The Wicked Duke Takes a Wife

Informationen zum Autor Jillian Hunter is the author of twenty critically acclaimed novels, among them the bestselling Boscastle series. She has received several awards, including the Romantic Times Career Achievement Award. She lives in Southern California with her husband and three daughters. Klappentext From London's ballrooms to its sizzling bedrooms! award-winning author Jillian Hunter spins a seductive dance of desire and breathtaking romance. Lord Griffin Boscastle has no intention of ending his glorious career as a rakehell now that he has inherited a dukedom. Still! there are responsibilities he must discharge before his pleasures resume! including finding a bride! and depositing his incorrigible niece at a relative's academy outside London. It is at this so-very-proper finishing school that flame-haired instructress Harriet Gardner awakens in Griffin emotions so dangerously intoxicating that he must avoid her at all cost. Yet when Harriet finds work in the townhouse where Griffin resides! her presence tempts him at every turn. Harriet has survived London's streets far too long to let an arrogant duke woo a bride he doesn't want when she desires him for herself! and she has seen too much of life not to recognize a man ripe for redemption. But just as Harriet finds the perfect cure for His Lordship's devilish ways! a vindictive enemy intervenes! and the duke whom Harriet has plotted to save suddenly becomes her devoted protector. Chapter One “I agree with you,” replied the stranger; “we are unfashioned creatures, but half made up . . .” Mary Shelley Frankenstein The Scarfield Academy for Young Ladies London, England 1818 It had taken Miss Harriet Gardner two years of intensive training in the polite graces to become that mysterious creation known in Society as a gentlewoman. It took the stormy young Duke of Glenmorgan less than two days to undo months of discipline, of tears, of sweat, of French lessons, to reawaken every gutter instinct Harriet had fought to subdue. The foundress of the elite academy for young ladies where Harriet was now gainfully employed would not be pleased. In fact, Emma Boscastle, the former Lady Lyons and current Duchess of Scarfield, would be the first to remind Harriet that a gentlewoman would sooner be caught in a swoon than in a sweat. Horses sweat. Gentlemen perspired. And ladies glowed, albeit only after a vigorous cotillion or lively ride through the park at the fashionable hour. Certainly a lady of the academy did not draw attention to this unfortunate bodily function. She merely applied her fan with a little more energy than usual. A well-bred lady should never speak of whatever embarrassment befell her at all. Which was why no one at the academy ever mentioned that its foundress had abandoned every rule in her own book when she unexpectedly fell in love. A handsome duke tended to wield a devastating effect upon even ladies who believed themselves to be above temptation. The Duchess of Scarfield’s lapse in love’s name, however, did not excuse those she had tutored from their obligations. Harriet would battle forth as her creator had intended. For two years she had devoted herself to the study of deportment. She had turned down the dancing master’s marriage proposal. She had laughed at the footman’s clumsy effort at courtship. Two grueling years, mind you, for everyone involved in her social edification. Days of rehearsing the nuances of proper behavior until curtsying to an earl came as easily to her as cutting a purse once had. Evenings spent practicing dictation until her tongue went numb. “How many times do I have to remind you not to drop your aspirates, Harriet?” “And how many times do I ’ave to tell you I ain’t never dropped my—what you said—in my life?” She cringed to think of what an utter ignoramus she...

Product details

• Authors: Jillian Hunter
• Publisher: Ballantine
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback
• Released: 27.10.2009
• EAN: 9780345503954
• ISBN: 978-0-345-50395-4
• No. of pages: 328
• Dimensions: 106 mm x 175 mm x 21 mm
• Series: The Boscastles; The Boscastles
• Subject: Fiction > Narrative literature