Free How to Woo a Widow by Manda Collins

 
    Chapter One
     
    Anthony Ogilvy, the Earl of Leighton, strode blindly down the dark walk, neither knowing nor caring where he was bound so long as it took him from the teeming crowd. It had been a mistake to venture out to Vauxhall on tonight of all nights. The organizers had oversold the tickets to the celebration of the Allied victory at Vittoria and as result the grounds of the pleasure garden were filled to bursting with revelers.
    Ever since his return from the Peninsula, crowds unnerved him. Though objectively he knew there was nothing to fear, his reactions were nigh impossible to control. His heart raced, his senses went on alert—it was as if he were in the midst of a great battle instead of a busy London street, or in this case wandering the fairy-lit splendor of the capitol’s premiere pleasure gardens.
    He had known tonight would be a trial, of course. Indeed, most events of the ton had proven to be more unsettling than entertaining. A hostess liked nothing better than to boast to all her friends that her rout had been a terrible crush. For Leighton, however, it was a damned nuisance.
    As he made his way farther into the winding network of paths, the crowds began to thin, and his breathing slowed. With the exception of an occasional couple partaking of the privacy afforded them by the shadowed recesses, at this point people were scarce and Anthony was pleased at the blessed solitude.
    He had left his mother and two sisters in the capable hands of his brother-in-law, who had been more than happy for Leighton to take himself off.
    “I hate to bring it up, old man,” the portly Baron Fullerton had begun earlier that evening, not hating to bring it up at all, “but since your return from the war you’ve been a dashed uncomfortable fellow to be around. Always frowning. Not a word to say to anyone. My brother Harold was invalided out like you were, but he’s always got a jest at the ready.”
    His brother Harold had also been invalided out the day after his arrival in Portugal by a stray shot to the buttocks from a green soldier cleaning his weapon. He had seen nothing approaching the horrors Anthony had witnessed as an officer in the fight against Napoleon. But, knowing the futility of pointing out the differences between Harold’s service and his own, he controlled his temper and changed the subject.
    “Perhaps if I accompany you and the ladies to Vauxhall this evening,” he told Fullerton, “it might placate Katherine somewhat.” It was his elder sister, after all who had been the one to suggest Fullerton broach the subject. Fullerton himself could barely string two thoughts together to form an idea, much less did he have the bollocks to come up with the notion of confronting his brother-in-law about his dark moods. No, Anthony was convinced that Katherine was the one pulling Fullerton’s strings. And despite his annoyance at having such a bacon-brain call him to account, he did appreciate the concern.
    Aside from the slight limp he’d taken as a souvenir from a Frenchman’s bayonet at Salamanca, physically he appeared unchanged. His dark hair still curled slightly if he did not keep it trimmed ruthlessly short á la Brutus. His face might sport more lines, but his eyes were still the clear green they had always been. Even the single dimple still dented his left cheek when he smiled, though admittedly that was a rare sight these days. On the outside he was much the same as he had always been.
    It was his soul that had changed.
    “Very well,” Fullerton nodded. “Mind you, you’ll be expected to do the pretty, Leighton. None of that skulking about like Hamlet’s ghost you normally do. Besides, it’s high time you started thinking about finding your own bride to warm your bed. Marriage has much to recommend it.”
    Blocking out the vision of his sister and her husband in the marriage bed, Anthony pulled a face. “Fullerton, you sound suspiciously like my sister. Was it she who put you up to