by Lynne Barron
Widow’s Wicked Wish
Lynne Barron
The Countess of Palmerton has lived her life by Society rules, marrying the right man, bearing the required heir and guarding her name at all costs. And what has it gotten her? A loveless union, a cold marriage bed and a reputation for perfect propriety.
Fleeing the whispers of her husband’s scandalous demise, Olivia finds a haven at Idyllwild. Away from the gossip and glitter of London, she dares to cast a wicked wish to the winter sky.
Be careful what you wish for.
Jack Bentley has a wish of his own, one he has no intention of leaving to the fickle fates. He will marry the stubborn widow, even if it means using her awakening passion to force her to the altar.
A Romantica® historical erotic romance from Ellora’s Cave
Widow’s Wicked Wish
Lynne Barron
Dedication
This story is dedicated to my husband, the hero of my heart who chose me, my son and a menagerie of pets over his dreams of children of his own. I’ll never forget the sacrifice he made to give me my very own happily ever after.
And to my son, my very own wee little lordling who grew up to be a gentleman any lady would be lucky to have as her hero.
And lastly to my editor, the wonderful Princess Whitney who plucked my first novel from the slush pile, promptly fell in love with my characters and encouraged me to continue the story of three siblings and the ties that bind their hearts to one another and to Idyllwild.
Prologue
London
August 1818
A whispery, feminine giggle drew Olivia toward the stables. Warm, masculine laughter, deep and appreciative, had her peering through the space between the heavy wooden doors that never did close properly without a fight.
Elizabeth Portman stood in a shaft of sunlight, golden curls falling over her shoulders, green eyes shining and her pale hands beckoning to a dark-haired man stalking her in the shadows.
Wicked. She’d heard her mother and her aunts speak of wicked girls who lured men into their arms, but she’d never imagined she would witness one in action. And certainly not in the stables behind Hastings House on a sweltering summer day.
Mesmerized by the sight of the powerfully built man prowling toward the petite lady, Olivia held herself still, afraid to move, to so much as breathe, lest she miss even a moment of the decadent drama unfolding. Heat bloomed on her cheeks, scorched a path down her neck and chest, shimmering through her limbs. She might have blamed it on the sizzling sun beating down on her uncovered head, but she suspected the spreading warmth owed more to the sight before her than the heat wave that held London in its grip.
Fascinated by the heavy-lidded gaze of the lady who’d danced along the thin line between flirtation and folly throughout the long, interminable Season, Olivia watched the man halt before Elizabeth, close enough that his long legs tangled in her skirts. He leaned down, one arm wrapping around her waist, the other arm coming to rest on the rough wooden wall behind her, his fingers drifting through her blonde tresses, skimming along her temple. As the pair stared into one another’s eyes, the narrow beam of sunshine shifted, glancing over them, illuminating their profiles. Olivia’s gaze drifted over the man’s strong jaw and full lips, across the sculpted angle of his cheekbone, along the straight blade of his nose to the slash of his dark brow.
Recognition was slow to come, and when it did, Olivia fought it.
No. No, please not Jack.
He was a stranger to her in that moment. Gone was the mischievous boy with the merry blue eyes who’d stolen her heart, who’d cradled it in his gentle hands for years.
She might have convinced herself she was wrong, that it wasn’t Jack Bentley looming over the lady, but in that moment when she teetered between denial and acceptance, his voice vibrated in the quiet space.
“You’re playing with fire.”
Olivia knew his voice, had teased him when it changed from alto to baritone, had dreamed of the gentle rhythm of his Northern dialect. She thought she knew every cadence of his voice but she’d never heard that edge of danger before. As innocent as she was, Olivia recognized the desire in the dark sound.
Pain beat against her breast even as a terrible anticipation filled her and she lifted one trembling hand to her lips just as Jack’s mouth found Elizabeth’s.
