The Problem with Seduction - By Emma Locke Page 0,94

on a nag that knows the terrain.” He pulled himself up and threw his leg over the horse’s flank.

Con looked about for a mounting block. “Are you always like this?” He meant to sound tongue-in-cheek, but fell far from the mark. It didn’t help that he had three older brothers, or that he was feeling so dashed incompetent.

Lord Trestin looked up from his pommel sharply, then to Con’s relief, grinned. “Unfortunately, yes. I’ve been told I’m rather awful.”

“By Montborne?” Con led the horse to the stairs and attempted to leap at the beast from the third one up. The horse skittered, but Con caught the pommel and hefted himself up.

“My wife. And, to be honest, my sisters. Hie!” Trestin kicked his heels and flicked the reins. He shot off down the drive.

Con mimicked him with a lot less sureness, only a little sore that he hadn’t been afforded the chance to agree with Trestin’s wife.

They set out with a jarring pace that had Con’s brain banging against his skull for the better part of an hour. It wasn’t that Con never rode. It was just that he liked to walk. Finally, they crossed into acreage he recognized as belonging to his family. He felt a tug strong enough to surprise him. He’d thought himself a Londoner, through and through. He didn’t have any ties to this godforsaken land, aside from a partial canal he’d never seen. Why the nostalgia?

They rode another quarter hour. A winding creek where Con and his brothers had played as pirates trickled around a jagged rock formation. Off in the distance, their ancestral pile stood in a crumbling state of wind-whipped limestone and overgrown foliage. Another stirring of wistfulness tightened his stomach. Montborne would need a very wealthy heiress, if the family seat was to be saved.

Con thrust the estate from his mind. He had his own expenses to contend with. Judging by the pristine condition of Worston Heights, Lord Trestin wouldn’t understand.

“I could use a good dividend, myself,” Trestin said, as if he’d read Con’s mind and decided to disabuse him of that notion. “It’s all well and good to marry money, but a man wants to make his own way.”

“I was just thinking Montborne ought to consider taking a walking purse for a wife,” Con replied, as if his pensiveness had been directed at his brother instead of himself.

Trestin laughed. “That place needs a lot more than deep pockets.”

Con looked askance at his host. “He needs to marry a strong woman as well as a rich one?”

“Or he could marry a strong, rich woman.” Trestin paused. “You could, too.”

This. This was exactly what he’d feared would happen. As if he didn’t have enough people telling him what to do, now he must suffer through Lord Trestin’s opinion. “I’m not looking to marry,” he said, hoping that might be the end of it.

Not that he believed it would be. He was quickly coming to learn Lord Trestin could be just as persistent as any of his brothers. “You don’t have to be looking,” Trestin replied. “Now, to be fully fair, I wouldn’t tell you to marry anyone. You have to decide that for yourself. But in your case, you must realize you will be notorious for marrying her. I feel I must say it so we are clear. You won’t ever be received the same. Her past won’t be forgotten, nor forgiven. Even if you can do both, they can’t.”

Con knew instantly who “they” were. But why hadn’t he realized he’d be a pariah? He hadn’t thought to marry her, that’s why. “How do you stomach it?”

A muscle twitched at Trestin’s jaw. “She’s worth it.”

Con knew exactly what he meant then, too.

They rode along until the land opened up to reveal several pieces of large equipment and two makeshift fences, one containing horses and the other, oxen. A wall of rocks had been formed against one side of the ditch, which ran with several feet of water. Con wasn’t sure what he was looking at.

Trestin gave him a brief tour, pointing out formations and features of the waterway that would be Devon’s first water connection to the Channel. Soon enough they were approached by two men, one clearly a foreman and the other some type of architect or engineer. After performing introductions, they all walked the canal for two miles, until Con knew the rock wall was actually a lime kiln and that it had taken three Acts of Parliament to finally receive all of