“What are you reading anyway?” he grumbled. “I can’t imagine it is more fascinating than Cornish Heath.”
“That is a matter of perspective.” She turned another page. “I am reading Aunt E’s diaries again, and her entries are full of advice for women on how to deal with men.”
Thomas eyed the plain-looking cover more curiously. So that was where Miss E, the scandalous spinster, had kept all of her secrets. “Are you learning anything new?” he asked, wondering why his new wife’s cheeks had gone so pink.
She lowered it, and that was when he realized she wasn’t ignoring him at all. “Well, that depends.” Her generous mouth curved upward. “For example, how do you feel about ropes?”
He was reminded, then, that his wife might not be a spinster anymore, but she was still a bit scandalous, and likely always would be. Not that he minded in the slightest. “I am open to exploration,” he told her, shifting on the seat to relieve the sudden tightness in his trousers. “And I . . . ah . . . remember from that day on the cliff that you are handy with a knot.”
“Good.” She smiled, closing the book and blowing him a kiss as the mail coach rolled to a dusty stop. “Because I’ve a notion to practice my knots on you.”
LUCY TOOK THOMAS’S hand and stepped down onto the single dirt street.
It felt a bit like coming home.
London had its charms, of course. With Thomas poised to formally take his seat in the House of Lords next year, they would need to spend at least half the year in the city. But for now they had time to spend here, and after the busy parliamentary session next year, she suspected she and Thomas would be all too ready to return again to the solitude of the little town.
The arrival of the mail coach was already attracting a crowd. She spied Bentley and Jamieson, both looking happy to see them. Reverend Wellsbury emerged from the door of the little church, raising a hand in welcome. At least two of the Tanner boys launched themselves at Thomas and began to rifle through his pockets, chattering in excitement. Mrs. Wilkins came bustling out her boardinghouse door, flour on her hands and a smile on her wrinkled face.
But this time there were a few new faces in the crowd, faces Lucy didn’t recognize. Well-dressed men with neckties and pocket watches and the stink of prosperity about them. Dread slithered through her. In spite of her attempts to save the town, had the Marston Mining Corporation found a foothold here after all?
Grabbing Jamieson by one arm, she pulled him aside. “Who are those men?” she asked uneasily.
The grocer beamed. “Oh, didn’t you know, Miss L? We’ve had visitors. They’ve been flocking here in droves. Ten came just this month.”
“It’s Lady Branston now, not Miss L,” she murmured, still eyeing the new men.
“Oh, you are married?” Mrs. Wilkins clapped her hands and exclaimed, “I just knew it!”
Reverend Wellsbury strode forward and slapped Thomas on the back. “Well done. Miss E would have been proud to hear it. Although, I confess I would have preferred to have you come back to Lizard Bay so I could do the honors myself.”
“We . . . er . . . couldn’t wait,” Thomas said, smiling warmly in her direction.
Lucy smiled back. No, they couldn’t have waited. And given the fact that she had spent most of the last month too nauseated to keep her breakfast down, the special license they had obtained appeared to have been a very smart thing indeed.
In spite of her happiness, she couldn’t help but glance at the newcomers again. They looked out of place here among the ragged, aging population of Lizard Bay, but she couldn’t quite put her finger on where they looked to belong.
“The visitors . . . do you mean to say they aren’t miners?”
“Oh, no, they’re naturalists.” Mr. Jamieson’s whiskers twitched. “From the Linnean Society of London. They’ve come to see the Cornish heath in bloom. Been a real boon to business here in town. Why, I sold four cans of snuff this week, and Mrs. Wilkins is having to double up on rooms.”
Thomas set her bag down on the street, a frown on his handsome face. “But . . . how did they know? I thought the pages I wrote for the Linnean Society had been lost.”
Lucy turned to the postmaster, a suspicion dawning. “Mr. Bentley, didn’t you give the papers to Lord Branston the way I asked? I told you he needed them most.”
Bentley nodded. “Yes, yes, I put them in the post.”
