Page 4 of A Wallflower to Win the Viscount

She closed her eyes, tipped back her head and smiled at the sun. The current Season was almost over, and she had completely avoided it. It now mattered not a fig whether her face became tanned or not because she was a woman of independent means and never again had to try and attract the attentions of eligible men.

She sighed with satisfaction and turned to watch a passing carriage clattering along the cobbled road. She nodded hello to the liveried driver and smiled at the sweet dappled horse, then looked in the window at the passenger.

It was him.

A small gasp escaped her mouth. She gripped her cream parasol tighter, raised it to cover her face and peeked out from behind its frilly lace trim. The sight of his profile sent that strange sensation shooting through her body and heat rushing to her cheeks. Her heart had seemingly stopped beating, and her stomach was doing some rather odd flips.

It made no sense whatsoever. This was exactly how she’d felt when talking to him. But this time she hadn’t been caught intruding in his garden and was not trying to explain the behaviour of her mischievous goose. He wasn’t even looking at her, never mind speaking to her.

What on earth was going on?

She would have to remember every physical sensation so she could describe them to Alice and Margaret. As married women, they were so much more worldly than her and would hopefully be able to make sense of what was happening to her, because this was unlike anything Primrose had felt before.

Men had always unsettled her, but not like this. This was both unpleasant and pleasant at the same time, which in itself was decidedly peculiar.

The carriage rolled on and turned the corner at the end of the road, and Primrose released her held breath. Difficulty breathing: She’d have to add that to the sensations she told her friends about. And there was also the strange reaction of her skin, as if it was being stroked gently with soft velvet. Very odd.

Reciting this list to herself she continued her walk until she arrived at Alice’s house and was pleased to see Margaret’s carriage parked outside, bearing the crest of the Duke of Rosedale.

Samuel the footman opened the door in response to her knock and smiled at her. ‘Good morning, Miss Fairburn,’ he said, standing back so she could enter. ‘Lady Thornwood and Her Grace are in the green drawing room.’

‘Thank you, Samuel,’ she said, noting that even though Samuel was a tall, good-looking man—as footmen tended to be—she did not have any reaction to him whatsoever, apart from being pleased to see his friendly face.

He escorted her through to the drawing room, and she kissed her two friends on the cheek in greeting. Both were showing the early signs of being with child. A small twinge of envy nipped at Primrose, which she pushed away. She was happy for her friends who, like Primrose, had both once assumed they would never marry and have children. They would make wonderful, loving mothers, and if she could be as good an aunt to them as Aunt Clemmie had been to her, she would be satisfied.

Alice poured her a cup of tea, and Primrose politely asked after her friends’ health, inquired about their husbands and discussed their families, all the while bursting to tell them her news.

When there was a pause in the conversation she saw her chance and leapt in.

‘I’ve met the new Viscount Westhaven. He’s moved in next door. Into his father’s house. His late father, that is. His house now, I suppose.’

Her words once again became garbled, as they had been when she spoke to the man himself.

‘What is he like?’ Alice asked, a frown creasing her forehead, while Margaret looked on with a matching expression. Anyone would think she was about to impart some bad news.

‘He’s tall, handsome and very manly. He could have stepped straight out of the pages of a Jane Austen or Charlotte Brontë novel.’

‘Is he anything like his father?’ Margaret asked, not as excited by this description as Primrose would have expected.

‘I don’t know. I never met his father. Was he tall, handsome and manly as well?’

‘Possibly,’ Margaret said. ‘But he had the most shocking reputation,’ she said and lowered her voice, ‘with the ladies.’

‘Oh,’ Primrose said, drawing out that one word.

‘Yes, I’d heard the rumours as well,’ Alice added.

‘I don’t believe they were just rumours,’ Margaret said, warming to the subject. ‘I’ve been told he had absolutely no conscience, and no woman was safe around him.’

‘Oh,’ Primrose repeated. ‘What do you mean, no woman was safe?’

Margaret’s frown deepened. ‘He was a lecher, a seducer. They say he fathered countless illegitimate children but acknowledged none of them. I believe his reputation became so bad that eventually no young female servants would work in his houses because they feared what he might do.’

‘Oh,’ Primrose said yet again, trying to take in this terrible revelation.

‘Do you think the son is like the father?’ Alice asked.

Primrose cast her mind back to all that had happened between them. ‘I don’t think so.’