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“You are badly in need of money. I have a great deal of it.”
Catherine felt the color flooding her face again. “I hope I am not so mercenary.”
“No, I don’t perceive you as mercenary—the word I would use would be desperate.” He waited patiently for a reply.
Catherine struggled with warring emotions. He was right—her situation was desperate. Still, she balked at being forced into anything, let alone a marriage she didn’t want to a man she hardly knew and had no hope of understanding. She took refuge in anger, a much stronger and more comfortable emotion than desperation.
“And you wish to take advantage of my predicament!”
Caldbeck’s expression never changed. “I simply propose a mutually beneficial arrangement.”
“And what do you hope to gain?”
“Your beauty, your energy, your superb elegance. You…warm me….”
Harlequin Historicals is delighted to introduce debut author Patricia Frances Rowell
#619 BORDER BRIDE
Deborah Hale
#620 BADLANDS LAW
Ruth Langan
#622 MARRIED BY MIDNIGHT
Judith Stacy
A Perilous Attraction
Patricia Frances Rowell
Available from Harlequin Historicals and PATRICIA FRANCES ROWELL
A Perilous Attraction #621
For Judy Elise Rhodes,
my friend in this world and all others. And for my chosen sister, Sue Harvey Harrison. No one has encouraged me more. And—always—for my hero, Johnny.
Contents
Prologue
Yorkshire, England, November 1783
The boy stood unmoving, one hand clutching his father’s, the other held rigidly in a fist at his side. The rain beat down on the umbrella his father held above them, while the sound of sodden clods of dirt striking the casket mingled with the vicar’s words.
“But thanks be to God who giveth us the victory….” The boy gritted his teeth, willing his lip not to tremble. He would not cry. He felt proud to be allowed to stand with the men of the funeral party. If they considered him old enough, he certainly did not want to disgrace himself with tears. Yet a very small, childish part of him wanted to turn and flee—back to the house. Back to hide his face in the skirts of the women waiting there, and to sob the pain away.
“In the midst of life we are in death. Of whom may we seek succor…?”
The child dared a glance up into his father’s face. It might as well have been carved in stone. He saw no tears. No sign betrayed the man’s thoughts or feelings, but his hand tightened encouragingly around his young son’s.
“Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye steadfast, immovable….”
The boy took a long breath and drew himself up in emulation, schooling his own face to stern control. His father was strong. He would be strong. Men didn’t cry.
The vicar finished the reading and stepped forward to murmur a few private words. Then the boy’s father turned and led him away from the grave of the woman who had been the anchor of both their lives.
Chapter One
London, England, October 1810
“You did what?” Catherine leaned her clenched fists on her uncle’s desk and scowled at him across it, bristling with outrage.
He winced. “There is no need to shout. I am not deaf.”
“I can only wish that I were! I cannot believe I heard you correctly.”
“Of course you heard me. I said I have accepted an offer from Lord Caldbeck for your hand in marriage.”
Catherine straightened up and stared at him in disbelief. “But, Uncle Ambrose, why? Aside from the fact that I have no wish to marry at all, I hardly know the man. I’ve danced with him a few times, but he has never shown any partiality for me. I’ve never even heard that he was hanging out for a wife.”
“Caldbeck is well known for hiding his thoughts. One never knows what he intends. The man’s an enigma.”
“An automaton, rather.” Catherine spun away from the desk, snatched her modish hat from her head and sailed it across the room into a chair. She felt her hair spring forth in its flaming halo, and ran her hands over it in a vain attempt to restrain it.
“Lord Caldbeck might as well be made of