His Substitute Bride. Elizabeth Lane

       www.millsandboon.co.uk

      Elizabeth Lane has lived and travelled in many parts of the world, including Europe, Latin America and the Far East, but her heart remains in the American West, where she was born and raised. Her idea of heaven is hiking a mountain trail on a clear autumn day. She also enjoys music, animals and dancing. You can learn more about Elizabeth by visiting her website at www.elizabethlaneauthor.com

      HIS SUBSTITUTE BRIDE features characters you will have met in THE BORROWED BRIDE

       Previous novels by this author:

      ANGELS IN THE SNOW (part of Stay for Christmas anthology)

      HER DEAREST ENEMY

      THE STRANGER

      THE BORROWED BRIDE

       and in Super Historical:

      ON THE WINGS OF LOVE

       For Teresa and Ted and for San Francisco

      Chapter One

       San Francisco, April 13, 1906

      By the time Quint found the woman, she was dying. She lay faceup on the checkered linoleum, a dollar-size crimson stain oozing through the fabric of her plain white shirtwaist. It appeared she’d been stabbed.

      “Virginia!” Quint crouched beside her, clasping her hand. “Can you hear me? It’s Quint Seavers!”

      The blood-frothed lips moved slightly, but no sound emerged. She was a slight creature, about thirty, he judged, her plain features made plainer by the thick spectacles that lay askew on her nose. Quint was meeting her in person for the first time. But he already knew Virginia Poole to be honest and brave. The man responsible for this was damned well going to pay.

      “The letter, Virginia!” His fingers tightened around hers. “Where is it? Can you tell me?”

      But she was already gone, slipping away without a sound.

      Releasing her hand, Quint cast his eyes around the shabby one-room apartment. The place had been ransacked. Furniture had been toppled, clothes thrown helter-skelter. Kitchen cupboards had been emptied, their contents strewn on the floor. The Murphy bed, which took up one wall, had been lowered, the mattress, quilt and pillow ripped to pieces.

      Feathers eddied in the gaslit room, blown by a chilly draft from the open window. Whoever was here hadn’t been gone long. They’d probably climbed over the sill when they’d heard Quint pounding on the door. Judging from the mess and the hasty departure, he’d bet good money they hadn’t found what they were looking for.

      And neither would he.

      Quint cursed in frustration. The handwritten letter, linking Supervisor Josiah Rutledge to a crooked scheme involving funds for the city’s water system, would provide enough evidence to bring Rutledge down. Even more important, it would alert the public that this critical work wasn’t being done.

      Quint had written more than a dozen articles for the San Francisco Chronicle, stressing the urgent need to repair the city’s crumbling network of pipes, aqueducts and cisterns and build a line to pump water out of the bay. Just last week he’d interviewed Dennis Sullivan, the city’s longtime fire chief, who’d stated that, given the faulty water system, a major fire could destroy much of the city, with loss of life in the hundreds, if not the thousands.

      “This town,” Sullivan had declared, “is on an earthquake belt. One of these fine mornings we’ll get a shake that will put this little water system out, and then we’ll have a fire. What will we do then?”

      For a balanced perspective, he’d also interviewed Mayor Eugene Schmitz and Supervisor Rutledge. Both had insisted that repairs were being made in good order.

      And pigs could fly, Quint had groused as he left City Hall. Schmitz was almost as crooked as Rutledge. The whole mess stank like rotten fish. But he couldn’t just start making accusations. He needed solid proof.

      The key to that proof had come yesterday, in the form of a phone call to his desk at the Chronicle. Virginia Poole, a clerk on Rutledge’s staff, had, by sheer accident, come across the damning letter in a stack of papers she’d been given to file. Knowing what she had, and being a woman of conscience, she’d called Quint and offered to give the letter to him.

      He’d arranged to meet her the next evening in a bookshop off Portsmouth Square. When she’d failed to show up, Quint, who’d had the foresight to ask for her home address, had sensed that something was wrong.

      Sadly, his instincts had been right.

      Sick with dismay, he rose to his feet. At some point, Rutledge must have missed the letter and realized it had been scooped up with the other paperwork. Grilled by her boss, Virginia would have denied seeing it. But she’d probably been too nervous to convince him. One call and the hounds in Rutledge’s pay would have been on her trail, with orders to silence her and get the letter back.

      It seemed indecent not to cover the poor woman with a sheet, or at least close her eyes. But Quint knew the police would soon be here, alerted