The Viscount's Wallflower Bride

by Lauren Royal

  Violet looked away.

  “Or both!” Rose concluded. “I knew it!”

  Lily laid a graceful hand on the white cotton that covered her chest. “Goodness.” A theatrical sigh escaped her lips. “What was it like?”

  “I never said he kissed me.”

  Her two very different sisters fixed her with matching, demanding glares. Rose spoke for both. “Let’s hear it, Violet.”

  “Oh, all right.” Violet crossed her legs and leaned forward conspiratorially. “It was very nice.”

  “Nice?” Rose folded her arms.

  “It was more than nice. It was marvelous.” Warming to her subject, Violet’s voice gentled. “The most amazing feeling. It made my head spin and my heart beat fast. His lips felt warm and squashy—”

  “Squashy?” Lily looked taken aback.

  Rose cocked her head. “Like an overripe peach?”

  “Certainly not. More like…I don’t know…” Violet wracked her brains. “A hard-boiled egg?”

  “An egg?” Lily’s fingers flew to touch her own lips. “I dislike eggs.”

  “The white part or the yellow part?” Rose asked.

  “Both!”

  “No, I was asking Violet if his lips felt like—”

  “Never mind!” Violet shouted over the din. “Forget about eggs. His lips were soft, all right? Warm and soft.”

  “Oh. That sounds nice.” Lily’s eyes softened to a hazy blue.

  “Gemini.” Rose fanned herself with a hand. “I must find someone to kiss. Tomorrow.”

  Violet reached out and caught her wrist. “No, you mustn’t. You must care for someone before you kiss him.”

  Lily gave another dreamy sigh. “Oh, Violet, that’s so romantic.”

  That was taking things a bit too far. “It’s over now. We’re going home tomorrow, and he’s staying here to meet with his solicitor. And even after he returns to Lakefield, Jewel has gone home, so there’s no longer any reason for me to visit.”

  “But you care for him. You just said so. And since he kissed you, he’ll be asking you to wed him, will he not?”

  “It doesn’t always work like that, Lily. Some gentlemen don’t put such store behind a kiss. The Master-piece says that marriage is meant to restrain man’s wandering desires and affections.”

  Lily frowned. “Does that mean all men prefer to keep wandering?”

  “I’m not sure. But he won’t be asking me to marry him.”

  “But if he did?” Rose pressed. “That would be splendid, wouldn’t it?”

  “No,” Violet said flatly. “If he’s making a show of courting me, you can be certain it’s because of my inheritance. And I won’t marry for anything less than true love.”

  “But Violet.” Concern filled Lily’s earnest gaze. “You must care. Or you wouldn’t have kissed him. You said a lady must care for a man before she—”

  “I’m not looking for one-sided love, Lily. If I cannot have a love like Mum’s, then I’d rather live life on my own.” She turned to Rose. “And you can stop worrying—I don’t care if you marry before me. I don’t care if I marry at all.” And because that suddenly wasn’t true, she made a big show of yawning. “It’s very late. I have much to tell you both about the ball, and especially Mr. Locke, but it will have to wait until morning.”

  Lily rose and placed a sisterly kiss on her cheek. “I would love to hear it all, Violet.”

  Rose’s kiss wasn’t nearly as sweet. “I don’t care about Mr. Locke,” she said, “but you should marry Lord Lakefield.”

  Long after her sisters had left, Violet lay awake, her heart and mind in turmoil.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  LAKEFIELD HOUSE was quiet. Too quiet.

  Hilda and Harry knew better than to disturb Ford when he was working, but Jewel had never quite mastered that bit of etiquette. Now Ford found his gaze straying toward the door, waiting for his niece to burst through, a grin on her heart-shaped face and a ribbon clenched in her diminutive fist.

  Or a dead insect. One never quite knew what to expect from Lady Jewel.

  But the one thing he hadn’t expected was to feel this sudden loneliness. Emptiness. For pity’s sake, he missed her.

  Ford Chase missed a child.

