Secrets 0f A Wallflower (Debutantes In Paris Book 1) Read online

  A secret shared...

  But can she trust him?

  In this Debutantes in Paris story, Diana Martin is thrilled to be a writer covering the Parisian Exposition. But her new role must be kept quiet—her parents would never allow it! When enigmatic Sir William Blakely discovers her ruse, he knows it could lead her into danger. With the sparks igniting between them, William realizes the only way to protect Diana is by staying as close to her as possible!

  Debutantes in Paris miniseries

  Book 1—Secrets of a Wallflower

  Look out for the next book, coming soon!

  “McCabe sets the perfect tone, complete with all the elegant trimmings and sparkling warmth such genre fantasy can capture.”

  —RT Book Reviews on The Wallflower’s Mistletoe Wedding

  Debutantes in Paris

  Three friends, three dashing heroes,

  one life-changing trip!

  Three best friends from Miss Grantley’s School for Young Ladies, Diana, Emily and Lady Alexandra, are excited to finally be free of school, family and society’s expectations as they head off for a summer of adventure in Paris!

  They each have plans for their futures—and they don’t include marriage anytime soon. But meeting three dashing gentlemen in the most romantic city in the world soon puts paid to the best-laid plans...

  Read Diana’s story in

  Secrets of a Wallflower

  And look out for Emily’s and Lady Alexandra’s stories coming soon!

  “And what do your parents think of your new job?”

  She bit her lip. “You don’t think I can do it, do you? Because I’m a lady?”

  “On the contrary. I’m sure your articles would sell many papers.”

  She gave a tentative smile. “Do you think so?”

  He remembered what he had read in her book, the detailed observations, carefully rendered but with a certain lightness that made it all fun. “Of course I do. But Mr. Martin has rather conventional views.”

  Diana sighed. “Papa. Yes. But if he and Mama think there will be lots of eligible suitors flocking to Paris...”

  William felt a curious tug at his smile, a pang of—could it be jealousy? No, of course not. Just worry for her. “And are there? Eligible suitors, I mean.”

  She shrugged. “There will be princes and German dukes and such, but I don’t mean to marry any of them.”

  “No?” he said, feeling rather bemused.

  “No. But I’m sure articles about them would sell magazines, don’t you think?” She smiled. “Now we know all of each other’s secrets.”

  He laughed. “Yes, indeed. All our secrets.”

  AMANDA McCABE

  Secrets of a Wallflower

  Amanda McCabe wrote her first romance at the age of sixteen—a vast epic, starring all her friends as the characters, written secretly during algebra class. She’s never since used algebra, but her books have been nominated for many awards, including a RITA® Award, an RT Reviewers’ Choice Best Book Award, a Booksellers’ Best Award, a National Readers’ Choice Award and a Holt Medallion. She lives in Oklahoma with her husband, one dog and one cat.

  Books by Amanda McCabe

  Harlequin Historical

  and Harlequin Historical Undone! ebooks

  Betrayed by His Kiss

  The Demure Miss Manning

  The Queen’s Christmas Summons

  Bancrofts of Barton Park

  The Runaway Countess

  Running from Scandal

  Running into Temptation (Undone!)

  The Wallflower’s Mistletoe Wedding

  Debutantes in Paris

  Secrets of a Wallflower

  More Harlequin Historical Undone! ebooks

  by Amanda McCabe

  Girl in the Beaded Mask

  Unlacing the Lady in Waiting

  One Wicked Christmas

  An Improper Duchess

  A Very Tudor Christmas

  Visit the Author Profile page

  at Harlequin.com for more titles.

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  To my mom, because we’ll always have Paris!

  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

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Epilogue

  Author Note

  Excerpt from Lord Stanton’s Last Mistress by Lara Temple

  Prologue

  Spring 1888—Miss Grantley’s School for

  Young Ladies

  ‘By this time next year I will be a famous authoress,’ announced Miss Diana Martin as she lay in the grass with her two best friends and stared up at the clouds sliding across the pale blue April sky. They were only a few days from leaving their schooling for ever, presumably as polished young ladies of eighteen, ready to grace society, and had thus been allowed a rare afternoon picnic unchaperoned in the school’s lush park.

  ‘How can you do that, Di?’ murmured Lady Alexandra, a duke’s daughter, the sweetest, shyest and most beautiful girl in all of Miss Grantley’s. ‘There are no great lady authors. It must be so hard. Everyone knowing who you are, staring at you wherever you go. If anyone would buy the book at all. I would be so terrified.’

  ‘Oh, Alex,’ laughed Emily Fortescue, the most sensible of the trio that everyone in the dormitory corridors like to call The Three Musketeers. ‘You would be terrified if a mouse even looked at you, though you must get used to it. You are a duke’s daughter and you look like an angel. Everyone will stare at you when you make your debut.’

  Alexandra’s face, which was indeed heart-shaped, all ivory and roses crowned by spun silver-gold hair, blushed bright red. ‘Please, Em, don’t remind me. I wish we could stay here for ever, just as we are. Right at this moment.’

