Mistletoe and Mayhem - Cheryl Bolen Page 0,63

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CONVINCING THE COUNTESS

by

ALINA K. FIELD

A penniless widowed countess with trade in her blood descends upon the country manor of her sons’ negligent guardian, intent on confronting him about her boys’ futures. Instead, she finds his younger brother, a business-minded aristocrat with a penchant for widows and a distaste for emotional entanglements. A man who once witnessed her greatest humiliation. A man offering enticing distractions that threaten to derail all her plans.

Called home at Christmas to bring his older brother to heel and sort out the family finances, a baron’s younger brother wishes nothing more than to finish the task and return to his railway project. But when he finds his mother entertaining a fetching widow he met many years earlier as the unfortunate bride of a ne’er-do-well earl, temptation steers him along a different track, one that may derail all his plans.

Can he convince the reluctant countess to set a course for her future that includes him?

Chapter One

Richmond, 1811

“Gad, I’ve never seen the likes of it.” Chester Halverton, Earl of Glanford, raised a shaky flask to his lips. “The gacking and puking go on forever. S’pose that’s how it is when you breed on a woman who’s not born a lady.”

Good God, what an ass.

The Honorable George Lovelace shuffled a booted toe through the gravel and glanced at his chuckling brother, Fitz—Fitzhenry Lovelace, eldest son and heir to Baron Loughton.

Fitz leaned against the next column of the circular folly in the Townsends’ garden, and stretched his legs along the stone bench he’d claimed for himself. “As the eldest of ten,” he said, “I can assure you, genteel blood makes no difference.”

The others—fashionable men of good birth, all Fitz’s friends, all well into their cups—laughed and chided Glanford. They’d slipped away from the terrace and wide lawn through the arbor to this secluded folly to smoke their cheroots and drink something stouter than their hostess was serving.

“Surely your bride isn’t ill all the time,” someone said. “Did she not accompany you today?”

Glanford had arrived with an attractive young lady with wheaten-colored hair and wide gray eyes. Tall and shapely, she’d matched her escort in height and had greeted her hostess with a solemn air of either haughtiness or deep unhappiness.

George had suspected the latter. Now he was sure.

“She did.” Glanford took another long drink. “Mooning about like death.”

“Still, she’s lined your pockets,” someone said.

The ass brayed. “And easy it was picking hers. Lured her onto a balcony and one stumble later she was in my arms—with the right nosy gossip observing.”

“Cleverly done,” someone said, and there was more drunken laughter.

George pushed himself off the column. The party had been a dead bore, and this? There wasn’t anything more tiresome than a bumptious fool’s marriage woes.

“Let it be a lesson for the young ones like young Lovelace here,” Glanford said.

Fitz glanced his way and shrugged.

Glanford belched. “Don’t ever give up your ladybirds though, George.”

He scoffed. “I do love tedious advice from my elders.” At eighteen he had no plans to keep a mistress. He had better ways to invest the small income he’d received from his late godfather. “Yet out of my unfailingly deep respect for you ancient ones, I shall keep it in mind.”

“Don’t you want to know why?” someone exclaimed, ignoring his sarcasm. “Do tell us, Glanford.”

He tried to catch his brother’s eye, but Fitz’s attention was fixed on the earl. Like George, Fitz was unmarried. However, Fitz did have a mistress tucked away in a lodging on Brook Street.

“No life there at all,” Glanford said. “Like poking through a hole in the ticking. Heard wives are like that. Never knew it would be true.”

In the general laughter that followed, Glanford turned a bleary eye George’s way. “Find a bumbling girl with a purse, George, but keep your side piece, unless you like bedding the dead.”

Everyone laughed, including Fitz.

He thought of the pain he’d seen in the lady’s gray eyes.

“I’ve heard,” George drawled, flicking at an invisible piece of lint, “a man has to make some effort. I’ve heard it takes a woman longer than two minutes to liven up. Unless, of course, one has engaged an actress.”

Loud snickers followed, petering out as Glanford’s face hardened. George forced a smile and held the ass’s glare.

“Now, now,” Fitz soothed. “What does my pup of a brother know about bed sport, eh?” He stood and slapped Glanford on the back. “George and I must be