Lady Myddelton's Lover by Evangeline Holland

Chapter 1
     
    June 1907
    London
     
    London society would have given their eyeteeth to see the very proper Aline, Countess of Myddelton as she was now. Her auburn hair waved loosely about her bare shoulders, and a negligee of the barest silk and lace hugged her lithe curves, the hem shushing like molten liquid across her restless feet, which tapped a nervous staccato.  She paused before the mirror over the fireplace mantle and nervously smoothed her unbound hair, disengaging a few stray curls from the knots of ribbon on the bodice of her negligee. Her face stared back at her, pale and wide-eyed, and for one moment, Aline contemplated dousing the lights, covering the dinner, and fleeing to her bedroom, where she could pull the blankets tightly over her head.
    No, she said inwardly, her mirror image squaring her shoulders and lifting her chin—she would not be a coward. It was her thirty-fourth birthday, and after spending two lonely years in mourning, taking a lover of her choice was the best—perhaps the only—decent gift she could present to herself. Her eyes shifted to the ormolu clock ticking merrily on the mantelpiece, noting the late hour. He should have arrived by now. His tardiness increased the prickly quiver of anxiety coursing through her.
    She moved towards the window overlooking Charles Street and jumped back when she noticed a man pausing on the kerb to stare up at her narrow townhouse. She inched to the window again—the kerb was empty save the soft moonlight bleaching the pavement an opalescent white. She bit her lip as a faint sensation of disappointment washed over her—until she remembered the doorbell went directly to the empty servant’s hall in the basement.
    Aline hurried to the mirror and pinched her cheeks for a bit of color, before rushing out of the sitting room, down the stairs and to the front door. Her heart beat triple time and she stopped herself at the door, running a cursory hand over her hair and negligee one last time. The knob was cold and smooth in her palm as she twisted it and pulled open the door, shivering at the whoosh of cool night air sweeping into the entrance hall. She looked up…and up…eyes widening at his immense height. He must be nearly two meters tall!
    As she stared at him, her…lover (the word seemed so much more physical now that he had arrived) immediately removed his hat, but with the moonlight streaming behind him, she could see nothing but an outline of wide shoulders and rough-cut gilt-colored hair.
    However, she could smell him; a warm, pungent bouquet of masculinity and ocean breeze, and she flushed at the reaction the stranger’s steady, quiet regard elicited within her.
    “Will you come in?” She stepped aside and gestured for him to enter.
    “Thank you,” He murmured, a hint of an unfamiliar accent elongating his gravelly vowels.
    He ducked his head to step into the entrance hall and she closed the door, plunging them into an uncomfortable, yet slightly thrilling semi-darkness. She peered up at him, gasping softly, overcome by his largeness.
    Aline hummed lightly to clear her throat. “Shall we, ah, go upstairs?”
    “Yes…I suppose we can,” He replied slowly, his lovely accent more pronounced (she decided that it was lovely, rather than strange).
                  He gave her sitting room a sweeping glance of assessment as he set his hat on the embroidered antimacassar folded over her striped couch, noting the small, but ornate French furniture and elegant, delicately scented plants and flower arrangements filling the room. She followed his line of vision to the table set for two, where she noted that for someone with little experience of illicit affairs, she felt her arrangement of the sitting room was rather seductive. A bottle of champagne sat, slightly tilted, in a bucket of ice, beside a cold supper of chicken and a dessert of hot house fruits grown at Myddelton Park, and the lights were dimmed to an elegant and intimate