Charming Sir Charles (Dashing Widows 5)

“Now I do. I’ve been so unhappy all week—then Morwenna reminded me that real love is worth every risk.”

“God bless Morwenna,” he said fervently.

“Yes,” Sally murmured. “She gave me the courage to come to you. I’m sorry I was frightened for so long.”

He brought her head down for another kiss. “You can spend the next fifty years making it up to me.”

She smiled against his lips. “I promise I will.” Then in a low, urgent voice, she said, “I love you so very much.”

He drew away, cradling her face between his palms and studying those fascinating features that had caught his heart from the first. “I swear I’ll make you happy, my love.”

Her wanton glance whipped his blood into a hot storm of desire. “There’s no time like the present to launch such an admirable project.”

Supreme happiness rang in his laugh. “Then, my darling, you and I are in complete agreement.”

THE END

Continue reading for an excerpt from:

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Pursuing Lord Pascal

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Book 4 in the Dashing Widows series

Golden Days…

Famous for her agricultural innovations, Amy, Lady Mowbray has never had a romantical thought in her life. Well, apart from her short-lived crush on London’s handsomest man, Lord Pascal, when she was a brainless 14-year-old. She even chose her late husband because he owned the best herd of beef cattle in England!

But fate steps in and waltzes this practical widow out of her rustic retreat into the glamour of the London season. When Pascal pursues her, all her adolescent fantasies come true. And those fantasies turn disturbingly adult when grown-up desire enters the equation. Amy plunges headlong into a reckless affair that promises pleasure beyond her wildest dreams – until she discovers that this glittering world hides damaging secrets and painful revelations set to break a country girl’s tender heart.

All that glitters…

Gervaise Dacre, Lord Pascal needs to marry money to rescue his estate, devastated after a violent storm. He’s never much liked his reputation as London’s handsomest man, but it certainly comes in handy when the time arrives to seek a rich bride. Unfortunately, the current crop of debutantes bores him silly, and he finds himself praying for a sensible woman with a generous dowry.

When he meets Dashing Widow Amy Mowbray, it seems all his prayers have been answered. But his mercenary quest becomes dangerously complicated when he finds himself in thrall to the lovely widow. Soon he’s much more interested in passion than in pounds, shillings and pence. What happens if Amy discovers the sordid truth behind his whirlwind courtship? And if she does, will she see beyond his original, selfish motives to the ardent love that lies unspoken in his sinful heart?

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Prologue

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Woodley Park, Leicestershire, November 1828

To a farmer, even winter’s dreary beginning had its purpose.

Or so Amy, Lady Mowbray, told herself as she stared out of the morning room window onto the landscape of her childhood. It was early on a gray day. Around her, the old house was blessedly quiet. That would change, once everyone was up.

Nash friends and family gathered to celebrate the christening of her brother Silas’s fourth child. The revels had extended late last night, but Amy, used to rising with the birds to tramp her fields at Warrington Grange, couldn’t sleep.

So she didn’t expect the door to open and reveal Sally Cowan, Countess of Norwood. “Lady Mowbray, I didn’t think anyone else was awake.”

Amy didn’t know Sally well. Recently the attractive widow had become friends with her sister-in-law Morwenna. Morwenna mostly lived in seclusion in Portsmouth, but she and Sally both supported a charity for indigent naval widows.

“I don’t keep sophisticated hours, Lady Norwood.” Anything but. Lately the sheer predictability of her days had begun to pall.