A Reckless Promise

London’s Little Season has never been so scandalous

It’s the kind of vow often made on the battlefield. Darby Travers, Viscount Nailbourne, never imagines he’ll have to honor it. Yet here she is on his doorstep—his late comrade’s young daughter, and Darby’s new ward. Worse, she comes with the most overprotective, mistrustful, bothersome chaperone—the child’s aunt, Sadie Grace Boxer. Darby is quite sure that behind her lovely facade, the woman is guarding a secret.

Sadie Grace faced many trials working in her brother’s surgery, but none prepared her for the world she’s thrust into with his passing. Navigating the ton, with its endless ball gowns and parade of parties, is difficult enough, but hiding the truth about her niece while the sophisticated viscount watches her every move proves nearly impossible—particularly when his searing gaze tempts her to bare all. But when her family’s past catches up with her, she’ll have to trust in Darby…no matter the cost to her heart.

Praise for New York Times bestselling author Kasey Michaels

“Kasey Michaels aims for the heart and never misses.”

—New York Times bestselling author Nora Roberts

“Michaels holds the reader in her clutches and doesn’t let go.”

—RT Book Reviews on What a Gentleman Desires,

4½ stars, Top Pick

“Michaels…outdoes herself… For lighthearted fun,

you can’t do better than this.”

—RT Book Reviews on An Improper Arrangement

“This mistress of the genre is on the peak of her career.”

—RT Book Reviews on A Scandalous Proposal,

4½ stars, Top Pick

“A poignant and highly satisfying read…filled with simmering sensuality, subtle touches of repartee, a hero out for revenge and a heroine ripe for adventure. You’ll enjoy the ride.”

—RT Book Reviews on How to Tame a Lady

“Michaels’ new Regency miniseries is a joy.… You will laugh and even shed a tear over this touching romance.”

—RT Book Reviews on How to Tempt a Duke

“Michaels has done it again.… Witty dialogue peppers a plot full of delectable details exposing the foibles and follies of the age.”

—Publishers Weekly, starred review, on The Butler Did It

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Dear Reader,

A promise is a promise is a promise.

Darn.

Darby Travers, Viscount Nailbourne, may have used stronger language to express his reaction to discovering that a promise made has become a promise he must keep.

Not that he considers reneging, not even for a moment, for he is an honorable if suddenly suspicious gentleman.

Darby is also a sigh-worthy hero: witty, urbane, sophisticated, rakishly handsome, apparently carefree. But scratch the surface and find the man beneath: the steel, the loyalty…and the carefully guarded heart.

Now imagine this man saddled with a female ward…because of a promise.

Grab a box of chocolates, curl up on something comfy and come along as seven-year-old terror Marley Hamilton turns the viscount’s life upside down, while her unimpressionable and secretive aunt, Sadie Grace Boxer, confounds his head and heart at every turn.

Is A Reckless Promise the next great American novel? Nah. Sometimes a girl just wants to have fun!

Happy reading!

To Jennifer Stevenson

Great writer, fantastic friend

Contents

COVER

BACK COVER TEXT

Praise

TITLE PAGE

Dear Reader

DEDICATION

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

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

EPILOGUE

EXTRACT

COPYRIGHT

PROLOGUE

March, 1814

Somewhere near Montmort-Lucy, France

RUMOR HAD IT in the camp that their guards were nervous. That Bonaparte’s victory over the Allies at Champaubert had only served as a temporary delay in toppling the French emperor from his throne.

Indeed, Jeremiah Rigby had returned from his morning constitutional around the perimeter of the prisoner-of-war camp to report that he’d counted ten less guards than had been at their posts the previous day.

And eight more bodies. The wounded were succumbing with disturbing frequency over a month into their captivity, thanks to the lack of food, clean water and medicine.

“The time couldn’t be better for a moonlight flit,” Gabriel Sinclair said as he and Rigby joined Cooper Townsend and Darby Travers inside the sagging lean-to they’d constructed to help shield them from a fading winter and early spring rains.

