Unbuttoning the Innocent Miss (Wallflowers to Wives) Read online

  “All you have to do is watch my mouth.”

  Simple in theory, but how can the ton’s most eligible catch, Jonathon Lashley, concentrate on his French lessons with Miss Claire Welton when all he wants is to claim that delectable mouth with a heart-stopping kiss?

  Wallflower Claire has loved dashing Jonathon for years—and this Season, she’s finally doing something about it! Except the closer she gets, the more she realizes how little she really knows him, and how much he has to teach her...especially about the art of seduction!

  Wallflowers to Wives

  Out of the shadows, into the marriage bed!

  In Regency England, young women were defined by their prospects in the marriage market. But what of the girls who were presented to society...and not snapped up?

  Bronwyn Scott invites you to

  The Left Behind Girls Club

  Three years after their debut and still without rings on their fingers, Claire Welton, Evie Milham, May Worth and Beatrice Penrose are ready to leave the shadows and step into the light. Now London will have to prepare itself...because these overlooked girls are about to take the ton by storm!

  Read Claire’s story in

  Unbuttoning the Innocent Miss

  Available now!

  And watch for more Wallflowers to Wives stories—coming soon!

  Author Note

  Nothing will change until we do! This is the motto of The Left Behind Girls Club.

  Claire’s story is the first in Wallflowers to Wives, a series of four books featuring four women who decide to change their circumstances. This is no small feat for a woman in Regency England. The higher born a lady is, the harder it is to challenge society and family who’ve had expectations for you since the day you were born. Yet these four young women find the courage to be themselves without living outside polite society, which, they discover, is a very fine line to walk!

  More important, Claire finds a way to be herself. She doesn’t have to change who she is, just her situation.

  This was a fun book to write because it takes advantage of some lesser-known destinations in London. I especially loved the parts where Claire and Jonathon sneak off to the French neighborhood of Soho. There really was one! There was a French market, too, but Claire and Jonathon never quite get there—you’ll see why.

  Happy reading! Remember, the best way to help an author is if you read a book you like, stop by a review site and post your thoughts! I also love to see you on my website, blog and Facebook, so don’t be a stranger. Find me at bronwynswriting.blogspot.com and bronwynnscott.com.

  Bronwyn Scott

  Unbuttoning the

  Innocent Miss

  Bronwyn Scott is a communications instructor at Pierce College in the United States, and is the proud mother of three wonderful children (one boy and two girls). When she’s not teaching or writing, she enjoys playing the piano, traveling—especially to Florence, Italy—and studying history and foreign languages. Readers can stay in touch on Bronwyn’s website, bronwynnscott.com, or at her blog, bronwynswriting.blogspot.com. She loves to hear from readers.

  Books by Bronwyn Scott

  Harlequin Historical

  and Harlequin Historical Undone! ebooks

  Wallflowers to Wives

  Unbuttoning the Innocent Miss

  Rakes on Tour

  Rake Most Likely to Rebel

  Rake Most Likely to Thrill

  Rake Most Likely to Seduce

  Rake Most Likely to Sin

  Rakes of the Caribbean

  Playing the Rake’s Game

  Breaking the Rake’s Rules

  Craving the Rake’s Touch (Undone!)

  Rakes Who Make Husbands Jealous

  Secrets of a Gentleman Escort

  London’s Most Wanted Rake

  An Officer But No Gentleman (Undone!)

  A Most Indecent Gentleman (Undone!)

  Ladies of Impropriety

  A Lady Risks All

  A Lady Dares

  A Lady Seduces (Undone!)

  Visit the Author Profile page at Harlequin.com for more titles.

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  For all my PEO sisters!

  This is a series about women who decide to make their own destinies. Their ambition to remake themselves is not all that different from the ambition held by our seven founders. With special love, of course, to my chapter of outstanding women. Thanks for all your support.

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Epilogue

  Excerpt from Commanded by the French Duke by Meriel Fuller

  Chapter One

  London—May 1821

  It all started with two words. ‘I’m pregnant.’ The phrase jerked Claire rudely out of her own admittedly rather self-centred thoughts and thrust her into the horrifying present of someone else’s reality. Had Beatrice truly said she was pregnant? Claire stared at her friend in abject confusion as the words settled. Pregnant, as in going to have a baby. Enceinte. Her brain switched to its fail-safe coping mechanism, French. In a crisis, everything always sounded better in French.

  Then the shock came, waves of it. Having a baby implied certain other things had taken place prior unless one was the Virgin Mary. Beatrice, one of her best friends since childhood, whom she had played with as a girl, whom she’d come out with, whom she’d not thought kept any secrets from her, had taken a lover and hadn’t told her. Hadn’t told any of them if the looks on the faces of Evie and May were anything to go on. They looked much like she suspected her face did—all pale emotion and bewilderment, while their brains picked through all responses possible for such a situation.

