Wildfire Kiss (Sir Edward 1)

“Chuck, you can be one of the most provoking creatures I know.”

“Next to you, Babs my sweet, I am a saint,” was all he would give her besides the grape he found on a nearby table and plopped into her mouth.

***

Corrine Bretton groaned as the coach in which she was attempting to find comfort lurched and swayed over the badly rutted road.

“Auntie Jane …” she said as she gazed and caught the eye of her stout aunt. “Are you certain that arriving in the dead of night at Lord Waverly’s will not be too presumptuous? An inner voice keeps telling me that we should have put this off until morning.”

“Nonsense! He is after all my brother,” returned Lady Jane Bretton, who clucked and added, “Besides, he sent for us.”

“Nooo,” objected Corrine, “he sent for you and isn’t aware that I am—”

“You are my niece, my dear late husband’s blood, and I love you as I would my own daughter. Therefore, you are as welcome as I.”

Corrine sighed and said, “Yes, Auntie.”

“You are a dear, good girl. Sweet and placid of nature. Perhaps your hair needs a bit of styling, but it is the loveliest shade of auburn. Your eyes are bright, and there is a touch of green behind the hazel …” Aunt Jane sighed. “Indeed, you are a catch but no one will know it stuck in the country as you have been. This will be good for you, and it will be nice for you to meet your cousin Babs. She is a complete handful but a dear child all the same. I can’t think why I didn’t throw the two of you together sooner.”

“Because, dearest, I have spent most of my years in America with my parents, as you well know.” Corrine laughed and then sighed. “I must admit that while I loved the bustle of New York and do miss it, this trip to London is very exciting. However, that sidesteps us from the subject at hand.”

“What subject is that?”

“Why we must arrive in the middle of the night? Why don’t we put up at a reputable hotel and—”

“Logical, but useless. If I know my niece, Babs, she and her father are out and about at some ball or other. Gadabouts the two of them, cut from the same mold, but darling creatures, really. They just need someone to guide them, which Babs’ mother did very well until her death. Bless and God rest her soul.” She sighed and then waved this off. “Never mind, we won’t think about that now. You, Corrine dear, are just the one to keep Babs in line.”

“Keep her in line? I will do no such thing—”

“She is in some scrape or other and needs guidance. You will set a perfect example for her.” She leaned in and confided, “My brother loves me, but he can’t abide my company for long, which means if he has sent for me, something is terribly wrong.”

Miss Bretton put all this information aside and returned to the question at hand. “And still I do not understand why—”

“Oh pooh!” cut in Lady Jane. “I am not about to sleep between strange sheets simply because of the lateness of the hour. Depend upon it, Waverly don’t expect it of me. What he does expect is almost anything from me, and that is precisely what I like to give him.”

Miss Bretton gave it up. Her aunt had evidently made up her mind. She took to staring out the window as her aunt suddenly fell off to sleep. Street lamps began increasing in numbers as they entered the heart of the city, and Miss Bretton looked about with keen excitement. London, she was really in London.

Faith, how her life had changed in the past year.

She had been attending finishing school in Boston when she suddenly received word that her parents had been lost in a boating accident off the coast of Virginia.

One moment she was whole, and the next, she was falling apart.

She had been left with a small inheritance and a tobacco plantation in Virginia, which her parents had owned but rarely visited.

New York was the home she had always enjoyed with them, but she had no other relatives in the States. She was informed by her parents’ attorney that her inheritance also included a small estate Grange in Romney Marsh, near Rye, very near her aunt Jane.

Corrine wrote to her aunt, who immediately sent for her, and as Corrine had decided she needed family nearby, that was where she went.

After her arrival at her ancestral home, she discovered she and her aunt were near neighbors. She was happy to stay with Aunt Jane and allowed her estate manager to continue to keep an eye on her Grange home.

She had just turned one and twenty, and her aunt insisted she accompany her to London so that she could launch her during the season. Corrine wasn’t sure a season was what she needed, but she loved Aunt Jane and wanted to please her. And so it was just after midnight when they pulled up at Waverly House.

Six

BABS PULLED OFF her long white satin gloves and dropped them onto the central hall’s ornate and rather gothic round table (a relic of the past and better days), and turned to her father.

“Papa, as much as I do adore thee and wish to please thee, we are not living in medieval times,” she teased and planted a kiss on his cheek. She was hoping to coax him out of his grim mood.