Surgeon John Hamilton didn’t look up from his work, inspecting the healing wound sustained when Cooper had taken a ball in his side at Champaubert and they’d been captured along with over a thousand others. “There’ll be a nasty scar, sir, but it’s all healing nicely now that we’re rid of that infection. You’re next, my lord.”

Darby Travers, Viscount Nailbourne, pushed himself up on his elbows as the surgeon approached, duckwalking across the damp ground, bent nearly in half thanks to the low roof and his tall frame. “No need, John. No angels visited overnight, no miracle was delivered by dimpled cherubs and even the devil hasn’t bothered to tempt me. The eye is all but finished, and that’s that. I’m already fashioning fetching eye patches in my idle moments.”

That was Darby. He would make a joke out of most anything. Not even his closest friends were privileged to know if he was truly as reconciled to his injury as he seemed. Being his closest friends, they didn’t ask, but only followed his lead.

The surgeon, however, ignored the levity and began unwrapping the fraying linen bandage that held a clean square of the same material against the viscount’s left eye. “It’s early days yet, my lord, and the swelling was profound. I can only hope I didn’t do more damage by removing the ball, hoping to relieve the pressure.”

Darby spoke quietly, so that the others couldn’t hear. “I don’t remember any of it, thank God, once I’d supposedly told Rigby I needed to sit down moments before I fell down. I was all but a dead man until you showed up with your scalpel and box of leeches. I have my life thanks to you, and my gratitude is without bounds. Now, I know you overheard the captain. We four go tonight. You’ll come with us.”

Hamilton shook his head as he began rewrapping the bandage. “I can’t leave my patients, my lord.”

“Those who can manage have been sneaking off every night for the last week. The guards may not have noticed yet, but soon our thinning ranks will become obvious. At least a few of us will reach our lines, and a rescue will be mounted. But we all know it could come too late. Our skittish captors might dispatch the wounded before they either run off home or go to join Bonaparte. As it is, they’re damn near starving us to death.”

“My lord, your duty is to return to our ranks in any way you can, as is the duty of every soldier. Mine is to remain with the wounded.” Hamilton looked behind him, where the others were deep in conversation, and leaned in closer. “You say you don’t remember anything, my lord, and I agree that can be a blessing. But you did speak while you were lost in delirium. Only I heard.”

“Well, goodness me, John, you put me to the blush. Was what I said all that terrible?”

“You spoke of your childhood, my lord. A particular time in your childhood. I...I only wanted to say that what happened was not your fault. Children often assume guilt that does not belong to them. You’re a good man—you are all extraordinarily good men.”

“Thank you, John,” Darby said. “I’m sorry you had to hear my ramblings. Truly, I’m long past those years. I can’t imagine why I spoke of them all this time later. I would much rather have regaled you with stories of my adventures with the ladies.”

The physician smiled. “You were not without amusing anecdotes, my lord.”

“Well, thank heaven for that. John, if you can’t reconsider and come with us, I want you to know that I’m aware of all I owe you, not the least of which is my fairly worthless, ramshackle life. If there is ever anything I can do for you in return, no matter how inadequate that thing might be, you must not hesitate to ask, because it is yours, on my word as a gentleman.”

“You have more goodness in you than I believe you realize, my lord.” The physician hesitated, looking out into the camp that was deteriorating daily. “I have every hope of returning home, sir, but if I don’t...”

Darby pushed himself to a sitting position and held out his right hand. “Yes? Name it, John, and it’s yours.”

CHAPTER ONE

London, the Little Season, 1815

“WHAT DO YOU think of Spain, Norton? I’ve heard intriguing things about the Alhambra, once termed a pleasure palace. But no, you have no interest in pleasure, do you?”

“I take vast pleasure in my duties, my lord,” the valet supplied in his usual monotone. “Even more so when His Lordship refrains from speaking whilst I am shaving him.”