The kiss was nothing like Olivia had imagined a kiss to be. There was no hesitation, no persuasion, no seeking or granting of permission. He simply captured her lips with a low groan, his hand fisting in her curls.
Elizabeth wound her arms around his shoulders, her hands gripping his neck, and arched into his embrace.
With a rumbling growl, Jack changed the angle of his head and deepened the kiss. Olivia imagined his mouth on hers, pressed her fingers hard to her lips, her breath leaving her on a fractured sigh.
Jack broke the kiss and lifted his lips, his head turning toward the doors.
Olivia froze, certain that he would see her watching from the narrow space between the doors.
“Kiss me again.”
Elizabeth’s breathy demand was like a bucket of cold water splashed over Olivia, awakening her to the shock of what she’d witnessed and the pending humiliation if she were discovered spying upon their secret passion.
She turned and ran, her slippers kicking up a cloud of dust in the stable yard. She pushed between two thorny rose bushes into her mother’s garden, dodged around a stone bench and raced up the hedge-bordered path.
It wasn’t until she reached the kitchen door that she realized she was crying, tears streaming down her cheeks. She scrubbed her hands over her face, drew a sobbing breath and pushed the door open.
Slowly and carefully she walked through the kitchen, pulling her lips into a wobbly smile for Cook and the young maid who puttered about in the warm room.
“Frightfully hot out there, Lady Olivia,” Cook said, dusting her hands on her apron.
“Yes,” Olivia agreed as she made for the servants’ stairs.
“Her ladyship asked me to tell her when you’d finished cutting her roses,” the maid said, her gaze dropping to Olivia’s empty hands.
“Oh, the roses.” She’d completely forgotten the reason she’d gone out to the garden.
“Don’t worry, my lady. I’ll cut some,” the girl offered.
“Thank you.” Olivia turned and carefully picked her way up the dark, narrow stairway.
Reaching the safety of her bedchamber she threw herself on the bed, buried her face in her pillow and allowed the sobs tearing up her throat free rein. She cried for the end of her innocence, for the demise of her dreams, for the loss of the secret hope she’d harbored for her future.
Hours later, when the world beyond her windows had faded to dark, Olivia pulled her weary body from the bed and made her way to the window seat. Curling her legs beneath her, she stared up at the night sky, surprised to see a handful of stars shining through the gray cloud of smoke and dust that hovered over London.
“Star light, star bright,” she whispered, her voice raspy and bittersweet, “the first star I see tonight. I wish I may, I wish I might, have the wish I wish tonight.”
Drawing in a deep breath and expelling it on a soft sigh, she thought about what she most yearned for, that which seemed most impossible, something worthy of what she suspected would be her last childhood wish.
“I wish that once, please just once, I might know what it is to be wicked, to unleash a man’s desire.”
Chapter One
Idyllwild Cottage
Northern England
January 1830
The funny thing about days when long-forgotten wishes come true is that they start out just like any other day.
Olivia awo
ke with the dawn just as she did every morning. She lay in her warm bed with her eyes closed and listened to the sounds of the household awakening. She heard the front door open and close downstairs as Tom Jenkins went out to collect the wood that was kept neatly stacked in the old barn. She heard Molly banging around pots as she prepared breakfast for the family.
It had snowed the day before, the first soft flakes beginning to fall just as she’d nudged her mount toward home after a canter across fields of dry, golden grass. Tom had predicted half a foot or more to fall during the night. Olivia didn’t need to look out the window to know he had been correct.
Beyond the sounds of the household arising, all was quiet. It was the distinctive silence of a snow-blanketed morning in the north of England, when all was still, as if the entire world had fallen into an enchanted sleep.
Olivia opened her eyes and sat up, stretching her arms above her head. Her shoulders and arms were sore, but it was a pleasant ache brought on by hard work. The previous day Tom had chopped down an old tree leaning perilously close to the stables. Together they had stacked enough wood to last the rest of the winter and beyond. It had been back-breaking work, but when they had stood back and looked at the neatly stacked wood, Olivia had felt a wonderful sense of accomplishment.
