In the next sparkling romance in debut author Charis Michael’s Bachelor Lords of London series, a proper viscount meets his match in a beguiling virgin who can't help but break all the rules.
The VirginLady Elisabeth Hamilton-Baythes has a painful secret. At the innocent age of fifteen, she was abducted by highwaymen and sold to a brothel. After two days, a young lord discovers her and enacts a brave rescue to get her out. Now she's a grown woman, working to save other girls from the horror she saw that night and never forgetting the young man who rescued her.
The Viscount
Bryson Courtland, Viscount Rainsleigh has overcome an abusive boyhood, neglectful parents, and a bankrupt title to be one of the wealthiest noblemen in Britain. He works tirelessly to be upright and forthright and proper to a fault. Now he requires only one thing: A proper, forthright, proper wife.
The Unraveling
When a charity event puts Lord Bryson and Lady Elisabeth face-to-face, Bryson has no memory of the wounded girl of long ago. All he can see is a perfect candidate to be his future wife. Elisabeth has never forgotten him, but she worries that the brave boy who saved her so long ago has become a rich man with an unfulfilled life.
As a whirlwind courtship reveals the truth, Bryson must accept that Elisabeth is actually a shadow from his dark past, while Elisabeth must show that love is the noblest virtue of all.
Prologue
On April
12, 1809, Franklin “Frankie” Courtland, 6th Viscount Rainsleigh,
tripped on a root in the bottom of a riverbed and drowned. He was drunk at the time, picnicking with
friends on the banks of the River Wylye.
According an account later given to the magistrate, his lordship simply
fell over, bumped into a fallen log, and sank.
It was
there he remained—“enjoying the cool,” or so his friends believed—until he became
too heavy, too slippery, and, alas, too dead to revive. But they did dislodge him; and after that,
they claimed he floated to the surface, bobbed several times, and then gently
glided downstream. He was later found
just before sunset, face down and bloated (in life, as also in death), beached
on a pebble shoal near Codford.
At the
time the elder Courtland was sinking to the bottom of the river, his son and
heir, Bryson was hunched over a desk in the offices of his fledgling shipping
company, waiting for the very moment his father would die. It had been an exceedingly long, progressively
humiliating wait. Years long—nay, decades.
Luckily
for Bryson, for his ships and his future, he was capable of doing more things
at once than wait, and while his father drank and debauched his way through all
respectability and life, Bryson worked.
It was
an unthinkable thing for a young heir and nobleman—to “work”—but Bryson was
given little choice, considering the impoverished state of the Rainsleigh
crest. He was scarcely eleven years of
age when he made first foray into labor, and not so many years after, into
private enterprise. His life in work had
not ceased since. On the rare occasion
that he didn’t work, he studied.
With his
meager earnings (he began by punting boats on the very river in which his
father later drowned), he made meager investments. These investments reaped small gains—first in
shares in the punting station; later in property along the water; later still,
in other industry up and down the river.
Bryon
lived modestly, worked ceaselessly, and spared only enough to pay his way
through Cambridge, bring up his brother, and see him educated him, as
well. Every guinea earned was
reinvested. He repeated the process
again and again, a little less meagerly each time ‘round.
By the
time the elder viscount’s self-destructive lifestyle wrought his river- and
drink-soaked end, Bryson had managed to accrue a small fortune, launch a
company that built and sailed ships, and construct an elaborate plan for what
he would do when his father finally cocked up his toes and died.
When at
last that day came, Bryson had but one complaint: it took fifty-two hours for
the constable to find him. He was a
viscount for two days before anyone, including himself, even knew it.
But two
days was a trifle compared to a lifetime of waiting. And on the day he learned of his inheritance—nay,
the very hour—he launched his long awaited plan.
By three
o’clock on the fourth day, he’d razed the rotting, reeking east wing of the
family estate in Wiltshire to the ground.
Within
the week, he’d extracted his mother from the west wing and shipped her and a
contingent of discreet caregivers to a villa in Spain.
