The Rake of Hollowhurst Castle by Elizabeth Beacon

dressmaker’s with it, you were so wedded to that interminable black.’
    Stella’s mouth set in a stubborn line for a moment, then she caught a glimpse of herself in the pier-glass and couldn’t hold to her resolution never to be happy again once she lost her dashing major.
    â€˜I do like it,’ she admitted, looking so shocked that Roxanne and Tabby laughed, and it set the evening off on a light-hearted note that lasted all the way to the mellow old hall the Longboroughs had lived in as far back as anyone could recall.
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    â€˜By Jove, you look so very fine tonight I hardly dare speak to either of you,’ Squire Longborough assured them in his gruff voice. ‘You’ll have our local bucks falling over themselves to dance with you as soon as you show your faces, so just see you save me a dance each, eh? Got to do the pretty until Lavinia says I’ve poured enough oil on all comers to choke a duchess, but save me a good old country dance apiece, there’s good girls.’
    Seeing Stella half-confounded and half-delighted to be called a girl and gruffly ordered to dance with their host when she fully expected to get away with her usual excuse that widows didn’t dance, Roxanne was aboutto twit her about it when she turned a little too far and met the intense, intent blue gaze of Sir Charles Afforde instead. Arrested in mid-laugh, she felt as if someone had just launched a hot spear straight at her most intimate core and altered everything. Everyone else faded into a murmur of faintly heard babble, a bright veil of dream figures no more real than ghosts. Suddenly she was a girl again, as sure that he must love her as strongly as she knew one day she would be mature enough, deep enough, to love him.
    Missing a step, she felt her breath stall, her heartbeat race and her skin flush with some unknown, unthought-of heat she certainly shouldn’t be feeling for someone who tormented and infuriated her as severely as Sir Charles Afforde did. Held still and bound to him for a long moment by his bright, compelling gaze, she stood on the edge of something even she never quite anticipated in her wildest dreams. Her lips were a little apart, her breath a little hurried and her eyes a touch feverish as they darkened to pure velvet black in the candlelight.
    â€˜Ah, Miss Courland,’ the son of the house interrupted their discovery of each other.
    Young Joe Longborough shot a glare at the man he obviously regarded as an interloper and gave Roxanne a reproachful look she didn’t care for at all. She didn’t relish being so violently awakened from her daydream, she decided with an exasperated glare for both gentlemen that should have put them firmly in their places.
    â€˜Ah, Mr Longborough,’ she parodied crossly.
    â€˜I came to claim a waltz,’ he informed her pompously.
    â€˜Then I suggest you go away again,’ Roxanne told him crossly, ‘and don’t come back until you’ve learntsome lessons in gentlemanly conduct from your papa, Joseph Longborough,’ she ordered and turned back to Stella with a condemning glare for both gentlemen.
    Joseph’s ears reddened visibly and his rather heavy features contorted with temper. He shot out a hand to pull her back and force his mastery on a mere woman who dared find his manners boorish and his personality lacking in charm, but he felt his arm locked in a grip of honed steel instead.
    â€˜You won’t lay so much as a finger on Miss Courland without her express permission,’ Charles told him in a low, menacing murmur even sharp-eared Roxanne failed to pick out of the general hubbub in the splendid old room. ‘Try it,’ he warned his host’s son with a look intended to freeze the dolt to his very bones, ‘and I’ll break your arm and make you wail like a baby in front of everyone here tonight.’
    â€˜How dare you threaten me in my own home? I’ll see you thrown out on your