Becoming The Earl’s Convenient Wife

Excerpt

6^th October 1816. The village of Little Bitterns, Kent.

Autumn was here, gaudy with yellow and red foliage, the scarlet of hedgerow berries, the scent of wood smoke and the harsh tannin smell of fallen oak leaves. The sun was shining, the wind had shifted to the south – it was a beautiful day. Unfortunately.

Isobel Martyn sidestepped a muddy patch on the path, climbed a stile and continued under the eaves of Tyler’s Wood. It was a shame to waste a lovely morning feeling so miserable. Her mood was one for persistent rain or, better, a violent thunderstorm, because that felt closer to the mounting frustration that threatened to consume her.

She could hardly blame Cousin Edward for the centuries-old legislation that meant that titles and entailed lands and property went to the nearest male heir, which meant that he had been Lord Martyn ever since the death of the fourth baron, her father, a year ago.

But, however fair she was, she could definitely blame him for being a smug, self-satisfied bore with the most appalling taste in wives. Dear Cousin Amelia was utterly infuriating.

There was someone in the clearing in front of her, a man sitting on a fallen tree trunk. Isobel slowed her brisk walk and trod more quietly on the damp turf.

Leo. Her heart did that strange little flutter that the sight of him always seemed to produce, then she saw his dark head was bowed, his shoulders slumped, and she forgot her own troubles as she stepped deliberately on a small dried branch. It snapped and Leo sat up straight, then turned to see who it was.

‘Izzy.’ His smile was wide and welcoming as he got to his feet and she wondered if she was the only person who could have told that it was not genuine. ‘Lovely day, isn’t it? Taking the air?’

‘As you can see.’ She the question with a sharp gesture of her hand and crossed the clearing to his side. ‘Now, tell me what is wrong, Leo.’

‘Wrong? Why, nothing,’ he said as they sat down.

He really was very good at dissembling, she thought, studying the handsome face, the wide, disingenuous brown eyes under strong dark brows.

‘You forget that I have known you since I was an infant and you were four,’ Isobel said tartly. ‘What is it? The estate? The girls?’

Leo had recently inherited not only his uncle’s title of Earl of Halford but also his debt-ridden estates and his two fifteen year old twin daughters by his second wife. He gave a slight shake of his head and his lips tightened. She read a flash of pain, not worry, and her heart sank.

‘You have proposed to Lucinda, haven’t you?’ Isobel asked bluntly. ‘Oh, Leo.’

‘I know. I should have waited. She refused me, of course.’ There was no sign of the bowed head or slumped shoulders now: Leo Havelock had too much pride for that.

‘Foolish of her,’ Isobel said lightly as she tried to ignore the conflicting, and thoroughly ignoble, emotions she was feeling. She had been in love with Leo since the morning eight years ago when her sixteen year old self had experienced an eye-opening revelation about her childhood friend. At the time she had been watching him playing cricket, of all things.

But Leo, of course, was not romantically interested in tall, brown-haired, self-contained, sensible girls, however much he might value her friendship. He had set his heart on their neighbour Lucinda Paxton who was everything Isobel was not – petite, blonde, pretty and bursting with interesting emotions, all of which she freely expressed at the slightest provocation.

Lucinda was the belle of the neighbourhood and had been ever since she had begun to attend the dancing parties and picnics that were intended to prepare young ladies and gentlemen for their come-outs into society. They had all learned to dance there and to make polite small-talk, but Lucinda had also honed her skills as a devastating flirt.

Virtually every gentleman in the district over the age of fourteen was smitten with Miss Paxton’s charms, although the other young ladies and their mamas were not. Even the most hard-headed and sensible of the young men of Bishop’s Carsington, the nearest market town, fell under her spell. And Leo, to Isobel’s horror, was as captivated as his friends.

She had thought he had more sense, more discernment, but it appeared there was some magic in wide blue eyes, combined with an ability to make any man feel as though he was a cross between Sir Lancelot, Adonis and Isaac Newton, that threw a spell of enchantment to disable their critical abilities. But at least she had the sense, and the pride, not to speak slightingly of Lucinda to Leo. That, she was all too aware, was the easiest way to lose his friendship, because he appeared to have fallen utterly, deeply and helplessly in love with the enchanting, spoilt and self-centred Miss Paxton.

