CHAPTER 1
WHERE A SECOND CHANCE PRESENTS ITSELF
Hampstead, England 1816
The flutter of awareness caught her like a needle beneath the skin.
Alexandra shaded her eyes, searching the broad bands of sunlight scattered across the stable yard. A spark skated across her skin, similar to the shock when her slipper chafed a woolen carpet. The man who’d laughed and caught her attention looked familiar, something about him seizing her breath in an uncommon way.
Uncommon because the woman the ton called the Wintry Widow rarely experienced jolts of any kind.
The male curiosity was sitting in the flatbed of a workman’s cart, long legs swinging, his left bootheel tapping the rimmed metal frame and flexing his hip in an appealing way. As the sun shifted behind a cloud and he came into view, she realized his display was more of a sprawl.
And his looks were as stellar as the display.
Hair the color of ripe chestnuts, too long for fashion, dusted a marble sculpture of a jaw. The strands were curling slightly in the post-drizzle air, an enticement she didn’t want to appreciate but couldn’t help noticing. Reflecting the casual setting, he was dressed informally. Scuffed boots she would nevertheless wager were Hoby-crafted, his fine trousers sporting a tear in one knee as if he’d gone down hard but not cared enough to repair the damage. A cravat looped carelessly about his neck, the dangling ends leading her gaze to the undone button of his waistcoat.
The bottom button.
From there, a mere drop of her gaze, and she was confronted with a set of muscular thighs and everything wondrous resting in between.
Her visual quest taking her places it hadn’t in years. Places it shouldn’t.
As the unwelcome rush of attraction cascaded through her, Alexandra shoved to her feet, stumbling into the workbench at her side. The filly next to her whinnied and sidestepped in alarm.
“Hold up, Mountbatten, or you’ll have me tools strewn in the soil and this young beast kicking out at us.”
Alexandra laughed, hoping false delight had the power to hide her bewildering reaction. “There was a bee, and you know I hate them.” Waving the rag she held before her scorching cheeks, she shrugged weakly. “And I’m no longer a Mountbatten. It’s Lady Amberly now.”
“Lass, you’ll always be a Mountbatten.” Seamus Doherty scrubbed his knuckles across his leather apron and rose on creaking knees, his expression more than a touch knowing. His eyes glowed the color of burnt timber in a face defeated by time and exposure. “That incident with the bee has to be going on twenty years past though I easily bring it to mind. Your teensy arm swelled to the size of a ham hock. Mrs. Dansen had me fashion a poultice. Same as I make for equine ailments, dog turd and beetles.”
She grimaced. His miracle salve had worked, but she’d smelled ripe for a week—and her terror of bees had been born.
"Your parents were away in Scotland, I think it was.” Seamus ran his hand down the mount’s glistening coat. “Or maybe Wales.”
Alexandra pressed her hand to her belly, surprised at the flurry of emotion that hit her when she recalled her parents, a couple who’d been away for most of her childhood. Away for good when a carriage accident removed them from this world when she was twelve. Seamus and his family, her father’s farrier since he rose from the position of lead groom the month before she was born, and Mrs. Dansen, her housekeeper, had raised her after that. A series of governesses and companions allowing her to reside in her childhood home, Hampton Court, until her marriage. Consumption had taken Mrs. Dansen, and an unlucky tumble from his mount on a hillside course in Brittany had claimed Alexandra’s husband of two years, Viscount Amberly, last winter.
For a multitude of reasons, it was hard to mourn him.
With as little direction as rubbish wafting about in a stormy gust, she’d left Amberly’s estate in Hertfordshire to return to Hampton Court, an unentailed property miraculously hers and hers alone. A former merchant’s manor, it was modestly dilapidated, reportedly haunted, and thoroughly beloved. She’d merely wanted to live out her days here, in peace. However, due to a lackluster Season, society’s regard had followed her, the scandal sheets mentioning her more than she cared for. Would the Wintry Widow marry again? Take a lover? Retire to the country to never return? The only benefit to her union with Amberly had been the ability to fade like fog in sunlight. Just another married chit in the ton.
When she’d once wanted, well, things.
She rolled her fingers into a fist, her surge of temper easily squelched. Rebellion at this stage would get her nowhere. And who in heaven’s name would she rebel with?
Unable to check herself, Alexandra shot a side-glance at the stranger lounging on the cart. He looked like a man able to answer philosophical questions.
Her pensioning agreement with Seamus had allowed him to outfit the small shed behind the stable as an office, where he welcomed business from the village and beyond. His son and grandson had joined him in the enterprise and gents routinely traveled from London for his expert knowledge of horses. It was difficult to find someone who could properly shoe a horse.
She delayed as long as she could before asking, “The man over there, is he one of your clients?”
Seamus tightened the filly’s bridle, his smile blooming in a way that meant his delight was going to pinch. “He is, indeed. Got a shoddy shoeing last week in a stall near Hyde Park. Left this beauty limping like she had a stone wedged in her hoof. They don’t teach the smithing profession as they used to. I can’t even find lads willing to apprentice. Could double me business if I could.” Seamus squinted at her across the sleek rise of the horse’s neck. “If it weren’t a catastrophe for a gel to be in trade, guaranteed expulsion from society, you’d be the chief soul I’d enter into agreement with. Except for me, you know more about this than anyone in England.”
Regrettably, this was true.
Since the age of ten, Alexandra had covertly trained under Seamus as industriously as his son, an improper proficiency for the daughter of an earl. A recently widowed viscountess. A woman. She’d had to pretend ignorance about so many issues—history, politics, art—that it had become second nature. As the ton liked nothing better than silly fools.
Again, she glanced across the courtyard. “He looks bored. Ready to scurry back to Town as soon as his mount is able to carry him.”