  All the while Bea sat still, equally pale, waiting for an answer, watching each of them expectantly and patiently while their emotions rolled. This was not at all what Claire had been anticipating today. Today’s meeting in the tiny attic garret of Evie Milham’s town house was supposed to be like all the other meetings: secret and commiserative. They would bemoan the lack of male attention and/or intelligence, eat some cake and go home, only to meet the following week and do it all over again. It was a comforting ritual they’d sustained over the last three years since they’d come out, when hopes had been, if not high, certainly higher than they’d become after three years on the marriage mart and no takers.

  Someone had to say something. Even May with her ever-ready comments couldn’t seem to mount an adequate response. For the first time, Claire noticed how tightly Beatrice’s hands were clenched in her lap, t
wo hard, pale fists while she waited for their...verdict.

  Suddenly Claire understood. Beatrice was waiting for them to pass judgement on her, against her, no doubt wondering right now which of her friends would move away first. They wouldn’t be the first to know. Beatrice had already been through this with her family. Apparently, she thought she knew what to expect: rejection of the very worst sort. Exile. The social death of anonymity. It certainly made Claire’s own problems pale by comparison. She’d been selfishly absorbed in her own concerns while Beatrice grappled with something much larger. Beatrice shouldn’t have to do it alone.

  She would help, if only she knew how. She needed information and that gave her a voice again. The questions came out in a rush. ‘How? When? More importantly, who?’

  Beatrice swallowed hard, the questions no doubt discomforting, but it was too late to take them back. Quiet Evie shot her a quelling look in scolding and leaned forward to take Beatrice’s hand. ‘Bea, you don’t have to tell us.’

  Bea shook her dark head. ‘Yes, I do. You have a right to know. I owe you all this much. You will have decisions to make.’ She looked at each of them in turn and drew a fortifying breath. Claire’s heart broke for her friend. She wanted to tell Bea it would be all right, but she couldn’t. Things might never be ‘all right’ for Beatrice Penrose again.

  Beatrice began to speak. ‘Over the winter, I became acquainted with the friend of a neighbour who had come for an extended visit. In hindsight, the term “repairing lease” might be more appropriate. There were likely “reasons” he was in the countryside of Sussex instead of London or somewhere far more interesting.

  ‘I did not look past his handsome face, his manners and the acceptance he’d been afforded by local gentry because of those attributes. Others easily accepted him without question and I did, too.’ Beatrice’s fingers pleated her skirt absently. ‘The country in winter is as dull as the weather and he was exciting, new. No one had ever been interested in me the way he was.’

  Claire nodded in sympathy. She felt guilty for being absent. Her family had spent the holidays in the Lake District. She’d not been there to steer Beatrice away from danger. Neither had May, whose family had stayed in town, nor Evie, who had gone to one of her sisters’. Beatrice had been entirely on her own. Alone and lonely.

  Claire had plenty of experience, they all did, when it came to being overlooked by gentlemen of society for one reason or another; She was too smart with her acumen for languages when most gentlemen could barely master one; Evie was too discreet as to become anonymous and May was just too well informed, too sharp tongued. May had a talent for eavesdropping. She knew everything about everyone and that made her positively frightening to men who preferred to hide their secrets.

  ‘He and I would take long walks and discuss everything: plant life, wildlife, the latest findings from the Royal Academy of Sciences. He listened to my opinions.’ Beatrice’s gaze grew misty with remembrance. Claire heard the wistfulness there even now with ruin facing Beatrice and it surprised her, knowing the perfidy this lover was capable of. Then she saw the dilemma in Beatrice’s eyes. Bea wanted to hate him but she couldn’t, didn’t. It was not a dilemma Claire could understand. The cad had left her pregnant. Ruined her. Destroyed her, in fact, and Beatrice could not bring herself to hate him, not quite, not yet.

  ‘Listening turned out to be far more seductive than I could ever have imagined, especially when that listening was accompanied by a pair of grey eyes the colour of a winter storm. I was convinced he valued me in the most important of ways.’

  Claire put a hand over her mouth and suppressed a sad sigh. In return for that false respect, Beatrice had given him the most important thing she possessed: she’d trusted him with her reputation. To her detriment, it turned out.

  Beatrice looked down at her lap, a wry half-smile on her mouth, her tone part self-reassurance, part self-deprecation. ‘The awful thing is, I tell myself surely it wasn’t all illusion. Surely he found me interesting to some extent. Even now, with disaster staring me hard in the face, I’m not convinced he’d felt nothing for me. Surely one can’t fake that depth of emotion. I guess I’ll never know.’ Instinctively, her hand moved to the flat of her stomach.

  Claire’s eyes caught the motion. ‘How far gone are you, Bea?’

  ‘Eight weeks.’ Two months. Long enough to be sure. Long enough for the announcement not to be a mistake. Then again, Claire had never known Bea to make mistakes. Unlike her, Bea was always certain, always sure of her direction.

  ‘And the father? How far gone is he?’ May asked, characteristically honing in on the heart of the issue. Clare exchanged a nervous look with Evie. May might have gone too far. But May would not be deterred. ‘Well, we have to know,’ she said resolutely. ‘Will you be marrying him?’

