The Accidental Mistress
A Novel
Chapter One
April 1814
Cornwall, England
Only a few more yards, Lily Bainbridge told herself. Only a little while longer and I will be safe. I will be free.
An icy wave struck her dead in the face. Gasping for breath, she pushed on, arm over arm, as she fought the unrelenting drag of the rough, rolling sea. Above her, lightning flashed against a viscous gray sky, slashes of rain hurtling downward to sting her skin like a barrage of tiny needles.
Arms quivering from the strain, she put the discomfort out of her mind and kept swimming, knowing it was either that or drown. And despite the suicide note she’d left back in her bedroom at the house, she had no intention of dying, certainly not today.
Many would call her insane to plunge into the sea during a storm, but regardless of the danger, she’d known she had to act without fear or hesitation. Delay would mean marriage to Squire Edgar Faylor, and as she’d told her stepfather, she would rather be dead than bound for life to such a loathsome brute. But her stepfather cared naught for her wishes, since marriag ...
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