Free First Comes Marriage by Mary Balogh Page A

foolish men were.

    She smiled at Viscount Lyngate when he bowed to her. Country bumpkins, he would discover, were not necessarily as easy to handle as the minions he must be more accustomed to encounter and dominate.

    But Stephen, she thought as the gentlemen stepped out of the room and then out of the house. Stephen was an earl.

    The Earl of Merton.

    “The Earl of Merton,” he said, echoing her thought. “Pinch me, someone.”

    “Only if you will pinch me first,” Katherine told him.

    “Oh, goodness me,” Margaret said, still on her feet and looking anxiously about the room. “Wherever am I to start ?”

    “At the beginning?” Vanessa suggested.

    “If I only knew where that was, ” Meg said, her voice close to a wail.

    And then Stephen spoke up again, his color returned, his eyes burning with intensity.

    “I say!” he said. “Do you realize what this means ? It means that I don’t have to wait until after university and probably years after that before I can do everything I have dreamed of doing in life. I do not have to wait to support you all. I don’t have to wait even a single minute longer. I am the Earl of Merton. I own property. I am a wealthy man. And I am going to give you all a grand new home and an even grander new life. And as for myself . . . Well.”

    Clearly he was lost for words.

    “Oh, Stephen,” Katherine said fondly.

    Vanessa bit her upper lip.

    Margaret burst into tears.
     
     

    5

    IT TOOK six days .

    Six days of kicking their heels at a modest village inn. Six days of amusing themselves as best they could in a remote country village during February, when the sun did not once shine but a chilly rain drizzled down on their heads almost every time they decided to set foot out of doors. Six days of being wined and dined and called upon at all hours of the day by a persistently cheerful and hospitable Sir Humphrey Dew. Six days of observing the reactions of a sleepy English village to the astonishing news that one of their own had just inherited an earl’s title and property and fortune.

    Six days of fuming with impatience to be gone—or of sulking with impatience if one listened to George Bowen, who was perhaps the most insubordinate secretary any man had ever employed.

    Six days of longing for Anna with a gnawing ache of unfulfilled lust.

    It felt more like six weeks.

    Or months.

    They called a couple of times at the cottage, but each time they found everyone so busy getting ready to leave that Elliott hated to slow them down. Young Merton called upon them once at the inn to assure them that they would all be ready in no time at all.

    Six days was no time at all ?

    He saw more of Mrs. Dew than of the others. But of course she lived at Rundle Park rather than at the cottage with her own family.

    It did not take him long to discover that she was going to be a thorn in his flesh. He had guessed it on the morning of his first visit to the cottage, of course, when she had clearly taken umbrage at his objection to the three sisters accompanying young Merton to Warren Hall without giving him a chance to settle in first and learn a few things about his new life. She had not actually said anything on that occasion, but she had looked plenty. Perhaps she thought that marriage to the younger son of a country baronet had equipped her adequately to take on the ton .

    She was not so silent when he ran into her three days later.

    He and George were riding to Rundle Park in response to one of the wining and dining invitations and came upon her walking homeward, presumably from the cottage. Elliott dismounted, directed George to ride ahead and take his horse with him, and then wondered if either he or Mrs. Dew appreciated his impulsive gallantry. They walked for several minutes without saying anything of greater significance than that the weather remained stubbornly chilly, a fact that was made worse by the total lack of sunshine and the abundance of wind, which always