“No, Bentley, most.” Lucy looked back at Thomas, shaking her head. “I am sorry.”
Her husband didn’t look very upset. In fact, he was already striding toward a few of the gentlemen and reaching out to clasp their hands in welcome. She smiled and curled a hand around her belly as she watched the exchange of greetings. It looked like Lizard Bay was poised to have two solid industries, then.
One grand cause down, a few more dozen to go.
AS THEY SLIPPED through the rocks and Heathmore Cottage came into view, Lucy came to a stop, her hand light against Thomas’s arm. “Wait a second.”
Thomas stopped and set down the picnic basket Mrs. Wilkins had insisted on packing for them—a “gift for the newlyweds” she had proudly proclaimed. They’d come up to take an inventory of the repairs still needed on Heathmore Cottage. He was pleased to see his wife wasn’t out of breath, but he thought taking frequent breaks was a fine idea. He’d been worried about having her make this trek in her condition.
Not that he’d have a prayer in hell of stopping her. He knew better than anyone that you couldn’t make Lady Lucy Branston do something she didn’t wish to do.
“Are you winded?” he asked in concern.
“No. I am pregnant, not a bloody invalid.”
At her words, Thomas smiled down at the woman he could still not quite believe was his wife. It was true: she looked remarkably fit, and it was clear that pregnancy agreed with her, in more ways than one. Last night she’d aptly demonstrated her skill with a knot, a fact he had been all too happy to indulge. Then again, she’d tied up his heart since the first moment she argued with him in her London drawing room.
“Why did we stop, then? You are staring at it as if you’ve never seen it before,” he said, following her line of sight. “I promise you, Heathmore Cottage is the same as you left it.”
And it was. He could see just ahead to the whitewashed walls. A partially finished roof.
Cats everywhere.
Actually, that part was new.
He squinted, counting five fat tomcats basking in the midday sun. “Er . . . except I believe the rat problem may have been addressed in our absence,” he said, laughing.
“It’s not just that. Can you hear it?”
He listened a long moment. There was only the sound of waves crashing down below and a subtle clucking from the scrub grass, feral hens settling on their nests. “I don’t hear anything.”
“Exactly,” Lucy said, turning toward him. “Where did the ghostly wind go?”
Thomas listened again. The wind was blowing hard today, Lucy’s hair flying about her cheeks. But try as he might, he couldn’t hear the whistling sound that had so characterized the property before. “That is odd,” he admitted. “The landslide must have changed the geography enough to silence our ghost.”
Lucy nodded. “That should make it easier to find roofers now,” she told him. “And to offer it as a retreat for some of the naturalists cluttering up Mrs. Wilkins’s parlor.” She smiled up at him. “It will still be ours. Still protected. But useful. I think Aunt E would have liked that.”
Thomas glanced back toward the little cottage. It would take a lot of work, but if she was willing, he was as well. The idea that not only did she value the extraordinary beauty of her land, but that she wanted others to enjoy it as well, made him want to give out a whoop of approval.
Instead, he nodded. “If that is what you want, that is what we shall do.”
“I like the way you think, husband.” She reached up to kiss him once on the mouth, stirring thoughts of other things they might do once their p
icnic was finished. “And if you are this amenable to my ideas now, I confess I can hardly wait for next year.”
“Why?” he drawled. Next year would be lovely, with a tiny heir or future spinster to keep them busy. But he was looking forward to the next hour, given that one kiss with Lucy usually led to more. He cocked his head, recognizing all too well the way she was worrying her lower lip. “What are you thinking?” he asked. She may have shown him her skill with knots, but he hadn’t yet had an opportunity to show her his.
And if memory served, there was still a rope around here somewhere . . .
She shrugged, looking the opposite of innocent. “Oh, just the grand bit of trouble I could cause with my very own voting member of the House of Lords in my pocket.”
“Lucy,” he warned, though his own smile had stretched as high as hers. “I am scarcely in your pocket, any more than you are in mine. What are you planning to do?”
