The Cheer in Charming an Earl (The Naughty Girls)
Read The Cheer in Charming an Earl (The Naughty Girls) Online
Authors: Emma Locke
For Love…
The second of five impoverished sisters, Miss Elinor Conley knows her dream of becoming a lady is farfetched. When an unmarried gentleman happens by her brother's smithy, it is up to her to act quickly—and rashly—to secure his interest. But Grantham Wendell, Earl Chelford, isn't in the market for anything more than a new horseshoe. What's a bachelor to do when an innocent miss turns up at his Christmas Eve bacchanalia? He ought to make her leave, but his Twelfth Night party just became more entertaining...
The Naughty Girls
Short Stories
Book 3 ½
THE CHEER IN CHARMING AN EARL
Copyright 2013 by Emma Locke
Cover design Copyright Seductive Designs
Cover photo Copyright @ Igor Borodin
Formatted by
IRONHORSE Formatting
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the author. Please do not support piracy. Obtain an electronic version of this book through an approved vendor.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Intrepid Reads
ISBN 13: 978-1-939713-16-2
I kept this one sweet for my biggest fan.
I love you, Dad!
Table of Contents
Did you miss the novel that started it all?
Gloucester, England
December 23
rd
, 1814
MISS ELINOR Conley wasn’t the type to sabotage a carriage wheel. She wasn’t the sort who contrived tall tales or lied to her brother—she especially didn’t lie to her four sisters. She didn’t utter profane oaths aloud and, aside from the recent occasion of her brother’s elopement, she didn’t drink to excess.
That was, until she set eyes on Grantham Wendell, the Earl of Chelford, on the day he led his horse into her brother’s smithy.
Grantham, as she’d called him privately in the three months since—for why
not
first-name him in her head, when they’d never met formally anyhow?—was the finest horseman, the deepest poet, the lightest dancer, and the handsomest man in all of England. Or so she’d convinced herself in the time since he’d swung one well-muscled thigh over his horse’s white flank and ridden away.
Oh, but she’d known it
then,
too! Even before she’d had the chance to examine her precious gossip rags from London and read the excellent things being said about him. Why, the moment she’d observed him soothing his stallion with calming, confident strokes while her brother affixed a new shoe to its hoof, she’d known Grantham’s heart was full of kindness.
That she’d seen hide nor hair of him since mattered not at all. That he hadn’t noticed her lingering in the doorway of her brother’s smithy and was therefore unaware of her presence in the world didn’t cause her the least bit of doubt. Her confidence in their suitability buoyed her; a few days in his company were all she required to confirm her suppositions true.
She hugged her mother then pulled her threadbare coat tighter about her shoulders so the wind’s bite couldn’t distract her from making her good-byes to the rest of her family. Her four sisters and her brother, his wife and her sister waited by the carriage, the entire Conley brood gathered together to see her off. In just a few moments, she’d be on her way to prove she and Grantham were destined to be wed. Truly, she could almost
see
her beloved in her mind’s eye. The wave of flaxen hair across his bold brow. The firm jaw, chiseled by a sculptor’s tool, that begged to be traced. The unsurpassed shine of his buttons and buckles. Oh, to behold Grantham again! The time could be reckoned in days, making her jubilation impossible to contain.
Her fleeting, somewhat flickering memory of his princely countenance was all she required to know that she was embarking on a mission that would be understood
later,
when the delicate details might be made public. Any reservation she felt today must be set aside for the greater good of tomorrow.
She was going to meet Grantham. It hardly mattered
how
.
“Are you certain you wish to do this?” Georgiana—her older sister who should never be called Georgie, though naturally it delighted Elinor to do exactly that—settled a sympathetic look on her at odds with her typically stoic demeanor. “Aunt Mildred is wretchedly infirm, Mama says, not at all able to introduce you about, and I do know how you so always wanted to marry a... well.” Georgie pressed her lips together in her firm, governess way. “Some dreams are quite silly. Surrendering them can be difficult, nonetheless, especially for a sentimental sort.”
Like you,
Georgie meant, though she didn’t say so aloud
.
She clearly believed Elinor was abandoning her much-mocked dream of becoming a lady. And why shouldn’t the older and inarguably sounder of them conclude as much? Attaining such a prestigious position as lady did seem an impossible feat when they lived at the end of the earth, in a tiny village lacking eligible men, let alone lords, to whisk them off their feet and out of their dull drudgery of a life. Never mind their older brother had somehow managed to snag a viscount’s sister for a wife! He’d needed to leave the county to do it, however. Elinor had little hope of stepping out of her house, let alone her village, without careful planning and a bit of deception.
She sighed and did her best to appear forlorn. “I suppose I’m as likely to find a husband here as I am in Yorkshire,” she lied, for in truth, she was ever so much more likely to find a husband in Yorkshire, as that was where Grantham spent his winters. “But at least I will be comfortable. Aunt Mildred’s cottage may be small but I expect it’s tidy, and I don’t deny that I will enjoy having my own bed.” At least she wasn’t exaggerating the last. If things didn’t progress as desired with Grantham, she fervently
hoped
Aunt Mildred’s reluctant offer of a bedchamber and board would stand. But since she never intended to learn whether taking up residence with her spinster aunt would be an improvement on her lot, rather than a concession, Elinor turned from her older sister to make her good-byes to the rest of her family before Georgie could sympathize with her any more.
Miranda, Abigail and Charlotte, Elinor’s younger sisters, were peering into the awaiting carriage as though they’d never seen their brother’s primeval equipage before. Of course they had; Gavin owned just one conveyance, an ancient monstrosity that rarely left its post. Their village was five blocks in total, including their whitewashed house at the end of the cobbled street. But he insisted on keeping the rickety coach even if the carriage roof leaked, one glass pane was cracked through, and the whole of it smelled like ruined boots.
“I envy you to
tears
.” Charlotte’s declaration was followed by an enormously overdone sigh, considering she believed Elinor to be resigning herself to spinsterhood, and by way of a moldy, rattling carriage. “I wish
I
were the second-oldest.”
Miranda frowned. “Poppycock. You would detest being anything but the youngest. At any rate, it’s not as though Elinor is going on holiday.
I
shouldn’t wish to be the one who must shuffle our poor aunt off this mortal coil.”
Elinor shuddered. What a ghastly thought! Yet wholly understandable in the circumstances, what with the family believing her to be on her way to attend their estranged aunt’s deathbed. Her belly tightened. It wasn’t entirely her fault they thought Aunt Millie knocking at death’s door. Neither she nor any of her siblings had ever met their mother’s sister, nor did they correspond with her directly. Mama had always maintained six boisterous children were too much stimulation for a woman in Aunt Millie’s condition. Elinor had never thought much of it; there was no need to write their aunt letters on their own, for she sent news twice per month—letters delivered directly into Mama’s hand.