The Seduction of an English Scoundrel

Informationen zum Autor JILLIAN HUNTER is the author of nine critically acclaimed novels. She has received several awards, including the Romantic Times Career Achievement Award. Jillian Hunter lives in Southern California with her husband and three daughters. Klappentext Award-winning author Jillian Hunter pens a delightful romp of passion and tantalizing trickery proving all is fair in matters of love. It would have been the wedding of the year-had the groom, Sir Nigel Boscastle, bothered to put in an appearance. To the shock of her distinguished guests, the respectable Lady Jane Welsham is left humiliated at the altar. Yet truth be told, although outwardly ruined she is elated to have escaped marriage to a man she does not love. Enter Grayson Boscastle, the irresistible Marquess of Sedgecroft (and cousin to Nigel). Grayson's duty is clear: salvage the young lady's pride and reestablish the family's good name, while repairing his own tarnished reputation as one of London's most notorious scoundrels. Their whirlwind affair is the talk of the ton. Yet nothing is as it seems between the bewitching Lady Jane, who knows that her wedding was cleverly sabotaged, and her charming rogue, as they are drawn into an amusing game of seduction and secrets.Mayfair London, England 1814 The Boscastle-Welsham marriage would have been the wedding of the year—if the groom had bothered to put in an appearance. Sir Nigel Boscastle was so noticeably absent from his own nuptials that the bride’s father had been forced to walk the long-suffering Lady Jane to the altar where, surrounded by a cluster of distraught bridesmaids, the wedding party minus the bridegroom waited. And waited. “I shall deal with the corkbrain after the ceremony,” the distinguished seventh Earl of Belshire muttered as his daughter stood with her back to their bewildered guests. “The idiot will be late to his own funeral.” After several minutes of confusion, the minister and bride’s parents decided that perhaps until the bridegroom arrived, Jane’s older brother, Simon, Viscount Tarleton, should stand in as temporary proxy. And so brother and abandoned bride stood. And stood. At first no one doubted that Nigel would eventually show up to rescue Jane from this embarrassment. If, as one guest in the third pew remarked, he remembered what day it was. After all, Sir Nigel was hardly known about town for his towering intellect, although his generosity had earned him a loyal following of friends. The bride-to-be had not wished to be married at the popular St. George’s Church in Hanover Square. A respectable young lady never previously involved in scandal, she avoided fussy affairs as a rule. Yet today the haut ton were crammed to capacity inside the private chapel of the Marquess of Sedgecroft’s Park Lane mansion. To witness a wedding that apparently would not take place. Lady Jane Welsham, the guests agreed, resembled a royal princess. She positively glowed in an eggshell white satin dress worn over an ivory tissue underbodice. The scalloped hem of the dress foamed daintily around her pearl-seeded slippers. A flowing veil of Honiton lace framed her face, casting in shadow whatever emotion it revealed, to the disappointment of her enrapt audience. The bouquet of white rosebuds she held glistened from a double-dipping in gilt. White kidskin gloves encased her slender hands, hands that remained remarkably steady considering that their owner was undergoing one of the worst humiliations in a young woman’s life. To be abandoned at the altar. What could have happened? Everyone in London knew that the parents of both parties had been planning this wedding since Jane and Nigel had toddled about the nursery in nappies. The Society papers had remarked more than once that rarely had a betrothed couple seemed so compatible. What had gone wrong? The bride’s si...

Product details

• Authors: Jillian Hunter
• Publisher: Ivy Books Inc.
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback
• Released: 26.04.2005
• EAN: 9780345461216
• ISBN: 978-0-345-46121-6
• No. of pages: 371
• Dimensions: 107 mm x 175 mm x 25 mm
• Series: Boscastle Family Trilogy; The Boscastles; The Boscastles
• Subject: Fiction > Narrative literature