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Chapter One
June 17, 1830
Malcolm Brown, the eldest of the late Alexander Salisbury’s bastard children, awoke from his dream with a moan.
It was not a moan of surprise.
The dream was the same as usual.
This dream, in fact, was always almost exactly the same.
In the dream, he, Malcolm Brown, had his cock buried deep inside a woman—always the same woman, although he did not know who she was. Her sweet scent overpowered him. He had one hand on her bare breast and the other on her ample arse. He pumped into her from behind, so he couldn’t see her face, but she was nevertheless close enough that he had his lips at her neck. And in the dream, he knew he loved the woman, the one he was brazenly tupping. In the dream, joining with her, in this way, was his peace on earth.
Most often, he woke up from this dream, panting, his cock hard. Exasperated, he would nevertheless palm himself and quickly dispatch of this strange visitation of arousal. The memory of the dream woman would fade with the pleasure of his orgasm—until she returned again some other evening and the process would repeat itself.
Now, however, as sometimes happened when he had recently been particularly abstemious in his self-pleasure, he found climax as he came into consciousness.
“Christ.” He swore when he realized what had happened.
He was now very awake and very much coated in the sticky results of his own spend, as was the sheet that had been wrapped around his waist.
Perhaps the mess was partly his fault. His punishment for sleeping completely bare.
In fact, Malcolm Brown always slept nude. It was improper, of course, but he was an improper man. As said eldest bastard of Alexander Salisbury, Malcolm’s very existence was itself improper. While his younger half brother, George, was the young master of Parkhorne Hall, Malcolm ran the farm, so he spent all day in the sun, with his hands in the dirt or on a plow and conversing in none too civil language with his fellow laborers. His father had been a gentleman, yes, but Malcolm wasn’t. He was a gentleman farmer, at best.
Thus, he could commit such sins against propriety.
After all, no one expected him to ever do more than manage the farm at Parkhorne. He was not meant for society. His younger brothers, even the ones who were also illegitimate, had made their way into that world. But he never would.
As a testament to that fact, his rooms were set a half mile off from the main house in what was once a hunting lodge.
And under normal circumstances, no one else occupied the place. Its three other bedrooms stood empty.
No one was likely to see what nightclothes he wore—or, in his case, didn’t wear—to bed.
Malcolm stood, crossed to the basin, and cleaned himself.
A glance through the curtains confirmed what he didn’t want to accept.
It was already morning.
He groaned.
And this time there was no pleasure in it.
He must dress. He must hasten to the hall and eat breakfast with his siblings, instead of heading out to the fields as he usually did.
Because today was not a normal day.
Today was the first day of the house party.
A month-long house party in which prospective brides—and their mamas—would descend upon Parkhorne Hall.
The young ladies were coming for his brother, George, five-and-twenty years of age, master of Parkhorne Hall, and, according to himself, ready to marry.
George’s mother, Mrs. Salisbury, wanted to make sure that her son made the right choice. She had devised the house party as a way to ensure that the girl who became the next Mrs. Salisbury was well-suited for both George and Parkhorne. Malcolm understood why she cared so much about her son’s marriage. His union had consequences for everyone who cared about the estate. A foolish match by George could harm Parkhorne irrevocably—and a good one, well, it could secure prosperity for a generation, at least.
And because Malcolm cared very much about Parkhorne, he had to care about the house party.
Even though the idea of good society made his stomach twist.
Ridiculous.
He was two-and-thirty years old. Far too old to fuss about where he belonged in the world.
His sister, Beatrice, who ten years ago had married the Marquess of Leith, was very fashionable herself. And she had begged him to come to London many times.
But he never could accept.
It had never felt right.
He knew Beatrice didn’t see him clearly.
She thought he was acceptable, but she was his sister.
She was used to him.
For these reasons, Malcolm had never even left Somerset.
He had hardly left this village.
So he couldn’t help but be a bit anxious. Because today London was coming to Parkhorne.
He winced at what these fine people would think when they looked at him, the rough, weather-beaten old bastard of the place. Luckily, he shouldn’t have to interact with any of them overmuch.
Shaking away such thoughts, Malcolm dressed and tried to steel himself for the day, the month, ahead.
He finished dressing and then looked out of his window, steadying himself with a deep breath. He took in the meadow, which his room overlooked, a sight that always calmed him.
He could make it through the next month.
It was only a society frivolity.
And he would have no part in most of it.
A half hour later, Malcolm Brown strode into the breakfast room at Parkhorne. To his dismay, when he entered, he confronted every one of his siblings and Mrs. Salisbury, already seated at the table.
