A Regency Duchess's Awakening: The Shy Duchess / To Kiss a Count
Escape to a world of roguish rakes and daring debutantes with this incredible Regency collection from Mills & Boon.The Shy Duchess by Amanda McCabeNicholas, Duke of Manning, isn’t looking for a bride, but he won’t pass up a stolen kiss at a masked ball. Yet when he finds himself betrothed to the masked beauty, Nicholas is determined to find out everything about his shy duchess…starting on their wedding night!To Kiss a Count by Amanda McCabeAfter a doomed affair in Sicily, Thalia Chase returned to England to try to forget the enigmatic Italian Count di Fabrizzi. But when she discovers him in Bath on a dangerous mission, it’s clear the Count never intended their parting to be anything but temporary…
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AMANDA MCCABE wrote her first romance at the age of sixteen—a vast epic, starring all her friends as the characters, written secretly during algebra class. She’s never since used algebra, but her books have been nominated for many awards, including the RITA>®, RT Reviewers’ Choice Award the Booksellers Best, the National Readers’ Choice Award and the Holt Medallion. She lives in Oklahoma, with a menagerie of two cats, a pug and a bossy miniature poodle, and loves dance classes, collecting cheesy travel souvenirs and watching the Food Network—even though she doesn’t cook.
Visit her at www.ammandamccabe.tripod.com and www.riskyregencies.blogspot.com.
Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Epilogue
Author’s Note
Lady Emily Carroll wished with all her might that the polished parquet floor beneath her satin slippers would open up and pull her down into the fiery pits of hell.
It would be far preferable to Lady Orman’s ball.
Emily hid behind a bank of towering potted palms, the silk-papered wall at her back as she peered between the green fronds at the crowd. Lady Orman’s rout was the invitation of the Season. Everyone who was anyone at all—and a few nobodies who managed to slip by the footmen—was gathered in the sparkling ballroom. Thousands of candles cast their light over the sheen of fine silk, the glitter of sapphires and rubies, and the snap of lace fans.
It was quite the “dreadful crush” that every London hostess longed for. The dance floor was swirling with the patterns of a country dance, while thickets of people packed around its edges to laugh and chatter and stare. Their voices blurred into a high-pitched, echoing cacophony where no words could be made out at all.
Not that it mattered, Emily thought. No one came to such a gathering for rational conversation. They came to be seen, to have everyone know they were important enough to be invited to Lady Orman’s ball. They paid a great deal of money to the modiste and the hairdresser in order to pack themselves into a ballroom like a tight row of salted fish. To have their hems trod on, their ringlets wilted in the heat, their throats made raw from shouting at one another.
And for what? For the dubious pleasure of having their names in the papers? “Mr and Mrs Whos-it were seen attending Lady Orman’s ball …”
Emily sighed. There were surely many more useful, not to say more pleasant, things to do with one’s time. But her parents and her brother Robert seemed to enjoy it.
She stood on tiptoe, peering through the palms to see her brother dancing with his new wife, Amy. They were laughing as they spun around, their faces alight with pleasure. Well, Amy did love society; she was good at being sociable, and that was all the better for Rob’s fledgling political career. They were surely well matched, even if Amy’s ancient-named family had not much money.
That was what Emily’s parents, the Earl and Countess of Moreby, said anyway. Amy’s family name, as old as their own, and her outgoing personality were fine assets, and a good excuse for letting Rob marry where he chose.
Besides, they would add, with sidelong glances at Emily herself, Emily will make our fortune. She is bound to marry very well!
Except that Emily had been a terrible disappointment to them thus far. She had not come close to marrying a title or a fortune. Or marrying anyone at all. And now the Season was almost over.
She instinctively raised her hand to nervously chew at her thumbnail, before she remembered she wore silk gloves. Her hand fell back to her side, tucked into the folds of her silver-embroidered white silk skirts. When, oh, when would that floor open up already?
The whole evening, the noise, the heat, the smell of melting candles and a hundred perfumes, bore down on her like an anvil. Soon, she would have to leave her little palmy sanctuary and join her parents. They would want to find her a partner for the next dance. That was what she did at every ball, let them match her up with rich lords—both young, spotty ones and old, portly ones—let them extol her beauty and goodness while she stood there with her cheeks on fire.
