Page 1 of Scoundrel at First Sight (Love at First Sight #2)

Part I

“ S ummer has filled her veins with light and her heart is washed with noon.”

~ Anglo-Irish poet Cecil Day-Lewis

In hindsight, it was the stairs’ fault. Had they not creaked when they did, Olivia would have likely been able to sneak out the front door without anyone - especially her mother - being the wiser.

But it had been a wet spring, followed by two months of dry summer heat, and on that momentous morning in August, the third step from the bottom gave a loud, betraying groan when she lightly pressed her bare toes upon it.

Clenching her jaw at the sound, Olivia froze, praying no one had noticed, and she could either make a mad dash for the door or retreat to the attic for the entirety of her parent’s annual house party, an exhausting three-week event filled with dinners, socializing, and pianoforte recitals.

So many pianoforte recitals.

An absurd amount, really.

If she could just quietly - but no, it was too late.

She had been seen.

“ There you are,” the Duchess of Abercorn exclaimed, her blue eyes - shared by her two oldest daughters, Jane and Bethany, but not Olivia, who had inherited her father’s green - lighting with a combination of relief and consternation.

Relief and consternation.

That was Olivia in a nutshell.

To start, she’d been born a month before the midwife told the duchess to expect her. Tiny, pink, and squalling, her arrival in the middle of a blizzard had sent the entire household into an uproar.

Then, when she was seven, she fell out of a tree in front of their Grosvenor Square manor and broke her arm… the day before Jane was to be presented to the royal court.

At the grand age of ten, she announced to anyone who would listen that she was taking her pony - Muffins - and they were running away to join a traveling circus or a gypsy caravan or a herd of elephants.

She hadn’t quite figured out the exact details.

All she did know was that she didn’t fit in.

Not with her perfect, graceful mother. Not with her polished, beautiful sisters.

So she’d packed up a satchel with extra carrots for her best friend in the whole world and made it all the way to the Fernhill Estate three miles down the road before Muffins unceremoniously dumped her in a puddle and trotted back to his best friends - May and Martha, two palomino mares - as fast as his little legs would carry him.

Their relationship was never the same after that.

When Olivia had returned home - wet, hungry, and smelling of horse - her mother was wearing a strikingly similar expression to the one she had now.

Relief that her youngest daughter wasn’t hurt or worse.

Followed by consternation that she’d had to worry in the first place.

But such was the bane of having a willful child.

A child that had always struggled to follow the rules that came so naturally to her other two daughters.

A child that detested dance lessons, sneered at anything to do with stitching, and would rather romp in a field filled with wildflowers than waltz through a ballroom filled with eligible bachelors.

“Olivia,” the Duchess of Abercorn began in a rather ominous tone that her youngest daughter recognized all too well. “You weren’t sneaking out of the house before our guests' arrival, were you?”

“No.” Olivia crossed her fingers behind her back. “Of course not.”

“That’s good, because your presence will be expected in the receiving line. After that, we’re having tea on the front lawn followed by-”

“Jane’s pianoforte recital in the music room,” Olivia sighed. “I read the itinerary, Mother. Just as you requested.”

The duchess’s brow rose as her gaze traveled from her daughter’s auburn curls, sloppily pinned to the top of her head, all the way down to her bare toes peeking out beneath the hem of an old morning dress with grass stains at the knees.

“I seem to recall also requesting that you make yourself presentable. This is not just a house party, Olivia. It is an opportunity. The best opportunity you will have all summer to find a husband.”

“I’d rather go looking for toads behind the garden shed,” she mumbled.

“I know you would,” said the duchess, not unkindly. “But that is a child’s errand, my dear. And you are no longer a child, but a young woman. A young woman whom I should like to see happily settled with a family of her own.”

“Bethany isn’t married,” Olivia quickly pointed out.

“Bethany is engaged to be wed to Lord Markhaven, as you are well aware. Whereas you have rejected every single suitor that has made an attempt to court you.” The duchess pinched the bridge of her nose. “England’s list of eligible bachelors is not endless.”

Was it not?

Because it seemed that way to Olivia.

