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The Viscount's Frozen Heart
Elizabeth Beacon
Thawed by his housekeeper’s kiss…Luke Winterley, Viscount Farenze, is duty-bound to fulfil his beloved aunt’s last request – even though it concerns bewitching housekeeper Chloe Wheaton. Years ago they fell in love, but the battle between duty and desire drove them apart.Now, embittered by a loveless marriage, Luke wonders if the ice around his long-buried emotions can ever thaw.A marriage between a housekeeper and a viscount should be impossible – but maybe the warmth of Chloe’s touch can bring a new beginning for them both…
A YEAR OF SCANDAL
A gentleman for every season
At the mercy of a ghostly matchmaker, four gentlemen must perform a shocking task. But claiming their inheritance might just lead them to the women who will steal their hearts!
Don’t miss this wonderful new quartet by Mills & Boon
Historical Romance author
Elizabeth Beacon!
First out:
THE VISCOUNT’S FROZEN HEART
Available August 2014
AUTHOR NOTE (#uf6a23c9b-8849-516c-9ea5-dbced5e0ff23)
Welcome to THE VISCOUNT’S FROZEN HEART, the first book in my new quartet of novels A Year of Scandal. Each book is set during a different season of the year. THE VISCOUNT’S FROZEN HEART starts the series off in January, with a new beginning for dark and brooding Luke and the most unlikely housekeeper he has ever met.
Each book should stand alone, but I would love you to meet the rest of my heroes and heroines as A Year of Scandal unfolds. Thank you for being my tolerant, loyal readers. This book is dedicated to all of you. I really hope you enjoy it.
The Viscount’s Frozen Heart
Elizabeth Beacon
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
ELIZABETH BEACON lives in the beautiful English West Country, and is finally putting her insatiable curiosity about the past to good use. Over the years Elizabeth has worked in her family’s horticultural business, become a mature student, qualified as an English teacher, worked as a secretary and, briefly, tried to be a civil servant. She is now happily ensconced behind her computer, when not trying to exhaust her bouncy rescue dog with as many walks as the Inexhaustible Lurcher can finagle. Elizabeth can’t bring herself to call researching the wonderfully diverse, scandalous Regency period and creating charismatic heroes and feisty heroines work, and she is waiting for someone to find out how much fun she is having and tell her to stop it.
Previous novels by the same author:
AN INNOCENT COURTESAN
HOUSEMAID HEIRESS
A LESS THAN PERFECT LADY
CAPTAIN LANGTHORNE’S PROPOSAL
REBELLIOUS RAKE, INNOCENT GOVERNESS
THE RAKE OF HOLLOWHURST CASTLE
ONE FINAL SEASON
(part of Courtship & Candlelight) A MOST UNLADYLIKE ADVENTURE GOVERNESS UNDER THE MISTLETOE (part of Candlelit Christmas Kisses) THE DUCHESS HUNT THE SCARRED EARL THE BLACK SHEEP’S RETURN
Did you know that some of these novels are also available as eBooks? Visit www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Contents
Cover (#ubabf1457-114f-5afb-972a-cf0a1e0f40ca)
Introduction (#uefe4640a-6f7b-5605-8a92-86408356bdce)
Author Note
Title Page (#u537c902c-1dd2-5dcc-ac92-804fe2f0270c)
About the Author (#u7730e61f-69dc-59d0-9933-dd1121cdef80)
Chapter One (#u6c0adae6-6d6d-5e24-9b3d-ea1a3efb3192)
Chapter Two (#u047224c4-74c7-5777-adf6-8eca78b7385f)
Chapter Three (#u75e763c9-241d-51bd-9655-4c8915180ed9)
Chapter Four (#u8ee24033-c3c0-503c-8931-5bcfc39bcce5)
Chapter Five (#u03ef5a2d-417d-5a14-9489-341f0f147f21)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nineteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter One (#ulink_d9f42958-b7b9-5775-a5fc-6946322eba68)
Luke Winterley, Viscount Farenze, turned to help his daughter down from the carriage and watched Eve eye the fine house nestled into the rolling Wiltshire hillside like a jewel bedded on winter-pale green velvet.
‘If only I had remembered Farenze Lodge was this beautiful I’d have teased you to bring me here a long time ago, Papa. I do recall Aunt Virginia giving me a sugarplum after I fell down the steps and cut my knee as a little tot, but that’s about all,’ she said and he had to smother a pang of guilt as he handed Eve’s small but formidable maid from the carriage before answering, since he had kept Eve away so he wouldn’t have to spend any more time here than necessary.
‘No wonder that event stuck in your memory, but, yes, it is a very fine house,’ Luke said with the second look the Palladian villa’s neat elegance always deserved.
