When You Wish Upon a Duke

Informationen zum Autor Isabella Bradford is a pseudonym for Susan Holloway Scott, the award-winning author of more than forty historical novels and historical romances. Her bestselling books have been published in nineteen countries and translated into fourteen languages with more than three million copies in print. Bradford also writes as half of the Two Nerdy History Girls, an entertaining history blog that is also on Twitter and Pinterest. She is a graduate of Brown University, and lives with her family outside of Philadelphia. Klappentext In a sparkling new series filled with irresistible charm and sizzling romance! award-winning author Isabella Bradford introduces us to the eldest of three Wylder sisters-unruly country girls whose passion for life leaves their London suitors breathless. Raised in the Dorset countryside! Lady Charlotte Wylder doesn't care one bit about well-bred decorum. The dark-haired! blue-eyed beauty would rather ride a horse than attend a stuffy ball. So when Charlotte learns that she is to leave immediately for London to wed the Duke of Marchbourne! a perfect model of aristocratic propriety! she is less than enchanted with her arranged marriage. But to her delight! their first encounters are brazenly flirtatious! and their wedding night burns with passion. March's broad shoulders and dark countenance make Charlotte want to rip every button off his waistcoast. She may even be falling in love with her new husband. Yet whenever their desire boils over! March reluctantly pushes Charlotte away. Will past secrets and present misunderstandings mire their marriage in scandal! or serve to strengthen a bond that is destined to last a lifetime? Chapter 1 Ransom Manor, Dorset June 1760 It was only in the middle of the night that Lady Charlotte Wylder could remember the past. She’d learned to wait until after the rest of the house was fast asleep before she slipped from her bed. With a shawl over her shoulders, she opened her bedchamber window and leaned outward, her dark hair tossing in the breeze. The moon was high in the blue-­black sky, and beyond the garden wall, the waves in the sea made no more than the softest shush as the tide retreated over the sand. She breathed deeply, making herself think of nothing beyond the sea and the moon and stars. And then, only then, could Charlotte remember the distant days when Father still lived, and Mama still laughed, and her home and her world had been full of magic. She closed her eyes, letting the memories come. She had been only four when Father had died, and she was eighteen now. They had lived in a grand house on Berkeley Square in the winter, and in an equally grand house in Somerset in the summer, as was fit for the family of the fourth Earl of Hervey. There had been servants in powdered wigs and livery trimmed with gold lace to cosset her, and elegantly painted carriages to ride in with Mama and Father, and more silk gowns in Charlotte’s own nursery wardrobe than most grown women possessed in a lifetime. But the memories she sought were more humble. She wanted to remember her parents as they’d been then, the merriest and most beautiful young parents in London. They had been young, too, younger than Charlotte herself was now when they’d wed. They’d sung to her, and talked in funny voices to make her laugh, and used her dolls for impromptu puppet shows in the drawing room. Each evening while Mama dressed for the theater or a ball, Father would come to the nursery. He’d play hide-­and-­seek with Charlotte, and soon with her younger sister Lizzie, too. He would roar like a bear to make them shriek, and then they would pretend to capture him, and tie him up with hair ribbons. Then later, much later, he and Mama would come kiss them goodnight when they’d returned home from whatever ball or frolic they’d attended. Mama’s perfume always lingered, as sweet as a bouqu...

Product details

• Authors: Isabella Bradford
• Publisher: Ballantine
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback
• Released: 31.07.2012
• EAN: 9780345527295
• ISBN: 978-0-345-52729-5
• No. of pages: 320
• Dimensions: 106 mm x 174 mm x 22 mm
• Series: Wylder Sisters; Wylder Sisters
• Subject: Fiction > Narrative literature