  Diana could definitely see what Alexandra meant. It was a perfect day, the sun soft and warm, the grass like a velvet blanket beneath them, the smell of honeysuckle on the breeze. The solid, Georgian red brick of Miss Grantley’s main building was in the distance, watching over them, keeping them safe as it had done for the last few years of their education.

  She had loved it here. The teachers had taught them so many things—geography, mathematics, philosophy, as well as the more usual French, watercolours, music, and how to curtsy to the Queen. They had one of the finest libraries in the county thanks to their founder, the daughter of a famous rare book collector. At Miss Grantley’s, Diana had found the stories that took her out of herself, the poetry and novels and plays. She knew she wasn’t pretty—she was too thin, too gangly, her hair too red—but here she had found a place for herself. Here she could start to see herself, unlike at her parents’ house where she always felt so awkward, out of place, and—wrong. Miss Grantley’s had changed all that, at least for a while.

  Best of all, she had found Emily and Alexandra. From the very first day, when they sat next to each other for the school’s formal dinner in its vast, intimidating great hall, they had been bonded fast in friendship. None of them had their own sisters, so they became sisters of the heart. They studied together in the library, whispered in the night as they shared chocolates, wandered the gardens, shared hopes and dreams and stories.

  And now it was all coming to an end, rushing towards them faster than a railway train, sweeping them into the unknown future. It was frightening—but also very exciting.

  Alexandra would surely marry. She was a great beauty and, as a duke’s daughter, could probably find a prince—if she could bring herself to speak to him. She was so very shy, which was why her ducal parents had sent her to school, hoping she would come out of her shell, make new friends.

  Emily, the daughter of a prosperous merchant in Brighton, could marry a wealthy factory owner her father knew, or she could run her very own business empire. She was clever enough, strong enough, brave enough, to do anything.

  But Diana—she had no idea what she could do. Her father was a respected diplomat, well-to-do but not hugely wealthy, long retired from a military career that had once taken him to India and South Africa. She knew her parents expected her to find a country gentleman to settle into a fine home with, or maybe a vicar, if he was from a good family, or even an army officer, as her father had once been.

  Yet marriage, despite all the wonderfully romantic French novels all the girls at Miss Grantley’s passed
around and devoured along with their chocolates, seemed quite terrifying. Once a lady was married, her own ideas seemed finished.

  She knew she wasn’t shrewd enough to run a business, as Emily could do. The one thing Diana really loved, the one thing that could take her out of herself and into other, stranger, beautiful worlds, was writing stories.

  Miss Merrill, their literature teacher, told her she had a rare gift for creating vivid atmosphere with her words. She couldn’t play the harp very well, could barely add sums above three digits, hopelessly mixed up the borders on globes and who should sit beside who at dinner parties. But she could write well enough.

  Couldn’t she?

  She propped herself up on her elbow and studied her friends. Their hats were all off, their faces turned to the sun, their shoes discarded, Emily’s chestnut hair spread on the grass beneath her. Miss Merrill would lecture them if she could see! Diana tucked a loose strand of her red-gold hair back into her unruly plait.

  ‘There are great women writers,’ she said. ‘Jane Austen. Mrs Gaskell.’

  ‘Charlotte Brontë,’ said Emily. ‘Plus all those anonymous books by A Lady, the ones Ann Parkinson is always bringing back from Paris. Plenty of lady writers, though few are as good as you, Di.’

  Diana felt her cheeks turn warm, maybe from the sun, maybe from the compliment. She had always longed for praise, but when it came she didn’t quite know what to do with it. She laid back down in her spot on the grass.

  ‘Do you want to write one of those French books, Di?’ Alexandra asked.

  ‘I don’t know.’ Diana thought of what they found in those smuggled books: wonderfully vivid descriptions of gowns and balls, kisses, elopements, scandal. They were fun. But she also loved the more realistic worlds found in George Eliot and Thackeray, so full of deep truths. ‘Maybe I’d like to do something like Mr Dickens. Something to make a bit of difference in the world. Or at least distract people from their troubles for a moment, as Miss Austen does, and give a bit of joy.’

  ‘You do that just by being—well, you,’ Alexandra said. ‘I’ve never known anyone to make me laugh as you do.’

  ‘Only because I fall down in deportment class and show my petticoats every week,’ Diana answered.

  ‘You only do that because it does make us laugh!’ said Emily. ‘Otherwise dreary old Mrs Percell would have us all asleep in boredom every week. We’ve seen you waltz when we practise our dance steps at night.’

  Diana had to admit that was somewhat true. When Miss Merrill, their floor chaperon as well as the literature teacher, had gone to sleep, the girls would often have their own little dance parties. It was fun to dance then, using the frilled hem of her dressing gown as a train, pretending she was dancing with a prince in a grand ballroom. They would all spin and spin, and then collapse into giggles before they ate their hidden stash of teacakes.

