Almost Heaven

No bounty in England could outshine Elizabeth Cameron, Countess of Havenhurst. But beneath her exquisite emerald eyes and cloud of golden hair lived a girl of rare gentleness, pride and splendid, even ferocious courage. In Ian Thornton’s powerful embrace, Elizabeth felt the first stirrings of a passion that blazed through her senses, never to be denied. Yet for Thornton, a dangerously handsome man of secret wealth and mysterious lineage, the voyage to Elizabeth’s heart was fraught with intrigue, scandal and a venomous jealousy! From London’s salons to Scotland’s highlands, Almost Heaven weaves its sensuous spell… a tempestuous, dramatic romance between two lovers destined for each other, and for love’s wildest abandon.

CHAPTER 1

Fifteen servants wearing the traditional blue and silver livery of the Earl of Cameron left Havenhurst at dawn on the same day. All of them carried identical, urgent messages that Lady Elizabeth’s uncle, Mr. Julius Cameron, had directed them to deliver at fifteen homes throughout England.

The recipients of these messages all had only one thing in common: They had once offered for Lady Elizabeth’s hand in marriage.

All fifteen of these gentlemen, upon reading the message, exhibited shock at its contents. Some of them were incredulous, others derisive, and still others cruelly satisfied. Twelve of them promptly wrote out replies declining Julius Cameron’s outrageous suggestion, then they hurried off in search of friends with whom they could share this unsurpassed, delicious piece of incredible gossip.

Three of the recipients reacted differently.

Lord John Marchman had just returned from his favorite daily pastime of hunting when the Havenhurst servant arrived at his home, and a footman brought him the message. “I’ll be damned,” he breathed as he read. The message stated that Mr. Julius Cameron was desirous of seeing his niece, Lady Elizabeth Cameron, suitably and immediately wed. To that end, Mr. Cameron said he would now be willing to reconsider John’s previously rejected offer for Lady Elizabeth’s hand. Cognizant of the year and a half that had passed since they had been in each other’s company, Julius Cameron volunteered to send his niece, properly chaperoned, to spend a sennight with John so that they might “renew their acquaintance.”

Unable to believe what he was reading, Lord Marchman paced the floor and read the entire message twice more. “I’ll be damned,” he said again. Raking a hand through his sandy hair, he glanced distractedly at the wall beside him, which was completely covered with his most prized possessions – the heads of the animals he’d hunted in Europe and abroad. A moose stared back at him through glazed eyes; beside it a wild boar snarled. Reaching up, he scratched the moose behind its antlers in an affectionate, if ludicrous, gesture that expressed his gratitude for the splendid day of hunting that particular prize had afforded him.

A vision of Elizabeth Cameron danced enchantingly before his eyes – an incredibly lovely face with green eyes, cameo skin, and soft smiling lips. A year and a half ago, when he’d met her, he’d thought her the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen. After meeting her only twice he’d been so taken with the charming, unaffected seventeen-year-old girl that he’d dashed off to her brother and offered for her, only to be coldly rejected.

Evidently Elizabeth’s uncle, who was now her guardian, judged John by different standards.

Perhaps the lovely Lady Elizabeth herself had been behind this decision; perhaps their two meetings in the park had meant as much to her as they had to him.

Getting up, John wandered over to the third wall, which held a variety of fishing poles, and thoughtfully selected one. The trout would be biting this afternoon, he decided as he remembered Elizabeth’s magnificent honey-colored hair. Her hair had glistened in the sunlight, reminding him of the shimmering scales of a beautiful trout as it breaks the water. The analogy seemed so perfect and so poetic that Lord Marchman stopped, spellbound by his own phrasing, and put the fishing pole down. He would compliment Elizabeth’s hair in exactly those words, he decided, when he accepted her uncle’s offer and she came to his home next month.

Sir Francis Belhaven, the fourteenth recipient of Julius Cameron’s message, read it while sitting in his bedchamber wrapped in a satin dressing gown, his mistress naked and waiting for him in his bed across the room.

“Francis, darling,” she purred, raking her long fingernails down the satin sheets, “what’s important enough about that message to keep you over there instead of here?”