He had to brace himself for the empty feel of it without the last Viscountess Farenze here to make it a home, though. It was his duty to see Eve didn’t feel the loss of her great-great-aunt even more acutely here, despite his own sorrow and frustration, and the less anyone knew about that second, rough-edged emotion and how hard it always bit him under this roof, the better.
‘It doesn’t seem anywhere near as vast to me now as it did back then,’ Eve said, as determined to be cheerful for him as he was for her.
‘No, it was built as a home, for all its grace and classical proportions,’ he replied rather absently. It was currently home to a full complement of grieving staff and one very inconvenient housekeeper.
The mere thought of Mrs Chloe Wheaton waiting inside this serenely lovely house made him want to groan out loud, but somehow he kept silent and smothered another pang of guilt that he was about to make her homeless. He couldn’t live under the same roof as Chloe Wheaton, yet still he felt this urgent need to see her again, if only to find out if she was as bitterly overwound by ten years of avoiding each other as he was.
‘Virginia and Virgil liked their comfort, although I’m sure she would have done her best to love Darkmere if he really wanted to live there. Luckily he was always far happier in the home they made together here,’ he told his daughter.
Somehow he must distract himself from Mrs Chloe Wheaton’s presence here one more time, or he would end up wanting her almost beyond reason again. She was a widow with a young daughter. He had no right to long for her with this nagging, nonsensical ache whenever they were in the same county, let alone the same house.
‘I don’t remember your Uncle Virgil, Papa, but he looks far too rakish and cynical in that portrait of him in the gallery at home to fall deep in love with anyone, however lovely Aunt Virginia must have been sixty years ago.’
‘Ah, but that was painted before they met and Virginia was a woman of character as well as an exotic beauty if her portraits are to be believed. I thought them the most deeply devoted couple I ever encountered and I’m far more of a cynic than Virgil ever was,’ he said with a smile that went awry as he missed them both for the first time now Virginia had joined her beloved the other side of eternity.
‘I’m not so sure you’re as hard-headed as you think, Papa, but this is a fine house and it certainly feels as if it’s been done with love.’
‘I know what you mean,’ Luke said with a brooding glance at the lovely place.
Unlike his predecessor, he loved Darkmere Castle and the stark beauty of its airy, windswept setting, but could see the attraction of having a smaller, more modern dwelling to retreat to on an ice-cold January afternoon like this one. He would need to spend part of the year here if he was to make sure it remained the gracious and elegant home Virgil and Virginia had always intended it to be. He cast a brooding glance at the lush parkland and rolling hills around him and decided most men would think him a fool or a liar if he said it was a mixed blessing. Yes, Mrs Chloe Wheaton would have to leave if he was to live here for very long, for both their sakes.
Even as he reaffirmed the rightness of his decision he saw a slender feminine figure come to stand below one of the half-lowered blinds at the long window of Virginia’s bedchamber to see who had arrived. Luke felt his heart jar, then race on at the double when the youthful housekeeper of Farenze Lodge visibly flinched under his fierce scrutiny. She met it with a proud lift of her chin and an icy composure he could only envy.
He couldn’t swear under his breath with Eve standing so close she could hear every syllable, yet a clutch of unwanted need tightened its hot claw in his gut while he gazed back with furious hunger. It seemed my Lord Farenze wanted the dratted woman as hotly as ever and he still couldn’t have her.
* * *
He’s here, whispered the siren voice of unreason as Chloe glared at her bugbear and did her best to ignore it. He’s come back to you at last, it whispered yearningly and she wished she could silence it for ever. It sprang back to life like some annoying spectre, refusing to be banished to outer darkness whenever she tried to pretend Lord Farenze was a gruff and disagreeable gentleman she could forget when she left for good. Since Virginia became so ill they lost hope of her survival, the thought of the viscount’s arrival to mourn his beloved great-aunt only added to her desolation.
Yet she still felt a charge crackle in the air when he set foot on the straw-muffled gravel. Chloe knew who the latest arrival at Farenze Lodge was by some misplaced instinct, so why was she standing here staring at him like an idiot? Lord Farenze quirked a haughty eyebrow as if to ask why she had the right to stare? He was master of Farenze Lodge and so much more and she was only the housekeeper. Her inner fool was so hungry it kept her gazing at him even after she’d made it clear she wasn’t going to shrink and tremble at the sight of him.
‘Imbecile,’ she muttered to herself.
He looked dominant, vigorous and cross-grained as ever. She could see that his crow-black hair was untouched by silver and too long for fashion when he mockingly swept off his hat and gave her an almost bow; dark brows drawn sharply above eyes she knew were nothing like the simple grey they looked from here. Close up they were complex as he was; silver grey and would-be icy, but with hints of well-hidden poetry and passion in the rays of gold and green at the centre of his clear irises. She wondered if such feelings would die if a man refused to admit he had them long enough.