She blinked. “Who, me? I’m just a plain almost-spinster who somehow managed to attach herself to a handsome, influential husband.”
“Mm hmm. Plotting to wreak all the havoc you want, I imagine.”
Her smile turned as brilliant as the overhead Cornwall sun. “I only want you,” she told him, going up on her toes to kiss him again.
He kissed her back, and gladly. This was not a time to argue with her.
Because for once they were in agreement on something.
Continue reading for an excerpt from the first Seduction Diaries novel,
Diary of an Accidental Wallflower
Pretty and popular, Miss Clare Westmore knows exactly what (or rather, who) she wants: the next Duke of Harrington. But when she twists her ankle on the eve of the Season’s most touted event, Clare is left standing in the wallflower line watching her best friend dance away with her duke.
Dr. Daniel Merial is tempted to deliver more than a diagnosis to London’s most unlikely wallflower, but he doesn’t have time for distractions, even one so delectable. Besides, she’s clearly got her sights on more promising prey. So why can’t he stop thinking about her?
All Clare wants to do is return to the dance floor. But as her former friends try to knock her permanently out of place, she realizes with horror she is falling for her doctor instead of her duke. When her ankle finally heals and she faces her old life again, will she throw herself back into the game?
Or will her time in the wallflower line have given her a glimpse of who she was really meant to be?
Available now from Avon Books
May 2, 1848
Dear Diary,
If a man’s worth is measured in pounds, a woman’s is measured in dance steps.
And if those dance steps are with a future duke, surely they are worth all the more.
Mr. Alban, the future Duke of Harrington, asked me to dance again last night, the third time since the start of the Season. My friends are abuzz with what he might ask next, and I confess, I hope it is something more significant than a dance. I know the Season has just begun, but surely a proposal cannot be far from his mind?
When I feel the sting of jealousy from the less fortunate girls lining the walls, I remind myself some casualties are inevitable if I am to dance all the way to a ducal mansion. Any girl who feels tempted to accept the first offer that comes their way would do well to comfort themselves on the arm of a mere marquess.
Miss Clare Westmore
The Future Duchess of Harrington
Miss Clare Westmore wasn’t the only young woman to fall head-over-heels for Mr. Charles Alban, the newly named heir to the Duke of Harrington.
Though, she was probably the only one to fall quite so literally.
He appeared out of nowhere, broad-shouldered and perfect, trotting his horse down one of the winding paths near the Serpentine. His timing was dreadful. For one, it was three o’clock on a Friday afternoon, hardly a fashionable hour for anyone to be in Hyde Park. For another, she’d come down to the water with her siblings in tow, and the ducks and geese they’d come to feed were already rushing toward them like a great screeching mob.
Her sister, Lucy, poked an elbow into her ribs. “Isn’t that your duke?”
Clare’s heart galloped well into her throat as the sound of hoofbeats grew closer. What was Mr. Alban doing here? Riders tended to contain themselves to Rotten Row, not this inauspicious path near the water. If he saw her now it would be an unmitigated disaster. She was wearing last Season’s walking habit—fashionable enough for the ducks, but scarcely the modish image she wished to project to the man who could well be her future husband. Worst of all, she was with Lucy, who brushed her hair approximately once a week, and her brother Geoffrey, who ought to have been finishing his first year at Eton but was expelled just last week for something more than the usual youthful hijinks.
Clare froze in the center of the milling mass of birds, trying to decide if it would be wiser to lift her skirts and run or step behind the cover of a nearby rhododendron bush. One of the geese took advantage of her indecision and its beak jabbed at her calf through layers of silk and cotton. Before she knew what was happening—or even gather her wits into something resembling a plan—her thin-soled slipper twisted out from under her and she pitched over onto the ground with an unladylike oomph. She lay there, momentarily stunned.
Well then. The rhododendron it was.
She tucked her head and rolled into the shadow of the bush, ignoring low-hanging branches that reached out for her. The ducks, being intelligent fowl, followed along. They seized the crumpled bag of bread still clutched in her hand and began gulping down its contents. The geese—being, of course, quite the opposite of ducks—shrieked in protest and flapped their wings, stirring up eddies of down and dust.
