THE SEDUCTION OF AN ENGLISH SCOUNDREL (BOSCASTLE AFFAIRS #1) BY JILLIAN HUNTER – eBook Details Online
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- Authors: Jillian Hunter
- Language: English
- Genre: Historical Romance
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Mayfair
London, England
1814
The Boscastle-Welsham marriage would have been the wedding of the
year—if the groom had bothered to put in an appearance. Sir Nigel
Boscastle was so noticeably absent from his own nuptials that the bride’s
father had been forced to walk the long-suffering Lady Jane to the altar
where, surrounded by a cluster of distraught bridesmaids, the wedding party
minus the bridegroom waited. And waited.
“I shall deal with the corkbrain after the ceremony,” the distinguished
seventh Earl of Belshire muttered as his daughter stood with her back to
their bewildered guests. “The idiot will be late to his own funeral.”
After several minutes of confusion, the minister and bride’s parents
decided that perhaps until the bridegroom arrived, Jane’s older brother,
Simon, Viscount Tarleton, should stand in as temporary proxy. And so
brother and abandoned bride stood. And stood.
At first no one doubted that Nigel would eventually show up to rescue
Jane from this embarrassment. If, as one guest in the third pew remarked,
he remembered what day it was.
After all, Sir Nigel was hardly known about town for his towering
intellect, although his generosity had earned him a loyal following of
friends.
The bride-to-be had not wished to be married at the popular St. George’s
Church in Hanover Square. A respectable young lady never previously
involved in scandal, she avoided fussy affairs as a rule. Yet today the haut
ton were crammed to capacity inside the private chapel of the Marquess of
Sedgecroft’s Park Lane mansion. To witness a wedding that apparently
would not take place.
Lady Jane Welsham, the guests agreed, resembled a royal princess. She
positively glowed in an eggshell white satin dress worn over an ivory tissue
underbodice. The scalloped hem of the dress foamed daintily around her
pearl-seeded slippers. A flowing veil of Honiton lace framed her face,
casting in shadow whatever emotion it revealed, to the disappointment of
her enrapt audience.
The bouquet of white rosebuds she held glistened from a double-dipping
in gilt. White kidskin gloves encased her slender hands, hands that
remained remarkably steady considering that their owner was undergoing
one of the worst humiliations in a young woman’s life. To be abandoned at
the altar.
What could have happened?
Everyone in London knew that the parents of both parties had been
planning this wedding since Jane and Nigel had toddled about the nursery
in nappies. The Society papers had remarked more than once that rarely had
a betrothed couple seemed so compatible.
What had gone wrong?
The bride’s sister Lady Caroline bitterly remarked, “Those flowers will
have dried into a sachet if Nigel takes any longer. I shall strangle him for
this.”
Her younger sister, Lady Miranda, shook her head in sympathy. “Poor
Nigel. Do you think he might have gotten lost? Jane did say he required a
map to find his carriage.”
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