The Earl She Should Never Desire, page 1
Sensations piled one on top of another. She could feel each of his fingertips on her palm through her thin gloves.
And worse, her other hand resting against his shoulder, warm and safe. Her mind slipped under the dark wool and soft linen of his clothes and touched the warm skin beneath...
Sense was doing its best to catch up with sensation, like a messenger running after an advancing army, haplessly waving an order to retreat: don’t go there! Only an awful, dreadful, traitorous person would be so aware of the man who was to become Annie’s husband.
One shouldn’t want to move closer, lean her cheek against the dark fabric of his coat, soak up his warmth and heartbeat. One shouldn’t have to fight against the urge to look at him. And one definitely shouldn’t imagine stopping right here in the middle of Lady Sefton’s ballroom, standing on tiptoe and touching her mouth to his to see if her worst fears were correct and it would feel horribly right.
Oh no.
The two words rang inside her like a bell underwater—muted but reverberating.
She didn’t want this part of her to wake. It had sunk to the bottom of some muddy lake even before Tim had died. It should stay there, where it and she were safe.
The very last place it should choose to revive itself was in the middle of a fashionable ballroom.
And the very, very last person who should revive it was Annie’s Lord Sherbourne.
LARA TEMPLE
The Earl She Should Never Desire
Lara Temple was three years old when she begged her mother to take dictation of her first adventure story. Since then she has led a double life: by day an investment and high-tech professional who has lived and worked on three continents, but when darkness falls, she loses herself in history and romance—at least on the page. Luckily her husband and two beautiful and very energetic children help weave it all together.
Books by Lara Temple
Harlequin Historical
Lord Crayle’s Secret World
The Reluctant Viscount
The Duke’s Unexpected Bride
The Earl She Should Never Desire
The Return of the Rogues
The Return of the Disappearing Duke
A Match for the Rebellious Earl
The Sinful Sinclairs
The Earl’s Irresistible Challenge
The Rake’s Enticing Proposal
The Lord’s Inconvenient Vow
The Lochmore Legacy
Unlaced by the Highland Duke
Wild Lords and Innocent Ladies
Lord Hunter’s Cinderella Heiress
Lord Ravenscar’s Inconvenient Betrothal
Lord Stanton’s Last Mistress
Visit the Author Profile page
at Harlequin.com for more titles.
To my dear friends Nina and Neta—I’ve always been in awe of your adventurous spirits and giving souls, now even more so as you bravely battle breast cancer. How lucky I am to have you in my life.
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Epilogue
Excerpt from The Duke’s Forbidden Ward by Millie Adams
Chapter One
‘Lord, what fools these mortals be.’
—A Midsummer Night’s Dream, William Shakespeare
Birmingham—May 1818
Lily smoothed out Annie’s letter and went to the window to read it again by the light of the fading sun. She could light a candle, but it was a week yet before she received her wages and she preferred to be careful. Luckily her sister’s large looping handwriting was a model of legibility.
Unlike her own.
Lily murmured the words aloud as she read. It was foolish, but it made Annie seem closer.
‘“Lord Sherbourne is so much more pleasant than any of the men Mama and Papa tried to secure for me the previous two Seasons. He doesn’t make me feel uncomfortable. He is amusing and kind and never seems quite serious about anything. And he is very handsome which is nice...”’
Kind. Nice. Handsome.
High praise indeed for a marriage of convenience. But Lily didn’t want her sister to make a marriage of convenience. The undisputed diamond of the last three Seasons deserved more than kind and nice and not feeling uncomfortable with the man with whom she must spend the rest of her life.
Still, it could have been much worse.
She turned over the sheet and continued reading.
‘“Could you come to town, Lily dear? I know it is foolish, but I’m feeling rather alone. This is such a big step and Mama and Papa are all caught up in Settlements and Festivities and there’s no one to talk to. Piers is down from Oxford, but it isn’t the same. Please, Lily. I need you. Your loving sister.”’
I need you.
Annie rarely played that card. She was too responsible.
Lily glanced about the tiny parlour she shared with Eleanor, another veteran’s widow. Spring had finally arrived, but it was chilly here on the top floor of Mrs Spratt’s Boarding House for Young Women. And damp.
It would be nice to be pampered and cossetted in a house full of servants and crackling fireplaces. She could explore London as she had with Tim the one time he’d been on leave during his last year of the war. Or rather as she had on her own as Tim had been rather busy with his cronies enjoying a whole different aspect of London.
There had been awful parts to that year, but she’d come to love her time in London.
She raised her head. The last three stairs creaked like an off-key organ grinder. One day they would collapse entirely and either she or Eleanor would find themselves on a pile of debris in the Ames’s back parlour.
Eleanor entered the room and heaved a sigh of relief as she sank into a chair by the empty fireplace, tossing her limp straw bonnet on to the table with weary disgust.
