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       PAULA MARSHALL,

      married with three children, has had a varied life. She began her career in a large library and ended it as a senior academic in charge of history in a polytechnic. She has traveled widely, been a swimming coach and appeared on University Challenge and Mastermind. She has always wanted to write, and likes her novels to be full of adventure and humor. She derives great pleasure from writing historical romances, where she can use her wide historical knowledge.

      Contents

      Prologue

      Chapter One

      Chapter Two

      Chapter Three

      Chapter Four

      Chapter Five

      Chapter Six

      Chapter Seven

      Chapter Eight

      Chapter Nine

      Chapter Ten

      Chapter Eleven

      Chapter Twelve

      Chapter Thirteen

      Chapter Fourteen

      Epilogue

       Prologue

      Temple Hatton, near Brinkley, Yorkshire, 1839

       ‘O ne of these days Eleanor Hatton, you will go too far,’ sighed Mrs Laura Hatton to her daughter. She was trying to comb Eleanor’s glossy black hair into some sort of order.

      ‘Really, Mama, if you say that once again I shall have the vapours,’ retorted Eleanor angrily, twisting in her chair.

      ‘Do sit still, child. You look like an unbrushed pony. No one would think that you were nearly eighteen.’

      ‘Well, I hate the idea of being eighteen. I’m sure that when I get there Grandfather will start making plans for my marriage to Stacy. He knows perfectly well that I don’t want to marry him. I don’t wish to marry anyone, ever.’

      ‘I thought that you liked Stacy Trent,’ sighed her vague, gentle mother, who found it difficult to understand her strong-minded daughter. However had she come to give birth to such a hoyden?

      ‘Oh, I do, I do, as a friend—or as a brother—but not as a husband. Besides, I don’t want a husband chosen for me by someone else. You chose to marry Father, I know.’

      Her mother sighed again, and did not need to tell Eleanor that it was the worst mistake she had ever made, Eleanor’s father having been an unfaithful, spendthrift rake of the first water.

      ‘Really, Eleanor, I think that your grandfather did you no favour when he arranged that you should be educated with Stacy and Ned until they went to Oxford.’

      Worse than that, not only did the three of them share a tutor, who had taught them Latin and Greek, but Sir Hartley, her grandfather, had insisted that they should be instructed in Natural Philosophy, or Science, as it was coming to be called, as well as in Mathematics.

      Eleanor had been as quick and bright as Stacy, and far more so than her older brother, Ned who hated all forms of learning. She had a mind like a knife, said her grandfather proudly; he secretly wished that her brother, Ned, his heir, was more like her.

      Her mother, though, deplored what education had done to Eleanor. It had made her, she frequently and despairingly said, a boy in girl’s clothing, everything which was unfeminine. Besides, her wickedness was all the cleverer for her having been educated. It really served to show that girls should never be taught very much more than how to play the piano a little, paint a little, read a little and the proper way to conduct themselves in public—something which seemed beyond Eleanor.

      Her frequent complaints to her father-in-law simply resulted in him saying gently, ‘I have no wish for Stacy to marry a fool.’

      Which was all very well, but neither should he wish Stacy to marry a freak. This thought was so painful that Mrs Hatton gave a little moan and dragged the comb through her daughter’s hair more forcefully than she had intended. Eleanor twisted away from her again.

      ‘Do sit still, child. You will never look like an illustration from The Book of Beauty at this rate.

      Eleanor pulled a face. ‘I shall never look like those simpering creatures if I live to be a hundred.’

      ‘Well, you certainly won’t look like a beauty if you do live to be a hundred! Concentrate on looking like a beauty at seventeen. There, that will have to do. And remember, you must be ready for tea. The Lorimers and some of their friends are coming.’

      Eleanor ignored this, racing out of the room and up the stairs, two at a time, shouting as she went, ‘I’ll be back in an instant. Don’t worry so, Mama.’

      On reaching her bedroom, she hung out of the window, calling down to one of the stable boys working in the yard below: he was her frequent companion in naughtiness. ‘Nat! Nat! Did you get it?’

      ‘Yes, Miss Eleanor, you can see it later…’

      ‘No, I want to see it now. Wait there. I’ll be down presently.’

      She shot down the stairs even faster than she had mounted them and ran through a side door into the yard, where she found Nat cuddling an animal which was squirming beneath his jacket.

      Nat Swain was a stocky youth from a family which had worked for the Hattons for generations. Although he was three years older than Eleanor he was not much taller than she was, but he was broad and strong, the perfect shape for a stable lad. He, Ned, Stacy and Eleanor had birds-nested and played together as children, and until recently the four of them had been companions and apparent equals.

      But then Ned and Stacy had left for Oxford and the wider world outside to which Nat had no access. Ned, nearly four years older than Eleanor, was now a young man about town, and Stacy, almost the same age, was growing up fast, too.

      Eleanor, once the two boys had gone, had been forbidden the stables and Nat’s companionship by both her grandfather, who was also her guardian, and her good-natured but ineffectual mother. She had responded by apparently agreeing with them—and then doing exactly as she pleased when no one was about. Sir Hart’s warning that her friendship with Nat must be a thing of the past went unheeded.

      Nat showed her his prize: a ferret. Eleanor exclaimed delightedly over it and was impatient to see it running free.

      ‘No, Miss Eleanor, it’s not safe; it moves so quick we might lose it.’

      ‘Well, then, at least allow me to hold it.’

      Nat looked doubtfully at her. He was well aware that Miss Eleanor was, as Ned, young for her age and that he was not. He