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The Marquess had made his stance clear.
He was content—insistent, even—on carrying on in the same manner. Yet what else could she expect? He did not see her—but how could he? He saw only what she had shown him. What she had become—for him.
Suddenly the truth was blindingly clear. She could not stay. Could not pretend that nothing had changed inside her. The pain she felt now was nothing to what such a course would lead to. Before long she would be writhing beneath an unbearable weight of unrequited caring and burgeoning resentment.
Hardwick had no future. Not with the Marquess. Not even without him.
Yet she was more than Hardwick, was she not?
She would never find out if she stayed.
AUTHOR NOTE
Are you a collector? Although I admit to a taste for research books, I don’t have anything to rival Lord Marland’s superior weapons collection. Then again, neither have I made his mistake of pouring all my passions into a room full of ancient swords and gleaming battleaxes—or hefty tomes and old maps, as the case may be!
I’m not über-organised either—unlike Miss Chloe Hardwick. But that’s the beauty of writing romance—the chance to explore all sorts of fantasies! Uptight Chloe may seem like an odd choice to turn the Marquess away from his obsession with instruments of death and towards life, but their quest to find a mysterious spear turns into a journey of discovery for both Chloe and Lord Marland. I hope you’ll enjoy the trip along with them, as they learn to let fear and hurt drift away and hold onto love—and each other—instead.
About the Author
DEB MARLOWE grew up in Pennsylvania with her nose in a book. Luckily, she’d read enough romances to recognise the true modern hero she met at a college Halloween party—even though he wore a tuxedo T-shirt instead of breeches and tall boots. They married, settled in North Carolina, and produced two handsome, intelligent and genuinely amusing boys.
Though she now spends much of her time with her nose in her laptop, for the sake of her family she does occasionally abandon her inner world for the domestic adventure of laundry, dinner and carpool. Despite her sacrifice, not one of the men in her family is yet willing to don breeches or tall boots. She’s working on it.
Deb would love to hear from readers! You can contact her at [email protected]
Previous novels by the same author:
SCANDALOUS LORD, REBELLIOUS MISS
AN IMPROPER ARISTOCRAT HER CINDERELLA SEASON ANNALISE AND THE SCANDALOUS RAKE (part of Regency Summer Scandals) TALL, DARK AND DISREPUTABLE HOW TO MARRY A RAKE
Did you know that some of these novels are also available as eBooks? Visit www.millsandboon.co.uk
Unbuttoning
Miss Hardwick
Deb Marlowe
To Valiant Husband:
For braving trolls and spiders beneath decks,
for technical support, for ‘just stopping by’, for liking my friends, for all the late pick-ups at the gym, for not damaging my calm, for having the best laugh and sharing it so often, and for a thousand and one other reasons.
I know how lucky I am.
Prologue
‘Miss! He’s coming!’
Over the relentless pounding of her own heart, Chloe Hardwick caught the excitement in the maid’s tone. She inched a little closer to her desk, straightened her spine and settled her new spectacles more firmly on her nose.
Clearly this was a woefully insignificant reaction.
‘Miss!’ How was it possible for the girl to shriek and whisper at the same time? Her shivery delight grated on Chloe’s already strained nerves.
‘Oh, heavens!’ From the passageway, the maid hissed again. ‘He’s nearly here!’
Chloe swallowed an empathetic surge of panic. Her day of reckoning had come. It was time to own up to her lies, to confess her deceit to The Marauding Marquess.
It’s only a nickname.
None of his infamous conquests, reportedly gathered on the battlefields and in the bedrooms of Europe, would come into play here at Denning Castle. She repeated the reassurance in her head even as she pinned the girl with a stern stare. ‘Thank you, Daisy. That will be all.’
The disappointed maid flounced away from the door. Making a small concession to her nerves, Chloe ran a finger along the row of buttons marching down the front of her jacket. The garment might be supremely unstylish, but as always she drew strength and a sense of security from her unusual attire, as if the string of tightly spaced fasteners were a line of soldiers standing firm between her and the world. Breathing deeply, she ignored the sounds of arrival, pulled a file from the neat stack at the corner of her desk and bent over it.
‘Hardwick!’ The shout echoed from below, followed by a set of footsteps advancing up the stairs. They paused as Chloe’s unwitting employer called to an unseen servant. ‘There is a loaded wagon coming along behind. No one is to touch it until I am available to supervise. Is that understood?’
He didn’t wait for an answer. The footsteps were nearly upon her now. ‘Hardwick!’ he called again. ‘Did you get it, man?’
Chloe sensed, rather than saw, the large form that erupted into her small study.
‘Hardwick?’
This was it. The moment she’d been preparing for—and dreading—for nearly sixteen months. Nervous energy coursed through her. She closed her eyes and tried desperately to quell it. When she opened her eyes, however, she saw that the quill she held trembled in her hand. Deliberate and slow, she set it down and rose to her feet.
‘Lord Marland, welcome home,’ she said to the quill. ‘How pleased we all are to have you back.’
She forced her gaze up, across her desk and the short expanse of carpet … and stalled at a pair of slightly dusty cavalry boots.
Oh, my.
Chloe did have a weakness for a man in boots—and this set had her swallowing back a sigh of admiration. Plain, black leather, climbing high at the knee and cut away in the rear, worn from use and moulded to a set of muscular calves …
‘Yes, yes. Thank you.’ The Marquess of Marland cleared his throat. ‘I’m looking for Hardwick.’
She raised her eyes, then—up and up, over the tall and powerful figure that dominated the small room—and stalled again.
He looked nothing like she expected—so much more than the portrait in the gallery downstairs. He was magnificent … and wrong. Broad of shoulder, wide of chest and sleekly muscled, Lord Marland looked as if he’d stepped from the pages of history. A Viking warrior, perhaps, or a knight of old, nothing like the few gentlemen of noble birth she’d had a glimpse of before. Even his hair bespoke of ages past: thick, chestnut locks left to grow just past his shoulders and caught up in a queue at his nape. Chloe couldn’t help herself. She ran her gaze over him, mentally stripping away the buff breeches and brown