Clare tucked deeper into the protection of the bush, straining to hear over the avian onslaught. Had she been seen? She didn’t think so. Then again, her instincts had also told her no one of importance would be on this path in Hyde Park at three o’clock on a Friday afternoon, and look how well those thoughts had served.
“Oh, what fun!” Lucy laughed, every bit as loud as the geese. “Are you playing the damsel in distress?”
“Perhaps she is studying the mating habits of water fowl,” quipped Geoffrey, whose mind always seemed to be on the mating habits of something these days. He tossed a forelock full of blond hair out of his eyes as he offered her a hand, but Clare shook her head. She didn’t trust her brother a wit. At thirteen years old and five and a half feet, he was as tall as some grown men, but he retained an adolescent streak of mischief as wide as the Serpentine itself.
He was as likely to toss her into Alban’s path as help her escape.
Lucy cocked her head. Wisps of tangled blond hair rimmed her face like dandelion fluff and made her appear far younger than her seventeen years, though her tall frame and evident curves left no doubt that she was old enough to show more care with her appearance. “Shall I call Mr. Alban over to request his assistance, then?” she asked, none too innocently.
“Shhhh,” Clare hissed. Because the only thing worse than meeting the future Duke of Harrington while dressed in last year’s walking habit was meeting him while wallowing in the dirt. Oh, but she should never have worn such inappropriate shoes to go walking in Hyde Park. Then again, such hindsight came close to philosophical brilliance when offered up from the unforgiving ground.
She held her breath until the sound of hoofbeats began to recede into the distance. Dimly, she realized something hurt. In fact, something hurt dreadfully. But she couldn’t quite put her finger on the source when her mind was spinning in the more pertinent directions.
“Why are you hiding from Mr. Alban?” Lucy asked pointedly.
“I am not hiding.” Clare struggled to a sitting position and blew a wayward brown curl from her eyes. “I am . . . er . . . feeding the ducks.”
Geoffrey laughed. “Unless I am mistaken, the ducks have just fed themselves, and that pair over there had a jolly good tup while the rest of them were tussli
ng over the scraps. You should have invited your duke to join us.”
“He’s not yet a duke,” Clare corrected crossly. Much less her duke.
But oh, how she wanted him to be.
“Pity to let him go by without saying anything. You could have shown him your overhanded throw, the one you use for Cook’s oldest biscuits.” Geoffrey pantomimed a great arching throw out into the lake. “That would impress him, I’m sure.”
The horror of such a scene—and such a brother—made Clare’s heart thump in her chest. To be fair, feeding the ducks was something of a family tradition, a ritual born during a time when she hadn’t cared whether she was wearing last year’s frock. These days, with their house locked in a cold, stilted silence and their parents nearly estranged, they retreated here almost every day. And she could throw Cook’s biscuits farther than either Lucy or Geoffrey, who took after their father in both coloring and clumsiness. It was almost as if they had been cut from a different bolt of cloth, coarse wool to Clare’s smooth velvet.
But these were not facts one ought to share with a future duke—particularly when that future duke was the gentleman you hoped would offer a proposal tonight. No, better to wait and greet Mr. Alban properly this evening at Lady Austerley’s annual ball, when Lucy and Geoffrey were stashed safely at home and she would be dressed in tulle and diamonds.
“I don’t understand.” Lucy stretched out her hand, and this time Clare took it. “Why wouldn’t you wish to greet him? He came to call yesterday, after all, and I was given the impression you liked him very much.”
Clare pulled herself to standing and winced as a fresh bolt of pain snatched the breath from her lungs. “How do you know about that?” she panted. “I didn’t tell anyone.” In fact, she’d cajoled their butler, Wilson, to silence. It was imperative word of the visit be kept from their mother, who—if last Season’s experience with potential suitors was any indication—would have immediately launched a campaign to put Waterloo to shame.
The Spinster's Guide to Scandalous Behavior Page 35