The Bachelor Bargain (Secrets, Scandals, and Spies) - Michaels, Maddison (an ebook reader TXT) 📗

Table of Contents

Dedication

Content Warning

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

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Chapter Forty

Chapter Forty-One

Chapter Forty-Two

Chapter Forty-Three

Chapter Forty-Four

Chapter Forty-Five

Chapter Forty-Six

Chapter Forty-Seven

Chapter Forty-Eight

Chapter Forty-Nine

Chapter Fifty

Chapter Fifty-One

Chapter Fifty-Two

Chapter Fifty-Three

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

About the Author

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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

Copyright © 2021 by Maddison Fitzsimmons. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means. For information regarding subsidiary rights, please contact the Publisher.

Entangled Publishing, LLC

10940 S Parker Rd

Suite 327

Parker, CO 80134

rights@entangledpublishing.com

Amara is an imprint of Entangled Publishing, LLC.

Edited by Stacy Abrams and Alethea Spiridon

Cover design by LJ Anderson/Mayhem Cover Creations

Cover photography by Chris Cocozza

Period Images

bonetta/Getty Images

ISBN 978-1-68281-479-6

Manufactured in the United States of America

First Edition May 2021

I dedicate this book to my mum, who is my greatest supporter and biggest fan!

I love you, Mama.

You really are the best mum a girl could ever have.

Content Warning

The Bachelor Bargain features themes, imagery, and content that may be triggering for some readers. Discussion of physical abuse, rape, suicide, and death appear within the novel. Scenes depicting graphic violence/death also appear. It is my hope that these elements have been handled sensitively, but if they could be considered triggering to you, please take note.

Chapter One

London, April 1885

The pelting rain lashed across Lady Olivia Haliford’s cheeks like the icy hands of death, battering the silent tears already coursing down her face without mercy. She stood there, soaked to the bone, her cloak and bonnet sagging after her parasol had long ago conceded defeat against the deluge, to now hang limply beside her cane.

But Livie was numb to it all. Numb to the cold. Numb to the pain. Numb to everything but the gleaming walnut wood of her friend’s casket as it was slowly lowered into the dark, yawning hole that had been freshly dug into the earth beneath.

Alice was dead. And Livie hadn’t been able to stop it.

She clenched her teeth tightly with the bitter thought. A thought that had been repeating itself over and over in her head since she’d heard the news.

The reverend snapped his bible closed, finishing his eulogy and jolting Livie from her grim musings. She watched, feeling frozen as the reverend nodded to one of the caretakers, who stepped forward and began shoveling some muddy dirt down upon her friend’s coffin.

The sound of the mud hitting the wood beneath was jarring in its finality. This was not a nightmare Livie was going to wake up from, as much as she’d been desperately hoping it was.

A sense of despair began to penetrate her numbness, and for a minute she couldn’t breathe as a tightness gripped her chest, her heart feeling as if it were being squeezed dry.

Instinctively, her fingers clenched even more firmly around the silver handle of her cane. Breathe, Livie, breathe. She inhaled a deep lungful of air, and then another, willing herself to maintain her composure as an overwhelming urge to rage at the heavens threatened to consume her. She mustn’t give in to the compulsion. Not here. Not now. She owed it to Alice to refrain from causing any embarrassment.

Alice, who had already suffered enough and was now lying cold and lifeless in that horrid box. Forever alone… Was this really her friend’s fate? Alice’s penance for being seduced and then discarded by an unknown scoundrel? A predator who had surely already moved on to some other unsuspecting young lady, having suffered no consequences for ruining Alice.

The injustice of it all was overwhelming, and Livie had to force down the fury trying to bubble to the surface. It was completely unacceptable. Someone had to do something, to stop such a thing from occurring again.

The fiend, whoever he was, had to be exposed and justice served.

Livie glanced first to her right and then her left. Her two best friends, Lady Kaitlyn Montrose and Miss Henrietta Merriweather, stood silently beside her. The expressions on their rain-streaked faces surely mirrored Livie’s own; equal masks of rage and despair.

“This situation is completely intolerable,” Livie whispered, loud enough for only her two friends to hear. “We must seek justice for Alice.”

“I agree.” It was Kat who spoke, her jade-green eyes flashing dangerously in the fading afternoon light, almost as wild as the wet strands of the flaming red of her hair peeking out from her bonnet, plastered against the sides of her face. “We cannot let this go unanswered. Alice must be avenged and the man responsible made to pay.”

Kat was the fiercest lady Livie had ever met, without exception, caused no doubt by her friend’s rather unusual upbringing. She had been raised by an uncle who had extremely liberal views when it came to women and what they should or should not be taught. As