He looked up and frowned at the sound her nails were making. “Don’t scratch the sheets, love,” he said. “They cost £30 apiece.”

“If you cared about me,” she countered, careful not to sound as if she was whining, “you wouldn’t give a thought to the cost.” Francis Belhaven was so tightfisted that there were times Eloise wondered if marrying him would gain her more than a gown or two a year.

“If you cared about me,” he countered smoothly, “you’d be more careful with my coin.”

At five and forty Francis Belhaven had never been married, but he’d never lacked for feminine companionship. He enjoyed women immensely – their bodies, their faces, their bodies . . .

Now, however, he needed a legitimate heir, and for that he needed a wife. During the last year he’d been giving a good deal of thought to his rather stringent requirements for the lucky young lady he would eventually choose. He wanted a young wife as well as a beautiful wife with money of her own so she wouldn’t squander his.

Glancing up from Julius’s message, he gazed hungrily at Eloise’s breasts and mentally added a new requirement for his future wife: she must be understanding about his sensual appetite and his need for variety on his sexual menu. It would not do for her to pucker up like a prune merely because he was involved in one trivial little affair or another. At the age of forty-five, he had no intention of being ruled by some chit with pious notions of morality and fidelity.

A vision of Elizabeth Cameron was superimposed against his naked mistress. What a lush little beauty she’d been when he’d offered for her nearly two years ago. Her breasts had been ripe, her waist tiny, her face . . . unforgettable. Her fortune . . . adequate. Since then gossip had it that she was practically destitute after her brother’s mysterious disappearance, but her uncle had indicated that she would bring a sizable dowry, which meant the gossip was as wrong as always.

“Francis!”

Arising, he walked over to the bed and sat down beside Eloise. Caressingly he laid a hand on her hip, but he reached for the bell pull with his other hand. “A
 
moment, my darling,” he said as a servant rushed into the bedchamber. He handed over the note and said, “Instruct my secretary to send an affirmative reply.”

The last invitation was forwarded from Ian Thornton’s London town house to Montmayne, his country estate, where it appeared on his desk among a mountain of business and social correspondence awaiting his attention. Ian opened Julius Cameron’s missive while he was in the midst of rapid-fire dictation to his new secretary, and he did not take nearly so long to make a decision as Lord John Marchman or Sir Francis Belhaven.

He stared at it in utter disbelief while his secretary, Peters, who’d only been with him for a fortnight, muttered a silent prayer of gratitude for the break and continued scribbling as fast as he could, trying futilely to catch up with his employer’s dictation.

“This,” said Ian curtly, “was sent to me either by mistake or as a joke. In either case, it’s in excruciatingly bad taste.” A memory of Elizabeth Cameron flickered across Ian’s mind – a mercenary, shallow little flirt with a face and body that had drugged his mind. She’d been betrothed to a viscount when he’d met her. Obviously she hadn’t married her viscount – no doubt she’d jilted him in favor of someone with even better prospects. The English nobility, as he well knew, married only for prestige and money, then looked elsewhere for sexual fulfillment. Evidently Elizabeth Cameron’s relatives were putting her back on the marriage block. If so, they must be damned eager to unload her if they were willing to forsake a title for Ian’s money. That line of conjecture seemed so unlikely that Ian dismissed it. This note was obviously a stupid prank, perpetrated, no doubt, by someone who remembered the gossip that had exploded over that weekend house party – someone who thought he’d find the note amusing.

Completely dismissing the prankster and Elizabeth Cameron from his mind. Ian glanced at his harassed secretary who was frantically scribbling away. “No reply is necessary,” he said. As he spoke he flipped the message across his desk toward his secretary, but the white parchment slid across the polished oak and floated to the floor. Peters made an awkward dive to catch it, but as he lurched sideways all the other correspondence that went with his dictation slid off his lap onto the door. “I-I’m sorry, sir,” he stammered, leaping up and trying to collect the dozens of pieces of paper he’d scattered on the carpet. “Extremely sorry, Mr. Thornton,” he added, frantically snatching up contracts, invitations and letters and shoving them into a disorderly pile.