Avoiding making eye contact with any of them, he slunk into a chair at the far end of the room and began slathering bread with marmalade.
“Good of you to join us, Malcolm,” Beatrice said tartly. “I didn’t know you’d become such a slug-a-bed.”
He gritted his teeth at the jibe.
The reference to him lingering in bed made him think of his dream and the woman in it.
Such comforts weren’t for him—and yet, he had dwelt too long between the sheets because of that ridiculous fantasy.
“I wasn’t aware my presence was so necessary on today of all days,” he bit back. “I thought a house party was being planned, not a harvest. Nor did I think such a happening would require your presence, Bea. Don’t you have a husband and a passel of children in London? Why are you in Somerset?”
“Yes, why are you here, Beatrice? Doesn’t the marquess need you? All the scandal sheets say that he will expire from longing if you leave his side,” Philip, the youngest of his siblings, broke in.
“Leith and the children will be here in a week, Philip,” Mrs. Salisbury chided. “You know this.”
“Yes, Philip,” George said. “Haven’t you committed my mother’s entertainment plan to memory? There hasn’t been a more important set of tactical maneuvers since the Battle of Waterloo.”
“Careful, brother,” Severn, who was the same age as George, but a bastard of their father’s, just like Malcolm, said. “You should not jest about traps in which you are the bait.”
Severn lived his life, as far as Malcolm could see, as George’s illegitimate shadow. He was all daring slyness to George’s steady sunniness. They were a funny pair, these two brothers of his, who functioned almost as if they were twins, despite really only being half-siblings, no different than the rest of them. But it had never felt that way. George and Severn had always seemed bound by something deeper. They weren’t just brothers but best friends, too.
George had been in many ways born to the better lot. Since a young age, he had been master of the estate around which all of their lives revolved. However, his club foot had given him, Malcolm knew, no small bit of trouble. It made walking long distances and riding difficult. Nevertheless, George’s frustration over this impairment, if he felt it, never showed. No, instead, he was assiduously considerate of his siblings and the position of worldly advantage he held over them. And he was as upstanding and respectable as any young man could be. As far as Malcolm understood it, George did not partake in any vices when he was in London—or when he was anywhere else.
Severn and George had the same dark good looks, but there their similarities ended. In all other ways, Severn was more like Beatrice. Like their sister, Severn could be cynical and not a little conniving. And to hear Beatrice tell it, Severn had begun to acquire, in London, quite the reputation for … sensuality. And that was putting it mildly. Apparently.
Unlike Malcolm, Severn had accepted every one of Beatrice’s invitations to Leith Manor in Grosvenor Square. In fact, he essentially lived there. And he had to accept his sister’s generosity. He had only a very small income of his own, which consisted of a small sum in the four percents left to him by his maternal grandfather, and whatever his mother, Mrs. Westmore, who owned a small estate nearby, could spare him from her own expenses.
Malcolm still had a hard time believing that the mischievous little snipe who had once followed him around like a puppy was now a metropolitan libertine.
“George isn’t bait,” Sally, the only illegitimate sister, retorted. Her grin recalled that which crossed her face when she and Malcolm had first ferreted out wild blackberries down near the pond. “He is the prize. There is a difference.”
Sally was eight-and-twenty. Sitting in her chair, the bright morning light illuminating her pale, clear skin and its copious freckles, she looked straight from the bright, sentimental illustrations of country scenes that rich London readers adored—even though they would never stoop to speak to Sally if they saw her in the flesh. Still, his sister appeared every inch the blooming matron that she was. The only caveat for that sentimental London reader would be his sister’s domestic arrangements—she had not just one husband but two. Well, not in the eyes of the church or the law. But she lived with two men and her family knew both should be regarded as her spouses.
Malcolm often thought Sally was the boldest of them all, Severn and Beatrice be damned.
“We are hoping for a girl with a nice fat dowry as the next mistress of Parkhorne, yes? Or am I mistaken?” Severn quipped.
“Dear lord, Severn,” Mrs. Salisbury said, her color rising. “You speak of George’s future bride as if we were trying to bilk her. He may have anyone he chooses, regardless of fortune. We all care most for his happiness.”
Because of Mrs. Salisbury’s intimate relationship with Severn’s mother—she and Mrs. Westmore were lovers and had been for years, despite the fact that Mrs. Westmore had once been the lover of her late husband—she often treated Severn as something closer to her own child than the rest of them. Which, in Mrs. Salisbury’s case, essentially meant that she scolded him more openly.
