Beware Of Virtuous Women

Beware Of Virtuous Women
Kasey Michaels

The perfect daughter…secrets within secrets, lies within lies.Adopted daughter Eleanor Becket is dedicated to her family and its welfare. She is also a commendable commander, and a keeper of secrets, most especially her own. Who would ever expect this fragile beauty, with her quiet ways and her unfortunate limp, to be capable of anything more than her accomplishments at embroidery and her mastery of musical instruments?Only Jack Eastwood feels the need to look more deeply at this self-proclaimed spinster, and what he sees–and the long-ago crime he suspects–lead both Jack and Eleanor to the very edge of desire and danger. As the Beckets feel the outside world looking ever more closely at the nocturnal activities taking place in Romney Marsh, as the Black Ghost rides yet again, Eleanor Becket is forced to risk her family, her chance at love, even her life, in one desperate gamble.

The Beckets of Romney Marsh saga continues

Our story so far…

Patriarch Ainsley Becket had taken his band of orphans and given them all new identities and a new life on the shores of Romney Marsh. His intention was to secure each a safe haven from their shocking beginnings and to give Ainsley a reprieve from his dangerous past. But one by one his children are leaving him to find new experiences…and to find mates.

Eldest son Chance Becket moved to London to become a true gentleman, though that did not work out exactly as planned. Now Chance is happily married to his young daughter’s governess, Julia, and they are raising a family of their own.

Feisty Morgan Becket was to have a season in London, hopefully securing the hand of a proper suitor…a man who could tame the troublesome debutante. She found a husband, all right, though Ethan, Lord Aylesford, might be just as wild as his new wife.

And then there’s Eleanor Becket. Quiet. Unassuming. Or so everyone thinks. But one should beware of virtuous women…

KASEY MICHAELS

Beware of Virtuous Women

Dear Reader,

It is 1813. England is fighting on two fronts, against both Napoleon and the United States. There is a third, smaller front—but hardly less important in certain quarters—and this front is on England’s own shores, the combatants England’s own citizens.

Anywhere the smallest boat might land, everywhere the Crown’s war-tightened purse has made day-to-day living precarious, there is the chance that the local populace is dabbling in a bit of free trading—smuggling.

The Beckets of Romney Marsh do not engage in smuggling themselves, but they have jumped in with both feet to protect those of their neighbors who do. Their Black Ghost Gang has secured the area and operated in peace for two years. But now that peace and the entire enterprise are being threatened by the Red Men, a large, vicious gang whose tentacles reach from France to London’s exclusive Mayfair.

And so is born an unholy alliance between Ainsley Becket’s business partner and his own oldest daughter, Eleanor, who travel together to London posing as man and wife to unmask the leaders of the Red Men Gang. Trust between the two is paramount if they are to succeed, but one is tightly wrapped in lies and the other has a potentially explosive secret to protect.

It had all seemed so simple. The man Ainsley Becket had been, the family he had built would all die and come to Romney Marsh to be reborn—safe, hidden, hopefully forgotten.

But the world keeps creeping in…

Please enjoy Eleanor’s story and watch for more Beckets in 2007.

Best,

Kasey Michaels

To Tom and Carol Carpenter

Beware of Virtuous Women

CONTENTS

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

CHAPTER ONE

1813