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First published in Great Britain by HarperImpulse 2015
Copyright © Jane Lark 2015
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Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2015
Cover design by Zoe Jackson
Jane Lark asserts the moral right
to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue record for this book is
available from the British Library
This novel is entirely a work of fiction.
The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are
the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to
actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is
entirely coincidental.
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Digital eFirst: Automatically produced by Atomik ePublisher from Easypress.
Ebook Edition © January 2015 ISBN: 9780007594665
Version 2015-01-13
“Jane Lark has an incredible talent to draw the reader in from the first page onwards.”
Cosmochicklitan Book Reviews
"Any description that I give you would not only spoil the story but could not give this book a tenth of the justice that it deserves. Wonderful!"
Candy Coated Book Blog
"This book held me captive after the first 2 pages. If I could crawl inside and live in there with the characters I would."
A Reading Nurse Blogspot
“The book swings from truly swoon-worthy, tense and heart wrenching, highly erotic and everything else in between.”
BestChickLit.com
“I love Ms. Lark's style—beautifully descriptive, emotional and can I say, just plain delicious reading? This is the kind of mixer upper I've been looking for in romance lately.”
Devastating Reads BlogSpot
It was a renowned truth, that any world-worn rogue, without a feather to fly with, must be on the hunt for a wife, or rather her dowry. As the parody of Miss Austen’s verse, from her charming little novel about country life, ran through Drew’s head, a sound of mocking humour rumbled through his chest and he leaned a shoulder against the false pillar in the Earl of Derwent’s ballroom watching town life.
The pillar was wooden, painted to look like marble. Like everyone in this damned room, it was a farce. A shallow image. A performance… Nothing here was what it seemed. Society lived a damned lie and he had lived it for a lifetime.
He was a bastard, sold by his mother to her husband as worth the risk of giving her naturally born son his family’s name to keep up the façade and to save the reputation of the Framlington title.
Damn the title…Damn the bloody name… Drew had no interest in either.
He was bored of this. Bored of pretence. Bored of the games these people and he played. Bored of the face he displayed to the world and bored of the man who suffered all this behind a closed door.
He wished to escape it. He had a plan. Of course plans required money. But his plan covered that. He was seeking a well-dowered young woman to take as his wife, and therefore earn himself an instant fortune. A fortune which he would use to pack up his bags and retire to a quiet life, away from town, away from this… Perhaps he would experience life then just as Miss Austen wrote it. Or was ‘Country Life’ an equal façade? Never mind wherever he went, he would not live behind a façade. He’d had his fill of charades.
“Have you seen Marlow’s daughter?” Mark leaned to Drew’s ear. “She would be a prize.”
Drew looked at his friend and lifted his shoulder away from the pillar, straightening up. “I have.”
“She looks remarkable.”
“She does indeed.” He’d been watching her. She was on his list of potential wives.
“Are you intending to try her?”
“I would be a fool if I did not. Look at her…” Yet the she in question, Miss Mary Marlow, was as far above his reach as the sun. The step-sister of a duke – with a bastard… It was not a match that would be desired by the sweet young miss’s mama and papa.
Yet Miss Marlow was the most appealing to the eye and Drew had been awaiting his moment to explore his opportunity with her. The time had come. He’d not been standing here for his pleasure. He’d been standing here waiting for Miss Marlow to complete her dance.