An Heiress for All Seasons (2 page)

“I doubt it would have been very diverting. I’m really not that interesting.”

Aurelia arched an eyebrow somewhat skeptically, stopping before Violet’s door. “We shall see. Good night, Violet.” She pressed a kiss to her cheek unexpectedly.

“Oh. Good night.” She watched the girl move down the corridor and disappear inside her chamber before stepping inside her own room. Her maid soon arrived to help her undress for the night.

Alone in the vastness of her lavish chamber, she laced her fingers over her stomach and stared up into the dark. She wondered how many people over the centuries had slept in this room, in this very bed. Now she was here. An American whose ancestors could very well have been serfs on this grand estate.

And Mama expected her to marry this earl? Some pompous lordling who hadn’t even seen fit to make an appearance yet. A wave of homesickness washed over. She missed the simple life she had left behind. Reading aloud after dinner to her Papa before the fire. And Mr. Weston with his kind, warm eyes. Always so kind. So respectful. She had to beg him for their first kiss, and even after that he still insisted on addressing her as Miss Howard. When Papa declined his suit and Mama announced their trip he had vowed to wait for her. To be faithful to her for all of his days even if that meant standing by as she married another man.

She sat up in the dark with an angry huff, flinging the counterpane back on the bed. She would not marry another man. She’d return home and eventually Papa and Mama would see just how perfect she and Mr. Weston were for each other. They’d relent. They had to.

Rising to her feet, she strode to the window again and stared out at the night, at the dark shape of the stable. A light glowed from within. Stable hands, no doubt.

Making up her mind, she fetched her boots and slipped them on. Finding her heaviest cloak, she put it on as well, burying herself in its ermine-trimmed folds. Pulling the hood over her unbound hair, she slipped from her chamber. The castle was as silent as a tomb. A doorman slept in a chair near the door, snoring softly, oblivious to her departure.

She sucked in a sharp breath when she stepped out into the night and burrowed deeper inside her cloak. She hurried, her feet eating up the ground as she rounded the house and drove a straight line for the stables.

She pushed open the creaking doors and stepped inside. The interior was marginally warmer. The smell of horse, sweet hay, and earthy oats immediately filled her nose. This felt like home to her. A light glowed from the far end of the stable. She could detect the faint sound of masculine voices. Deciding she needn’t alert the stable hands of her presence, she strolled silently before the stalls, peering in at each horse, petting velvety noses and cooing softly.

She reached one stall, larger than the rest and immediately she understood why. Inside stood a monstrous beast of a horse. A black stallion with a white star on its forehead.

He stood back several paces, watching her warily, his liquid-dark eyes seeming to say,
I don’t know you.

Violet extended her hand, palm out, for him to sniff. “Come, my beautiful boy, come now. Let’s see you.”

The stallion walked a few steps closer, his hoofs hitting the ground almost reluctantly as he approached.

“There now, my beauty. I’m sorry I have no treat for you. Let me pet you, and next time I promise to bring you a tasty treat. Would you like that?”

Almost as though he understood her, he tossed his head, neighing, his glossy dark mane shaking on the air.

Then he did it. He pushed his velvety nose into her palm. His hot breath puffed against the cup of her hand in greeting. She grinned.

“What in the bloody hell do you think you’re doing?”

Violet whirled around with a gasp, her hood sliding back from her head. A stable hand stood there glaring at her. He’d discarded his jacket and neck cloth. She gaped at the inappropriate sight of his lean physique on display. His shirt was open at the neck, exposing firm, touchable looking flesh. His trousers fit him like a second skin, concealing nothing of his narrow hips and muscular thighs. Dark boots hugged his calves almost to his knees. He exuded virility—the type of man who spent more time out of doors than indoors.

His face was equally pleasing. Square jaw. Sharp blade of a nose and piercing blue eyes. Eyes that looked her over now, taking in her tumbled hair and cloaked figure. Her hands dove for the edges of her cloak, making certain none of her nightgown peeked out. With consternation, she realized she still had not responded.