Darby Travers, Viscount Nailbourne, longed to inquire as to whether his man’s words could be construed as a threat, but quickly discarded the notion. Until the straight edge moved from his neck, he prudently refused to so much as swallow.

“And we’re done, my lord,” Norton said in some satisfaction, stepping back even as he handed his employer a warm, moist towel. “Until this evening, that is. I would ask you to consider again the advantages of a well-trimmed beard.”

Darby wiped at his face, then tossed the towel in Norton’s direction as he got to his feet and walked over to the high dresser topped with an oval mirror. “Not if you’d continue to force your barbering skills on me, no. It wounds me to say this, Norton, but your mustache appears chewed on, and I’m convinced you employ that wirelike appendage on your chin to brush dried mud from my riding boots. The fact that both are shoe-black dark and your hair red as a flame makes me wonder what you do to amuse yourself when I leave you alone.”

Norton, a man of at least forty summers, smoothed a hand over his hair, parted neatly in the middle and tied back into a tail at least six inches in length, and then tugged at his goatee. “Red facial hair is unattractive, my lord.”

Darby would have asked his new valet why he didn’t expand his use of the dye pot to include the hair on his head, but then the man might tell him. Norton was his third valet in as many months, and the only one who didn’t perpetually suppress a flinch when he saw his employer without his eye patch. For that small mercy alone, the viscount didn’t really care if Norton sought his jollies by wearing his pantaloons on his head.

He picked up his brushes and ran them through his own coal-dark hair. “I believe I’ll refrain from comment on that, Norton. But back to Spain. I’m devastated to inform you that we can’t go, much as I’d like to escape my fate. For one, I’m promised to a birthday celebration at the end of the month. Either that or a funeral. Nobody’s quite certain yet. My jacket, if you please.”

“Yes, my lord. Will we be returning to London today?”

“Don’t care for my cottage, Norton?” he asked, shrugging into his handsomely cut tan hacking jacket, for he was anticipating a ride yet this morning. “I know it’s quaint, but I believe it provides most of the necessities of life.”

Nailbourne Farm, or the “cottage,” as Darby termed it, was a large estate just outside Wimbledon, and only an hour’s drive from London. Along with an extensive breeding stable and three hundred acres of Capability Brown’s better efforts at landscaping, the estate boasted a unique, sprawling stone-and-timber mansion. There were sixteen bedchambers, a dining hall that comfortably sat fifty and a dozen other rooms, all beneath a whimsical thatched roof that kept four thatchers gainfully employed year-round. It even boasted a royal bedchamber, which had actually been slept in by no less than two English monarchs.

It was the smallest of the half dozen Nailbourne holdings.

“Well, Norton? Do you agree?”

“It’s...serviceable, my lord.”

“How greatly you relieve my mind. I wouldn’t want to have to order it torn down and rebuilt to your specifications.”

Sarcasm was totally lost on Norton, Darby knew, winging over his head like a bird in flight, but at least the viscount was amusing himself. He was in some need of a smile at the moment.

“Your pardon, sir, but I feel I must remind you that I accepted this temporary position on the understanding that we would be in London for the Little Season.”

Darby made one last small adjustment to the black eye patch he’d tied to his head, and turned to give a slight bow to his valet. “And alas, I’ve failed you. I’m so ashamed, and must hasten to make amends. Since I’ll be traveling to London this evening for an engagement, you have my permission to ride along with me. I’ll have you dropped at your favorite tavern, as I’m certain you have one, and come back to take you up before I return here, to the wilds. I most sincerely hope that meets with your approval?”

“Yes, my lord!” Norton exclaimed, bowing deeply at the waist, perhaps the first display of emotion the man had allowed in his master’s presence. “The Crown and Cock, my lord, just off Piccadilly. And may I say, my lord, you look exceptionally fine today. You flatter that new jacket all hollow.”