Lucinda was younger that Isobel and, at only just eighteen, ready for her very first London Season. Isobel had experienced two London Seasons, but her calm good sense and perfectly ordinary looks had failed to attract a suitor capable of displacing Leo in her heart. Now she was four and twenty and, as Cousin Amelia took relish in pointing out, teetering on the edge of the shelf.

She took a steadying breath and tried to feel sorry that Leo had been refused and was, no doubt, deeply hurt.

‘Did she say why she would not marry you?’ she asked, sliding her hand under his elbow and giving his arm a comforting squeeze. It was important not to think about the muscles under her fingers.

‘She laughed and said I must be teasing her,’ he said. ‘Surely I knew she was about to have her first London Season, one where she would meet many titled gentlemen?’

‘You are a titled gentleman,’ Isobel said, indignant at the slight.

‘Wealthy titled gentlemen, not debt-ridden earls. There are even a few unmarried marquises or their heirs out there, apparently, even if available dukes are a trifle thin on the ground,’ Leo said with a stab at bitter humour. ‘I am her dear, dear friend, of course I am, but she was good enough to tell me that she had already turned down three of her other dear, dear friends this month.’

‘Leo, if all Lucinda cares about is wealth and title, are you sure she is the right wife for you?’ It was the nearest she dare get to actually criticising his beloved.

‘If she loved me it would not matter to her, so at least I know where I am now,’ he said with flat good sense. The almost-convincing smile was back now.

‘I am so sorry,’ Isobel said, and rested her head on his shoulder. And she was, she realised. She wanted him to be happy, even if she could not imagine any man being happy with Lucinda for long. She could never have Leo for herself, after all, and it was totally selfish to wish away other women. One day he would find one who was worthy of him. One who would make him happy.

‘I know you are, Izzy, bless you.’ He put an arm around her shoulders and gave her a hug and she bit her lip hard so as not to let a sob escape. What would it be like to be held by Leo, not in friendship, but in passion?

‘But what about you?’ he asked, clearly unwilling to talk any more about his problems. ‘How are you coping with life with your cousins? When we last spoke about it you were finding them very trying.’

‘That is putting it much more moderately than I would have,’ Isobel said, sitting up straight and putting a few inches between them and the temptation to hug back. ‘I am on the point of scouring the advertisement columns of the news sheets to look for posts as a lady’s companion.’

Leo shifted around on the tree trunk to stare at her. ‘But paid companions are generally nothing more or less than superior servants, at the beck and call of cantankerous old ladies.’

‘Well, what am I now?’ she demanded. ‘I am the spinster cousin living by my relatives’ charity under the roof that used to be my own home. I should be thankful for a respectable, secure place to live, I am told, and I am ungrateful if I do not wish to pander to every little wish and whim of my dear cousin. Besides,’ she added bitterly, ‘a paid companion is just that – paid, which is more than I am.’

‘Surely your father left you well provided for?’

‘Cousin Edward, who has the oversight of my inheritance, assures me that it would be insufficient for me to maintain any level of gentility if I lived independently.’

‘Oh yes? And when was that?’ Leo was sharply focused on her now, his lean features showing the intelligence that had somehow failed to penetrate past Lucinda’s loveliness to the shallow woman beneath.

‘It was after the last lecture on my general ingratitude and lack of enthusiasm for my new role in life. I told them that I would take myself off to lodgings and be independent but apparently I could not afford a proper maid, let alone more than a single room in some dreary lodging house.’

‘I would be inclined to set a lawyer on them to establish just what is in trust and how your money is being invested. Do you receive an allowance?’

‘Pin money. Cousin Edward says it would be foolish to squander my limited resources and besides, I have my board and lodging.’

‘Don’t do anything rash, Izzy. They are right in that you are under a most respectable roof, living in a community where you are known and valued – even if your cousins fail to appreciate you – and life is perilous out there for an unprotected lady.’