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      Author Note

      When I was a little girl I loved reading fairy stories. One of my favourites was The Sleeping Beauty. The prince had to hack his way through a thicket of thorns to get to the castle where Aurora lay, bound by the wicked witch’s spells. He would have got cut and bruised, probably ending up with half a forest’s worth of leaves stuck all over his clothes and in his hair. He must have been quite a sight to wake up to!

      I always hoped that the first thing the Princess would do would be to bathe his wounds…

      Lord Matthison is convinced he has to fight his way through a thicket of thorns to rescue his own lady love from the spell that seems to hold her in its grip. But is she the one who is bound by a spell, or is he the one who is really under a witch’s curse?

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       For Peter and Ruth, Steadfast Friends

       Chapter One

      Lord Matthison reached for the area railings to steady himself, blinking up at the façade of the house where Miss Winters lived.

      With her ambitious mother.

      And her ruthless father.

      He had no idea how he’d fetched up on Curzon Street, at the house of the scheming jade who had stripped him of his last vestige of hope.

      He was drunk, of course. He had been drinking steadily since just before midnight. Any man who’d had the week he’d just had would have done exactly the same—made for the nearest gin shop and called for a bottle. Though he had assiduously avoided taking the road that led to oblivion during the past seven years, when the cards had turned against him, and he’d gone down to the tune of five hundred guineas for the third night in a row, he’d had to accept it was over.

      ‘Cora,’ he moaned, as the pain of her loss struck him with an intensity he had not felt since the first day she’d gone. Gin was so deceitful! It promised to relieve all woe, but all it had done was strip him of the ability to pretend he did not care. He’d assumed he would have found at least a measure of respite, before coming round in some gutter. Possibly even staggering back to his own lodgings. He’d never dreamed he would turn out to have such a hard head, he would still be on his feet by dawn. Or that those wayward feet would have brought him to the last place on earth he would willingly have gone.

      ‘But I won’t marry you!’ he yelled, shaking his fist at the shuttered windows.

      A milkmaid who was passing eyed him with suspicion, and gave him a wide berth. He scarcely noticed her as he straightened up with renewed resolve. What did he care if Miss Winters was ruined!

      He had not lured her into her father’s study, tousled her hair, and torn the bodice of her gown. No, she’d done all that herself. Then launched herself at him just as the door swung open, making it look as though they had been locked in a passionate embrace.

      Not that she wanted to marry him so much now, he laughed mirthlessly. He’d soon wiped that triumphant smile from her face!

      ‘So, you want to dance with the devil, do you?’ he had mocked, seizing her by the upper arms when she would have broken free.

      ‘You are hurting me,’ she had protested, beginning to look a little uncertain.

      ‘But that is the kind of man I am,’ he had answered. ‘Have you not heard the rumours? Damsels of a sensitive nature practically swoon with fright whenever I walk into a room. With good reason, wouldn’t you say?’

      The confusion in her eyes had made him wonder if she really did not know. It was just possible. Her family did not mix in the best circles. Her mother had no intimates privy to the type of gossip circulating about him. They might have managed to secure a house at a fashionable address, but Miss Winters was never going to receive vouchers for Almack’s.

      ‘Or were you fooled by the fact that I still get invited everywhere?’ he had mused. ‘That was naïve of you. But as you do not seem to understand the ways of the ton, I will explain. Some of them ignore my reputation, because of the vast amount of wealth I have accrued since I made my pact with the devil. They claim not to care how I came by it, because my birth is sufficiently exalted for them to turn a blind eye. But they would never let me near any of their daughters.

      ‘And there are others who are fascinated by the aura of evil I carry with me. They get quite a thrill from telling people they’ve been daring enough to ask the man who murdered his fiancée to attend one of their insipid gatherings. Oh,’he’d said, when a look of horror had spread across her face. ‘So you had not heard?