Well, in fact, between her special relationship with Mrs. Westmore, and the fact that Sally and Philip were orphans, Mrs. Salisbury essentially treated everyone besides himself as something close to her own child. She was always scrupulously kind to Malcolm. But they didn’t have the easy familiarity that she had with her dead husband’s other by-blows.
In fact, Malcolm could never shake the feeling that he carried unique pain for Mrs. Salisbury. He suspected that his long-ago appearance was what made Mrs. Salisbury realize that her husband was an unfaithful, unscrupulous blackguard.
It also didn’t help that—besides his green eyes—he looked exactly like his bastard of a father. He could never shake the thought that it pained Mrs. Salisbury to have him haunting her home day in and day out, year after year.
He couldn’t blame her for not warming to him.
“But, still, Mother,” George said. “We shan’t lie. A large dowry is, if not a prerequisite, then a salutary qualification.”
“A salutary qualification? Are you taking a wife, brother,” Severn interjected, “or hiring a valet?”
“George, if that is how you feel,” Mrs. Salisbury broke in, her soft voice going as high as it ever went, “then perhaps we should cancel the party. Because you are not mature enough to marry, if you take that view of it.”
“I apologize, Mother,” George said, holding up his hands in surrender. “It was a jest.” He dropped his hands and looked down at them for a moment. “And I am, perhaps, also trying to put in another good word for Miss Perkins. She is already my choice, you know. This party isn’t necessary.”
At those words, everyone in the room—including Malcolm—groaned.
“If I hear you say those words again!” Sally complained.
“Please, George,” Beatrice lamented. “Not again.”
“As your mother, I won’t have you rush into marriage,” Mrs. Salisbury supplied, her speech on the topic having not lost its alacrity, despite overuse, “without looking about yourself—”
“Yes, yes,” George said. “I know. Looking about myself, etcetera. But I’ve had three London seasons to do that. And I have no appetite for more. I want to marry a good girl and retire to the country. And Tilly is the one I want.”
“If she is right for you,” Beatrice said, “then you’ll be even more confident after a month spent in her company, here at Parkhorne, where you propose to live with her.”
“Yes,” Severn said dryly. “Because no one would want to do anything hasty in this family, Beatrice, when it comes to marriage. Or reckless.”
Ten years ago, Beatrice had married her husband, Lord Leith, in under a month—and, from all that Malcolm understood, and didn’t want to understand, they had known each other a far shorter time than that when they became as intimate as man and wife.
“Don’t you dare, Severn Westmore, take such a tone with me,” Beatrice said. “Not when those hasty nuptials have provided you the fine fare, fine dwelling, and endless fine society invitations that you enjoy so much.”
Severn gave the knowing, rakish smile that was apparently now his signature.
“We cannot all have your unerring wisdom, sister,” Severn retorted, with a laugh. “It is not everyone who can marry a marquess without even trying.”
“Or, in George’s case, snare an heiress,” Philip chimed in.
“Stop! Stop this at once!” Mrs. Salisbury demanded. “Do not encourage Philip, Severn! You will make him as bad as yourself.”
“I am not being encouraged,” Philip said. “I am not a child. Not that anyone around here remembers it.”
“I do, in fact, remember that,” Mrs. Salisbury said, her tone softer now. “Which is why I have made you a crucial part of every aspect of the next month.”
Philip was not so much of an adult, at two-and-twenty, Malcolm noted, as not to appear pleased by this assurance.
“We have everything set,” Mrs. Salisbury continued. “The house is sparkling. We have all the extra servants from town that we could entice into Somerset. Every room is turned out. We have five very eligible young ladies and their chaperones coming to reside here until halfway through July, and every provision has been made for their entertainment and comfort.”
“The farm has laid by everything you have asked for,” Malcolm interjected. “We should have every country amenity that our guests could expect. They will not get a gloomy view of living here on the account of the table you will present, ma’am.”
His siblings were not, as far as he could see, reassuring Mrs. Salisbury. And she—and he—had worked hard to show Parkhorne in its best light. And Malcolm did think Mrs. Salisbury wise for having the party. Parkhorne was not for every young lady, especially given how remote the location was and how retired George apparently wanted to be once he married. Coming here, and spending a month in its environs with George, would allow each of his brother’s potential brides to see whether they could live here as its mistress.
“Thank you, Malcolm,” she said, smiling. “You are appreciated, especially amongst this rabble. And I must presume on you further, I’m afraid.”
