
Castle Beaupierre seemed to bask as it lay in the sunshine that reflected off the polished slate of the roofs, the walls of creamy, perfect stone. Jack tried to estimate the cost and time involved in cleaning and repairing those walls and roofs and failed utterly.
From the centre tower a great black flag stirred and lighter pennants fluttered, red and blue and gold, around it. The encircling moat, full of water, was home to perhaps a dozen swans gliding in pristine white formation past the drawbridge. Which was raised.
‘She invited me, Altair,’ Jack observed. The big black gelding flicked one ear and then cocked a hoof comfortably, settling down to wait. ‘The least she could do is lower the drawbridge. Perhaps I am supposed to send a page over in a rowing boat or have a herald trumpet my arrival. What is the etiquette for calling on people deluded enough to live in the Middle Ages?’
He gathered up the reins and sent the horse on at a walk down the slope towards the fairy-tale building. When they were halfway there the drawbridge began to creak slowly downwards until it reached his side of the moat with a dull thud. Someone was watching.
‘Which leaves me faced with a portcullis,’ Jack muttered. ‘What is the matter with the woman? Her father was the lunatic who wanted to play knights in armour and he’s been dead for almost a year.’ Hence, he supposed, the black flag. As he spoke there was a rattle of chains from inside the walls and the wood and iron grid creaked upwards.
Now, faced with vast double oak doors studded with sufficient metal knobs to repel a charging elephant, Jack felt both amusement and patience slide away. ‘I should have brought siege engines, obviously. If Mistress—Mistress,if you please!—MadelynAylmer wants me then she can open her confounded gates because I am not going to knock. I did not drag down to Kent in the middle of the Newmarket July race meeting to play games.’ He clicked his tongue at Altair, who stepped on to the bridge, pecked at the sudden hollow note under his hooves, then walked on. Finally, the great doors opened.
The shadows were deep as Jack rode through the high archway, the sunlight blinding in the courtyard beyond a second opening. Here he was in the killing ground, where attackers could be penned in and assaulted on all sides from above, and he felt a prickle of awareness run down his spine as he rode towards the light. Someone was watching him. Jack circled the horse and looked up and back to a window high in the wall, making no attempt to disguise his scrutiny. A flicker of white, the pale oval of a face, the flash of spun gold and the watcher was gone.
Serve her right if I keep going right back where I came from.
But this was a commission, which meant money, and at least Mistress Aylmer hadn’t expected him to dress up in medieval clothes for this meeting. Pride was all very well, but it was a hollow coin that bought neither bread nor horseshoes. Jack turned Altair back and rode into the courtyard where, finally, someone had come out to meet him.
It was a surprise that the servants were not dressed in tights and tabards, although the leather jerkin and breeches of the groom who took Altair’s reins and led him away had a timeless look to them and the black-coated individual who came forward could have come from any period in the past hundred years.
‘My—’
‘Mr Jack Ransome to see Miss Aylmer, by appointment.’
‘Mistress Madelyn will receive you in the Great Hall,’ the man responded with the same emphasis Jack had used and without a flicker of either amusement or annoyance. ‘This way, sir.’
Jack followed up stone steps, along passages hung with tapestries that glowed as bright, surely, as the day they had been made. Which was probably within the last twenty years, he reminded himself with a flash of cynicism. He suspected that appearances were all in this fantasy world.
The butler, if that was who he was, threw open double doors—more studded oak, of course—and stood aside for Jack to enter. They closed behind him with a dull thud.
The Great Hall was well named. Walter Scott would love it, Jack reflected. All it needed was a bearded bard in one corner reciting The Lay of the Last Minstrel. He preferred something with fewer draughts and more soft furnishings himself. The roof was a hammer-beam construction and he counted two, no, three fireplaces of the ox-roasting variety, sighed at the sight of a number of suits of armour and walked on past more tapestries.
At least there are no harps and minstrels…