His employer appeared not to hear him. He was already rapping out more instructions and passing the corresponding invitations and letters across the desk. “Decline the first three, accept the fourth, decline the fifth. Send my condolences on this one. On this one, explain that I’m going to be in Scotland and send an invitation to join me there, along with directions to the cottage.”

Clutching the papers to his chest, Peters poked his face up on the opposite side of the desk. “Yes, Mr. Thornton!” he said, trying to sound confident. But it was hard to be confident when one was on one’s knees. Harder still when one wasn’t entirely certain which instructions of the morning went with which invitation or piece of correspondence.

Ian Thornton spent the rest of the afternoon closeted with Peters, heaping more dictation on the inundated clerk. He spent the evening with the Earl of Melbourne, his future father-in-law, discussing the betrothal contract being drawn up between the earl’s daughter and himself.

Peters spent part of his evening trying to learn from the butler which invitations his employer was likely to accept or reject.

CHAPTER 2

With the help of her footman, who did double duty as a groom when the occasion required (which it usually did), Lady Elizabeth Cameron, Countess of Havenhurst, hopped down from her aging mare. “Thank you, Charles,” she said, grinning affectionately at the old retainer.

At the moment the young countess did not remotely resemble the conventional image of a noblewoman, nor even a lady of fashion. Her hair was covered with a blue kerchief that was tied at the nape; her gown was simple, unadorned, and somewhat outdated; and over her arm was the woven basket she used to do her marketing in the village. But not even her drab clothing, her ancient horse, or the market basket over her arm could make Elizabeth Cameron look “common.” Beneath her kerchief her shining gold hair fell in a luxurious tumble over her shoulders and back; left unbound, as it normally was, it framed a face of striking, flawless beauty. Her finely molded cheekbones were slightly high, her skin creamy and glowing with health, her lips generous and soft. But her eyes were her most striking feature; beneath delicately winged eyebrows long, curly lashes fringed eyes that were a vivid, startling green. Not hazel or aqua, but green; wonderfully expressive eyes that sparkled like emeralds when she was happy or darkened when she was pensive.

The footman peered hopefully at the contents of the basket, which were wrapped in paper, but Elizabeth shook her head with a rueful grin. “There are no tarts in there, Charles. They were much too expensive, and Mr. Jenkins would not be reasonable. I told him I would buy a whole dozen, but he would not reduce the price by so much as a penny, so I refused to buy even one – on principle. “Do you know,” she confided with a chuckle, “last week when he saw me coming into his shop he hid behind the flour sacks?”

“He’s a coward!” Charles said, grinning, for it was a known fact among tradesmen and shopkeepers that Elizabeth Cameron pinched a shilling until it squeaked, and that when it came to bargaining for price – which it always did with her – they rarely came out the winner. Her intellect, not her beauty, was her greatest asset in these transactions, for she could not only add and multiply in her head, but she was so sweetly reasonable, and so inventive when she listed her reasons for expecting a better price, that she either wore out her opponents or confused them into agreeing with her.

Her concern with money didn’t stop with tradesmen; at Havenhurst there was scarcely an economy she didn’t practice, but her methods were successful. At nineteen years old, with the burden of her small ancestral estate and eighteen of its original ninety servants on her youthful shoulders, she was managing with limited financial help from her grudging uncle to do the nearly impossible. She was keeping Havenhurst off the auctioneer’s block, as well as feeding and clothing the servants who had remained there. The only “luxury” Elizabeth permitted herself was Miss Lucinda Throckmorton-Jones, who had been Elizabeth’s duenna and was now her paid companion at severely reduced wages. Although Elizabeth felt perfectly capable of living alone at Havenhurst, she knew that, were she to do it, what little was left of her reputation would have been blackened beyond redemption.

Elizabeth handed her basket to her footman and said cheerfully, “Instead of tarts I bought strawberries. Mr. Thergood is more reasonable than Mr. Jenkins.
He
agrees that when a person buys multiples of something, it is only reasonable that she should pay less per each.”