Scandalously Wed To The Captain
Bound to a stranger …in a secret ceremony! With her finances, reputation and heart all broken by a family scandal, Grace Linwood seeks employment. But the lady she’s companion to isn’t long for this world. She’s intent on seeing Grace protected and quickly wed to her son, curt and closed-off Captain Spencer Dauntsey. With little choice, all Grace can say is ‘I do’ …but who is the man she has just married?
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Bound to a stranger
...in a secret ceremony!
With her finances, reputation and heart all broken by a family scandal, Grace Linwood seeks employment. But the lady she’s companion to isn’t long for this world. She’s intent on seeing Grace protected and quickly wed to her son, curt and closed-off Captain Spencer Dauntsey. With little choice, all Grace can say is “I do”...but who is the man she has just married?
JOANNA JOHNSON lives in a pretty Wiltshire village with her husband and as many books as she can sneak into the house. Being part of the Historical Romance family is a dream come true for her. She has always loved writing, starting at five years old with a series about a cat, imaginatively named ‘Cat’, and keeps a notebook in every handbag—just in case. In her spare time she likes finding new places to have a cream tea, stroking scruffy dogs and trying to remember where she left her glasses.
ISBN: 978-1-474-08954-8
SCANDALOUSLY WED TO THE CAPTAIN
© 2019 Joanna Johnson
Published in Great Britain 2019
by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF
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For my husband, family and friends—
thank you for all the help and support along the way.
Contents
Note to Readers
Grace Linwood stared out at the flat haze of the horizon until she could no longer tell if the tang of salt on her tongue was from the sea spray or her own tears.
How long she’d stood on the rain-lashed Cobb she couldn’t say; only that when Henry Earls had pushed a piece of paper into her hand he had worn a halo of January sunlight and now that same sun was setting over the sea somewhere far beyond her reach.
The cries of gulls wheeling overhead mixed with the whistle of wind in her ears, its invisible hands lifting her cloak to snap behind her as though it were alive. Tiny needles of rain pricked at her cold cheeks, at the hands that held a letter between nerveless fingers, but Grace was numb to everything but the lead weight of despair that had settled behind her breastbone.
In light of your father’s recent incarceration I must rescind my offer of marriage. The unfortunate reversal in your position and fortune render me unable to continue our engagement and I am certain you will be good enough to release me from any obligation towards you.
A hot tide of tears rose up, stinging her eyes alongside the salt spray thrown into her face. If only they would stop coming. Surely there couldn’t be many left to fall, but each time she recalled Henry’s callous words pain twisted like a knife in her guts and a fresh stream fell to mingle with the rain.
Perhaps some part of her should have questioned why such a man would notice