‘They were protesting outside Birkin’s so I had to walk all the way around by Needles Alley. I really must remember to have my boots resoled. I don’t know what’s worse—the cold or the ache.’
Lily handed her a blanket one of the soldiers’ wives had knitted last winter and went to pour tea from the kettle hanging on the hob. It wasn’t very hot, but then the room wasn’t much warmer than outside and Eleanor took it gratefully and nodded at the sheet of paper Lily had set aside.
‘A letter?’
‘From my sister. She is to be married.’
‘Oh, how wonderful. Has the star of the Season finally fallen in love?’
Lily considered the letter.
‘Well, it doesn’t sound like love. Affection, more like.’
‘Even better. Love is all too often a prelude to disappointment. Look at us.’
Lily smiled.
‘Point taken. She hopes I shall join her in London for a period. Now that term is over I might go.’
‘Oh, you lucky beast! London! I haven’t been there since I was a child. There was a trip to Astley’s to see the horses and I remember a man fell into the Thames. It was very exciting.’
Lily laughed. ‘Watching a man drown? This is a side of you I haven’t encountered yet.’
‘He didn’t. It was low tide and he fell face down in the mud. It took five men to drag him up to the road. They were all drunk and singing and kept slipping and tripping over each other. It was better than Astley’s. Oh, I do envy you. I love working at Hope House, but sometimes I wish I could...’ She rubbed her knee absently. ‘I don’t even know what any longer. Travel, I suppose. Or not. Something...different.’
‘I know.’
They both fell silent for a moment, then Lily shook herself.
‘Will you manage on your own?’
‘Goodness, Lily. Of course not. I shall shatter to smithereens the moment you and your portmanteau are out the door.’
Lily smiled.
‘I know I’m being silly. I’m merely... I’m quite certain my mother would rather I not come.’
‘Devil take her, then. You have allowed that shrew to chase you out of your home twice before—do not let her stop you from spending some time with your sister before she weds.’
‘To be fair she didn’t chase me away the first time, I eloped. And the second time...’
‘...she made your life so miserable you leapt at my suggestion to join me as a teacher at Hope House with the alacrity of a horse bolting from a burning barn.’
‘I leapt at the suggestion because I wished to be doing some thing useful, not wasting away in Kent while my mother pricked at me with her needle-sharp tongue. Teaching veterans and their children to read and write and do sums is by far the most useful thing I have done with my life.’
‘Yes, yes, but I won’t allow you to turn the conversation. Your mother is a shrew, but you are no longer dependent on her. You are not going for her, but for Annie.’
‘And Piers will be there, too.’
‘Well, then, that’s settled. I know how much you miss your brother and sister, mooning over their ridiculously short letters as if they were billets-doux. You go spend your time with them and ignore your nasty mama. That’s what I do with my father. The moment the sermons begin I paste a smile on my face and nod every ten breaths while I dream of knights and corsairs. Works like a charm. How shall you reach London?’
Lily reviewed her savings and her budget for the month. And her wardrobe. She looked down at her serviceable boots. They were perfect for her work in Birmingham, but for London...
Eleanor made a strange sound, between a sigh and a curse.
‘Oh, please don’t start thinking, Lily Walsh. Just go. Annie needs you. And just think—London! This requires a toast. Where is that bottle of claret Mr Featherstone gifted us for Christmas?’
‘London,’ Lily repeated obediently as Eleanor rooted around the cupboard for the bottle and glasses and again the image of walking through the Park and visiting Somerset House and... ‘I shall go. Devil take my mother.’
‘By all accounts he probably will.’ Eleanor laughed and raised a glass with a sensible finger of claret in a salute. ‘Go live a little, Lily Walsh.’
Chapter Two
London
London was clearly extending her a warning.
Lily bent her battered umbrella into the wind and turned up Brook Street. How on earth would she know which house was Number Twenty-Three? Half of them had no numbers at all.
Thunder roared at her and carriages sped past, wheels throwing up mud and worse. She ought to have hailed a hackney cab, but she’d been stubborn and now she would arrive looking like a drowned rat, if she arrived at all. Her boots were soaked and her portmanteau hung painfully on her arm. She’d packed too much which was foolish because by the look of the women she’d seen at the posting inn, her clothes were a decade out of fashion at least...
She stopped before a narrow house in dark brick. Number Twenty-Three. It was just like the others on either side: respectable, with a bay window and two storeys above, all shielded by heavy curtains. Somehow she’d expected her mother to have insisted on something grander.
Lily stood for a moment, her heart thumping.
‘Watch yourself, miss.’
A man pushing a wheelbarrow covered in barrels was trying to get by on the narrow pavement and she rushed up the stairs. There was no turning back now.
The maid who opened the door stared at Lily, her round, freckled face framed by a linen cap.
‘Miss Lily!’