  Whoever would have thought? Wasn’t a family of his own the last item on his list of priorities? Though he’d always known he must have children eventually—Lakefield would need an heir, after all—he’d never been able to envision them in his life. Having a family had seemed so dreadfully adult.

  But now, instead of finishing his watch, he found himself daydreaming. A girl and a boy, like Jewel and Rowan. And a mother for them, of course.

  Violet would be perfect.

  Gears slipped from his fingers as that thought took root in his brain. He dropped to a crouch to reach one that rolled beneath his workbench, then bumped his head as he came back up.

  Rubbing where it hurt, he sat on the floor to analyze when and how he had fallen in love with Violet Ashcroft.

  He’d always thought he wanted someone like Tabitha. Effervescent, confident, a girl whose looks stopped men in the street. Violet was none of those things. But she listened to his ideas and challenged him with her own.

  He’d never imagined a girl like Violet existed.

  Now that he knew she did, perhaps it was logical for an academic such as Ford to find himself drawn to someone with Violet’s unusual qualities.

  But it would be downright illogical for him to pursue the matter. He could hardly expect Violet to marry him when his estate and finances were such a disaster. The meeting with his solicitor had not gone well. There were bills to be paid and no money with which to pay them.

  The man had presented two options. One, turn Lakefield into a working estate and see that it prospered. Two, sell the blasted place. Only a small portion of the land was entailed. Selling the rest—including the house—would raise enough money to support Ford for years to come, leaving him free to pursue his own work.

  As a third son, Ford should never have had a title, and while he enjoyed that part of it well enough, he wasn’t cut out to be a landowner. True, he’d assisted his brother Jason with Cainewood’s never-ending responsibilities—he knew the ins and outs of running an estate. But he had no love for that sort of life.

  Working the land, dealing with tenants, collecting rents. It was all so tedious and trivial. At the end of a typical nobleman’s life, one’s legacy was naught but more of the same passed down to an heir. Nothing new to contribute to knowledge and mankind.

  He’d always pictured his life in London, with his research and the Royal Society.

  But now his heart was here.

  Restless, he rose to his feet and tossed the gear into the mess on the table. What did it matter where his heart was? Violet’s parents might appear to like him personally, but it would be highly irrational of them to allow their daughter to marry a penniless viscount. Under normal circumstances, the fact that Violet came with a sizable inheritance as well as a dowry might mitigate the situation, but nothing about Violet was normal. Knowing her feelings about husbands and inheritances, he was sure he’d have a beast of a time convincing her he wasn’t after her fortune.

  And knowing the reality of his finances, he’d have an equally difficult time sticking to his word.

  He closed his eyes and rubbed them. It was hopeless. He might as well put her out of his mind. And he knew just how to go about that, too.

  For once, his inability to concentrate on more than one thing at a time would prove an asset.

  After quickly separating the jumble of gears on his work table, he lifted the gold watch to dangle by its chain. He wanted to invent a personal timepiece with two hands. That was why he had come to Lakefield in the first place. Without Jewel to distract him, he ought to be able to achieve his aim at last.

  It was a good thing he’d taken time to analyze the situation, because these lofty romantic sentiments had nothing to do with his real life. Nothing to do with
his aspirations.

  He took a deep breath, raked a hand through his hair, and got to work.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  SEATED IN her customary spot in the summerhouse, Violet cleared her throat. “As I was saying…” She sent Rose a severe glance before raising the book. “‘In this concavity are diverse folds, wrinkled like an expanded rose.’”

  “A rose?” Rose interrupted again. “That ‘concavity’ looks nothing like the roses in our garden.” When her sisters gaped at her, she bristled. “Well, it doesn’t. I’ve looked. With a mirror.” She narrowed her gaze. “Don’t tell me you haven’t.”

  Violet just continued reading. “‘The hymen, or claustrum virginale, is that which closes the neck of the womb relating to virginity, broken in the first copulation. And commonly, when broken in copulation, or by any other accident, a small quantity of blood flows from it, attended with some little pain.’”

  Silence descended on the summerhouse.

  “Little pain,” Lily whispered finally. “That doesn’t sound too bad, does it?”

