How to Capture a Countess (Duchess Diaries 1) Read online

  “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.”

  “Hawkins always delivers delightfully humorous, poignant, and highly satisfying novels.”

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  One Night in Scotland

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  Contents

  Prologue

  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

  Epilogue

  A ‘Duchess Diaries’ Excerpt

  About Karen Hawkins

  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!

  Prologue

  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.

  It was a bitter situation, and yet here he was, sober as a priest and denied even the relief of dickering for horseflesh with Throckmorton.

  He ground his teeth against this onslaught of disappointments. As soon as his grandmother was safely ensconced at the side of one of her bosom-bows, Sin made his escape to the library where a slew of bachelors could be found in hiding.

  Desperate for some amusement, he engaged young Lord MacDoonan in a card game. Twenty minutes later, MacDoonan’s silver engraved flask, half full of fine Scottish whiskey, was neatly tucked into Sin’s waistcoat pocket. Sin stayed another half hour, hoping to pass the time until his grandmother was ready to return home, but Lord MacDoonan was not a merry loser, and he whined incessantly about the loss of his flask until Sin had had enough. Bored, Sin left the library and made his way to the refreshment tables, which were empty but for a few crumbs, a sadly wilted flower arrangement, and a stack of unused punch glasses. He pocketed a glass, paused behind a palm, and filled it with whiskey.

  Fortified, he rejoined the company and had just lifted the glass to his lips when he accidentally caught the eye of a young lady wearing a pink ball gown. The second their eyes met, she hurried forward as if invited.

  Bloody hell, they’re like leeches.

  He turned his back on her, only to find himself being eyed by two other damsels in similarly atrocious gowns. Though they didn’t lick their lips at the sight of him, their predatory gazes made him think of his hawk as it dove for a plump hare.

  That was it; he was leaving. He’d leave the carriage for his grandmother and order a hackney to take him home.

  Jaw tight, Sin turned and almost tripped over a slight bit of a girl who’d apparently been hovering at his elbow. For a nerve-wracking moment, he juggled his precious glass of whiskey.

  As the glass settled back into his hands, he scowled at the chit who dared impede his departure. She was slight of stature, unusually tanned, with a smattering of freckles across a snub nose in a small face framed by wildly curling black hair barely held in place by a profusion of ribbons. Worse, she wore a dowdy white gown that was far too large for her, the style and color doing little to enhance her dank skin and too-slender figure.

  “H-how do you do?” She offered a hurried curtsy with a desperate smile.

  He tamped down the desire to curtly wish her to the devil. “Pardon me,” he said in an icy tone and started to walk around her.

  “Oh, do wait!” Her hand gripped his arm.

  A jolt of heat raced through him.

  Sin stopped dead in his tracks and looked down at her gloved hand. He’d felt that zap of attraction through three layers of material as surely as if she’d brushed his bare skin with her fingertips.

  He found himself looking directly into her eyes. Pale blue and surrounded by thick black lashes, they showed the same shock that he felt.

  Her gaze moved from his face to her hand and back. “I’m sorry. I didn’t expect—” She shook her head, color flooding her skin, tinting the brown an exquisitely dusky rose.

  Are her nipples that same dusky color? It was a shocking thought, but plain and loud, as if he’d said it aloud.

  She jerked back her hand as if it burned. “I didn’t mean—I’m sorry, but I—” She gulped as if miserable.

  His irritation returned. “I’m sorry, but do I know you?”

  She looked crestfallen. “I saw you at the Countess of Dunford’s luncheon only a week ago.”

  “Did we speak?”

  “Well, no.”

  “I don’t remember.” He’d been far too in his cups to remember much of that day at all, anyway.

  “We also met a week and a day ago at the Melton house party.”

  He’d spent most of that evening in the library with the men, planning a hunting party for the next day. “I’m sorry, but I don’t—”

  “The Farquhars’ soiree?”

  He shook his head.

  “The MacEnnis Ball? The Earl of Stratham’s dinner party?”

  He shook his head at each.

  She looked even more crestfallen, which set off an unusual flash of remorse in him followed by annoyance. Bloody hell, he couldn’t remember every chit who spoke to him, much less feel sorry for them all.

  But then, none of them have ever caused such a reaction by merely touching my sleeve.

  A footman came by and his companion captured a glass of champagne from the man’s tray. To Sin’s surprise, she took a deep breath and tossed it back, swallowing it in several fast gulps.

  She caught his surprised gaze, and flushed. “I know that’s unladylike, but—” She scrunched her nose and regarded her glass with disgust. “It’s so horrid I didn’t wish to taste it.”

  He had to laugh and his irritation disappeared
. Who is this girl? He sipped his whiskey and regarded her over the edge of his glass. “So you like champagne, then? Good champagne, that is?”

  “Yes, but there’s not a drop of good champagne to be had, so . . .” Without the slightest hint of embarrassment, she eyed an approaching footman and, with a slight move to her left, managed to replace her glass as he passed by and grab another, which she disposed of as neatly as the first. “At least it’s cold,” she said in a pragmatic tone.

  Sin burst out laughing. She looked so incongruous, this innocent-looking chit, with her freckled nose and black curls and wide blue eyes, snapping back flutes of champagne with a calm disdain for society’s concept of propriety. Sin didn’t know when he’d been so charmed.

  When he’d first seen her he’d thought her a youngster, sixteen at most. But now as he met her gaze and caught a decided twinkle in her blue eyes, he realized he’d misjudged her because of her minute size. She was obviously older—and far more interesting—than she’d first appeared. “Tell me, Miss—?”

  “Balfour. Miss Rose Balfour.”

  He boldly looked her up and down. He wasn’t usually a fan of women without curves, but there was something appealing about Rose Balfour. Suddenly, the ball didn’t seem so boring. “Your name suits you.”

  “It’s not my real name. My mother was a great lover of ancient mythology so she named me Euphrosyne.”

  “Ah. One of the three graces.” At her surprised look, he shrugged. “I read, though I’ve forgotten which grace Euphrosyne is. Joy? Splendor? Mirth?”

  “Mirth.” She made a droll face. “I’m afraid I have a very unruly sense of humor.”

  A naughty one? he wondered, his interest quickening even more.

  As if she could read his mind, she laughed. The deliciously husky sound held a shimmery excitement that he could almost taste. This was more to his liking: a woman who refused to arm herself with faux innocence in an effort to lure one into a gossamer net, and boldly expressed her thoughts and desires.

  He leaned a bit closer. “Miss Balfour, what brought you to this ball? The company doesn’t seem to suit you any better than it suits me.”