  But she still had the dratted tendency to topple over in curtsies. What she really liked about those classes was learning what to wear to various social events. She pored over the Parisian fashion magazines avidly and liked to sketch her own ideas for gowns and hats when she was supposed to be reading Cicero. Usually those imaginary gowns ended up on heroines in her short stories.

  Stories of young ladies like her friends. Ladies who could change the world.

  ‘And even if you were clumsy,’ Alexandra said, ‘no one is more stylish than you.’ She reached out to touch the elaborate floral embroidery on the pale blue muslin sleeve of Diana’s dress. The local seamstress had made it to Diana’s own design, with puffed shoulders and a narrow skirt in the latest fashion.

  Maybe she could use that style to make her mark. But how? Once she went home to her parents and their rules, she wouldn’t have many more chances.

  Diana sat up on the grass and stared over the rolling lawns, the bright reds and yellows of the flowerbeds, the tennis court where girls in white were wielding their rackets, their merry laughter echoing on the breeze. The sun glinted on the windows of the main building, dazzling and golden.

  It was a wonderful place. But Emily and Alexandra were right. Soon they would have to fly away. Where would they all go?

  ‘No matter what happens,’ she said, suddenly feeling quite urgent, almost frightened, ‘we must never lose each other.’

  Emily sat up beside her, a tiny frown between her amber-brown eyes, and Alexandra reached for their hands.

  ‘Of course we’ll never lose each other,’ Emily said. ‘We’re sisters, are we not? We have to support each other through our horrid Season next year, all those ghastly teas and receptions. Curtsying to the Queen in her black veils...’

  ‘Or worse, the Prince of Wales,’ Alexandra said with a giggle. ‘My cousin Chris says the Prince tries to grab ladies’ backsides if they don’t move away fast enough.’

  ‘Alexandra!’ Emily cried. ‘That is quite the naughtiest thing you’ve ever said. But if Mr Blakely said it, I’m sure it’s true.’

  Alexandra’s cousin, Christopher Blakely, was a bona fide member of the Marlborough House Set, a group that centred around the Prince of Wales and loved horse races, music halls, card games and beautiful, married ladies above all else. Chris was a handsome bon vivant, favouring carnation boutonnières and gold-headed walking sticks, and he made all the girls giggle and blush when he came to the school’s family visit days, which he often did, since he was Alex’s favourite relative. Diana also quite liked him. He had style and humour, and was impossible to take seriously. She had been looking forward to his visit today for weeks.

  Chris’s older brother, Sir William Blakely, on the other hand, was the very portrait of solemn respectability. A member of the Foreign Office, he seldom visited his cousin at school, and they said he was soon to go to India. While Sir William was certainly handsome, with his glossy dark hair, fathomless dark eyes and tall, lean figure in his perfectly cut suit, he was quiet. He so seldom smiled, yet always seemed to be watching everything around him so closely.

  He made Diana feel so—so frivolous. Silly. Young. And so strangely, well, fluttery. Those dark eyes that seemed to see so much...

  Diana pushed away thoughts of William Blakely’s handsome eyes. It was very unlikely she would ever see him again, anyway. Bombay was far away and she had more immediate things to worry about. Such as what to do when she left Miss Grantley’s.

  ‘Where are your cousins, Alex?’ Emily said, turning her face up to the sun. ‘It’s almost time for tea.’

  ‘I think they went fishing in the lake or something like that,’ Alex murmured dreamily. ‘Surely it’s ages before tea. I don’t think I can bear to move just yet. I feel so wonderfully lazy.’

  ‘I think I had better move about a bit,’ Diana said, ‘or I will never want to leave this spot! Maybe I’ll go draw. I’m supposed to add some landscapes to my portfolio for art class, so it won’t just be filled with drawings of gowns and hats.’

  She took her sketchbook and made her way along the winding pathways that led between the groves of trees beyond the picnic grounds. She soon found herself lost in the work, as she always did when sketching, and barely noticed the time passing, the light changing overhead. Until she heard a loud splash, a shout. Startled, she spun around to stare at the lake in the distance.

  There were two men on the mossy bank, one was Alex’s cousin Christopher, laughing as he tried to push the other man into the water, to the loud encouragement of the people already splashing in the waves. Chris was laughing, as he usually was, his golden hair damp and standing on end, his expression full of mischief.

  The man he tried to push was his brother William, he of the dark eyes and solemn smile. When Diana had first met him, she had been barely able to speak when he looked at her, she had felt so foolish. She was sure he hadn’t even noticed her then, but she had certainly noticed him.

  Now, she instinctively ducked down, even though the men weren’t looking in her direction at all. She knew she should leave right away, but she couldn’t seem to stop watching. Stop staring at William Blakely.

  He looked very different to the way he had in the school drawing room, his coat gone, his fine linen shirt damp and showing the lines of his muscled shoulders, his dark hair rumpled, his face alight with laughter. Yet he seemed so still within himself, so perfectly in control even in his dishabille against Chris’s silliness. Diana found herself utterly unable to look away.