  “I’m sure it’s not,” Violet said firmly.

  But they all took a deep breath in unison.

  “All right, then.” Violet turned the page. “Listen to this.” She swallowed. “‘There are many veins and arteries passing into the womb—’”

  Suddenly they heard a jaunty tune being hummed outside. “Gemini!” Rose exclaimed. “It’s Mum!”

  Leaping up, she ran for the door and jerked it open, Lily at her heels. The two of them pushed through at the same time, all but stumbling over each other.

  “Good afternoon, Mum,” Rose said. “Come along, Lily. Father is waiting.”

  “For what?” Mum asked, frowning at Violet as her younger daughters all but trampled her in their haste to escape.

  Shrugging, Violet snapped the book closed and set it face down on the bench. “What are you doing out here?”

  Unlike Father, Mum avoided the outdoors, especially on a nice, sunny day like this one. She worried for her creamy complexion. Now she was wearing a big straw hat and carrying a basket over her arm, filled with stale bread. “I thought I’d just take some air,” she said. “And feed the swans.”

  When Violet stood, her spectacles tumbled from her lap to the red-brick floor. She bent to retrieve them, hoping her mother wouldn’t notice the book on the bench. “Shall I come with you?”

  “That would be lovely.”

  She slipped the frames on her face as they crossed the wide green lawn to the river. A multitude of daisies sprouted among the blades of grass; heaven forbid Father leave any part of his land free of flowers.

  Mum bent to pick one as they went. She twirled the white and yellow posy in her fingers. “Is the book you were reading interesting?”

  Faith, she’d noticed.

  “It’s philosophy.” Well, it was. In a sense.

  “What is it called?”

  “Um…” Violet felt her face heat, but the title certainly wasn’t a giveaway. “Aristotle’s Master-piece.”

  Stepping onto the bridge, her mother threw her an inscrutable look. “And is it?”

  Her heart stuttered. “Is it what?”

  “A masterpiece.”

  “Oh.” Halfway across the bridge, Violet stopped and turned to the rail. She focused out over the river. “It’s Aristotle, you know. I’m sure you’ve heard me jabber enough about him.” She reached into her mother’s basket and broke off a bit of bread, tossing it out to the lone swan nearby. “I don’t expect you’d find it very interesting.”

  “You might be surprised.”

  Violet wondered what her mother meant, but she didn’t want to ask. She had a feeling she was better off not knowing.

  More swans glided near, and her mother tossed a few crumbs. “You miss him, don’t you?”

  Him. Mum had to mean Ford. But Violet had never admitted to any regard for him, so how could Mum know?

  “Miss whom?” she asked.

  “Lord Lakefield, of course. Don’t be coy, Violet. For weeks you saw him every day, but now that Jewel is gone, you have no excuse to visit. I know you’re fond of him.”

  “He’s very nice,” Violet said carefully.

  “You don’t allow a gentleman to kiss you just because he’s nice.”

  Violet’s jaw dropped open. She closed it, along with her eyes, then opened them and turned to her mother. “Wherever did you get the idea he kissed me?”

  “One of your sisters.” Mum held up a hand. “No, I won’t tell you which one, because it doesn’t matter.”

  “It matters to me! It was Rose, wasn’t it?”

  “I won’t be saying.”

  Violet was more frustrated than embarrassed by Mum’s revelation. She knew her mother must have kissed her father before they were married—how else could they have been caught in a ‘compromising position’?

  But that was beside the point. “I’m not marrying him, Mum.”

  Below them, the swans squawked, and Mum broke off more bread. “Why not?”

  “Well, for one thing, he hasn’t asked me. And for another, I wouldn’t agree if he did.”

  “Can you explain why?”

  “Why?” To avoid meeting her mother’s eyes, Violet took a hunk of bread and faced the graceful white birds. “Why should I? With or without my spectacles, I’m not blind. I know I’m no beauty. If he asked for my hand, it would only be to get my ten thousand pounds—heaven knows he needs it, as Rose has pointed out countless times. And I won’t marry for less than true love, Mum. I…I suspect marriage isn’t all it’s purported to be, anyway.”

