Free A Flirtatious Rendezvous: The Gentlemen Next Door #4 - Historical Regency Romance Novellas by Cecilia Gray

Prologue
     
     
    Twelve-year-old Hanna Morton followed Hayden Banks up the old beech tree that grew exactly between their two London homes near the neighborhood of Pimlico. Hayden perched at the top, nestled against the trunk and a sturdy, knotted branch, and glanced down as she clawed at the base.
    “You’ll never make it to the top if you go that way,” he said. “You need to use the branches that grow closer together.”
    Hanna surveyed the tree, trying to find the branches he was recommending, but they all looked the same to her. By the time she figured it out, Hayden would be long gone.
    “This will do.” She anchored her elbows on a branch. With a grunt, she hoisted herself over it. The rough bark pricked the skin beneath her dress and her mousy brown hair snarled in the twigs.
    “You’re going to hurt yourself.”
    She winced as her hair was tugged hard from its roots. “No, I won’t.”
    She tackled the next branch and the next, ignoring the snags in her curls and the pinching of her skin. After several minutes, she reached the top, breathless not only from her exertions, but also from her proximity to Hayden Banks. He was quite possibly the most beautiful boy she’d ever seen—and she had the good fortune to live next door to him.
    “See,” she said as she gasped for air. “I told you so. I made it.”
    Even though his eyes darkened with scorn beneath his brows, he looked positively romantic.
    “Barely. Why didn’t you use the route I suggested?” He pointed beneath their feet. From this vantage point, she could see the branches that were stronger and closer together. She could have used them like a set of stairs.
    “How could you tell that from the bottom?” she asked.
    “How couldn’t you?”
    “It doesn’t matter. I made it anyway.” She gave a contented sigh—he was not only beautiful, but smart as well.
    “What is it?” he asked.
    “What is what?”
    “You sighed. Whenever a lady sighs, she wants a gentleman to ask her why.”
    She considered his question. Why had she sighed? Why did she always seem to sigh when he was around? “I suppose it’s because…because…” Hanna felt lightheaded and woozy. “I love you.”
    Hayden’s lips parted. “Nonsense. Why?”
    “What do you mean, why?”
    “I mean precisely what I asked. Why do you love me? There’s no reason to it. You don’t even know me.”
    “Love doesn’t need a reason,” Hanna insisted. “Love doesn’t have a reason.”
    Hayden shook his head. “Everything has a reason.” He scooted off the branch and began to climb down, ranting all the way. “There’s no point to your feelings. I don’t love you in return. I never will.”
    Disappointment pierced her, sharp and poignant. “How do you know?” Hanna called down the trunk.
    Hayden dropped to the ground and stared up at her. “Because, despite your pleasant green eyes, you’re not very pretty, and we have nothing in common. I’m sure we can be considerate neighbors, though. There’s nothing to prevent that.” He pivoted on his heel and walked away.
    Hanna watched Hayden disappear inside his red-brick Georgian house and kept watch, though all she could see was his head as he passed from one white-framed window to another.
    She grasped for a reason to hate him, a reason to drown her feelings, but it was futile. She was twelve, after all, and not much given to sense. She could only consider how he’d complimented her eyes, which her father had always said were an amazing shade of green.
    So despite reason and sense, she continued to love Hayden Banks.

Chapter One
     
     
    Lady Hanna Morton had learned three things about love in her nineteen years.
    First, her parents loved each other. She realized this not from the moments when they gazed into each other’s eyes or held hands, but in the moments they didn’t seem to love each other at all. Such as on the occasion of her tenth birthday party, when her father had clumsily knocked over her tea setting