AllFreeNovel
Share Us
*****
Nerissa looked at her reflection in the tall mirror and sighed.
She would never be an Incomparable, and that was that. Her colouring was all wrong, she was too tall and her face was too angular.
In the pale pastel colours that were deemed fashionable for young ladies, she faded into insignificance.
She sighed again, thinking of her sister Maria, an acknowledged Beauty, who had cut a triumphant swathe through thetonduring the previous Season. It had been fashionable to be in love with Maria, with her flashing amber eyes, rich auburn hair and flawless creamy complexion.
Thus, Maria had had the opportunity of choosing from amongst a veritable army of suitors and was now betrothed - very advantageously betrothed, to be sure, to a wealthy Earl, to their parents’ delight.
Donning her fur lined pelisse and her velvet bonnet, Nerissa crossed the hall and stepped into the carriage with her maid, bound to Meltonbrook Chase, where she was to have tea with her bosom bow Alyse, the Duke of Melton’s daughter.
No, not daughter, sister, she amended her thought. Hunter was Duke, now, after the untimely demise of his father and his elder brother.
She blushed. They hoped that Hunter would be home soon, for he had sent his family a message from London, but with the deep snow on the roads, he was likely delayed.
Would he recognise her? She did not think so. He had had scant interest to spare for her, to begin with, when he was a young man just back from his term in Oxford, and she was just a shy ten year old, all angles and elbows and not even a promise of feminine allure.
Nerissa leaned back on the carriage seat, closing her eyes.‘Much good it does me to wool-gather like that’, she chided herself.‘I’ll be lucky if I don’t find myself married to some gouty old man before the Season is over.’
She shivered, and not because of the sharp wind blowing and howling through the naked trees.
*****
As Hunter approached the door, the butler, a delighted expression lighting his usually impassive features, opened it. Immediately regaining his formal demeanour, Jermyn schooled his expression to a more serious face, better suited to the Butler of a great house.
“Welcome home, Your Grace. The ladies are in the drawing room. Follow me, please.”
“No need, Jermyn, I know the way”, answered Hunter, secretly amused by the butler’s display of self-restraint, and almost ran to the drawing room doors, suddenly unable to wait any longer to see his family.
He opened the doors, and an instant of shocked silence followed his entrance. Hunter scanned the tableau – a morning visit frozen before him. All of his family were there (although part of his mind still expected to see his father and Richard as well), and there was someone else.
A woman he did not know, a woman who was more beautiful than any he had seen.
She had burnished golden hair, surrounding her face with a profusion of waves and ringlets, a honey and gold complexion; long, almond shaped green gold eyes, fringed by thick burnished golden eyelashes and emphasized by high cheekbones, and a tall, shapely body.
The only feature detracting from perfection, but greatly adding to character, was a rather large, mobile mouth, much more capable of expressing feelings (and temper, he suspected!) than a proper prim little rosebud. He was captivated. Her eyes met his across the room, and for a moment, everything else faded away.
He was brought back to the moment when the silence was broken by his sister Alyse, who cried out: “Hunter! Hunter, you are back! Is it really you, Hunter?” and, without any further ado, threw herself at him. His eye contact with the woman was broken, and he forgot her in the chaos that followed.
Hunter’s mother, the Duchess Louisa, half-fainting, reclined on the sofa, fanning herself and calling for her vinaigrette. His sister Sybilla, almost jigged around the table, before forcing herself to behave with greater propriety. His brother, Charles, obviously tried to be the cool gentleman, but could not help but step forward and embrace Hunter, his eyes shining with held back tears.
“At long last, my son,” sobbed his mother.
“Come here, and let me look at you. Last time I saw you, you were a boy. Now you are a man. And what a man! Your father, God rest his soul, would be so proud of you…”
Moved despite himself, Hunter gathered his weeping mother into his arms.
“Shush, Mother, I’m here to stay. I’m so sorry I was not here when it would have really mattered. I feel that I have failed you all, yet it was at the time of Waterloo, and I did not even hear the news for months! I’m so sorry…”
The Duchess brushed her tears impatiently aside.
“I’m a foolish old woman, my son. This is not a time for weeping, but a time for rejoicing. God knows, we have been mourning long enough. And look who is here, Hunter. Do you remember Lady Nerissa Loughbridge, Lord Chester’s youngest daughter?”
A faint recollection of a meddlesome brat, always trying to follow him around, vaguely stirred in Hunter’s memory.
He turned his head and froze again, caught by her appearance.
