The Wild Wellingham Brothers: High Seas To High Society / One Unashamed Night / One Illicit Night / The Dissolute Duke
In this exciting collection, Sophia James unleashes the charms of the four wild Wellingham brothers…and their sister!HIGH SEAS TO HIGH SOCIETYAsher Wellingham, Duke of Carisbrook, had happened upon Lady Emma Seaton swimming naked and, beyond her beauty, had seen the mark of a sword on her thigh. The Duke is intrigued by this lady of contradictions—and vows to possess her!ONE UNASHAMED NIGHTForced by a snowstorm to spend the night together, guarded Lord Taris Wellingham and plain Beatrice-Maude Bassingstoke seek solace in each other’s arms. The passion they unleash surprises them both. How will their lives change with the coming of the new day?ONE ILLICIT NIGHTAfter one uncharacteristically wicked night, the once reckless Eleanor Bracewell-Lowen now leads a safe and prudent life. On his return to London’s high society, Lord Cristo Wellingham looks different from the man she knew so briefly in Paris, but he is still as magnetic…THE DISSOLUTE DUKEThree years after notorious rake Taylen Ellesmere, Duke of Alderworth, turned his back on their marriage, Lady Lucinda has just placed one delicately-shod foot back in the halls of the ton when her husband returns. He has an offer she can’t refuse. And in exchange? Their wedding night!
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SOPHIA JAMES lives in Chelsea Bay on Auckland New Zealand’s North Shore, with her husband, who is an artist, and her three children. She spends her morning teaching adults English at the local Migrant School, and writes in the afternoon. Sophia has a degree in English and History from Auckland University, and believes her love of writing was formed reading Georgette Heyer with her twin sister at her grandmother’s house.
The Wild Wellingham Brothers
High Seas to High Society
One Unashamed Night
One Illicit Night
The Dissolute Duke
Sophia James
Table of Contents
For Pete, my pirate!
London, May 1822
Asher Wellingham, the ninth Duke of Carisbrook, stood in a corner with his host Lord Henshaw, and watched a woman sitting alone near the dais.
‘Who is she, Jack?’ he asked with feigned casualness. In truth he had noticed her as soon as he had walked into the salon, for it was seldom a beautiful woman wore such a plain gown to a ball and then sat alone looking for all the world as if she was actually enjoying her own company.
‘Lady Emma Seaton, the Countess of Haversham’s niece. She arrived in London six weeks ago and every young blood has tried to strike up some sort of relationship with her since.’
‘Arrived…from where?’
‘Somewhere in the country, I would presume. Obviously she has not seen a London stylist—I’ve never seen hair quite like it.’
Asher’s gaze travelled across a thatch of blonde curls barely restrained by hairpins. A home-fashioned coiffure, he surmised, and executed badly, yet the whole effect of sun-bleached curls threaded with gold and corn was unsettling.
People seldom surprised him. Or intrigued him.
But this girl with her lack of self-consciousness and her fashion faux pas had succeeded. What woman, after all, ate her supper whilst wearing her gloves and licked the end of a silk-covered finger when the jam of a sweet biscuit stained it.
This one did.
Aye, this one did not nibble on the food as every other female in the room was wont to do, but piled the plate before her from the tray of a passing waiter as though her very life depended on it. As though it might indeed be a good deal of time until the next course showed itself, or as if, perhaps in her old life, in some country village, she had not had as much food as she had needed and could barely believe that she was being offered such bounty here.
He saw others looking her way and felt vaguely irritated. The buzz of whisper had grown as she stood, tall and thin, the hem of her gown reaching a good inch above the line that would have been decent and at least three inches above the length that was now in vogue.
He could hear the conjecture and the whispers all around, even if she did not seem to, and he wondered why the hell it should concern him anyway, but there was something about her. Some hint of familiarity. Some elusive memory of fellowship that could not quite be shaken. How could he know her? He tried to determine the colour of her eyes, but from this distance he could not. Turning, he cursed the Countess of Haversham for being remiss in seeing to her niece’s wardrobe and hairstyle, and left Lady Emma Seaton to the circling society wolves.
The room was crowded with men and women chatting at great speed and without pause, the music from a stringed quartet hardly discernible across the din.
Emerald frowned and sat, closing her eyes in order to listen better. People here did not seem to appreciate music, did not seem to understand that, when silence threaded the undertones, sound could be better heard, melody enhanced.
The music was unfamiliar, an English tune and lightly woven. She could almost feel her harmonica at her lips, notes soft across whisper-swelling seas. Jamaica crowded in like an ache.
Nay, she mustn’t think of this, she admonished herself, drawing her body more upright in the chair and forcing herself to observe the pressing crowd around her.
