Previous novels by the same author:

      A SCOUNDREL OF CONSEQUENCE

       FORBIDDEN LORD

       SCANDALOUS SECRET, DEFIANT BRIDE

       FROM GOVERNESS TO SOCIETY BRIDE

       MISTRESS BELOW DECK

       THE BRIDE WORE SCANDAL

       DESTITUTE ON HIS DOORSTEP

       SEDUCING MISS LOCKWOOD

       MARRYING MISS MONKTON

       BEAUTY IN BREECHES

       MISS CAMERON’S FALL FROM GRACE

      And in Mills & Boon^® Historical Undone! eBooks:

      ONE RECKLESS NIGHT

      Did you know that some of these novels are

       also available as eBooks?

       Visit www.millsandboon.co.uk

      The

       Housemaid’s

       Scandalous Secret

      Helen Dickson

       www.millsandboon.co.uk

      For my husband, George, with love—

      he has provided unconditional support and

       encouragement throughout.

       Prologue

      Cholera had killed Lisette’s parents. Suddenly, at nineteen years old, she found herself homeless, penniless, with no family and no purpose in life. She was adrift but she would survive. She could survive anywhere, but she belonged nowhere.

      Unable to remain in her beloved India, she was to travel to Bombay, where she hoped to work her passage on board a ship bound for England.

      Lisette had enjoyed living in an Anglo-Indian society in Delhi. Her father had been an eccentric academic, a linguist and a botanist, working for the University of Oxford in India. It was through her father’s friendship with the Rajah Jahana Sumana of the state of Rhuna that she had met and become a close friend of the Rajah’s daughter, Princess Messalina.

      Messalina was being escorted to her wedding in Bhopal and suggested Lisette travel part of the way with her as one of her attendants. Not wishing to draw attention to herself Lisette was dressed as a native girl, for to travel openly as an unescorted English girl was unthinkable.

      Lisette had parted from her friend when the rains came. It was a light sprinkling at first that washed the dust from the air. Then, as the lightning pranced closer in a flashing, sizzling display of the storm’s power, a torrential downpour marched across the land, turning the roads to mud and causing the rivers to overflow. The people Lisette was travelling with reached the banks of a wide, fast-flowing river at the only point of safe crossing for twenty miles upstream and down. Usually the banks here were lined with dhobis busy with piles of washing, mahouts bathing their elephants and children playing and splashing in the shallows.

      The rain had stopped some time ago. The last rays of the sinking sun catching the river glittered on the rushing water in a haze of gold. The bridge creaked and swayed with the pull of the current. It was almost dark, but rather than wait until morning by which time the bridge could have been washed away or become impossible to cross, the travellers decided not to postpone their crossing.

      There were so many people and conveyances and bullocks milling about the bridgehead that Lisette was in danger of being crushed to death. Panicking she tried to turn back but she was carried forward by the frenzied crowd. She saw the red uniforms of British soldiers trying to bring some kind of order to the chaos but to no avail. One of them, an exceedingly handsome and masculine British officer, was familiar to her, although they had never been introduced. He and his orderly had ridden part of the way with the rajah’s procession—the presence of British soldiers had provided added protection against marauding bandits.

      Trying to keep his horse from bolting from the melee ahead, Colonel Ross