Remembering she was a guest here and not someone to be spoken to so rudely—by a stable hand, no less—she drew back her shoulders. “I was merely petting the horse.”

His gaze flicked to the stallion just behind her.

“You’re lucky he did not make a snack of you. I believe he has a fondness for Yanks.”

She bristled, quite certain no servant or employee had ever talked to her in such a manner before. Certainly such ill manners were not tolerated in an earl’s household. Perhaps he thought her a servant, too.

Lifting her chin, she disagreed. “He’s quite friendly.”

He crossed his arms over his chest, drawing her eyes there again—to that impossible broadness. “I know him. And he’s not friendly.”

She crossed her arms, mimicking his pose. “Well, I know horses. And he is. He likes me.”

His eyes flashed, appearing darker in that moment, the blue as deep and stormy as the waters she had crossed to arrive in this country. “Who are you?”

“I’m a guest here.” She motioned in the direction of the house. “My name is V—”

“Are you indeed?” His expression altered then, sliding over her with something bordering belligerence. “No one mentioned that you were an American.”

Before she could process that statement—or why he should be told of anything—she felt a hot puff of breath on her neck.

The insolent man released a shout and lunged. Hard hands grabbed her shoulders. She resisted, struggling and twisting until they both lost their balance.

Then they were falling. She registered this with a sick sense of dread. He grunted, turning slightly so that he took the brunt of the fall. They landed with her body sprawled over his.

Her nose was practically buried in his chest.
A pleasant smelling chest
. She inhaled leather and horseflesh and the warm saltiness of male skin.

He released a small moan of pain. She lifted her face to observe his grimace and felt a stab of worry. Absolutely misplaced considering this situation was his fault, but there it was nonetheless. “Are you hurt?”

“Crippled. But alive.”

Scowling, she tried to clamber off him, but his hands shot up and seized her arms, holding fast.

“Unhand me! Serves you right if you are hurt. Why did you accost me?”

“Devil was about to take a chunk from that lovely neck of yours.”

Lovely?
He thought she was lovely? Or rather her neck was lovely? This bold specimen of a man in front of her, who looked as though he had stepped from the pages of a Radcliffe novel, thought that plain, in-between Violet was lovely?

She shook off the distracting thought. Virile stable hands like him did not look twice at females like her. No. Scholarly bookish types with kind eyes and soft smiles looked at her. Men such as Mr. Weston who saw beyond a woman’s face and other physical attributes.

“I am certain you overreacted.”

He snorted.

She arched, jerking away from him, but still he did not budge. Instead his hands tightened around her. She glared down at him, feeling utterly discombobulated. There was so
much
of him—all hard male and it was pressed against her in a way that was entirely inappropriate and did strange, fluttery things to her stomach. “Are you planning to let me up any time soon?”

His gaze crawled over her face. “Perhaps I’ll stay like this forever. I rather like the feel of you on top of me.”

She gasped at his shocking words.

He grinned then and that smile stole her breath and made all her intimate parts heat and loosen to the consistency of pudding. His teeth were blinding white and straight set against features that were young and strong and much too handsome. And there were his eyes. So bright a blue their brilliance was no less powerful in the dimness of the stables.

Was this how girls lost their virtue? She’d heard the stories and always thought them weak and addle-headed creatures. How did a sensible female of good family cast aside all sense and thought to propriety?

His voice rumbled out from his chest, vibrating against her own body, shooting sensation along every nerve, driving home the realization that she wore nothing beyond her cloak and night rail. No corset. No chemise. Her breasts rose on a deep inhale. They felt tight and aching. Her skin felt like it was suddenly stretched too thin over her bones. “You are not precisely what I expected.”

His words sank in, penetrating through the fog swirling around her mind. Why would he expect anything from her? He did not know her.

His gaze traveled her face and she felt it like a touch—a caress. “I shall have to pay closer attention to my mother when she says she’s found someone for me to wed.”

