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
MILLS & BOON
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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
