To Wed The Widow (The Reluctant Bride Collection)

Fiction. Romance. Historical Fiction. HTML:Come back to a time when manners are everything and rules are made to never be broken. Come back to a time when men are in charge and women do what they are told...Yeah, that never happened.Welcome to Megan Bryce's Regencyland, where ladies with backbone get what they want. Where a woman can thumb her nose at rules and care little for convention, and yet somehow, unexpectedly and most reluctantly, find love.To Wed The WidowA man with a Future, the Honorable George Sinclair would rather poke his eye out than take his place beside his brother and learn How To Be An Earl. But when an earl orders, a brother obeys. And when an earl tries to make his brother steady and responsible and old and gray, well... he just might kill them both. A woman with a Past, Lady Haywood is a scandalous distraction that no honorable gentleman can ignore. Especially one who's just been told that his very happy life is changing irrevocably to the boring. But even if a scandalous distraction is what George wants, what he needs is a wife. A virgin wife. A scandal-less wife...The earl would be the first to say that his brother has always had a problem choosing what he needs over what he wants. Lady Haywood would say that very few women who have buried five husbands would bother with a sixth. And George would say...why, this sounds like fine fun.*EXCERPT*The room erupted into hushed whispers and excited laughter and the very Honorable George Sinclair breathed it in deeply and thought to himself, for the first time, that it was good to be home.He hadn't missed England. India had sunk into his bones; the heat, the food, the never-ending roar of life. He hadn't wanted to leave; he mourned the fact that he'd never be able to return.India had sent him home a changed man. He'd never be warm again; his greatcoat was now a permanent part of his wardrobe no matter how brightly the weak English sun tried to shine. Food would never taste again; flavorless, spiceless, and missing that now familiar bite. And he stayed as far from the country as he could because the silence was too much to take.That, and his brother the earl.He was too much to take as well.But here, in town, with the excitement of balls and the roar of life and the rules, here George Sinclair found what he hadn't realized he'd been missing.Scandal.The noise level somehow both increased and decreased at the same time as she entered and he turned to look at just who could cause such a commotion.Her golden hair piled high atop her head, her plunging neckline peaking coyly from beneath row upon row of jeweled necklaces.She paused, looking down on her subjects and they looked back, twittering and fluttering, and Sinclair thought that it was not enough. There should have been trumpets fanfaring and fireworks exploding because a regal queen had deigned to grace them with her presence.Sinclair poked his friend in the side. "Just who, pray tell, is that?"George St. Clair looked to where his friend pointed and fingered his cravat. "Mmm. The widow."Sinclair trembled with delight. "She has an epithet? The widow? How very intriguing.""A richly deserved one. She has had five husbands, all dead within one year of the wedding. The last, rumor has it, died whilst in bed and under her. Two weeks ago."Sinclair jolted when he realized her dress was black. That she was in mourning. Her dress skimmed here and flared there, and despite the color said nothing about mourning.Sinclair's eyes followed the curves and flares and he said, "Lucky bastard."St. Clair snorted and Sinclair looked at him with an eyebrow raised. "Is that not the most fervent wish of every man? To die naked, in bed, and beneath a beautiful woman riding him into everlasting oblivion?""It is apparently many a...… (more)