“Mama,” came a sleepy voice from across the room and Olivia looked up to see her three-year-old son Charlie peeking around the door.
“Come in here and cuddle with your mother, Bonny Prince Charlie,” Olivia sang out just as she did every morning.
Charlie toddled across the room, his gait uneven as he lurched from his strong right foot to his weaker left. Olivia forced herself to remain still amid the rumpled covers and allow him to scramble onto the bed unassisted.
“Mama, there’s lots of snow.” He squirmed under the covers and Olivia wrapped her arms around him and buried her nose in his neck, breathing deeply. Every day he smelled less like a baby, she thought sadly.
“Is Fanny awake?” Olivia asked.
“Uh huh,” came his sleepy reply.
Together mother and son lay cuddling in bed while they waited for Fanny to roust them.
“Mama!” Fanny’s shrill voice broke the silence some minutes later. “Breakfast is ready, Mama,” she cried from the bottom of the stairs just as she did every morning.
“Well Charlie, we’d best get up or she’ll be in here yanking our covers off.” Olivia rolled out of bed with her son in her arms and hurried him back down the hall to dress in warm woolen pants, a hand-knitted jersey, and sturdy leather boots custom-made to lend support to his damaged foot.
“I’ll take the darling down.” Olivia looked up to see Mary Morgan standing in the doorway smiling at her where she sat on the floor tying the laces of Charlie’s boots, sunlight glinting off her silver hair and her blue eyes twinkling. “Get dressed before you catch a chill.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Olivia replied with a smile.
It was a bitterly cold day. It had stopped snowing but the wind had picked up and was whipping the snow into swirling clouds when Olivia and the children walked out into the yard just before noon. Fanny wore boy’s trousers and a jersey under a long wool coat, her dark hair pulled into two braids, a floppy old hat pulled low over her ears. A scarf was wrapped around her from her neck to her nose.
“Fanny May, you’re not but a pair of twinkling blue eyes in a sea of wool,” Olivia told her as they walked together pulling a wooden sledge that Charlie, equally bundled up against the cold, was riding.
“Well you’re not but a pair of silvery eyes and a rosy nose,” Fanny replied with a giggle. “Your nose is red, Mama, because your blood is there to keep it warm.”
“Where did you learn that?” Olivia asked in surprise. At six, Fanny was a precocious child, smarter than her mother could fathom sometimes. She absorbed knowledge, seemed to soak it up through her skin. It was often scary the things her daughter knew.
“I don’t know,” Fanny said with a shrug before dashing ahead. “Last one to the top is a rotten egg!”
Olivia pulled Charlie on his sledge up the hill behind her daughter. When they reached the top, mother and daughter stood looking down at the view spread out before them.
“It looks like a fairy tale,” Fanny whispered in awe.
Everything for miles was white. Hills and valleys in the distance sparkled in the winter sunlight. The pond behind the cottage was frozen, covered in a bed of snow that all but hid it. The bare trees were hung with icicles, branches blowing in the breeze, filling the air with their music as they clinked together before breaking away to fall to the ground.
Idyllwild Cottage sat atop a small rise, gray stones shimmering in the sunlight, smoke drifting from the chimneys to curl in the crisp air before blowing off in the wind. Home, Olivia thought, a small smile pulling at her lips. Olivia and the children had come to Idyllwild more than a year ago, one month after Palmerton had died, leaving Olivia a widow, and baby Charlie the new Earl of Palmerton. And Fanny? Fanny had barely been touched by her father’s passing. At five she had hardly known him.
Strange, thought Olivia, that she had found a home in the wilds of the north. She, who had been raised in busy London, who until three years before had been unaware of Idyllwild’s existence, had fallen in love with this wonderful old house and the fields and forests that surrounded it. From the first moment she had seen it, she had been enchanted. When she had left after that first summer, she had found her dreams filled with a longing to return.
