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      LOUISE ALLEN has been immersing herself in history, real and fictional, for as long as she can remember, and finds landscapes and places evoke powerful images of the past. Louise lives in Bedfordshire, and works as a property manager, but spends as much time as possible with her husband at the cottage they are renovating on the north Norfolk coast, or travelling abroad. Venice, Burgundy and the Greek islands are favourite atmospheric destinations. Please visit Louise’s website—www.louiseallenregency.co.uk—for the latest news!

       Novels by the same author:

      VIRGIN SLAVE, BARBARIAN KING

      THE DANGEROUS MR RYDER^*

      THE OUTRAGEOUS LADY FELSHAM^*

      THE SHOCKING LORD STANDON^*

      THE DISGRACEFUL MR RAVENHURST^*

      THE NOTORIOUS MR HURST^*

      THE PIRATICAL MISS RAVENHURST^*

      PRACTICAL WIDOW TO PASSIONATE MISTRESS^†

       Look for Celina’s story, INNOCENT COURTESAN TO ADVENTURER’S BRIDE coming soon in Louise Allen’s latest mini-series

       The Transformation of the Shelley Sisters

      MILLS & BOON

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      For the Romantic Novelists’ Association in their 50th Anniversary year

      Prologue

       12 February 1814

      If James truly loves you, means to marry you—then I’ll help, somehow. It was over five years since Arabella Shelley had said those words to her sister Meg and helped her to elope with her childhood sweetheart, James Halgate, the local squire’s son.

      It was nine months since she had hugged her weeping younger sister Celina and assured her that, if she could, she would help her run away from home too, away from the oppression and tyranny of their puritanical father who was convinced that all women were the vessels of sin and must be controlled and guarded against the slightest temptation.

      Dreamy Meg and sensitive Lina had wilted miserably under this treatment, pining for laughter and music, flowers and books. And love. Oh, yes, they had all pined for love, Bella thought, grounding the watering can she had been using to fill up the pewter jugs of greenery set around the font. Flowers were permitted only grudgingly in the Reverend Shelley’s Suffolk church, but ivy and sombre foliage would help remind the congregation of the graveyard that awaited them all, sinners that they were.

      Bella sat down in the nearest pew, ignored the cold that soaked into her booted feet from the stone floor and wrestled with guilt once again over her failure to realise what Lina had intended. Without any help from Bella she had run away, leaving only a scrap of a letter from a sister of their dead mother, an aunt none of them had known existed until Lina had found her hidden letter.

      The vicar blacked out Lina’s name in the family Bible, as he had Meg’s. If her sisters wrote, then their father intercepted the letters and destroyed them. Bella clung to the hope that if either of them had died, he would not have been able to conceal his knowledge of the bad end they had come to, but sometimes it was hard to hold on to the hope that they were still well and happy.

      Bella rubbed her aching back and tried to push away the memory of Lina’s sobs after she had been reprimanded for speaking to the curate. He said I was a trollop, and wicked and leading Mr Perkins astray! How are we ever supposed to find husbands and get married if we may not even speak to Papa’s curate?

      Goodness knows, had to be the answer to that question. But Bella knew that her own destiny was already ordained. At the age of twenty-five her fate was to be Papa’s support in his old age. He had told her that often enough, with the certainty that an elder daughter should expect nothing more than to do her duty to her parent.

      A lovable parent would be one thing, a sanctimonious, aggressively puritanical vicar, which was what the Reverend Shelley was, quite another. She had cherished hopes that dull Mr Perkins the curate would find one of them attractive enough to offer for, but after the confrontation following Lina’s few words with him she did not deceive herself that he would risk alienating his vicar for the sake of either of them.

      Her two younger sisters could not cope with the oppression, the carping, the sheer drabness of life at the vicarage. It was better that they had gone, for she, the sensible sister, was the one who could best cope with Papa who was becoming more suspicious and ill tempered as the years went by. Now she had no younger sisters to protect—only to worry about. It was time to accept finally that her life would be bound by the vicarage walls, and by her duty as the vicar’s plain spinster daughter.

      Something tickled her lip and she licked it, tasting salt. Sitting here weeping would not accomplish anything, except to put her behind with her duties, and besides, she never cried. What was the point?

      Bella wiped her eyes and looked at the note tablets suspended from the old-fashioned chatelaine that hung from her waist. Complain to butcher re: mutton; mend surplice; assemble sewing for Ladies’ Circle; turn sheets side to middle. Church greenery—that could be crossed off. Another tear trickled down and splashed on to the thin ivory. She dabbed it off, smudging the pencil marks, and bit down on her lower lip until she felt more under control.

      Sometimes she did not think she could bear this any longer. She wanted her sisters—even a letter would do. She wanted a hug, a kiss, laughter, warmth. She wanted love.

      Bella picked up the remains of the ivy fronds and then lugged the heavy watering can back to the vestry. Once upon a time she had dreamed of a lover coming for her. A knight in shining armour. A gallant nobleman