A Count For Christmas (The Seldon Park Christmas Novella Book 6) Read online

  A Count For Christmas

  A "Tales From Seldon Park" Christmas Novella

  By Bethany M. Sefchick

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2018

  Bethany M. Sefchick

  All rights reserved

  For all of those wishing for a holiday miracle…

  And a little magic to go with it…

  Chapter One

  Mid-December 1821

  Highburn Castle

  Yorkshire

  Risking a decided lack of decorum, Lady Grace Rowe pushed the traveling coach’s curtains aside and peered out the window excitedly for her first glimpse of Highburn Castle. As the dowager Countess of Colbourne, she had a reputation for strict propriety. For once, however, she could not resist doing as she pleased and not as Society expected.

  Her Aunt Martha had always spoken in glowing terms of this place, though this was Grace’s first opportunity to see the castle for herself. On the journey here, she had wondered more than once if this place would truly live up to all of the praise her beloved late aunt had heaped upon it. It did. Without question.

  With the line of waiting carriages still stretching down the drive and the arriving guests apparently taking their time disembarking, Grace had plenty of time to study the castle for as long as she liked. And she did want to study Highburn because something about this place had made her normally rational and logical aunt turn into a fanciful little girl during each visit. According to her aunt, dreams, hopes, and wishes came true here. While Grace did not believe in such things, she now had to admit that if there were a place on this earth touched by magic, it would be the magnificent castle sprawled out before her.

  The towering gray structure should have been dark and dismal. Foreboding, even. The place was hardly small and was obviously meant to be intimidating. It boasted eight turrets and what looked like three dome-topped spires, along with a parapet that ran along the front of the building and around to the back. The sides of the castle were also crenelated, and part of the first floor of the east side seemed to curve outwards and then back in on itself as if a passage had been added so that one could reach what looked like an orangery hiding in the distance without leaving the safety of the castle itself.

  Those parts and pieces were all remnants of the different eras in which the castle had been constructed, renovated, and rebuilt. After all, the place had been ransacked by the Scots twice and nearly burned to the ground once by long-forgotten forces – however the faint scorch marks from the event were still evident on the castle’s west side.

  So yes, Highburn Castle should have been intimidating.

  Perhaps in the dark of January, it was. But not this evening.

  No, this evening candles danced in nearly every window and festive – but massive – pine wreaths with enormous red bows dangled down from the castle’s parapet from thick rope, welcoming all of the guests for the dowager Duchess of Winterset’s annual “Night of a Thousand Stars” Christmastide house party and ball.

  The fountain in the courtyard had been wrapped with holly garland and more red bows, and the curved drive was lined with lanterns to guide the way to the carved double front doors that featured a sun and starburst design. Large red and gold ribbons festooned the hedges lining the front of the castle, lending an additional festive air. Servants in red livery trimmed with gold braid scurried about, unloading carriages and escorting guests into the castle.

  The entire place was alive with activity and joy, and Grace understood why her aunt had found this place so magical, especially during the Christmastide season. She only wished that she could feel some of that magic for herself.

  Perhaps that was why the dowager duchess had once more extended the invitation to Grace, the first she had ever accepted. Perhaps, since the dowager and Aunt Martha had been such close friends, the duchess now wanted Grace to feel some of that same magic. Lord knew, her life was in sore need of it.

  Born the daughter of a poor baron, Grace had always been the toast of her small village back in the Lake District. Her family had sent her to London for a Season at the tender age of eighteen in hopes that she might attract an offer of marriage from a wealthy peer, a gentleman that might also be amenable to saving her father’s deeply in debt barony. After all, out of all of her siblings, Grace was by far the most beautiful and, after some time at an expensive finishing school, she was also the most well-suited to catch a wealthy husband. Or heiress, in the case of her brothers, as her father wasn’t choosy about where the funds to save him came from. Time in London before the Season began also provided Grace with the polish she had otherwise lacked with her country manners.

  All of that time and effort and expense exerted in the hopes of securing a title for herself and funds for her father.

  And Grace had attracted offers of marriage – several of them.

  Handsome gentlemen of elegance and taste had offered for her. She had men in trade vying for her hand, as well. She also had a young viscount promise her his heart and soul – and she had foolishly promised him hers in return. Back then, Grace had thought herself in love with the young man, though now she knew those feelings had been little more than lust.

  Still, those early days in London had been, well, magical, for lack of a better word.

  Unfortunately, her father had rejected all of those early offers for her hand, including the one from the viscount, whom Grace did actually care for a great deal. The prospective suitors were either not wealthy enough or, if they did have a surplus of funds, the gentlemen in question were not eager to spend those funds to save a barony that was deep in debt and only becoming more so.