Within the month, he’d sold every stick of furniture,
every remaining fork and dish, every sweat-soaked toga and opium-tinged
gown. He burned the drapes, burned the
rugs, burned the tapestries. He
delivered the half-starved horses and the fighting dogs to an agricultural
college and pensioned off the remaining staff.
By the six-week mark, he’d unloaded the London
townhome—sold at auction to the highest bidder—and with it, the broken-down
carriage, his father’s dusty arsenal, what was left of the wine stores, and all
the lurid art.
It was a whirlwind evacuation, a gutting, really, and no
one among polite society had ever witnessed a son or heir take such absolute
control and haul away so much family or property quite so fast.
But no
one among polite society was acquainted with Bryson Anders Courtland, the new
Viscount Rainsleigh.
And no
one understood that it was not so much an ending as it was an entirely fresh
start. Once the tearing down ceased, the
rebuilding could begin. New viscountsy, new money, new respect, new life.
It was
an enterprise into which Bryson threw himself like no other. Unlike all others,
however, he could only do so much, one man, alone. For this, he would require
another. A partner. Someone with whom he could work together
towards a common goal. A collaborator
who emulated his precise, immaculate manner. A matriarch, discreet and pure. A
paragon of propriety. A viscountess. A proper, perfect wife.
About CHARIS MICHAELS
Charis
Michaels is thrilled to be making her debut with Avon Impulse. Prior to writing
romance, she studied Journalism at Texas A&M and managed PR for a trade
association. She has also worked as a tour guide at Disney World, harvested
peaches on her family’s farm, and entertained children as the “Story Godmother”
at birthday parties. She has lived in Texas, Florida, and London, England. She
now makes her home in the Washington, D.C.-metro area.
Where to buy THE VIRGIN AND THE VISCOUNT
“His eyes, already hot-blue with passion, dropped, heavy lidded. He leaned in. She thought he would kiss her again, and she turned up her face. Instead, he put his mouth to her ear and growled, “And I merely put my hand up your skirt. I would have taken you right here, in a public building, with patrons and staff and bloody school children walking through. Do not push me, Elisabeth. My God—please. Have mercy.””
I don't know what it is about these, broody, tortured and difficult heroes that I love so much, but there you are, I absolutely loved this book! I guess I could call this a second chance romance since the two main characters had met years before and missed their chance but 15 years later as if fate had intervened they meet again. This was quite different to the HR's I normally read mainly because the heroine has experienced something quite life changing, the peerage might even say she's been compromised...disgraced even. You see Lady Elisabeth Hamilton-Baythes, was sold to a brothel when she was only 15 years old, she would have lived the life of a prostitute had she not been saved by Bryson Courtland, the then son of the infamous Viscount and Viscountess Rainsleigh.
When they meet it's as if Bryson subconsciously never forgot that girl he saved from the brothel all those years ago, although he has no idea who she is now. Out goes his plan to find the perfect and most respectable wife and in comes his plan to have Elisabeth at any cost. He is ruthless in his pursuit but while he may not know who she is, she never forgot. While Elisabeth may have escaped a great danger, Bryson lived through the most cruel upbringing, he became a successful businessman despite his family's reputation and his rough beginning in life. Because of this Bryson is a guarded man, slow to trust and has to the utmost control of himself and everything around him. Elisabeth turns his entire world upside down, and the control he had is blown apart.
“His body felt hard and warm, solid and unmoving. She tucked the sensation away for later—for many, many laters. Their previous exchange had sustained her for fifteen years. This would have to last her for the rest of her life.”
So this book was quite an emotional rollercoaster, from Elisabeth's misgivings about her budding relationship with Bryson, to her complete surrender when she realised that her resistance was futile. Like I said Bryson's pursuit of Elisabeth was relentless and once he had her in his hands nothing would take her away. But there was some really delicious angst too, because all these good stories have one thing in common. Secrets. What's a story without one? And when they are uncovered everything changes and Bryson wasn't so sure of himself any more, he no longer had the will to carry on. It was up to Elisabeth to show him his real value. Let me not spoil the story for you, but if you're looking for a great historical romance with plenty of emotional turmoil and a love that overcomes all... then you should definitely give this a go.
ARC kindly provided by publisher via Edelweiss in return for an honest review
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