His Secret Duchess

is the award-winning author of ten novels written for Harlequin. Gayle has lived in Alabama her entire life, except for the years she followed her army aviator husband to a variety of military posts. She holds a master’s degree and an additional certification in the education of the gifted from the University of Alabama. Before beginning her writing career she taught at a number of schools around the Birmingham, Alabama, area.

Gayle writes historicals set in the Regency period of England for Harlequin Historicals and contemporary romantic suspense for Harlequin Intrigue. She was a 1995 Romance Writers of America RITA Award finalist for her first historical title, The Heart’s Desire. Her first contemporary novel, Echoes in the Dark, won the 1996 Award of Excellence presented by the. Colorado Romance Writers, and placed third in the Georgia Romance Writers’ prestigious Maggie Award competition.

Gayle and her husband have been blessed with a wonderful son, who is also a teacher of gifted students, and with a warm and loving extended Southern family and an ever-growing menagerie of cats and dogs.

For my friend and mother-in-love, Emma Lou, who also creates heroes, and who gave me the best.

Prologue (#ulink_cfeae05b-b8a1-5ff1-8b2c-a095ecfcb76f)

April 1815

The chestnut gelding, fresh and eager for the promised run, resented the sedate pace to which his rider was relentlessly holding him. That resentment had been subtly demonstrated to the man who competently, and without conscious thought, controlled the horse’s brief rebellion. To an outside observer, of course, it would have seemed that a flawless connection existed between the horseman’s hands and the magnificent animal they guided.

It was not until Lieutenant Colonel Lord Nicholas Stanton finally sighted the slender figure moving through the dappling shade the ancient oaks provided that he allowed his mount his head, and then only until they had closed the distance. The gelding was pulled up once again, and horse and rider sedately followed the strolling girl until, apparently hearing them behind her, she turned to look over her shoulder.

Her blue eyes, shaded by the wide brim of a style of straw bonnet that would certainly not have been seen in the fashionable city from which the Duke of Vail’s younger son had just returned, openly considered the rider a moment. Her gaze then returned to concentrate on the path she had been following along the edge of the shadowed country lane.

The horseman’s well-shaped lips tilted upward. Nick Stanton was unaccustomed to being snubbed. Especially by women. Indeed, the adulation of the marriageable ladies of the ton during his recent visit to London would have been enough to turn the head of many a man. Not only was he nobly born and extremely well-fixed, but he was an acknowledged military hero, as well, his exploits in Iberia having been remarked upon in dispatches by Wellington himself.

It didn’t hurt his standing with the fairer sex that his profile had, on more than one occasion, been compared to Adonis and his tailor was never forced to resort to buckram padding in the making of the well-cut uniforms Nick wore to perfection. The calm dismissal in the eyes of the girl in the outmoded straw bonnet was certainly not the reception Lord Stanton had recently been accorded by the London ton.

Perhaps in response to that obvious disdain, Nick touched his heels to the chestnut and guided him alongside the strolling figure. Again, blue eyes rose to his, their gaze far too direct for fashionable flirtation.

“Good afternoon,” Stanton said, holding his mount to the pace the girl had set. A finger of sun reaching through the overarching branches touched briefly on his hair, turning it gold. The fair hair was darkened now with perspiration, and slightly curling. What others of his set achieved with heated irons, nature had bestowed upon him quite naturally, another of her generous gifts for this favored son. His uniform jacket set off broad shoulders and a narrow waist, the tight pantaloons emphasizing the muscled strength of his long legs.

At his greeting, the girl’s eyes lifted again, slowly appraising both horse and rider. Her upturned face was classically heart-shaped, but her mouth was too wide for the current fashion and her nose straight rather than retroussе, and there was nothing the least bit simpering in her manner. Her assessment was unflinching.

The sprigged muslin she wore was at least two years old, its skirt rucked up in the country style to protect the fragile material from briars, revealing underneath a plain white petticoat. She carried over her arm a wicker basket almost half-full of red currants.

“My lord,” she said simply, and then the blue eyes returned to the lane before them.

Again, that upward tilt disturbed the line of the rider’s mouth, as his gray eyes, also, sought the shaded path that stretched ahead of them. The silence lasted for several moments as they moved side by side.

“Berrying?” he asked finally—a ridiculous question, given the evidence in the bottom of the basket.

The girl’s mouth, more used to laughter than to primness, flickered dangerously, almost losing its determined sternness. “Indeed,” she agreed.

Again silence descended, broken only by the plodding hooves of the gelding. The horse had finally relaxed into the pace his rider was keeping him to.

“May I give you a ride?” Lord Stanton offered, holding out his hand. His fingers were long and deeply tanned, despite the months he’d spent in England and away from his regiment. That had not, of course, been his choice, but the ball he took at Toulouse had proved to be far more troublesome than anyone suspected it might. There had even, at one juncture, been talk that he might lose the leg, but, thankfully, that danger was long past. Despite a slight, persistent stiffness in his right knee, Nick considered himself in fighting trim, and that had been the point of his recent trip to London—to convince his superiors at the Horse Guards of that.

“Thank you, but no, my lord. I’m sure you’re far too busy with your own affairs to bother with mine.”

“I promise I should be delighted to assist a lady.”

The girl’s eyes rose to linger a moment on the handsome face. “But surely you can see,” she said, “that I’m not—”

“A lady?” he said, interrupting her, his mouth controlled and his face a politely inquiring mask.

“In need of assistance,” she finished, without apparent rancor at his insult. She changed the heavy basket to her other arm, and from that sleeve removed a scrap of lace with which she touched the dew of perspiration on her upper lip.

“Making jam?” Stanton asked pleasantly, his eyes following the dabbing movements of the cloth along the beautiful bow of her upper lip.

The girl glanced at him, her dark lashes sweeping upward to reveal some emotion dancing in the. depths of her eyes.

“Pies, I believe,” she answered.

“For your sweetheart?”

“I have no sweetheart, my lord.”

“For a lass so beautiful, I find that difficult to believe. Are all the men here blind?”

“Perhaps. To my charms, at least. It seems there are always…other pleasures that distract them.”

“Then they’re fools,” Nick said softly. Unthinkingly, he slipped his right Hessian out of the stirrup and eased it into a more comfortable position, straightening the aching knee.

“So I’ve often thought,” she agreed, watching the procedure until he glanced down again. Then her gaze deliberately shifted from its focus on the man who rode beside her to the lane ahead.

“Do you have a name?” Stanton asked.

“Of course, my lord.”

This time Nick lost the battle to control his amusement, and the smile that had charmed the feminine half of the beau monde was unleashed in full force. Remarkably, it seemed to have no effect on the girl.

“Might I know it?” he urged.

“You might,” she said calmly, removing from her basket a berry that had apparently, on closer examination, proved unworthy for inclusion in the proposed pies. “And then, you might not. I’m sure I don’t know what you might know, my lord.”

“Has no one told you not to be pert with your betters?” Nick asked, laughing.

“No one but you, my lord. But I’m sure that was simply an oversight.”

“Gertrude,” he offered.

“I beg your pardon?” the girl said, but it was obvious, even to Stanton, that she didn’t.

“Since you seem so reluctant to share the information, I was attempting to guess your name.”

“My name is Mary Winters, my lord.”

“Do you live here in the village, Mary?”

“With my father in the vicarage, my lord.”

“The proverbial vicar’s daughter?”

“Indeed, my lord.”