Wanted: Mail-Order Mistress

Wanted: Mail-Order Mistress
Deborah Hale

He asked for a mistressBetrayed by his first wife, Simon Grimshaw won’t marry again. But sultry nights in Singapore can be lonely – nothing a beautiful English mistress wouldn’t fix! They sent him a wife Believing herself a worldly woman, Bethan Conway answers an advert to become a wife, but is secretly searching for her missing brother.Her naivety hits her hard when she’s robbed and stranded! Luckily her saviour is none other than her husband-to-be, but soon Bethan wonders if she’s jumped straight from the frying pan…into the fire!Gentlemen of Fortune Three men with money, power and success… Looking to share life with the right woman

‘Save your warnings, Mr Grimshaw.’ She stood toe-to-toe with him and fixed him with a blistering glare.

Did she not realise the danger in which she’d placed herself? He had only to raise his arms and bend forward a few perilous inches and she would be captive in his embrace again, his lips on hers, taking what they wanted.

Or did she know exactly what she was doing? Was she trying to provoke his lust to test how much power she could exercise over him? Every muscle in Simon’s body tensed with the effort to keep his hands from her.

‘I am not the kind of woman you think,’ Bethan insisted. ‘I would never have come to your bed last night if I’d known that was all you wanted from me. I suppose you reckoned that once you’d ruined me I’d have to take what I could get from you, but you’re wrong. I may have been a green little fool for trusting you, but I’ll be no man’s whore!’

Wanted: Mail-Order Mistress

Deborah Hale

www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)

In the process of tracing her Canadian family to their origins in eighteenth-century Britain, DEBORAH HALE learned a great deal about the period and uncovered plenty of true-life inspiration for her historical romance novels! Deborah lives with her very own hero and their four fast-growing children in Nova Scotia—a province steeped in history and romance!

Deborah invites you to become better acquainted with her by visiting her personal website www.deborahhale.com, or chatting with her in the Harlequin/Mills & Boon online communities.

Previous novels by the same author:

A GENTLEMAN OF SUBSTANCE

THE WEDDING WAGER

MY LORD PROTECTOR

CARPETBAGGER’S WIFE

THE ELUSIVE BRIDE

BORDER BRIDE

LADY LYTE’S LITTLE SECRET

THE BRIDE SHIP

A WINTER NIGHT’S TALE

(part of A Regency Christmas)

MARRIED: THE VIRGIN WIDOW

BOUGHT: THE PENNILESS LADY

Gentlemen of Fortune

This book is dedicated to my faithful readers, who waited so patiently for the release of this series, and to editors Suzanne Clarke and Jenny Hutton, who were committed to making it the best it could be.

Author Note

Welcome to the third book of my series, Gentlemen of Fortune, about the self-made men of Vindicara Trading Company! While I love reading and writing about dashing aristocrats, I’ve always had a fascination with the man who makes his own fortune and charts his own destiny. Such men make great romance heroes, because they have large, definite objectives and an intense motivation to succeed. They will fight for what they want and refuse to let anything or anyone get in the way of achieving their goals—even when it comes to love.

Ford Barrett, Hadrian Northmore and Simon Grimshaw all left Britain for various reasons, going halfway around the world to make their fortunes. Now, though they have money, power and success, they discover those things mean nothing without a special person to share them. As destiny throws three unique women into their paths, these driven men discover that achieving material success is easy compared to the challenge of forging a close, passionate relationship that will last a lifetime.

WANTED: MAIL-ORDER MISTRESS is the story of Simon Grimshaw, the partner left behind in Singapore to carry on the business after Ford and Hadrian return to England. Betrayed by every woman he has ever trusted, Simon is determined never to wed again. When he enlists Hadrian to find him a mistress, Simon gets far more than he bargained for in Bethan Conway. The spirited Welsh beauty mistakenly believes Simon wants a bride, while she has her own secret reason for coming to Singapore—a reason she dares not confide in him!

I hope you will enjoy WANTED: MAIL-ORDER MISTRESS, and the stories of those other Gentlemen of Fortune!

