A Bride for Colonel Avington (Beniton Hall #7)

Prologue

Richard Avington—young, handsome, and wealthy—fell hopelessly in love the very first day he met Miss Catherine Pershing at the tender age of four and twenty.

And it was glorious.

Her smile enraptured him across every ballroom. The glimmer of her golden-brown hair beckoned him during every picnic and every boat party the two families attended. He’d met her early that Season—perhaps a full week before her formal London bow. She was his aunt’s goddaughter, after all.

Richard was no green schoolboy, despite his tender age.

Growing up in possession of three older brothers, two of them more rogues than saints, had ensured Richard’s early appreciation of feminine beauty.

The Avington brothers were a handsome, admirable bunch, their very presence stirring the interest of any ballroom they entered.

Richard had always been surrounded by beauty.

But Miss Pershing was different.

Her graceful manners enchanted him. Her soft laughter sent trills down the back of his spine. Every turn of her figure mesmerized him until nothing and no one else existed in the entire universe.

Then Miss Catherine Pershing married; she married the young and dashing Earl of Branston a whole month before it even occurred to Richard to ask for anything more than an opening dance. Then a mere eight months later, Catherine, Lady Branston, died with her stillborn child in her arms.

And Richard Avington—young, disconsolate, and broken—left for war.