CHAPTERONE
A Gothic Novel, Late June 1816
The white-washed oak door to the writing retreat of Lancelot Nowlton—commonly addressed as Lakehurst or Viscount Lakehurst—flew open, bouncing off the bookcase beside the door with a loud, reverberating bang. The sound of books falling over and a cat’s shrill, yowling protest added to the rude disturbance.
Lakehurst sighed and set his quill down. He knew without looking around that his twin sister, Lady Guinevere, had come looking for him.
He turned slightly, laying his arm across the back of his chair as he looked at her. “Yes, Gwinnie?” he asked in a long-suffering tone. His sister might be a lady by birth; however, she was no lady by behavior.
“Do you realize what time it is?” she demanded.
“And do you realize that you have once again barged in on me while I am working?” he countered, waving his hand at the pile of parchment spread on the desk before him. “You promised you would knock first after your last interruption.”
“Yes, that was before I realized it takes forever for you to answer your door!” she retorted, her hands planted on her prominent hips.
He nodded. “That happens when I need to finish a scene while it is fresh in my head,” he explained with exaggerated patience. “Everyone else seems to understand that. Why can’t you? Is the house burning down, or something equally dire? No,” he answered for her before she could say a word.
Oscar, Lakehurst’s large black cat, jumped down from his corner of the desk and sauntered over to Gwinnie to rub against her gowned legs.
“No, go away, Oscar,” Gwinnie told the cat. “I don’t want black fur on my dress—at least not this early in the evening.” She looked up at her brother. “You were supposed to be downstairs before Ann and her fiancé, the Duke of Ellinbourne, and Ellinbourne’s sister arrived.”
“They are not expected until six o’clock, an infernally early evening hour for dinner visitors. And it is not—”
“It is!” Gwinnie exclaimed. She pointed at his clock on the small table next to his desk as she pushed Oscar away again.
Lakehurst turned to look at it. It displayed twenty minutes past the hour. “Bloody hell!” he swore, running his hand through his hair. Apparently, he’d been so deep into his writing that he’d never heard the chiming of the hour.
Rising to his feet, he grabbed his jacket from where he’d tossed it over an ornate hook hung on the wall.
Lakehurst filled the small room—what had been their childhood governess’s room—with his presence. He towered a good five inches over his twin, who was herself an unusually tall woman, a good six feet in height. Taking after their mother’s Scottish Highland forbearers with their broad shoulders and large-boned frames, they loomed over everyone in society. With his size, he might have appeared menacing to others if it weren’t for his thick, wavy red hair that curled across his wide brow, his warm brown eyes, the cleft in his chin, and the sprinkling of freckles across his cheeks and nose. He often groused that he looked like an overgrown leprechaun.
Freckles. The bane of his existence. What man suffered freckles? That was a woman’s characteristic, one that unfortunately bypassed his sister and blessed him instead.
“Grandmother, Ann, and Father are in the library with Ellinbourne and the solicitor. They are signing the settlement paperwork for Ann and the Duke of Ellinbourne’s marriage,” she explained. “I left Ellinbourne’s sister in the Lady Margaret parlor to come up here and get you.”
Lakehurst groaned. “I don’t understand why she is here.”
“Lady Darkford? And I’m not understanding your quibble that she is,” Gwinnie declared, her brows drawing together.
Lakehurst ran his fingers through his hair again, his frustration habit. “It is probably more of Grandmother’s matchmaking. She commented archly, in that manner of hers, that she saw me talking to Lady Darkford at Ann’s betrothal ball.Talking!We were just talking. The woman looked so lost. I was just trying to put her at ease, not that I was successful—or ever could be at putting a lady at ease given my size.”
Gwinnie chuffed and rolled her eyes. “That again?” she asked dismissively.
He shook his head, his gaze sliding away from hers. “You wouldn’t understand.”
“Ha!I don’t know how you can say that. You know full well what it is like for me. I stand head and shoulders over all my female friends—the few I have. The others titter behind their fans about the giantess and wonder aloud how she can ever hope to snag a husband. ‘Unless, of course, she trips the poor man in question and sits upon his back so that he can’t escape her,’ they say.”
To Lakehurst’s dismay, he could see tears fill her dark, Scotch whiskey-colored brown eyes. “Gwinnie, I—”
“And they are not wrong,” she declared, cutting him short. “How many men in society are as tall as I am? How many of them can look me in the eye? They certainly don’t wish to look up to murmur their sweet nothings!”
“Yes, I grant you all that,” he said. “And I’m sorry, I tend to forget that most people don’t see beyond your size to your beautiful face and clever mind. But if it makes you feel better, I have a worse issue.”
Her eyebrows and lips twisted into a doubting frown that only she could carry off. “And that is…?” she asked sarcastically.
“The women in society are afraid of me,” he said simply.
Gwinnie made a sound of disbelief. “What? How can you say that? I have seen women flock around you at balls,” waving her arms before her in large circles.