Recalling a time when he’d almost swept them both to disaster on a raging tide of wanting and needing, she did her best to pretend her shiver was for the cold day and this dark time in both their lives, not the memory of a Luke Winterley nobody else at Farenze Lodge would recognise in the chilly lord on the gravel sweep below. The besotted, angry girl of a decade ago longed for him like a lost puppy, but mature Mrs Wheaton shuddered at the idea of succumbing to the fire and false promise of a younger, more vulnerable Lord Farenze and knew she had been right to say no to him.
‘Who is it, my dear?’ Culdrose, her late mistress’s elderly dresser, asked from her seat by the vast and luxurious bed.
‘Lord Farenze, Cully,’ Chloe said with an unwary sigh and almost felt the older woman’s gaze focusing on her back.
‘And very good time he’s made then, but why call him “imbecile” when he got here as fast as he could?’
‘You have sharp ears, Cully. I wasn’t talking about Lord Farenze,’ Chloe said and promised herself she’d break free of his compelling gaze any moment now.
‘I may have white hair, but my wits haven’t gone a-begging. His lordship is a fine man, as any woman with two good eyes in her head can see. You’ll only be a fool if you lose your wits over him.’
‘I shall not,’ Chloe murmured and turned away with a dignified nod she hoped told him: I have seen you, my lord. I will avoid you like the plague from now on, so kindly return the compliment.
* * *
What was so special about the woman his toes tingled and his innards burned at even the sight of her from afar? Luke told himself to be relieved when she broke that long gaze into each other’s eyes across yards of icy January air. He didn’t want more reminders of how close to disaster he once walked with her. Feeling ruffled and torn by feelings he didn’t want to think about right now, he did his best to let the frigid breeze cool his inner beast and shivered at the idea of how cold it would be to ruin a good woman’s reputation and mire her little girl’s prospects with scandal.
He was six and thirty, not a green boy with every second thought of the female sex and an incessant urge to mate. If she could turn away with such cool disdain, he would get through this without begging for her glorious body in his bed. She was an upper servant; he recalled the fate of such women whose lovers wanted them so badly that they married beneath them out of desperation and shuddered. He might not like her much just now, but he couldn’t wish such a fate on a woman he respected for her strength of character, even if it got confoundedly in the way of the pleasure they could have had in each other if she wasn’t so sternly armoured against it.
‘I wonder how it feels to love someone as deeply as Virginia did,’ Eve mused and jarred Luke back to here and now. His heartbeat leapt into a panicky race at the idea his daughter had inherited her mother’s ridiculous romantic notions.
‘Painful and dangerous, I should imagine,’ he replied brusquely.
‘Now I think it could be wondrous and exhilarating to love the right person and have them love you back, Papa.’
‘Your mother would have agreed with you, time after time,’ he cautioned and shuddered at the memory of his wife falling in ‘love’ again and again as soon as she decided her young husband wasn’t her ideal after all.
Sometimes traces of Pamela’s pettish outbursts shook him if Eve pouted mulishly, or flounced out of the room in a headlong temper, but his Eve was too kind-hearted to treat a man as if he had no more feelings than a block of wood. He often wondered how such a loving child came from such an ill-starred marriage.
‘Please choose someone worthy of you when you marry, Eve,’ he cautioned. ‘Don’t accept the first beau to say he loves you one day and someone else the next.’
‘I’m not an idiot, Papa, and you’ll end up a lonely old cynic when I do find a fine man to spend my life with if you’re not careful.’
‘I want you settled before I find a suitable wife.’
Eve grimaced and rolled her eyes. ‘Suitable?’ she echoed dubiously. ‘Aunt Virginia would hate to hear you speak so. It sounds as if you’re expecting to choose a wife from an emporium and have her delivered to the church on an appropriate day for a wedding, complete with her bridal attire and a suite of attendants.’
‘Although you’re an impertinent young miss, I have to admit Virginia wasn’t happy with the idea,’ Luke said, his last conversation with his great-aunt by marriage running through his mind a little too vividly for comfort.
‘You only married That Fool because your father and stepmother threw her at your head and it seemed a good idea at the time,’ Virginia raged when he unwarily set out his plan to remarry as soon as Eve was settled. ‘If you wed a “suitable” young lady, at least have the decency to fall in love with a mistress.’
Virginia had given a weary sigh when he smiled cynically at the very idea of loving a female he must marry to beget an heir.
‘No,’ she argued with herself. ‘Don’t. No woman deserves to marry the cold fish you think you are, then watch you love a hussy instead. You’re a passionate man under all the starch and to-hell-with-you manner and another marriage like the last one will break you. Please don’t imagine you’ll be lucky enough to breed a sweet child on a ninny twice in one lifetime—no man deserves to be that fortunate.’
