The Secret Wallflower Society - Jillian Eaton Page 0,15
the complication of a courtship. That wasn’t to say he’d remained celibate over the past seven years. Because he most definitely had not. And logically he knew that if he didn’t want the earldom and all of its properties to go to his sniveling cousin Bernard he would, at some point, need to produce an heir. But that ‘some point’ was a vague, as-of-yet undetermined date in the future.
Quite bluntly put, he didn’t want to marry again. Not to some highborn chit in a peach dress and not to whomever it was Helena wanted him to meet at the ball. Mostly because no one could compare to Heather, and a little bit…a little bit because there was a part of him that regretted he’d gotten married so early the first time round.
Barely nineteen years old, and already burdened with all of the obligations and duties that had accompanied being a husband. His friends had been incredulous when he first announced his engagement. Heather’s family had been ecstatic. And Leo, who had always secretly yearned for a family of his own after his mother ran away and his father abandoned him at the most expensive boarding school money could buy, had been…content.
Content to leave his bachelor ways behind him – what there’d been of them – and marry the woman he loved. Content to enjoy Christmases by the fire and holidays in Bath. Content to live a life of quiet leisure, first as a husband then (so quickly sometimes he feared he might blink and forget it all) as a father.
And if he occasionally wondered if he’d acted too rashly, if he’d given up his independence too swiftly, if he’d sacrificed the excitement of bachelorhood for simple contentment, well…all he had to do was look at his wife holding his son to know he had everything he could ever possibly need. Until Heather was gone, and Henry with her, and his contentment turned to devastation.
His gaze shadowed, Leo left the main thoroughfare for a smaller trail that followed a meandering stream. Eventually the trickling water would spill into the Serpentine, but he had no intention of walking that far. He only wanted a few minutes of solitude away from the prying eyes of a public that hungered for every little slice of the Earl of Winchester they could manage to grab. Or the Wicked Earl of Winchester, as he’d come to be known these past few years.
Leo didn’t mind the moniker. It kept the timid at bay and was a warning to the rest to stay their distance. Which they’d more or less done after he’d made it clear he was not going to accept invitations, or host parties, or do anything that might be considered even slightly social in nature.
Attending Lady Galveston’s ball was going to change all that. It would open the proverbial doors, so to speak, and he’d no doubt the manor would soon be inundated with callers, and cards, and crying mamas thrusting their unmarried daughters at him. Which was why he had already made arrangements to skip the rest of the Season and travel directly to his country estate, where he would remain in relative isolation until the furor died down and he could return to his life of self-imposed solitude.
Or at least, that was his plan…
Until a woman fell out of a tree, landed on top of him, and ruined everything.
Chapter Five
If it were left up to Helena, she and Calliope would have remained in the dress shop all day. Surrounded by an endless array of fabrics and feathers and French seamstresses, the countess was in heaven. But for Calliope, who would have happily worn the same three dresses for the rest of her life, it was a personal form of hell.
By the time she’d tried on her eighth gown (unlike other shops which made everything from scratch, Madame Angelique’s specialized in articles of clothing that had already been created and needed only a few finishing touches before they could be worn) her patience had run its course, and when a tiny seamstresses emerged from behind the curtain holding yet another gown – one with more ruffles than any gown should rightfully have – her patience officially ran out.
“You pick one,” she begged Helena as she stepped down off the dais in the middle of the fitting room and began to search for the clothes she’d arrived in. “Whatever you think would look best. Have it delivered to your house, and I’ll get ready there.”