Cover Copy
Well-bred, well-dressed, and well-read, Henrietta, Harriet, and Hero are best friends who have bonded over good books since their schooldays. Now these cultured ladies are ready to make their own happy endings—each in her own way . . .
Lady Henrietta Parker, daughter of the Earl of Blakemoor, has turned down many a suitor for fear that the ton’s bachelors are only interested in her wealth. But despite the warnings of her dearest friends, Harriet and Hero, she can’t resist the challenge rudely posed by her half sister: transform an ordinary London dockworker into a society gentleman suitable for the “marriage mart.” Only after a handshake seals the deal does Retta fear she may have gone too far . . .
When Jake Bolton is swept from the grime of the seaport into the elegance of Blakemoor House, he appears every inch the rough, cockney working man who is to undergo Retta’s training in etiquette, wardrobe, and elocution. But Jake himself is a master of deception—with much more at stake than a drawing room wager.
But will his clandestine mission take second place to his irresistible tutor, her intriguing proposal . . . and true love?
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Books by Wilma Counts
An Earl Like No Other
The Memory of Your Kiss
My Fair Lord
Published by Kensington Publishing Corporation
My Fair Lord
Wilma Counts
LYRICAL PRESS
Kensington Publishing Corp.
www.kensingtonbooks.com
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Copyright © 2017 by J. Wilma Counts
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First Electronic Edition: October 2017
eISBN-13: 978-1-60183-907-7
eISBN-10: 1-60183-907-3
First Print Edition: October 2017
ISBN-13: 978-1-60183-908-4
ISBN-10: 1-60183-908-1
Printed in the United States of America
Dedication
This book is dedicated
to the memory of my friend,
MARILEE SWIRCZEK
who lost her battle with depression
in July,2016.
What she once wrote about someone else
is a fitting tribute to Marilee:
“She truly used her art to teach,
To comfort, to witness.
There’s a hole in the soul
Of the universe.”
Chapter 1
London
Late September, 1814
Henrietta Georgiana Parker, Lady Henrietta to members of the ton, that highest echelon of London society, was simply Retta to her intimate friends, to her father, and to her siblings—her younger half-brothers and half-sisters. Her father’s siblings, Uncle Alfred and Aunt Georgiana, also affectionately called her Retta. Her stepmother, Countess of Blakemoor, on the other hand, deplored the vulgarity of having one’s name shortened thus. Retta did not mind it at all.
One sunny day in early autumn, Retta was hosting visitors in the drawing room of her father’s elegant London town house.
One might wonder why the eldest daughter of the Earl of Blakemoor was hostess on this occasion, for everyone knew the countess would never tolerate a lesser being usurping her position—and a stepdaughter was certainly a lesser being.
The explanation: the earl and his countess were not in residence.
Only the children were, along with the earl’s brother, the aforementioned Uncle Alfred, and the countess’s rather aged and somewhat dotty but lovable Cousin Amabelle, whose presence was intended to lend propriety to the temporarily parentless household that included two single young women. Society would, of course, have considered the newly married Lady Lenninger as far too young to be an appropriate chaperon for her sisters.
To say that only the “children” were in residence was misleading. Lady Henrietta and her twin half-brothers, Gerald and Richard, had all reached the age of majority—and more—and the younger sisters, Rebecca and Melinda, were nineteen and eighteen. Rebecca had recently married a properly titled young man, Baron Lenninger, and Melinda had danced her way through her second season.
Retta was fonder of her twin brothers than of her sisters, perhaps because they were closer to her in age, there being less than three years between them. She often recalled with pleasure hours in the nursery reading to the little boys as soon as she had herself mastered that skill. Even then, she had sensed that Gerald, Lord Heaton, would grow up to be the more responsible and scholarly of the two, and that Richard would always be easily distracted by sport and any scheme offering adventure.
In their nursery days, she had earnestly tried to be as fond of the girls too, but found she shared very few of their interests. Besides, Rebecca and Melinda had, in those early days, spent much time in their mother’s company—a circle in which Retta rarely felt truly welcomed. Playing with dolls and dressing up to pretend to be ladies of fashion had never interested Retta, whom her stepmother often scolded for having her nose in a book or riding her pony far too fast. “You will never get a husband if you continue to behave in such an unladylike manner, Henrietta.”
The absent Earl of Blakemoor and his countess, along with many of the rest of London’s governing ministers and social elites, were traveling via Paris to Vienna, Austria, where the earl was to fulfill a minor role in the Congress of Vienna, set to open at the beginning of November. The countess, Retta knew, would try mightily to fulfill a self-declared role as one of the leaders of the sparkling social whirl intended to alleviate the tedium of the serious business of the Congress: dividing up the imperial spoils of the recently deposed Emperor of France.
Napoleon, of course, was not to be present in Vienna. After his defeat at the Battle of Nations at Leipzig, and his subsequent abdication, he had been consigned to the island of Elba where he presumably licked his wounds and regretted his folly. Retta was aware that not everyone shared that prevailing