Free Running into Temptation (Bancrofts of Barton Park) by AMANDA MCCABE

Prologue
    Melanie Harding struggled to climb up the slope of the hill, holding onto her bonnet as the wind tried to snatch it away. Nature was really terribly horrid, especially to someone like her who had always lived in towns with paved roads and noisy lanes. She never would have thought it, but she even missed pokey, stuffy old Bath! Even that was better than living in such a tiny village, with such a dull old uncle.
    Melanie sighed as she caught at her skirts, whipped around by the wind. Once she really had thought Bath a narrow, quiet place, especially with those tiny rooms she’d shared with her mother, the evenings at card parties and sipping tea at the assembly rooms. But now she knew what “narrow” really was, when she had no friends at all.
    She stopped on the green slope of the hill and closed her eyes, hearing her mother’s voice in her mind again as Melanie had tried to stop her from throwing all her clothes into a trunk.
    “Why must I go there?” she had cried, snatching at her spencers and shawls, trying to keep her mother from sending her away. Her mother had been all Melanie had since her feckless father died when she was a child, leaving them so poor, so alone.
    “You know very well why,” her mother had said shortly, as she kept on packing. “Because no one there will ever have heard of Captain Whitney and your unfortunate behavior. Your uncle the admiral will keep a close eye on you.”
    Melanie sighed. The Captain Whitney thing had been unfortunate, but surely that was his fault, not hers. She had only believed him when he said his pretty words of love and devotion, read his tender poems, and she’d thought that her dreams were coming true at last. That a handsome officer was rescuing her from their impoverished life.
    How could she have known that those poems were copied from a dusty old book by someone called Marlowe—or that Captain Whitney’s promises were just as false? That he was like her father, like so many other men. Selfish and careless.
    Captain Whitney, in addition to looking handsome in his red coat, had a good income and respectable connections to a viscount’s family. If all had gone as he’d promised, her mother would have been ecstatic. But Melanie had been deceived, and now she was being punished for it, being sent to live with her elderly uncle in a tiny village in the middle of nowhere.
    Thank goodness for Mrs. Smythe, Melanie thought as she continued her path up the hill. At least she had one friend here. Mrs. Smythe knew about fashion and the newest dances, even though she herself was enceinte and couldn’t dance for several more months. She would invite Melanie to tea at her cozy village house, where they would sit by the fire to look at fashion papers and share romantic novels.
    Everyone else there seemed too serious to be interested in fashion. They never even laughed at all! And at least Mrs. Smythe seemed glad to have a friend, too. Melanie had been feeling all too rejected since her mother sent her away. Mrs. Smythe also had a handsome brother, who was a widower. A brother with a fine estate and a very good income. Sir David Marton.
    Melanie reached the top of the hill and turned to look toward Sir David’s house at Rose Hill. Its gray stone walls rose against the rolling green fields, its windows sparkling in the sun. It was a pretty enough place, with Palladian columns and rounded towers. It could use a bit of renovation and decoration, of course, but that was what a wife was for. Melanie could certainly settle for being Lady Marton of Rose Hill. Then she would have a home for herself and her mother forever, a home no one could take from them.
    The fact that Sir David was reasonably good-looking and smelled nice, not an old, balding man with gout like her uncle’s retired old navy cronies, made the idea palatable. But, oh, Sir David was so serious! So quiet and dull, buried in books and work. Not like Captain Whitney had been…
    Melanie scowled at the