HANNAH MEREDITH (Cont.)
KALEIDOSCOPE
BLURB EXCERPT
Born in India, Carolyn Rydell moves her shipping
business to London. Although she’s exotically beautiful
and wealthy, her late husband’s aristocratic family rejects
her because of her profession and heritage. Feeling in-
creasingly isolated, Caro uses work as a shield against
loneliness. Then she finds an injured man floating in the
Thames—and the pattern of her life changes.
The injured man is Lord Lucien Harlington. The
youngest son of a marquess, Luke has been accused of
seducing and abandoning a young lady. Disgraced and
estranged from his family, he tries to live down to others’
expectations. But now he’s become disgusted with his
dissolute lifestyle and longs to start anew. To do so, how-
ever, he must find his missing legacy—a cache of jewels.
Luke’s innate kindness and golden good looks spark
Caro’s desire, but she fears he’s attracted to her money
and not herself. For his part, Luke finds his rescuer fasci-
nating and wants more than the friendship she offers.
Surrounded by greed, bigotry, and betrayal, Caro
and Luke try to discover the passion and love that will
complete the patterns of their lives. The next time Luke became conscious, a face ap-
peared in his view—a beautiful face with sharp cheek-
bones and dark, vaguely tilted eyes. “Houri,” he said,
reaching for her. He must have been whisked to the Mus-
lim’s heaven. How odd. He wanted to ask the breathtak-
ing woman how this had happened, but darkness again
descended.
***
Caro watched the unknown man slide into uncon-
sciousness, confident it wasn’t a precursor to death now
that his fever had broken. The doctor had been right. Her
inadvertent guest was now on the mend.
“Pye-dog,” Amala said at her shoulder. “I knew he
would show himself to be a misbegotten cur. After you
save him, he calls you a whore.”
Caro smiled. Amala had been her defender since she
was a child. “No, he said houri. I think he imagines I’m
something like an angel. Not a bad thing to be compared
to.”
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