The Penniless Lords
In want of a wealthy wife
Meet Daniel, Gabriel, Lucien and Francis Four lords, each down on his fortune and each in need of a wife of means.
From such beginnings, can these marriages of convenience turn into something more treasured than money?
Don’t miss this enthralling new quartet by Sophia James
Read Daniel, Gabriel, Lucien and Francis’s stories in
Marriage Made in Money Already available
Marriage Made in Shame Already available
Marriage Made in Rebellion Out now
Marriage Made in Hope Coming soon
She tasted like hope and home.
And of something else entirely.
Tristesse.
The French word for sadness came from nowhere, bathed in its own truth, but it was too soon to pay good mind to it and too late to want it different.
‘Only now, Lucien,’ she whispered. ‘I know it is all that each of us can promise, but it is enough.’
Marriage Made in Rebellion
Sophia James
SOPHIA JAMES lives in Chelsea Bay, on Auckland, New Zealand’s North Shore, with her husband, who is an artist. She has a degree in English and History from Auckland University and believes her love of writing was formed by reading Georgette Heyer in the holidays at her grandmother’s house. Sophia enjoys getting feedback at sophiajames.co.
Marriage Made in Rebellion is the third story in my The Penniless Lords series.
Lucien Howard, the Earl of Ross, is a soldier, a fighter, a spy and a gifted linguist.
Alejandra Fernandez y Santo Domingo is the only daughter of a powerful Spanish guerrilla leader whose family has been decimated by the conflict.
They come together on the battlefields after Corunna in this dark and dangerous story of high-stakes warfare in a country that has been split apart by politics. It is also about a great love that conquers all.
Francis St Cartmail is next. When Lady Sephora Connaught falls from a bridge into the deep and fast-running Thames everything in her world changes.
The stranger who dives in to rescue her, the Earl of Douglas, is known as the black sheep of the ton and is a man of questionable reputation. Yet only with him does she finally feel safe.
I love feedback, and you can find me at sophiajames.co.
Contents
The English declare they will no longer respect neutrals on the sea; I will no longer recognise them on land.
Napoleon Bonaparte
A Coruña, Spain—January 16th, 1809
Captain Lucien Howard, the Earl of Ross, thought his nose was broken. His neck, too, probably, because he couldn’t move it at all. His horse lay upon him, her head bent sideways and liquid-brown eyes empty of life. A good mare she was, one that had brought him up the hard road from Lisboa through the snows of the Cantabrian Mountains and the slippery passways of mud and sleet. He swore silently and looked away.
It hurt to breathe, a worrying thought that, given the distance from any medical help. Another day and Napoleon and his generals would be all over the harbour. It was finished and the British had lost, the harsh winter eating into what was left of resistance and a mix-up with the ocean transports in from the southern port of Vigo.
God, if he wasn’t so badly hurt, he might have laughed, but the movement would have most likely killed him. It was so damn cold, his breath fogging as he fought for what little air he could drag in, but a mist had come up from the sea to mingle with the smoke of battle hanging thick across the valley.
Lucien was not afraid of death. It was the dying that worried him, the length and the breadth of it and the helplessness.
Lying