Chapter One

Singapore—June 1825

“So this is it, then?” Brushing a stray auburn curl out of her eyes, Bethan Conway leaned forward in the boat that was ferrying her and her travelling companions into the harbour. “Not a very big town, is it?”

While part of her was thrilled to reach her destination after five months aboard ship, another part wanted to plead with the man at the tiller to turn the boat around and head back out to sea!

“This place would fit into Newcastle’s pocket, right enough.” Bethan’s young friend Ralph gazed around at the mix of buildings that lined both banks of the river. Some were made of timber with huge, shaggy thatched roofs while others had white-plastered walls topped with orderly rows of neat red tiles. “Hasn’t been around long, though, has it? I heard Mr Northmore say there was nowt much here at all when him and his partners landed six year ago.”

“I wouldn’t care if it was nothing but jungle,” croaked Wilson Hall. “As long as I can get solid dry ground under my feet again, I’ll be happy.”

Poor Wilson! Bethan recalled how seasick he and the other three lads from Durham had been at the start of their voyage. They’d envied her ability to keep her food down even in the roughest weather, but they’d been grateful, too. If she hadn’t tended them so capably when they retched and moaned in their hammocks, some might not have recovered.

For the past several days they had talked of little else but how happy they’d be to reach their destination and start work at the Vindicara Trading Company for Mr Simon Grimshaw. Every time she heard that name, a bilious wave had roiled through Bethan like a belated attack of seasickness. While the lads had been hired from the coalmines of northern England to work for Mr Grimshaw, she’d been recruited to marry him.

If she hadn’t been so desperate to reach these distant shores, she never would have pledged her life to a stranger. But she’d been anxious to get there soon, while there was still a faint hope someone might recall what had become of her brother or his ship. At the time, her marriage had seemed too far in the future to be quite real. The closer it came, the more it worried her.

As the boat eased up to the jetty, Bethan inhaled a deep draught of warm air that mingled the tang of the sea with an exotic whiff of coffee and spices. She had made her bargain. Now she must honour it by doing her best to be a good wife to Mr Grimshaw. She only prayed her new husband would not be too old, ugly or ill tempered.

The mooring lines were barely secured when the Durham lads swarmed ashore. Only Wilson had the manners to turn and offer Bethan a hand to disembark, while the others asked anyone within earshot the way to the Vindicara warehouse.

There was no shortage of people on the quay to question. There were a great many men with bare chests the colour of mahogany wood, who wore white turbans and bright-hued skirts wrapped around their legs. Other men, with lighter skin and slanted eyes, carried sacks slung from poles draped over their shoulders. They wore baggy trousers and black-sashed tunics. The front parts of their heads were shaved bald while the jet-black hair further back was braided in long tight plaits. Tall bearded men, wearing white turbans and long robes, looked as if they’d just stepped out of a Bible story. The only thing all these strange people had in common was trouble understanding the broad north-country English of Bethan’s companions.

After a good deal of shouting, waving and pointing, Ralph turned to her. “I think they’re trying to tell us Mr Grimshaw’s warehouse is on the other side of the river.”

“There’s a bridge.” Wilson pointed up the sweeping curve of the quay to a spot where the river narrowed and a slender wooden span connected the two sides of the harbour. “We can walk around.”

The rest agreed and they set off at once. Though Bethan forced one foot in front of the other, her shoes felt strangely heavy. It did not take long for her to fall behind her companions.

The men working on the quay turned to stare at her as she passed. Could it be because they noticed her resemblance to a young man they remembered? Reason told her it wasn’t likely. Their curious interest was probably on account of her skin colour, or because she was a woman.

But it wouldn’t hurt to ask, would it? She’d come all this way and bartered her freedom in hope of finding the last bit of family she had left in the world. She needed to start somewhere.

“Pardon me.” She turned toward a young man wearing white leggings and a turban who smiled at her. “I’m looking for news of a crewman from the barque Dauntless. His ship came to Singapore three years ago. Do you remember it?”

The man’s smile broadened further and he answered in a language she didn’t understand.