To Seduce a Bride A Novel [Paperback]

USNicole Jordan is the nationally bestselling author of fifteen historical romances. She recently moved with her real-life hero to the Rocky Mountains of Utah, where she is at work on the next book of her scorching Notorious series–tales of dangerous rakes and bold adventurers during the Regency era.Chapter One


Lady Freemantle’s matchmaking is vexing enough to drive a saint mad, and you know I am no saint.
—Miss Lily Loring to Fanny Irwin

Danvers Hall
Chiswick, England
June 1817

“I cannot understand why he flusters me so,” Lilian Loring mumbled unevenly to the gray cat. “No man has ever unsettled me this way.”

A soft purr was the only reply Lily received to her complaint.

“It is not merely because he is handsome, either. I am not ord’narily attracted to handsome noblemen.” If anything she was highly wary of them. “And I care nothing for his rank and consequence.”

Giving a woozy sigh, Lily stretched out in the straw as she stroked the cat’s fur. She was hard-pressed to explain the deplorable effect that Heath Griffin, Marquess of Claybourne, had on her. Particularly since she had just met him for the first time this morning at her sister’s wedding.

“The trouble is, he is too sharm . . . charming.” And virile. And vital. And powerful.

Whatever his attributes, they made her absurdly breathless and agitated.

“Devil take ’im. . . .”

Lily bit her lip and fell silent upon registering how slurred her words sounded. No doubt the result of drinking three full glasses of champagne—which was at least two glasses too many, given how spirits of any kind went directly to her head. But the events of the evening had been dismaying enough to drive her to imbibe.

She wasn’t completely foxed at the moment, yet it had probably been a mistake to attempt climbing up to lC,