All eyes swiveled to Mrs. Salisbury. Malcolm’s blood ran cold.
He knew it. He had known it. This horde, the only family he had ever known, would not take no for an answer.
“Mrs. Salisbury, I cannot—”
“It is Eleanora, Malcolm, for the thousandth time. And I know that you have refused to take part in the house party socially. But I have an emergency. A crisis, if you will, and you are the only one who can solve it.”
“A crisis?” Malcolm said. “Yes, I am sure it was quite spontaneous.”
His siblings met him with blank stares.
“There is no reason to be paranoid, Malcolm,” Beatrice snapped. “We aren’t the enemy. And I am sure no one here knows what Mother means.”
“Really, brother, I haven’t the faintest notion of what she means,” Severn said.
“Nor do I,” Sally said.
He sighed. It didn’t matter, anyway, what they knew. “What is it?”
“I forgot about a guest,” Mrs. Salisbury said crisply. “It is all my fault. Because it is a rather unforgivable oversight.”
“Who is it?” Malcolm repeated.
“And it is especially egregious because she is part of the Perkins party. You know, Miss Matilda Perkins, your brother’s—”
“Yes,” Malcolm said. “I am aware of the significance of Miss Tilly Perkins.”
He restrained himself from saying—yes, I understand ton English, even if I work beside men who speak West Country.
“Well, she has a sister, and I completely forgot her, I am ashamed to say. She attends Tilly everywhere. And it was only when Beatrice asked if the girl—a very nice young lady—was coming, that I realized I had completely left her unaccounted for!”
Malcolm narrowed his eyes. “Why did you forget about her? Is she not one of the five eligible young misses?”
It was very unlike Mrs. Salisbury to make such a mistake.
“Er, no,” Mrs. Salisbury said. “She is—well—a young lady, yes, but not as young—”
“What my mother is struggling to say,” Beatrice cut in, “is that Miss Scarlett Perkins has long been on the shelf. She is older than Tilly by six or seven years. She chaperones her sister when Tilly’s mother—who is often poorly—is indisposed.”
“How does any of this affect me?” Malcolm said, dread pooling in his stomach.
“Well, for one,” Beatrice said. “We’ve had to put her in the hunting lodge.”
“What?” Malcolm said. “You promised only servants.”
“We have to work with what we have,” Mrs. Salisbury said.
“Isn’t that indecent? A young lady all that way out there by herself? With me?”
“Oh, Malcolm,” Mrs. Salisbury said. “You’re hardly some reprobate. And she will have a maid.”
“And that’s not all,” Beatrice said.
Dear God, Malcolm thought, what could be worse?
“She needs to be attended into dinner by a gentleman,” Mrs. Salisbury said. “Especially because of her relationship with Miss Perkins. It would not do to slight her.”
“Any more than lodging her a half mile from her sister?”
“Yes,” Mrs. Salisbury said. “Particularly on this first night. We must even out the numbers. We must have the right amount of gentlemen to ladies. And you are the only gentleman left near Parkhorne available, Malcolm.”
“I am not a gentleman,” Malcolm grumbled, glowering at Beatrice, who looked far too delighted by this turn of events. “And I am not available. I don’t even have clothes for dinner.”
“We can find you something suitable,” Beatrice said. “And you have no choice, Malcolm. You wouldn’t want the poor young lady humiliated, would you?”
His sister had no notion of actual humiliation.
Humiliation was not being the odd lady at a country supper.
Humiliation was what he would experience pretending to be acceptable to London society.
Humiliation was trying to look and act presentable to people of fashion when he was just a coarse farmer.
“Please, Malcolm,” Beatrice scolded. “It will only be until Leith arrives later in the week. Then our numbers will be even once more.”
Beatrice, Mrs. Salisbury, and the others thought that because he knew them so well, he must be comfortable in their sphere. And while he knew which fork to use when and how to offer a lady wine, and basically how to dance, it wasn’t enough. Nowhere near it. All of these London people would read him instantly for what he was.
But he couldn’t say that aloud here. Not now.
Because while it was going to be humiliating to be trotted out as the last acceptable man available in twenty square miles, it would be even more mortifying to admit that it bothered him.
“Very well. I’ll do whatever I can to help, Mrs. Salisbury.”
Malcolm consoled himself that the arrangement wouldn’t be necessary for long. A week. A small eternity. But at least not the entire month.
“Eleanora,” Mrs. Salisbury corrected. “Please call me Eleanora.”
End of Excerpt
