There was colour on her cheeks and her eyes were lowered. It came to him that for all her directness and bravado Laura was shy. ‘It has been a long time,’ she had said. Six years for a sensual, beautiful woman who had known physical passion was indeed a long time. Time to ache—and time to grow reticent.

‘Would you like me to put out the light?’ he asked.

She looked up at that, eyes wide. ‘Oh, no! I want … I want to see you.’ A smile trembled on her lips. ‘I want to be very bold and I fear to shock you.’

‘Shock me?’ Avery tugged his neckcloth free and stripped off his coat and waistcoat. ‘I would love you to shock me, Laura.’

He finished undressing, his arousal stoked by her unwavering gaze. When she ran her tongue along her lower lip he almost lost control like a callow youth.

He dragged a deep, steadying breath down into his lungs. ‘Show me. Let me show you.’

AUTHOR NOTE

I always enjoy a ‘secret baby’ plot, and I began to wonder what would happen if it was the hero with the baby and the heroine with the secret. What would drive a respected diplomat to take on the scandal of raising someone else’s love-child, and what lengths would a woman go to in order to take back her daughter from him? Gradually I got to know Lady Laura Campion, whose unhappiness leaves her uncaring that society calls her Scandal’s Virgin. It took me longer to discover the motives of Avery, the gorgeous, intelligent, haunted Earl of Wykeham—other than that the cause of all the deception and heartbreak, six-year-old Alice, has him firmly twisted round her little finger!

I hope you enjoy getting to know them all too, and discovering how Laura and Avery manage to untangle years of deceit, passion and distrust without bringing scandal down on Alice’s innocent head.

LOUISE ALLEN has been immersing herself in history, real and fictional, for as long as she can remember. She finds landscapes and places evoke powerful images of the past—Venice, Burgundy and the Greek islands are favourite atmospheric destinations. Louise lives on the North Norfolk coast, where she shares with her husband the cottage they have renovated. She spends her spare time gardening, researching family history or travelling in the UK and abroad in search of inspiration. Please visit Louise’s website—www.louiseallenregency.co.uk—for the latest news, or find her on Twitter @LouiseRegency and on Facebook.

To all my friends in the Romantic Novelists’ Association.

Chapter One

April 1816—the park of Westerwood Manor,

Hertfordshire

Keep still! The circular image shook, swooped over immaculately scythed grass, across flower beds fresh with young growth, over a flash of bright blue cotton... There.

The watcher’s hand jammed so hard against the branch that the rough bark scored the skin from the knuckles. Yes. Glossy ringlets the colour of autumn leaves, determined little chin, flyaway brows over eyes that must surely be clear green. Beautiful. She is so beautiful.

And then the girl smiled and turned, laughing as she ran. The telescope jerked up and a man’s face filled the circle. Hair the colour of autumn leaves, stubborn chin, angled brows, sensual mouth turned up into a smile of delight.

‘Papa! Papa!’ The child’s voice floated back through the still, warm air. The man stooped to scoop her up and turned towards the house as she buried her face in the angle between neck and broad shoulder and clung like a happy monkey. Her laughter drifted on the breeze towards the woodland edge.

The telescope fell with a dull thud onto the golden drift of fallen beech leaves and the woman who had held it slid down the tree trunk until she huddled at its base, racked with the sobs that she had stifled for six long years.

* * *

‘You saw her then.’

‘How did you guess?’ Laura Campion let the door slam shut behind her.

‘Look at the state of you. All blubbered up. You never could get away with tears, my la—ma’am.’

Trust Mab to exhibit the delicate sensibility of a brick. The scratch of wicker on wood as the maid pushed aside the mending basket, the sharp tap of her heels on the brick floor, the creak of the chain as

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