  However, when Lord Richard Rowe, the elderly Earl of Colbourne, a man nearing his seventh decade, had offered for Grace’s hand, along with the assurances that he would pay off her father’s debts and add a bit more coin to the coffers as additional incentive, Grace had found herself saying her vows not quite a sennight after meeting the earl. The very next day, she had departed London for Northumberland where she had become more nursemaid that wife to a dying man who had only bedded her once on their wedding night, and even then, just barely.

  In short, Grace had been sold into marriage like the broodmare her father believed all women to be without a say in the rest of her life. At the tender age of eighteen, all of her dreams had died and with them, any hope of the love and affection from a husband that she had longed for as a little girl.

  On her wedding day, Grace had no way of knowing that the earl had been seeking a young woman to care for him in his dying days or that the earl already had three sons and two daughters and didn’t want or need more children. Nor did she know that hers was to be a marriage in name only and that the only reason the earl had consummated the relationship was so that Grace could not claim the earl had neglected her in that fashion. Or that the marriage was not legal. But she had learned all of that very quickly in the days that followed, much to her disappointment.

  If there was one bright spot, however, it was that Grace got on well enough with her new step-children, many of whom were older than she was. She would hardly have called them close or loving, but they were cordial enough, which was something, she supposed. When the earl passed away eight years later and left Grace a widow at the age of five and twenty, that favorable relationship continued, even if the old ea
rl’s family was more inclined to view her as a nurse than a widow.

  The new earl, Richard’s son Harry, also honored his father’s wish that Grace be given her own cottage at Wisteria House, one the many unentailed estates attached to the title. Though she was more or less forbidden from seeking out a new husband and greatly discouraged from even discreetly taking a lover, Grace was otherwise free to do pretty much as she pleased. She could live with, or at least tolerate, the lack of companionship, though she was quite often lonely. She also suspected that her step-son was, to some degree, keeping her around and financially bound to him and the rest of the family in the belief that Grace could serve as his nursemaid in his later years as well.

  Though Harry had accepted Grace as his father’s new wife and they got on well, Grace had always believed that the new earl thought himself just a bit better than she, as she had grown up in what had been close to poverty while he had been raised in extreme luxury.

  To Harry, Grace was a commodity to some degree and while that bothered her, she was content to live as she was. Or, if not content, too afraid to try to change her circumstances and defy what was expected of her by both the earl and Society. In truth, she knew nothing else and wondered where on earth she might go if she did leave the safety of the earldom. So she did not think or dream about such things. There was little point.

  Until the day the funds ran out.

  Unlike his father, Harry had no sense of accounting or the value of money, and a wife who liked to spend that same money as if it grew freely on trees. As the earldom sank deeper into financial distress, the new earl took money from various sources to keep himself out of debtors’ prison – including from the funds set aside by her late husband that were supposed to care for Grace into her own old age. Those funds had been the one true kindness Richard had done for her. He had provided her with an enormous settlement, likely because he felt guilty about essentially purchasing a nursemaid under the guise of securing a wife. And a young wife at that.

  Those funds should have lasted Grace until she was in her dotage. Except they couldn’t when they were gone, pilfered and then spent by the new earl to keep his wife happy. Grace also should have had a roof over her head for that same length of time but she didn’t. The unentailed property where Grace had lived following her husband’s death had been sold three years ago in order to raise more funds to keep Colbourne afloat.

  Grace, unable to face her step-son without flying into a rage, had worried that she might be cast out onto the streets. It was not unheard of for dowagers to die in poverty, especially ones that had married much older men at a very tender age as she had done. Fortunately for Grace, her Aunt Martha had opened her home to the newly homeless dowager countess.

  Lady Martha Evans was the sister of Grace’s mother and had always been considered something of a hoyden and bluestocking, especially by Grace’s father. Aunt Martha had never wed and, thanks to a considerable inheritance left to her by a distant relative, had never found the need to “leg-shackle herself to a man,” as she often informed Grace by letter during the lonely years when Grace had been wed to the earl.

  Aunt Martha had also befriended some of the most notorious people in London – courtesans and gaming hell owners among them – but she had also become fast friends with those in the highest reaches of Society. Including Lady Hester Payne, the Duchess of Winterset. With friends such as those, Martha Evans had lived a high-flying lifestyle that a young Grace had envied and longed to be a part of on more than one occasion.

  Grace had been invited to take part in at least some of that lifestyle, actually. The yearly invitation to this ball and house party had always extended to Grace and her husband, as well as to Aunt Martha, but Grace had never been free to accept. Not even after she became a widow.

  Then Grace had lost her home, moved in with Aunt Martha and things had changed – and not. Unfortunately. For Grace still didn’t feel free to fully embrace the sort of life her aunt led, the shadow of her step-son and his insistence that Grace not re-marry hanging over her, which was why she had not accepted the dowager duchess’ invitation to the ball until this year.

  Now out of mourning for her Aunt Martha who had passed away from a lung fever last year, and with her coffers full of the funds her aunt had left her, Grace felt ready to take the first step and begin to live again. Harry and his wished be damned.