Violet’s gaze shot up from the mesmerizing movement of his lips to his eyes. “Your
mother?
”

He nodded. “Indeed. Lady Merlton.”

“Are you . . .” she choked on halting words.
He couldn’t be
. “You’re the—”

“The Earl of Merlton,” he finished, that smile back again, wrapping around the words as though he was supremely amused. As though she were some grand jest. He was the Earl of Merlton, and she was the heiress brought here to tempt him.

A jest indeed. It was laughable. Especially considering the way he looked. Temptation incarnate. She was not the sort of female to tempt a man like him. At least not without a dowry, and that’s what her mother was relying upon.

“And you’re the heiress I’ve been avoiding,” he finished.

If the earth opened up to swallow her in that moment, she would have gladly surrendered to its depths.

C
HAPTER
T
WO

T
he heiress he’d been avoiding intrigued him.

This was his sole thought as he surveyed her. She was young. Pretty. Prettier than she realized. He recognized that at once. She did not possess an inch of self-awareness and that was a refreshing change. Most heiresses he had met floated around with inflated egos, confident that their positions and dowries would win them anything. The pretty ones were the most insufferable.

His fingers flexed against her arms. He itched to move his hands and grip the hips splayed above him, settle her to his liking against him. She was curvy. Her body soft and yielding. He appreciated the cushion of her breasts on his chest.

Perhaps his mother had finally found someone he could sincerely consider.

“Miss Howard, I presume.”

If possible, her eyes widened even further. She nodded jerkily, all that unbound hair of hers tossing around her face and trailing down to his chest. He itched to touch the pale brown mass, gather it in his fist to test its texture.

“I don’t recall your Christian name.” Something with a V. Vera? Victoria? He really should remember. His mother had talked of her incessantly since she had extended the invitation for her to join them through the holidays. As though the constant barrage of her name and talk of her dowry would persuade him to propose.

It was apparent that no man had ever handled her thusly—or uttered suggestive words to her before. He knew that at once from her wide-eyed expression. Enough reason for him to peel her off him and stand, and yet he remained just so. She was a guest in his home. Worse than that. She had come here for the sole purpose of snaring him into marriage. He should be thrusting her from him and running in the other direction. And yet here he remained.

“My Christian name is Violet,” she supplied, reminding him of a wild animal on the verge of biting or bolting. Her hazel eyes, so wide and gleaming green-gold, watched him without blinking. Her voice was husky, her accent soft and sultry.

“Violet,” he pronounced, studying her—this strange creature so unlike the icy heiresses his mother had paraded before him in the hopes he would form a match and drag his family back from the brink of debt his father had left them in.

“I did not give you leave to use my Christian name.” That chin of hers lifted. He knew she was trying for haughty, but she missed the mark. He knew haughty. He’d been surrounded by haughty all his life. There was something genuine about her. A female without airs or pretension. A girl who would sneak into the stables on a cold winter night wearing naught but a cloak and nightgown.

It was clear she hadn’t known his identity . . . which made her reaction to him all the more interesting. Her face burned every shade of red. He was no green lad unable to recognize his effect on her. He felt her response to him.

Her body trembled against him. After her initial struggling, her curves sank pliantly into him. His body stirred, aroused.

“True. You did not give me leave,” he finally answered. “Addressing you by your Christian name does imply a close acquaintance, but is that not why you are here? To make my close acquaintance?”

Her eyebrows knitted tightly. “I’m here because my mother insisted. She didn’t want to spend Christmas at a hotel and—”

“She brought you here to win an earl,” he finished, cutting straight to the matter.

Her mouth shut with a snap, her lips twisting obstinately, as though she refused to admit this glaring truth.

“Come. It’s no secret that’s why you are here.”

“What my mother wants and I want do not necessarily match, my lord.”

“Indeed? That would be a first.” He studied her sharply, intrigued. A well-bred girl who did not bow to the whims of her Mama? What a novelty.

She frowned at him, distrust keen in her hazel eyes. “What do you mean?”