By her twentieth birthday in March, she’d had a seemingly infinite number of men paraded in front of her.

Earls, viscounts, barons. Even a duke or two.

Then a most terrible thing had happened.

Lady Annalise Buttercream, a wallflower if ever there was one, had been swept off her feet by the Duke of Tennyson, and the entire ton had lost its collective mind.

Including Olivia’s mother.

Because if Lady Annalise , a shy recluse with nary a prospect in sight, could become betrothed to the notoriously debaucherous Duke of Tennyson, well, what was to prevent Lady Olivia from doing the same?

“I… forgot something in the stables,” she said, crossing her fingers even more tightly together as she side-stepped her mother.

“Olivia,” the duchess began in a low, warning tone.

“Olivia, don’t you dare – blast it all!” As the front door slammed shut behind her most willful daughter, her shoulders momentarily slumped in defeat…

then rose with determination. She would find Olivia a husband if it killed her, which it very much could at the rate things were going.

Not because she wanted her youngest out of the house.

Oh, how she had cried when Jane left! And how she would cry when Bethany did the same.

Quiet tears that only her devoted husband had been privy to.

But because she wanted her daughter to find love, joy, and happiness in a partner who would lift her wings instead of wishing to clip them.

In a life rich beyond measure with all of the gowns, carriages, and jewels that a fortune could buy, the duchess had discovered long ago that her most important treasure of all was the relationship she shared with her beloved Albert.

A man who had stood beside her in both troubled waters and calm.

A man who had held her hand as she’d brought each of their three children into the world.

A man who had slept beside her every single night since they’d said their vows some thirty years ago, neither of them without any concept yet of what true love was.

The sacrifices it would demand of them.

And the blessings it would bring.

How could she not wish the same for her daughters?

The same sense of fulfillment.

Of contentment.

Of peace in knowing that she loved and was loved in return.

Jane had found her husband when she was a young girl.

She and Thomas had grown up together, and it was only natural that they would marry when they’d never had eyes for another living soul.

Bethany had taken a bit longer. A year and six months to be precise, but Jacob had been consistent in his devotion, and he’d won her middle daughter’s hand eventually.

Which left Olivia.

Wild, willful, stubborn Olivia.

Not her favorite - as a general rule, mothers were not allowed to choose those - but the one she thought about the most. She worried about the most. She prayed for the most. If Olivia truly never wanted to marry, and instead live out her days running barefoot through fields of flowers, than the duchess wouldn’t stop her.

But she knew, she felt in her very heart, that if Olivia found find a man worthy of her, she would love more fiercely than both her sisters combined.

All the duchess had to do was find that man.

A task easier said than done.

***

Hoyt Culpepper was everything that the British nobility hated about Americans.

And that was just fine with him, thank you very much.

He was loud.

He spoke his mind.

He was, on occasion, crass.

He drank Kentucky bourbon.

He smoked Connecticut cigars.

He wore what he wanted.

He ate what he hunted.

But his most terrible sin was also the most unforgivable.

He was rich.

Filthy, stinking rich.

The worst part of all?

He hadn’t inherited a penny of it.

He’d earned it.

Every damned dollar.

Off the sweat of his brow and the brains in his head, he’d amassed a fortune in property, businesses, and financial positions that expanded from the coast of California to Maryland’s eastern shore.

Now he had his steely gaze fixed on England.

In particular, a small, seemingly inconsequential railway that cut across the countryside.

A railway with a depot station only half a day’s ride from where he would be spending the next two weeks by invitation of the Duke and Duchess of Abercorn.

When the pearly white envelope sealed with a perfect circle of ruby red wax was hand delivered to him at the top story of the hotel he’d leased out for the better part of the summer, Hoyt’s initial reaction was that of exasperated amusement before he’d tossed it onto a mounting pile of similar envelopes and correspondence.

Ever since news of his arrival in London had broken, he had been receiving any untold number of invitations to any manner of events.

Balls, plays, operas. Even a pianoforte recital, whatever the hell that was.

With his mind on business, he’d had his secretary politely decline each and every one…

until it was brought to his attention that the Duke of Abercorn’s country estate was right next to the railway he planned to acquire.