Dear Reader,
Bad boys can be fascinating. With this in mind I decided to write about some, and the result is a miniseries of Regencies that commences with Mr. Trelawney’s Proposal. The novels feature heroes, linked by family or friendship, who are definite rogues—wickedly charming, wryly humorous, dangerously attractive. Good girls can’t resist them. But innocence can be as captivating as sophistication: the heroines are more than a match for their jaded suitors.
Gentle widow Victoria Hart succeeds in taming and securing the devotion of cynical rake Viscount Courtenay in A Kind and Decent Man. His friend, Sir Richard Du Quesne, is equally predatory and disreputable in The Silver Squire, and relentlessly pursues unassuming spinster Emma Worthington…until she catches him and brings him very willingly to his knees.
As their separate stories unfold, the couples battle through a maelstrom of action and emotion. I hope you enjoy their passionate skirmishing, the laughter and tears that pave the way to harmony and happiness, as much as I have enjoyed writing the novels for you.
Mary Brendan
Mary Brendan was born in north London and lived there for nineteen years before marrying and migrating to Hertfordshire. She was grammar school educated and has been at various times in her working life a personnel secretary for an international oil company, a property developer and a landlady. Presently working part-time at a local library, she dedicates hard-won leisure time to antiques browsing, curries and keeping up with two lively sons.
Mr. Trelawney’s Proposal
Mary Brendan
Contents
Chapter One
1814
‘So you are travelling back from visiting your sister in London, Miss Nash,’ remarked that unpleasantly soft voice for the second time in five minutes.
‘Indeed, yes, I am,’ Rebecca Nash agreed, struggling to keep impatience from her voice and revulsion from her eyes as she again raised them from her teacup to glance at the slightly built man sitting opposite her. Having redrawn her attention to himself, Rupert Mayhew lounged his wiry frame back into the battered leather wing-chair.
Rebecca forced a polite smile and tried to prevent her eyes from fixing too obviously on the arrangement of lank, greying strands of hair which threaded across the man’s balding pate. At one time he must have had a thatch of gingery-fair hair, she guessed, judging by what remained. The colour would have been similar to those beastly yellow eyes that leeched on to her every movement.
During the twenty minutes or so since she had arrived, whenever she had shifted slightly on the ancient hide wing-chair, a pair with the one in which he was ensconced, his feline eyes had stared boldly as though anticipating something interesting might be revealed.
Rupert Mayhew slid his scrawny frame forward on his seat, enquiring solicitiously of the beautiful young woman opposite, ‘And how is your dear sister? And the new babe? Well, I trust?’
‘Thank you, yes,’ Rebecca replied civilly, suppressing the urge to shrink back as he leaned towards her.
‘My own dear wife is in the same delicate condition…as I believe I mentioned in my last letter to you,’ he reminded her with a sly smirk.
This time Rebecca was unable to prevent a tremor of revulsion, clinking her delicate china cup against its saucer.
‘Had she not been indisposed, Caroline would, of course, have been happy to meet with you today,’ Rupert Mayhew informed her smoothly. ‘But we are about to be blessed with our infant at any time now, so Dr Willis informs me. So my lady wife is staying with her dear sister in Shoreham for her confinement.’ Yellow eyes slid from Rebecca’s face to craftily linger on the closely buttoned bodice of her sprigged cotton gown.
The ensuing lengthy silence seemed to be metered by the sonorous tick of the heavy oaken grandmother clock positioned behind Rupert Mayhew’s chair. Rebecca felt her spine stiffen and her flesh creep. Desperate for casual conversation to distract his hooded, wolfish gaze, she remarked lightly, ‘You must be glad of your stepdaughters’ company while your wife is away. Lucy is fifteen, is she not, and the younger, Mary…?’ She hesitated, expecting him to advise her of the younger girl’s age.
His only response was to mutter on a grunting laugh, ‘At times they have their uses.’ His manner and words heightened her uneasiness.
Rebecca replaced her pretty china cup and saucer on a low table close by. ‘I am most grateful for the refreshment, sir, but I really need to be back on the road to Graveley, without delay,’ she informed him with a busy, professional tone. ‘Perhaps you would discover whether your stepdaughter is now ready to depart. I’m sure you’re aware this unseasonable heat makes travelling after noon quite unbearable.’
As though to reinforce her anxieties about the climate, Rebecca dragged her eyes from Rupert Mayhew’s sparsely covered head, where they had once again drifted, and stared through the casement window to one side of her.
On this late September morning. the atmosphere glowed bright and lucid, threatening another blazing, sultry afternoon. Her intention to be directly abroad had as much to do with the valid reason voiced as with the desperation to escape this odious man’s presence.
Rupert Mayhew’s thin visage pinched further. He straightened himself in the chair and leaned stiffly back into it. Bony fingers steepled together and he regarded Rebecca imperiously across them and the hooked bridge of his nose. He obviously had no intention of acceding to her courteous request and wanted her to be aware of it.
It was hard to determine what about him was the most repellent, Rebecca realised: his puny build, his ugly countenance or his objectionable manner. Thank goodness all prior contact had been carried out by letter. Had she previously been subjected to his obnoxious presence, she might well have turned down his application to send