“Oh, shut up,” Darby said amicably as he brushed past the valet on his way to the stairs, only smiling once he was out of sight. “For a moment there, I thought he’d ask to kiss my ring,” he mumbled to himself.

His mood may have been temporarily lifted, but the knowledge that Norton was right served to bring it crashing back down once more. He’d been at the cottage for nearly a week, cooling his heels as he awaited the arrival of the consequences of his forgotten promise to John Hamilton. Granted, he’d escaped to London, twice, for evening parties, but the days here were nearly interminable when he wished only to be with his friends before everyone adjourned to their country estates until the spring Season.

Darby supposed he should have put a qualifier or two into his promise to the good doctor before agreeing to take guardianship of the man’s daughter should anything fatal befall the man. He’d thought that meant if John had perished at the camp before it could be liberated. He hadn’t counted on any responsibility outliving the promise by more than eighteen months, which was when the good doctor had cocked up his toes.

Yet here he was, about to become guardian to his very own ward. His female ward. If there could be any one person less suited for the position, Darby believed a person would have to search far and wide to find him. His friends had all laughingly agreed, and looked forward with some glee to watching him deal with this unexpected complication to his smooth-running life.

Marley Hamilton. Age unknown. Would he be able to send her off to some young ladies’ academy and forget about her for at least a few years, or would he be laying down the blunt for a Season for the girl? Was she dewy and young, or already past her last prayers?

John had been a country doctor. Of good family, one could only hope, but would his daughter be up to snuff for a Season, or would she come to the cottage still with hay in her hair and mud on her half boots, and speak in some broad country accent?

Would he be forced to rebuild her, as it were, from the ground up, in order to be rid of her?

Would she feel it necessary to address him as Uncle Nailbourne?

Egads.

“Coop’s right,” he told himself as he reached the bottom of the stairs. “I do get myself into the damnedest situations. If only John’s solicitor would arrive, and get the waiting over with before I drive myself mad.”

“Milord?” the footman asked, holding forth his employer’s hat, gloves and small riding crop. “You be talkin’ ta yerself again, the way you said you wuz yesterday?”

“Exactly, Tompkins,” he responded, accepting the articles. “And as was the case yesterday, and probably will be for some time yet, you may feel free to ignore me.”

“Yes, milord. Mr. Rivers brought the new stallion ’round. He’s a big ’un, milord. You do mind ta be careful.”

“Since it would upset you, I’ll do my best not to break my neck,” Darby promised the young lad, and then stopped in the action of pulling on his gloves when there were three loud raps on the door knocker.

His entire body instantly went on alert.

“Ah, perhaps the time has come. Strange we didn’t hear a coach pulling up. Attend to that, Tompkins, if you please.”

The boy, freckle-faced and towheaded, and more accustomed to his usual chores in the kitchens, looked at his master in some distress. “But, milord, Mr. Camford says he’s ta greet all His Lordship’s guests to be sure where ta put ’em, and yer’r ta be summoned ta the drawin’ room only after he—”

“Tompkins, I can’t be certain of this, of course, but last I looked, I do believe I still outrank my butler. Open. The. Door.”

Tompkins blushed to the roots of his hair. “Straightaway, milord.”

“Clearly I have to develop more of a commanding air with the staff,” Darby told himself, replacing hat, gloves and riding crop on the large round table and stepping back two paces, ready to surprise his guest with his unexpected presence. Or perhaps he’d be mistaken for Camford, come to vet the uninvited guest so he’d know where “ta put ’em.”

A mental picture of the portly butler dressed in riding clothes brought a small smile to Darby’s lips as Tompkins opened the door and then stood directly in front of the opening, blocking any view of the visitor. Apparently Camford hadn’t had time to complete the lad’s lessons in footmanship.

“Let whoever it is pass, please,” he told the boy, unnecessarily it would seem, as Tompkins was rather handily pushed out of the way as a tall, heavily cloaked and hooded figure breached the human barrier and stepped through the portal, dripping water onto the tile floor.