  Grace was nine and twenty now. She would be thirty come May. It was time for her to embrace the life that should have been hers all along.

  After all, Harry had not been in contact with her for nearly nine months now and even then, that was only to beg funds of her and try to persuade her to “return home” as he had phrased it, saying that his wife was now ailing and she required the same kind of nursing that Grace had provided his father.

  To the earl’s surprise, Grace had refused.

  During the time Grace had lived with her aunt, she had grown a bit of a backbone and was now no longer quite as afraid to stand up for herself. She was a different woman than the scared young mouse that had been sold into a marriage she didn’t want to a man who only desired a nursemaid and exiled to Northumbria.

  Grace was still the dowager Countess of Colbourne, but that was all she was to the Rowe family these days. She had their name but she shared nothing else with them and, as she had explained to Harry when last they spoke, that was how she wished things to be.

  Harry had been hurt when Grace refused his offer, but he hadn’t threatened her in any fashion. That was not the sort of relationship they had. Quite simply, he didn’t care enough to threaten her. She wasn’t that important to him.

  The earl had only sighed in what was likely frustration and wished her well, knowing that whatever modicum of control he had previously held over Grace was gone now. He said nothing of her not remarrying or taking a lover, though it was clear from his expression that he wished she wouldn’t. After all, his father had been a saint in Harry’s eyes and, misplaced though this idea was, Harry still felt that Grace owed his father some degree of loyalty.

  While Grace would always honor her late husband’s memory to some degree, that was all she would do and had informed Harry as such. She hadn’t loved Richard nor had he loved her. They were nursemaid and patient and little more than strangers most of the time.

  Her past was over and it was time to move on and begin again.

  Except that Grace had no idea how to move on now that she had made the decision to be free of her past. She was old, perhaps not physically but by Society’s standards. Her first blush of youth was gone, though she was still accounted beautiful enough to a man’s eye – at least if he was in the market for the sort of nursemaid-wife she had already been.

  Grace was a widow. She had no London residence, though she supposed she could purchase a town home if she wished. She also had no friends. She didn’t speak to her blood family any longer or even know where she might find them if she did wish to write.

  She could obtain those things and find that knowledge, she supposed, but such actions would take time. Time she did not wish to spend.

  That also did not solve her more immediate problem. How did she return to Society and announce that she was ready to take a lover? Or find a husband? Or something?

  How did she move on when she had no idea how or where to begin?

  Grace did not know and had felt at her wit’s end. That was until the invitation to this ball had arrived in the post, along with a personal note from the dowager duchess that practically begged Grace to attend. The dowager wrote of the magic of the ball and of the breathtaking beauty of Highburn Castle at Christmas. She also hinted that she knew of Grace’s decision to return to Society and implied that the Night of a Thousand Stars ball would be the perfect opportunity to ease back into the social whirl with a “bit of elegance,” as she had phrased things.

  Aunt Martha had often spoken at length of the magic to be found at Highburn during the holiday season, spinning tales of the wonders that could
be found there, as if the place dwelled within a fantasy world detached from reality. Her aunt had also hinted that many of her amorous affairs had been conducted there over the years and that at Highburn there were men willing to bed a lady practically falling from the rafters.

  A brief affair would be a good way for her to begin to reclaim her life, Grace thought. Provided she could go through with it. And even if she couldn’t, perhaps the mere suggestion of such a thing could be a benefit during the next London Season. Make her appear more mysterious and sought after. That sort of thing.

  So before she could change her mind, Grace had ordered her trunks packed with the new gowns she had ordered for her return to Society – but had yet to wear – and began making plans for the trip from Shropshire where she had lived with her aunt to Yorkshire and the so-called “magical” Highburn Castle.

  Even as skeptical as she was, Grace could now see hints of what her Aunt Martha had spoken about as the line of carriages slowly moved forward. The castle was lovely and while the dusting of snow on the ground made everything a bit slippery, it was also rather pretty. It reminded her of the gingerbread houses she used to make with the old earl’s grandchildren.

  Flighty and fanciful and, yes, just possibly a bit magical. Though she still hated that word. Magical. Magic did not exist. At least it never had for her.

  Finally, it was Grace’s turn to alight from her traveling coach, but before she could even collect herself, the steps were lowered, the door was flung open and she was being escorted to the ground by a burly footman. Still trying to gather her wits, Grace was nearly forcefully propelled up the front steps and into the castle’s grand entrance before being swept into an embrace of thin arms, crushed silk, and the sweet smell of violets.

  Lady Winterset. The dowager duchess.

  Grace would know that scent anywhere. Aunt Martha had smelled the same.

  Suddenly, Grace was overcome with memories and emotions and had to blink rapidly so that she would not cry. It would not do to weep in front of her hostess, especially not over something so silly as a scent remembered.