Read How to Capture a Countess (Duchess Diaries 1) Online
Authors: Karen Hawkins
Tags: #Romance, #Regency, #Fiction, #Historical, #General
How to Capture a Countess (Duchess Diaries 1)
“I had a purpose in bringing you to my aunt’s house,” Sin said.
A look of wariness entered Rose’s blue eyes.
His lips brushed the delicate shell pink of her ear and she shivered. “If I’m to be condemned for seducing you, then I should be granted the pleasures of that seduction, not just the pains.”
“The pleasures?” Her voice was breathless.
Sin smiled then, his first genuine smile of the day. His hips held her soft body captive against the rungs of the ladder, making him instantly aware of how much more he wanted from her. “Oh yes.”
She blinked as realization slowly settled on her face. “You’re going to
seduce
me?”
“Oh yes, my little Rose. You’ve owed me that pleasure for six years, and the time has come for you to pay.”
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To my daughter, Kym Hawkins, an amazing poet and wordsmith.
I dedicate this book to you.
I expect you to return the favor one day.
Dear Reader,
How to Capture a Countess
is set at Floors Castle, a beautiful castle built in 1721 for the first Duke of Roxburghe. Floors was built on a natural terrace overlooking the River Tweed. On the opposite bank is the ruin of Roxburghe Castle, which was once considered the strongest fortress in the Borders region. Interesting to note, too, is that an ancient fort once located on the Roxburghe estate is one of the rumored locations for King Arthur’s Camelot.
Floors Castle is the largest inhabited castle in Scotland. Known for its beauty and elegance, Floors is open today for tours. Since it first opened for tours in 1977, over a million visitors have passed through its magnificent front doors.
Most of the castle you see today is the result of renovations that took place between 1837 and 1847. Drawing inspiration from the Heriot’s Hospital in Edinburgh, architect William Playfair remodeled the castle to include a roofscape of turrets, domes, and spires, lending a fairy-tale feel to an already beautiful building.
If you’d like to read more about Floors Castle, visit my website at
www.karenhawkins.com
. And be sure to check into Hawkins Manor, where you can play games, win free books, help a Regency lord and lady select their clothing for a ball, read about fascinating real-life people who helped define their time period, find recipes to make Regency-era dishes, and more!
The Palazzo Albrizzi
Venice, Italy
June 11, 1806
From the Diary of the Duchess of Roxburghe
At the urging of my husband, Roxburghe, I put pen to paper in the hope that this diary may undo some of the unkindnesses posterity will attempt to attach to my name. There are truths . . . and then there are untruths.
For example, it’s
true
that I’ve thus far outlived four husbands and am now married to a fifth, my beloved Roxburghe. It’s also
true
that each man I married was fabulously wealthy and older than the last. However, it’s patently
untrue
that I married for wealth and wealth alone.
Call me a romantic, but I could never marry without love, for that—and family—are the cornerstones of a worthy life.
But despite my many marriages, it is the one sadness
of my life that I am childless. Thus I have dedicated myself to the happiness of my only sister, the Dowager Countess of Sinclair, and her grandchildren. I’ve three handsome great-nephews, scattered across the hills and vales of England and Scotland, two of whom I’ve now seen safely married.
Sadly, the eldest, the Earl of Sinclair, has become a cause for concern. I’ve never been certain why, but Sin finds the concept of matrimony odious. At one time I thought him merely obstinate, but lately I’ve begun to wonder if far more lurks behind the bored visage he keeps turned to the polite world . . . Is it truly boredom, or is it icy disdain caused by some unknown hurt?
Sadly, he is not one to share his thoughts and, in an attempt to keep the world from knocking upon his door, he’s growing more and more willing to engage in socially reprehensible behavior. This very morning I received a disturbing missive from my sister reporting that my beloved great-nephew Sin has been embroiled in a scandal of some sort.
My sister is a known stoic, but I recognize her cry for help, and so I must hurry back to Scotland. I wish we could find our way there quicker, but passage must be secured, carriages found, trunks packed, and—oh, a thousand details.
I fear that in the month it will take us to return to our home, the damage will be done. I can only hope that it will not be permanent . . .
Lady MacAllister’s Annual Hunt Ball
Two weeks earlier . . .
Lord Sinclair stood at the edge of Lady MacAllister’s ballroom and wished to hell that he’d never come. The evening had been one disappointment after another. First, cajoled by his grandmother to provide her with a ride to the ball, she’d surprised him by bringing with her not one but two unmarried hopefuls—a Miss MacDonald and some other woman whose name he’d already forgotten. The two had spent the entire ride to the ball alternately staring at him and giggling. It had been enough to make Sin ill to his stomach.
His second disappointment had been the absence of Viscount Throckmorton. Sin had come to the ball for no other reason than to corner the viscount and persuade him to sell a certain high-stepping bay that Sin had seen on the streets of Edinburgh last week. Apparently Lord Throckmorton’s plans had changed, for he was nowhere to be seen.
Sin’s third disappointment had been with his hostess, Lady MacAllister. Known for being notoriously tightfisted even among the Scots, she had scrimped on the refreshments to the point that by the time he’d arrived, every drop of port and whiskey had already been consumed, leaving nothing but cloyingly sweet sherry and painfully dry champagne.
But the crowning indignity was the realization
that the sporting people with whom Sin usually bandied words had wisely decided to forgo Lady MacAllister’s brand of amusement for events that were, Sin suspected, genuinely amusing. Even worse, the ball was awash in young, doe-eyed, annoyingly eager innocents. It was becoming all too obvious that his grandmother’s casual mention that she’d heard that Viscount Throckmorton was to attend Lady MacAllister’s ball had been nothing more than a ploy to trick Sin into attending an event filled with what she considered “marriageable young ladies of quality.”
Sin hated the cloak of respectability society had draped over the most soul-deadening, avaricious aspect of life—that of getting married. Oh, let others talk of love; it was a mere sop to the sad truth: love didn’t exist; the need to breed heirs did.
He knew what would happen the second he began a conversation with any young lady present tonight: they’d fawn and smile and pretend they were interested in every word he had to say, but he knew better. They were all pasty-faced clinging vines who saw him as nothing more than a fat purse and a coveted title. He hated such events as these, designed to truss up every available male and deliver them to a room full of hungry-eyed women where, bound by propriety to smile and converse and dance, they might slip and end up committed to a life of boredom.