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Hopefully I left you wanting more, so keep reading for a sneak peek atThe Earl and the Vixenfrom the Unlikely Betrothal series! I can’t wait for you to meet Nick and Eliza! You can also go ahead and get your copy ofThe Earl and the Vixenin paperback, ebook, and audio!
The Earl and the Vixen
Surrey, England - Spring 1810
“Iloveyou,Eliza,andI intend to marry you. To hell with our fathers. Please tell me you want to be with me as much as I wish to be with you. In every way.”
Elizabeth Nelson, the eldest daughter of the Earl of Nelson, melted into the arms of her sweetheart, Nicholas, who would one day become the Earl of Craven. She had loved him from the first time she’d come across him swimming in the stream that ran between their fathers’ estates, almost five years ago.
Although the ownership of that very stream had been a long-disputed issue between their fathers. They each believed that the stream belonged to them and made trouble for each other when either household made use of it for livestock or to provide irrigation to crops. Ultimately, they both ended up using it for their estates anyway, and one would think they could be content with that. But a silly stream had been enough to cause such a rift that the men had sworn to hate each other. The bad blood only became worse between the pair over the years.
When she first saw Nick all those years ago, he hadn’t given one whit about her back then. She had been far too young, and he had only been home for the summer from Eton, and by the time fall came again, he was gone. When he returned years later, he came across her reading a novel by the very same stream and finally noticed her, a woman and no longer an annoying young chit. They spent the next few months falling more in love each day and taking a few scandalous swims together at night in the stream in a rebellious slight against their fathers.
There wasn’t a doubt in her mind that she wished to marry him, and she wanted nothing more than to give him every part of herself. To truly become his and make him hers. As a young woman of eight-and-ten whom no one spoke of such things to, she knew very little of what that would mean, but she knew she only wished to experience such things with Nick.
He would have offered to marry her already, and they would already be betrothed if they knew for certain how their fathers would react. Given the hatred the men harbored for each other, they feared that Eliza’s father wouldn’t agree to the union. With her age, they needed his approval to do so properly, or they would have to do something scandalous like elope to Gretna Green.