‘Hello, Ailish.’ Lily smiled at Annie’s maid. She’d turned from a girl to a young woman since Lily had seen her in Kent two years ago. Ailish visibly shook herself, her gaze moving down and up.
‘Why, you’re soaked through, Miss Lily! Oh, dear, oh, dear, you’ll catch your death. Come through to the back parlour, there’s a fire on and we’ll soon have you dry. You leave that right here and I’ll have Henry Footman see to it.’
Lily set her ragged portmanteau down with a sigh and followed the little whirlwind down the narrow corridor by the stairs. The house was no grander inside than out, but she supposed houses leased for the Season rarely were. Certainly not on her parents’ budget, whatever her mother’s pretensions.
‘Is my sister home?’
‘Well, of course, miss. It is not gone ten o’clock. They’re all abed. They were at Lady Cratthock’s ball yesterday and only back past midnight, Mr Devenish and Mr Piers not being one for late nights.’
‘I don’t remember Anne being one for late nights either,’ Lily said as she struggled out of her sodden coat.
‘Well, needs must,’ Ailish replied philosophically.
‘Lily.’
Lily turned at the familiar voice, her empty stomach clenching. Her mother had a lovely voice, deep and musical. It took Lily years to realise what was wrong with it. The same thing that was wrong with her mother—it lacked warmth.
‘Hello, Mama.’
Mrs Devenish signalled to Ailish who hurried out with Lily’s belongings.
‘Didn’t you receive my letter, Lily?’
Lily concentrated on undoing the wet tangle of her bonnet ribbons, but it had snagged a lock of her reddish-brown hair and refused to give.
‘No, Mama. I haven’t received a letter from you since last August.’
‘Well. Goodness. What a pity. We weren’t expecting...’
‘I sent a letter saying I was coming a week ago, Mama. I know you had it because Annie mentioned you’d received it in her letter confirming my arrival.’
‘Well, yes, but that is it, you see. What with all the preparations for the wedding we have been at sixes and sevens. This really is not a good time for you to visit. We shan’t have any time to entertain you.’
‘I don’t require entertaining, Mama. I came because Annie...’ Lily finally managed to tug open the ribbons and took a deep breath. Best not lay it at Annie’s door. ‘...because Annie is to be married and I wished to spend some time with her before she is swept away by her new husband.’
Mrs Devenish went to the table and fiddled with the pink and mauve flower arrangement.
‘Nevertheless...’
Whatever further objections her mother was about to raise were left unsaid as the door flew open and Annie rushed straight into Lily’s arms, which opened of their own accord at the sight of her sister.
‘Lily! Oh, how wonderful you are here. I missed you so!’
‘Anne. A little more decorum, if you please.’
Annie withdrew abruptly at their mother’s admonition, but she took Lily’s hand and drew her towards the fire.
‘Your gloves are wet! Take them off and come warm yourself. Was the coach awful? I kept thinking while we were at the ball you were already aboard the mail and crammed in on all sides by people reeking of cabbage and onions while I was dancing and sipping champagne... Well, lemonade, really, but still I felt hideously guilty all of a sudden. Do tell me it wasn’t horrid.’
Lily laughed and lied as she peeled off her gloves.
‘It wasn’t in the least horrid. I slept much of the way.’
Annie smiled, but shook her head.
‘I’d wager you didn’t. You must be exhausted. Ailish is putting your room in order and will bring some cocoa and then you shall sleep and if the weather permits this afternoon you shall come with me and Lord Sherbourne for a turn in the park. I want you to meet him right away.’
Mrs Devenish had been watching them with a look they knew well and had both learned to ignore, but now she intervened.
‘I doubt Lord Sherbourne would care to take up two passengers in his curricle, my dear Anne. Those fashionable men’s sporting vehicles are not built for excessive weight.’
Annie’s hand tightened on Lily’s.
‘No, Mama. Why don’t we go upstairs so you may change, Lily?’
Lily followed her upstairs, thankful to leave their mother’s baleful glance behind. She’d not expected to be welcomed and she’d long ago denied her mother the power to hurt her, but the sullen resentment was already wearing at her, pushing her back into her memories of unhappier times.
That comment about her weight had worn thin long ago, along with her. Years of following the drum and war and loss and counting pennies had done what her mother’s insults had failed to do. She would never be reed thin like Annie, who was very much like Piers in both looks and build, but those same years of being surrounded by soldiers had taught her that many men didn’t agree at all with her mother. They’d seemed to appreciate her generous hips and breasts and had no compunction telling Tim so. At first she’d worried he might take offence at their comments, but he always seemed pleased her attributes were appreciated.
The guest room connected to Anne’s was narrow but pleasant and out of the corner of the wet window Lily made out the tips of dark green trees which was more than she could see from the murky panes of her window in Birmingham. The rain had stopped and as she wiped the condensed moisture from the pane with her sleeve, the sun heated up the edges of the clouds and then burst through with a patch of freshly pressed blue.