  She wished she could still believe that with the certainty she once had. But she wasn’t quite so sure any longer, not since attending the ball. Now, late at night, she lay in her four-poster bed alone, wishing to feel that feeling again. That feeling of being wanted—cherished, body and soul—that she’d felt in that candlelit piazza.

  Mum threw the last of her crumbs to the swans. “I see.”

  Violet didn’t care for her mother’s tone. Tossing the rest of her own crumbs, she turned to face her. “You’re not going to try to match me up with him, are you? Because—”

  “Goodness, no! I want you to be happy, Violet. Married or not—whatever makes you happy.”

  Mum sounded sincere. But as they strolled hand-in-hand back to the house, Violet couldn’t help but wonder.

  THIRTY-NINE

  CHRYSTABEL LOVED the nighttimes.

  In the quiet of the master chamber, her dear Joseph could always hear her. It didn’t quite make sense, which was why she sometimes teasingly accused him of selective listening. But he said it had to do with competing sounds. That during the daytime, there were noises, always noises: servants going about their work, animals in the fields, birds in the skies, dishes and silverware at mealtimes, and the children all talking at once. With more than one sound, he couldn’t distinguish any of them.

  But within the thick, solid walls of their room, the nighttimes were blessedly quiet. And he also declared that her voice was the one he could hear most easily, especially when there were no competing sounds. The perfect pitch.

  That did make sense to her. Because they’d always, always been perfect together.

  But now he had nodded off, though she’d expressly asked him not to. She closed the door behind her with a smart thump that startled him awake. “I told you to wait up.”

  He yawned and rolled over. “Has Violet fallen asleep yet?”

  “Yes. Finally.” She deposited a leather-bound book on the counterpane. “I got it.”

  “What?” He rubbed his face, then struggled up onto his elbows to see better. “What is this all about?”

  She untied the sash around her waist. “Aristotle’s Master-piece,” she said in a deceptively casual tone.

  “Holy Hades. The marriage manual?” He bolted upright. “Where on earth would Violet get such a thing?”

  “Language, Joseph! No wonder Rowan has learned such habits.” Shruggi
ng out of her dressing gown, Chrystabel straightened her chemise, then went to work on unpinning her hair. “And I’ve no idea where Violet got the book. But I mean to give it back to her before she realizes it’s missing—we’ve this night only to peruse the material and ensure it’s appropriate.”

  “Appropriate?” He cast the ordinary-looking tome a thunderous glare. “How could it possibly be—”

  “Ah, Joseph, don’t be so old-fashioned. I know the book is supposed to be scandalous, but Violet is old enough to learn the facts—and if half of what’s said about the Master-piece is true, it will explain things much better than we could ever bring ourselves to do.”

  Chrystabel saw no need to mention their younger daughters were reading it as well. Her beloved Joseph wasn’t always as open-minded as she. Often he needed some time and guidance to come around to her way of thinking.

  Settling herself in the soft feather bed, she retrieved the book in question and laid it on her lap. “Frankly, I’ll try anything to discourage her preposterous commitment to spinsterhood.”

  “Spinsterhood! Why, she’s not even eighteen.”

  “I know, darling. But Rose has been hard on her. Violet has tremendous strength of character, but she’s not without her weak points. And clever Rose knows exactly how to exploit them.”

  Joseph crossed his arms. “I still don’t see how letting Violet read this unseemly book will improve matters.”

  Chrystabel sighed. Men. They had to have everything spelled out for them. “What does Violet love more than anything else in the world?”

  “Learning, of course.”

  “Indeed. And what knowledge might she hope to gain from a marriage manual?”

  “Um…knowledge about marriage?”

  “Precisely. She’s taking an interest, Joseph. Will you be the one to quash that interest? Don’t you want to see your daughter happily married?”

  “Of course I do—but not at the expense of her innocence.”

  Chrystabel rolled her eyes. “Her innocence will remain intact. We’ll make sure of it.” She took a candle from the side table. “Or do you not plan to read it with me?”