When had it begun to rain? Did Norton so sincerely loathe the country that he didn’t even peek out the window to be certain his employer would be correctly dressed? Darby waved a figurative goodbye to any notion of working the new stallion.

He took a closer look at the figure. The words drowned rat scuttled into his brain.

“If you hadn’t yet noticed, young man, the doorway lacks a portico. How long do you usually have His Lordship’s guests stand unprotected in a deluge?”

A woman? It was definitely a woman’s voice. Tall, for a woman, able to wear a man’s cloak and not have it be six sizes too large. Only four, he estimated, taking in the many-caped cloak once again. Bossy, for a woman, especially one who had arrived uninvited, unaccompanied and apparently on foot.

“Tompkins, offer to take the lady’s cloak before she drowns in it, both literally and figuratively.”

“Yes, Tompkins, do that. And when it’s dry, consider burning it. I feel as if it could stand on its own after five days of travel on the public coach. And then please inform His Lordship that his ward has arrived.”

“Oh, bollocks,” Darby muttered under his breath, feeling the worst of his many suppositions had just sloshed through the doorway. Past her last prayers, unmannered, tall as a stick and clearly— “Well, hello.”

The woman had finally thrown back her dripping, drooping hood to reveal a head of more than merely damp blond hair, eyes that could be any color from blue to green to even gray, probably depending on her mood.

At the moment, as she looked directly at him, they were definitely leaning toward a stormy gray.

Her nose was straight, her lips full—with an intriguing pout to the upper one—her skin pale and flawless, a slight dimple in her chin. Her slim neck could only be judged as regal.

Furthermore, she was tall enough to tower over young Tompkins, and was only a few inches shy of being able to look Darby straight in his eyes, which would make her very nearly six feet tall.

Amazing. One can only wonder how much of her is legs.

“And you are...?” she asked him, definitely imperiously, and with no hint of a country accent. In fact, her English was probably more precise than his own, as he had a tendency to drawl when amused, and he was often amused. He’d best pull out his most precise accent.

He also probably should stop grinning.

“Astounded,” Darby said, bowing. “Perplexed. Nonplussed. Oh, and dry. And you?”

“You’re Viscount Nailbourne,” she countered as Tompkins finally realized he should close the door. “John told me about the eye. You received my letter? I sent one to every address John had provided. You weren’t at the first one and I was forced to continue my search.”

Typical female. Somehow everything apparently has become my fault.

“Clearly a lapse on my part. A thousand apologies,” he said, bowing yet again. “Would you care to continue this conversation upstairs, or are you more comfortable in foyers? I’m amendable either way, and I’m certain Tompkins here wouldn’t mind watching this small farce unfold.”

“I’m more comfortable dry. Our trunk momentarily lies abandoned just inside your gates. I would appreciate having it fetched and taken to whatever quarters you might assign. Once I have your ward settled, I would be more than amenable to continuing our conversation.”

“You’re...you’re not my ward?”

Then who in bloody hell are you?

She looked at him as if he had just popped out a second head. “Certainly not. I’m above the age of requiring a keeper. Marley? You can come out now, please, and allow me to introduce you to your new guardian.”

The young woman pulled back one side of the oversize cloak to reveal a female child of no more than six or seven. The child was clinging to her apparent protector with both arms, her face buried against the damp muslin skirts.

Yes, the legs were that long...

“Marley,” the woman urged, “if you’re quite done with your impersonation of a barnacle, make your curtsy to His Lordship, as I’ve taught you to do.”

“Will not.” The words were rather muffled, but clearly understood.

I don’t blame you, Darby thought.

“She’s prodigiously fatigued, poor poppet,” the woman said through only slightly gritted teeth she still couldn’t manage to keep from chattering with cold. “Unless I gave him a copper, the coach driver wouldn’t bring us any farther. We were forced to walk from the gate. And then it began to rain.”