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CHAPTER ONE

‘Elliot Turner, you will behave yourself this weekend.’

‘Nice to see you too, stepmother. May I at least set down my case before I receive a lecture?’

Mrs Turner—the second Mrs Turner, the first having been lost somewhere in Elliot’s faded childhood—swept down the last few stairs and crossed the grand entrance hall of Oakwood Manor.

‘I mean it,’ she said as she took his shoulders, then kissed each cheek.

‘This weekend is about Viola, not you. I will not have you creating a commotion because you have broken some heart or cuckolded some husband. Keep your…’ she waved her hand in the air, ‘ London ways to yourself. And stop calling me stepmother. You make me sound like a mean old lady.’

‘You are mean. You locked me in the attic!’

‘That was only once, and only because I did not know you had followed me up there. Although maybe I should have locked you up on purpose. You might have grown into a better-behaved man.’

Elliot smirked his usual grin, the one he occasionally practised in the mirror.

Of course, his stepmother remained impervious as always.

Haughty, elegant, and still a beauty twelve years after she’d been snaffled in her first season and dragged out to the estate, the earl’s daughter who could call herself lady but satisfied herself with Mrs regarded him with one raised brow.

She softened for no man except Father. Even if the old bastard didn’t deserve it.

‘Where is the ice princess?’ he asked.

‘In the sitting room, with her friend. She’s terrified her dress will be the wrong length. And I wish you would not call her that.’

Elliot sat his case on the parquet. Polished to gleaming, the floor hid even the last remaining dots of dust in inoffensive grooves.

He couldn’t fault her that. Mrs Turner took her duties as matron of the house seriously, although neither of the two children were hers.

If she couldn’t give Viola a coming-out audience with the Queen, she’d give her—along with every other country miss in a twenty-mile radius—a ball as grand as any in London.

With another grin, which earned him a full eyeroll, he set off down the hall to find his sister.

Elliot took a lusty breath. Lemon, bleach, and cloves…

all the scents of his childhood mingled with the fresh spring breeze and the chill rolling in from the coast. The manor had been built two centuries ago; yet the funds that kept it humming had been minted in the last two decades.

Gauche new money they were, and Elliot’s father may as well have been Midas.

Financing, railways, shipping, engines, even shares in an ice cream company—everything the man touched turned to gold.

His investments had bought this house. They had not saved the mother of his children, but had brought them a more than respectable replacement.

They had also paid for the best boarding schools for both Elliot and Viola.

Elliot had never forgiven Father for it.

He had spent those years cowering in the shadow of boys with long titles and longer lineages, until, at about the age of twenty, he had realised that he had something most of his snide classmates did not: charm to go along with the money.

Perhaps there were other ways he could have sought his revenge on them for their teasing and bullying.

But bedding their bored wives, kissing their debutante sisters behind curtains or in gardens, and occasionally rolling with their lustier mothers had seemed far more enjoyable than pistols at twenty paces.

Elliot paused outside the sitting room. Bright words sneaked between the cracks. Viola… And some other voices, softer voices. He should knock. But why knock when he could make an entrance? He pushed the handle down, then thrust the door open.

‘I am returned!’

A woman balanced on a stool in the centre of the room shrieked and flung her arms across her chest. The seamstress swore as her pins scattered over the carpet.

The cat hissed and shot between his legs and down the hall.

As for Viola, she only huffed from her seat by the window, then grumbled, ‘For heaven’s sake, Elliot. Can you not be mature for once?’

Elliot chuckled. ‘Where’s the fun in that?’

Hand on the doorframe, he surveyed his work. Viola annoyed, the seamstress muttering as she collected her pins, and the woman in the centre of the room thoroughly flustered. The woman… wait. Who was that? Surely not…

She looked away and bowed her head, placing a protective hand over a loose bun as she grasped at her dress with the other.

White lace and frills clouded skirts which hung from a delicate waist, and he caught a wisp of nape that demanded to be kissed before the seamstress threw a cloak over her shoulders.

Elliot took a sidestep and bent to see her face. ‘Ava?’