Never Fall for Your Fiancee
- Автор: Heath Virginia
- Год: 2021
- Язык: английский
- Год: St. Martin's Publishing Group
- Жанр: Исторические любовные романы
Электронная книга - «Never Fall for Your Fiancee». Краткое содержание книги:
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Virginia Heath's fun characters and situations will have you laughing out loud! Don't miss this wonderful read! - Sabrina Jeffries, *New York Times* bestselling author**
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The first in a new historical rom-com series, a handsome earl hires a fake fiancée to keep his matchmaking mother at bay, but hilarity ensues when love threatens to complicate everything.**
“Perhaps he’s wandered to one of the lesser-used parts of the house.” She was willing the butler to understand, although to be fair to him, he probably had no idea the pair of them were supposed to meet in the gallery covertly. “Maybe he has gone somewhere quiet to think?”
“My idiot son doesn’t think. Or if he does, he thinks only of his own amusement.”
“But it was funny last night.” Diana’s lips had been twitching all morning. “Especially when Minerva delighted us.” Next to her, Vee sniggered, which set Jeremiah off, too, causing Olivia to scowl at him.
“And do not think I have forgiven your part in last night’s debacle either, Husband. You plied poor Mrs. Landridge with drink and embarrassed all her daughters in the process.”
“I hardly plied her, Olivia. Don’t you recall her summoning me over? And did you not hear her add the words ‘Mr. Peabody, don’t be stingy’ to the opening bars of Una Donna A Quindici Anni?”
“Still—you should have applied some common sense! Especially when poor Mrs. Landridge is unused to alcohol.”
“She didn’t drink it like a stranger to the sport.” Jeremiah snapped open his paper just as Hugh strode in, looking a little flustered but as effortlessly handsome as usual.
“Sorry for my tardiness.” His eyes darted to Miverva’s in question, confirming he had been waiting for her upstairs.
“Did you forget today was Sunday, too, Hugh?” Minerva smiled at him over the rim of her teacup. “Honestly, if I hadn’t collided with your mother on the landing this morning, I would be late, too.”
“Ah yes … I had forgotten. I had also forgotten my mother’s zealous observance in attending the Sunday sermon.”
“I might have known you would forget church this morning.” Olivia pointedly turned away from him and rolled her eyes. “Hugh requires near constant nagging, Minerva.”
“She never nags me, Mother.”
“Whyever not?”
Minerva hadn’t expected that question, which meant she told the truth rather than parry with a pithy setdown. “Because he is normally no trouble at all.” Aside from being the charming conundrum who occupied far more of her thoughts than he should. The conundrum blew her a kiss down the table, and she couldn’t help but smile at his nerve. “If one ignores his flirtatious tendencies, of course. I shall need to knock that out of him.”
“I must say, Minerva, in view of his outrageous behavior yesterday, I am surprised you would even deign to speak to him today. You owe your dear fiancée a groveling apology, Hugh.”
He sat in his chair at the head of the table and tried to look contrite. “Please forgive me, Minerva. As my mother was at great pains to tell me last night, I shouldn’t have used you, your mother, or my own dear mother’s deep hatred for Mozart for my own shallow amusement.” The mischievous twinkle in his deep blue eyes called him a liar. “Do you forgive me?”
“I shall give it some thought.” She took a casual sip of her tea. “Although forgiveness hangs on your actions rather than your words and shouldn’t be rushed into. I shall expect some proper groveling today and will come back to you with my decision after dinner.”
Olivia nodded in approval. “Very sensible, my dear. It is always best to start a marriage stingy on the forgiveness, as it encourages the husband to improve those aspects of his character which need the most work early on.” Jeremiah’s withering sigh behind his newspaper earned a glare. “My own husband is still a work in progress, of course, because he was old and too set in his ways when we married. But Hugh is young enough to train properly. So long as you are diligent, Minerva. Don’t allow that boyish charm to distract you from his wicked ways.”
Before Hugh could offer a rebuttal, Olivia shivered dramatically. “Is anyone else chilly?” The room was the perfect temperature. “Payne, could you throw another log on the fire, please?” A look passed between Hugh’s mother and his faithful servant. Then he produced the log from under a cloth on the sideboard. It was the sheet music from yesterday, the entire works of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, tied in a roll with string and lying ceremoniously on a silver platter that he carried slowly around the table so he could parade it past Hugh before it was tossed on the fire. The paper instantly crackled and curled as it burned. “What a lovely sound! I cannot say I have ever enjoyed Mozart more.”
Hugh toasted her with his teacup. “Touché, Mother.”
“Do not think I am done with you yet, darling.” Olivia smiled with mock innocence as a footman placed a loaded plate in front of her son. “Unlike your charitable and forgiving fiancée, I shall have no qualms about seeking further revenge. Sweet, swift, unexpected revenge…”
He stared down at the plate warily. “Have you poisoned my eggs?”
“As if I would do something so predictable, dear.”
“Run, Minerva,” Jeremiah’s stage whisper came loudly from behind his newspaper. “Run like the wind back to the sanity of Chipping Norton. Save yourself before it’s too late.”
Twenty minutes later and Minerva found herself squeezed into the same carriage as Hugh, his mother, and her husband, while her sisters had the one behind all to themselves. She was seated next to Olivia, the two gentlemen opposite, Hugh’s long legs encroaching in the space needed for hers as they pulled up outside Saint Mary’s.
“My lady … Mr. Peabody…” The vicar beamed. “How delighted I was to learn of your unexpected return. It has been too long. And you have brought Lord Fareham, too, I see. Saint Mary’s has missed him.”
This statement earned Hugh another glare from his mother as she took the reverend’s proffered hand to exit the carriage. “I had hoped now that he was finally settling down, he would be more diligent in caring for his rotten soul in my absence—but alas, he is a terminal disappointment. Which leads me to assume you have not yet been introduced to my soon-to-be daughter-in-law either, which is very remiss of him, too. Miss Minerva Landridge, allow me to introduce Reverend Cranham.”
The older gentleman took her hand, too, bowing over it as he helped her down. “Miss Minerva, I have long despaired of His Lordship ever abandoning his carefree bachelor ways and I cannot tell you how happy it makes me to know he has finally found a bride.”
“Thank you, Reverend.” There was something about the white-haired vicar’s cheerful smiling face that instinctively made her like him. “Hugh always speaks very fondly of you.” Or at least he had on the one occasion he had mentioned him—when he had promised to invite the man to tea for the sake of her lying soul.
“Does he indeed? That is very gracious of him. Although I must confess that until this week, I knew nothing but hearsay about you, Miss Minerva. His Lordship has been very closemouthed about his lovely fiancée, which in turn has set the entire village abuzz, now that you are finally here in the flesh. The pews are filled today, and I suspect that is more to do with their desire to glimpse the woman who has finally stolen this rapscallion’s heart rather than the scintillating nature of my sermons.” He glanced toward Hugh and grinned. “I have had the family pews freshly dusted, my lord, in honor of your presence here today. They had accumulated quite a thick layer.”
“Thank you, Reverend.” The two men shook hands like old friends. “And might I congratulate you on the splendid job you have done of efficiently alerting both my mother and my fiancée to my laxness in attending. You seem to take great pleasure in maligning my good character.”
“The more people I have praying for your soul, the better.”