*
Montaigne walked backto Carrington Place, despite the cold, despite the wet trousers, and despite the aching in his bollocks that did not subside with his erection.
Olivia Watson was the most bewitching, beguiling woman in London. He couldn’t keep from reliving the sweet smell of her against him and imagining again and again all the ways in which he could have taken her against that wall. He again marveled at the fact that, in the years since their last meeting, she had not lost any of her appeal to him. He still felt himself melting before her warm brown eyes, willing to do anything to just get a little closer to her.
By the time he arrived at Carrington Place, he was glad to be home. Generally, in fact, helikedarriving home. After all, of his friends he had been the only one who had never taken lodgings away from his family home. His friends had teased him for it over the years. He had always made out that it would upset his mother if he were to leave or that he had a responsibility as the heir to tend to his younger siblings. But that wasn’t true. His mother would have understood if he had wanted his own household. And she certainly didn’t need his help with his siblings.
He just didn’t want to live anywhere else.
When he crossed the threshold, he heard the familiar sound of boisterous voices and the smell of fresh tea cakes emanating from the drawing room. After the erotic and emotional trial of Olivia Watson, the warmth of his home brought a lump to his throat—which showed, more than anything, how she was threatening to unman him.
He heard a step in the hall and looked up to see his youngest sibling, Petunia, only eighteen, standing there.
“I can’t believe you let Percy drive your curricle,” she exclaimed, her glossy light brown locks bouncing with the force of her astonishment, “He has been crowing about it ever since he got home.” She turned back towards the drawing room and, when she saw he wasn’t following, she called back to him. “Come, Auggie, and take tea. Mother has been waiting for you.”
Montaigne smiled. He had planned to withdraw to his rooms and change his buckskins, but there would be no escaping his family now. And he couldn’t even say that he was particularly reluctant to avoid them.
When he entered the drawing room, Montaigne took in his family seated as they were in their customary semi-circle. In the past few years, their number had shrunk and together their group still looked small to him, especially now with Beatrice gone. He was still adjusting to her absence, even after a year. She had married a barrister last spring and now lived with him in a small townhome on the other side of Mayfair. Some had said that it was an unworthy match for her—but those people, Montaigne always thought, had never seen his sister laugh at one of her new husband’s jokes.
They had lost Lawrence to matrimony three years before that, although Montaigne made sure his brother always came to Carrington Place for part of the season, with his wife and young sons. Lawrence was the closest to him in age and held the living at the vicarage attached to the family estate in Derbyshire, but Montaigne had insisted that he and his wife take the manor as their quarters. In fact, he had given it to them as a wedding present, with funds allocated from the earldom for the upkeep. Given his general reputation, his gift to his brother hadn’t circulated much in theton, but those who had heard of it declared it odd, extravagant, and damaging to the estate. They had divined rightly that it suggested the earl must not be eager to marry himself. And, certainly, giving away one of the most valuable pieces of property associated with the earldom to one’s younger brother was not a common action of most heirs. But his own future aside, Montaigne had never seen why he should have everything, just because he was older than his siblings.
Of course, Montaigne thought with a pang as he lingered on the familiar figures before the fire, they had lost his father first. When he was fourteen, his father had died of a disease that had weakened him over the course of a year. It was the only time he could remember dreading coming home. Each time Montaigne returned from school, he found his father worse and worse until, one day, his sire could not get out of bed to greet him. He died not long after, on a warm summer day, the kind that was so beautiful you couldn’t believe it was real. He didn’t know how his mother had borne it.
Despite the early death of her beloved husband, his mother had never lost her kindness or her good humor. Montaigne took her in now, seated closest to the fire, still a comely matron, youthful for her age, which was now past fifty.
“Auggie,” she called out to him, “Percy told us about the tea mishap. I hope you did not walk all the way home in those wet breeches. Come, sit by me, close to the fire.”
“I thought you had gone to Leith’s for new buckskins,” Percy objected.
“He wasn’t at home,” Montaigne lied, settling into the armchair nearest his mother.
“Now I feel bloody guilty,” Percy said, “I took your curricle.”
“You’ve been bragging so much,” said Elizabeth, his second oldest sister. She was a pretty, dark-haired girl of two-and-twenty, Percy’s twin. Thus far, she had proved a bit too brash for the young men on the marriage mart. Doubtlessly, she terrified no small number of them, but she seemed not to mind and enjoyed the flow of parties, even if she didn’t yet take the prospect of courtship seriously. “And here Auggie has been out in the cold, trudging home with tea-soaked trousers.”
“I’m perfectly fine,” Montaigne grumbled, “They dried long ago.” It wasn’t quite true, of course. He shifted in his seat. His smalls were still damp.
Petunia handed Montaigne a cup of tea that she had poured from the sideboard. He accepted it, gratefully. He lifted the warm brew to his lips and gulped it down, feeling his spirits rise with his body temperature.
“It was deuced unlucky,” Percy said, “Especially since the incident cut our visit short. Miss Mapperton is so charming.”
“Yes,” the Dowager Countess said, her eyes sparkling, “We have heard much about Miss Mapperton’s attractions from Percy. Do you share his assessment, Auggie?”
“Mother!” Percy objected, his cheeks aflame. “I have only said that she is a very charming young lady.”
“And that she is the most beautiful woman you have ever seen,” Willa said, quietly.
Willa was the shyest of his siblings and, at four and twenty, the oldest still at home, besides himself. She wasn’t bookish, although people often mistook her for being so, given her quiet manner. Instead, she was very invested in charitable works, spending much of her time with the children at a local orphanage. Montaigne worried about her catching sick from her work there and his mother fretted that the dismal scene wore down her spirits. But she loved the time that she spent with the children—and he couldn’t imagine denying her that. Blonde, bespectacled, and generally regarded as too plump for the tastes of fashion, Willa had struggled at the balls and parties that Beatrice and Petunia found to be their natural element. Montaigne thought that his sister would flower with the type of spousal companionship that had brought Lawrence and Beatrice such happiness. One day, he knew, the right person would see how special his gentle sister really was.
“Well,” Percy equivocated, coloring afresh, “I suppose I did say that I found her comely.”
“Percy finds the most beautiful woman he has ever seen three times a week, at least,” Elizabeth broke in, “I wouldn’t give it much credence, Willa.”
“Yes, but the way he said it,” Willa said, with a soft smile. “It seemed like he actually might mean it this time.”
“I found Miss Mapperton very charmingandvery pretty,” Montaigne interjected. “And I don’t see why Percy shouldn’t get to know her further. She seems everything that is amiable and, in regard to fortune, it would be a practical match.”
“La! Auggie,” said Petunia, “You sound like an old woman, like mother, when you talk of matches.”