Olivia knew that soon, in two months, perhaps three, she and the children would have to return to London, to the town house in Grosvenor Square that had never been a home, to the social whirl of another London Season, to the whispers that would surely follow in her wake, to the cold disapproval in her mother’s gaze.
Her brother Henry, the Earl of Hastings, would be there to welcome her home with his booming laughter and mischievous humor. And of course, her cousin Simon, Viscount Easton, and his wife, Beatrice, Olivia’s half-sister, would come to Town from their country house. Yes, it would be wonderful to see them, to bask in the uncomplicated affection they offered.
“I can go by myself.” Fanny’s words brought Olivia out of her thoughts and back to the picturesque view from the hill above Idyllwild Cottage.
“I don’t know, Fanny,” Olivia replied. The hill was not so steep but the snow was quite deep and she knew there were rocks and boulders hidden in its depth.
“I’m six,” her daughter argued. “I’m not a baby like Charlie.”
“I’m not a baby!” Charlie cried from his perch on the sledge.
“Of course you’re not,” Olivia assured him before shooting her daughter a look of reproach.
“If you go down alone, you’ll have to bring the sledge back up by yourself,” Olivia warned.
“Oh,” Fanny murmured. “I don’t know about that.”
Olivia turned away to hide her smile. Unless she was in the kitchen with Molly, Fanny dreaded anything that hinted at hard work.
“I know,” her daughter continued, undaunted, “I’ll go down and then you can come down and bring the sledge up. Charlie can wait at the top…”
Olivia listened with half an ear but her mind was on the sight far below. A carriage and two people on horseback were traveling the long road that wound past Idyllwild. The road led north to the village of Deerfield and south to the London Road. It was rare to see travelers on the road, especially in the winter months. The carriage was traveling south and having a tough time of it as the road was buried in snow. The locals could have picked out the road between the low stone walls that ran on both sides of it. This carriage was not driven by a local man.
“Don’t you think so, Mama?” Fanny looked up at her mother with guileless blue eyes.
“We’ll ride down together,” Olivia said firmly.
They rode down the long hill, laughing as they came to rest at the bottom, just before the front lawn disappeared into the woods. When they had trekked bac
k up to the top, Olivia looked toward the road but it was empty. She wondered if the carriage had become stuck on the other side of the woods. Perhaps she should ask Tom to ride down and see. Or she could saddle Mirabel and make the short trip herself.
Olivia joined her children on the sledge, Fanny in front and Charlie wedged in the middle between them. She pushed off and then tucked her trouser-clad legs around both children as they started down the hill. The sledge picked up speed on the snow that was packed from their first foray. Olivia saw movement to her left and looked to see a man on horseback coming out of the woods. Another rider, perhaps a child or small woman, joined the first. They were riding their mounts slowly up the long drive to the cottage.
“Oh, no,” Olivia murmured.
“Mama,” Fanny warned as she noticed the riders.
“Weeee,” Charlie cried as the sledge flew over a small boulder and left the ground. “Look out!” Olivia cried.
“Move!” Fanny shouted.
“Faster!” Charlie laughed.
The sledge, with its three riders, sped down the hill with no way to slow their descent. The two people on horseback appeared oblivious to the danger. Couldn’t they see them, hear them? No, they were still too far away, but soon they would all collide.
“Get out of the way!” Olivia shouted. She watched as the man finally turned his head. He seemed to freeze for a moment before he hauled back on the reins, turning his mount sharply to the right. He grabbed the reins of the second horse and turned it back. Both horses pranced about in a circle. Olivia wrapped her arms tightly around her children and leaned her weight to the right.
She might have succeeded in turning the sledge had it not rolled right over another boulder. They were airborne once again and with their combined weight all leaning right, the sledge twisted in the air and sailed out from under them.
Olivia cried out as she flew through the air with her arms and legs wound around her children. She looked up just in time to see the snowdrift before they all landed in it amid tangled limbs.