To have and to hold…
After her first disastrous marriage, wealthy heiress Amethyst Cameron swore she’d never take a husband again. Yet her beloved father’s deepest wish is for her to wed an aristocrat to protect her life and reputation.
Until the debts are paid!
Lord Montcliffe must marry into money to save his debt-ridden estate, but he doesn’t have to like it—or his bewitching future bride. So he’s stunned by the feelings stirred up by one scorching kiss! But when Daniel uncovers the truth, can he accept the real Amethyst and help to banish the ghost of her past forever?
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’s story in
MARRIAGE MADE IN MONEY
January 2015
AUTHOR NOTE
MARRIAGE MADE IN MONEY is the first book in my new The Penniless Lords mini-series.
Daniel, Gabriel, Lucien and Francis are lords, down on both luck and money. With commitments to family, and great estates to support, each is forced into finding a wife of means. But the sacrificing of personal hopes and dreams does not always lead where they might imagine … and even dark clouds can sometimes have silver linings.
The first book in this series belongs to Lord Daniel Wylde, the sixth Earl of Montcliffe, newly returned from the Peninsular Wars. Is a loveless marriage of convenience to the wealthy daughter of an East London timber merchant the only way out of his substantial and mounting financial problems?
Miss Amethyst Cameron has her own conditions for their union, and she makes it known that she is as unhappy as he is with their unexpected betrothal. As a woman of trade she clearly understands that in any other circumstance the Earl of Montcliffe would never have chosen her.
Marriage Made in Money
Sophia James
MILLS & BOON
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This book is dedicated to my writing friend, Lizzie Tremayne, who helped me to understand the anatomy of horses and the joy of working with them.
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
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Epilogue
London—June 1810
Amethyst Amelia Cameron’s father loved all horses, but he especially loved his matching pair of greys.
‘I doubt you will ever see others as fine, Papa, if you do indeed intend to sell them.’ Amethyst tried to keep the worry from her voice as the carriage drew to a halt in the narrow lane outside number ten, Grosvenor Place. Things were changing without reason and she didn’t like it.
‘Well, there’s the problem, my dear,’ Robert Cameron replied. ‘I had the best and now I want for nothing more. Take your mother, for instance. Never found another like her. Would not even have tried to.’
Amethyst smiled. Her parents’ marriage had been a love match until the day her mother had died of some undefined and quick illness, seven hours short of her thirty-second birthday. Amethyst had been all of eight and she remembered the day distinctly, the low whispers and the tears; storm clouds sweeping across the Thames.
‘I do not think you should part with the pair, Papa. You can easily afford to keep them. You could afford ten times as many; every stallion and mare here in the Tattersall’s sales for the next month, should you want.’ Looking across the road at the generous roofs of the auction house, she wished her father might order the carriage homewards, where they could talk the matter over at their leisure.
It was not like him to decide on a course of action so quickly and she hoped he might have second thoughts and withdraw his favoured greys before the Monday sales the following week.
Yet as her father hoisted himself from the carriage his breathlessness was obvious, even such a small movement causing him difficulty.