  Bea gave a pretty shrug. ‘The question is hypothetical only. Perhaps I would, if he was here, if our affaire hadn’t been a pretence to him.’

  Claire’s heart swelled with admiration for her brave friend. Even with a baby on the way, Beatrice would not stoop to marry a man if it had all been a game and nothing more. As always, Beatrice’s ethical compass faced true north and would not be compromised. It was an enviable commodity, one that Claire had once possessed herself: to be herself even in the face of great social odds, but somewhere in the last three years she’d lost it, ironically perhaps in an attempt to protect it. It was hard to say when it had started to slide. Maybe it had begun with Rufus Sheriden and refusing his proposal on the principle that she was a unique individual and as such deserved his unique regard, or perhaps it had been the Cecilia Northam incident. It had certainly been a slippery slope since then. She was no longer sure who she was, or what she was capable of.

  May’s cheeks were in high colour, her quick temper rising on behalf of their friend. ‘The gall of the man to leave you pregnant and alone, unwilling to do right by you!’

  Beatrice shook her head, her tone a soft contrast to May’s outrage. ‘He doesn’t know, May. He left before...well, before I knew. Please do not despise him out of hand.’ She took in the whole group with her gaze, perhaps guessing the direction of their thoughts. It was easy to vilify the absent father. ‘It was the most delicious, exquisite week of my life. He brought me flowers, he smiled at me in a way that wiped away all reason. He did not seduce me, I went willingly into this folly. We had a winter of long walks in the cold and a week of illicit loving in abandoned cottages and warm haylofts. He told me he had business in a town a day’s ride away. He didn’t come back.’ But he would always be among them. With a baby on the way, he’d never truly leave them. Ever.

  ‘We have some time. That is good,’ Evie said encouragingly, still holding Bea’s hand. Thank goodness for Evie, always willing to put a cheerful outlook on things. ‘It will be a Christmas baby. You shouldn’t be showing until the very end of the Season. Fashions are fuller this year. I can start altering gowns right away.’ Evie was at her best when she had a needle in her hand and fabric to transform. But her words spoke for them all. They would not desert their friend. Claire glanced around the circle. They were all smiling at Beatrice now; smiling their support, their approval.

  Tears prickled obviously in Beatrice’s eyes. She swiped helplessly at them. ‘Dash it all! I wasn’t going to cry. All I’ve done this past week is sob. Thank you, thank you, all of you. I didn’t expect this.’

  ‘What did you expect?’ Claire couldn’t keep the sense of betrayal out of her voice. ‘Did you think we’d desert you at the first sign of trouble? After all we’ve been through, certainly you know we’re made of sterner stuff.’

  May took Claire’s lead and leaned forward, her hand joining Evie’s. ‘You were there for me when my family forgot my birthday. You made me a cake and stole a whole bottle of brandy out of your father’s liquor cabinet.’ Claire remembered that. May’s brother had got a prime government appointment and her pare
nts had gone to London to celebrate with him, leaving May home. Alone. For her seventeenth birthday, the last birthday of her childhood.

  ‘We got rather drunk that evening, I recall.’ Beatrice managed a small smile.

  ‘You were there for me through both of my sisters’ weddings,’ Evie added quietly. ‘I had so much work sewing lace and pearls on to their gowns I hadn’t time to see to my own gown. But you stayed up all night to help me finish my own dress for the wedding.’

  ‘I think my fingers are still reluctant to pick up a needle again to this day!’ Beatrice laughed.

  Claire added her hand on top of the pile. ‘And you were there when I refused Sheriden. And other times, too.’ Her voice broke a little. Claire cleared her throat. ‘Bea, you’ve always been there, for all of us, our glue holding us together in our time of need. We wouldn’t dream of losing you now.’

  It wasn’t just a rescued birthday, or a stitch in time on a dress. They’d been there for each other when no one else had. They understood how much it hurt to be left behind by their families, no matter how unintentional, and how much it hurt to face the reality that this was a foreshadowing of their future. They’d been left behind by the dashing gentlemen of the ton.

  There would be no gallant matches. Those gentlemen had looked right through them for years in London’s ballrooms either purposely or accidentally choosing not to see them in lieu of seeing some other dewy-eyed, innocent miss. The world they knew had moved on, leaving them behind because they were too smart or too mousy, too anonymous or too outspoken for the ton’s tastes.

  May pulled her hand out of the pile and broke the silence that had descended on the room. ‘Beatrice is going to have a baby! We should be celebrating. This is a joyous occasion.’ May reached beneath her chair and pulled out the basket she’d brought. ‘I know just what to celebrate with. Cider and Cook’s chocolate cake squares.’

  Claire felt a smile of gratitude for May overtake her face. Leave it to May to know exactly what they needed, what Beatrice needed; not the chocolate, although chocolate helped quite a lot—the celebration. This baby might be a bit unorthodox in its beginnings but it was clear Beatrice was prepared to love the baby, that she already loved it. May passed around chipped cups and the cider jug. She passed around the cake squares, too, until there was only one coveted square left on the plate.

 
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