An Earl to Guard a Widow’s Heart (Preview)

Chapter One

  Harbury 1815

It was a soft, peach-blushed morning in the village of Harbury, the sort of day that seemed spun from warm milk and wildflowers. A place where the trees stood rather like sleepy debutantes leaning towards one another in quiet congress.

Grace Hutcher, with a basket on her arm and her heart very nearly singing, stepped daintily over a puddle and into the bustle of the Saturday market.

There was a certain pleasure in being at the market, a pleasure as honest and clear as the toll of the chapel bell. Grace delighted in selecting apples one by one and in the weighing of ribbons. She also never seemed to tire of the warm chatter of market-women whose hands were chapped from real work and whose spirits never seemed to mind.

Truth be told, Grace had always found markets more tolerable than balls, for at least one could buy something worthwhile in a market.

Today, she was buying joy.

Her daughter Horatia’s sixth birthday loomed ahead, and no, Grace hadn’t wept at the thought of her little girl being so very grown, not more than twice. She had set her mind on a wooden horse, on ribbons the colour of sky after rain, and a cake perfumed with orange blossom. 

“Oh, Mrs Hutcher,” called a plump, smiling woman behind a flower stall, “primroses are just coming in!”

Grace turned, her dark curls catching the light beneath her modest bonnet. “Thank you kindly, Mrs Tulliver,” she said with her usual quietness, the sort that made people lean in and listen. “But I am on a mission today for something else entirely.”

And she was. She was in pursuit of enchantments.

For Grace, though she rarely allowed herself the indulgence, felt just a touch enchanted by the morning. She passed the cheese-monger, whose yellow wheels she always found vaguely amusing, and stopped at the bookseller’s barrow to thumb the spine of a weathered Homer.

She had no need for Greek today, but it was comforting to know Homer still rested among the onions and boot-laces.

A child darted past her skirts, laughing, and a pig escaped a tether near the butcher’s stall, pursued by two boys with a string of sausages like a banner between them. Grace laughed before she could help it.

In fact, she had laughed more these last three years than in the ten years of her marriage.

But how dangerous it was for the heart to grow light, for joy was rarely welcome in the drawing rooms of propriety. And Grace Hutcher, widow of Edmund Hutcher of Haversleigh Park, had been warned, repeatedly, unkindly, and with great relish, by certain relations, that her position was tenuous.

Still, she let them whisper. She let her uncle, Lord Solomon Lymington, glower from his townhouse and send letters that trembled with veiled threats of what was best for the child. She let him scowl at her refusal to remarry, to hand over the estate as if it were a tray of tea biscuits.

Horatia was hers, and Grace would burn down the drawing room before surrendering her. 

That was when she arrived at the fruit stall and examined the oranges. They glowed like captive suns, rare and plump. She touched one gently, as if it might sing. Horatia had only tasted orange once, as it was a gift from a passing visitor two winters ago. She had spoken of it ever since with the reverence usually reserved for fairies and elephants.

The stall keeper, Mr Bleecher, saw her and bowed, in his way, in a sort of nod that looked more like a shrug that had changed its mind.

“Fine fruit today, Mrs Hutcher,” he said, and she inclined her head.

“Indeed. Might I enquire the price of your finest orange?”

He quoted a sum that would, under any other circumstance, earn a purse-string’s immediate tightening. But Grace simply smiled and chose three.

She was a poet, after all. And what was poetry if not the purchase of delight, whatever the cost?

Grace had just passed the final coin to Mr Bleecher, who accepted it with the reverent care of a banker receiving an heirloom jewel, when a sharp, commanding voice sliced through the music of the marketplace.

“… this is the last time, do you understand? I’ve tolerated more than I ought already.”

The words, loud and clipped, struck like flint against the morning’s softness. Grace turned instinctively. A few paces beyond the spice stall, partially obscured by the swaying white cloth of a linen vendor’s canopy, a peculiar tableau had formed.

A young man was kneeling pitiably in the dirt. He was young, perhaps no older than five and twenty, and bore the unmistakable grime of a night spent poorly. His coat was misbuttoned, and one boot had no laces. There was something frantic in how he looked up, not at the gathered crowd but at the tall figure looming before him.

The taller man, evidently a gentleman by his bearing, though his coat was plain and his cravat unassuming, stood very straight, with his hands clasped behind his back in a manner that made him appear not just firm, but judicial. His voice was low now, though Grace, near enough still, caught the tail of it.

“Do you want to ruin yourself and your family entirely? Because that is precisely where you’re headed.”

The words cracked across the cobblestones like a whip. 

“Pathetic,” the tall man snapped, his voice low but vibrating with restrained fury. “You’ve had every chance. This is not misfortune; it was your own choice.”

Something in his posture, something akin to tension without violence and command without cruelty, struck Grace as dangerous, though not in the way most men threatened. He looked like someone who had been patient for too long and now spoke only from the wreckage of that restraint.

“You think I’ll keep cleaning up after your recklessness? That I’ll shield you forever? I warned you.”

The kneeling man flinched but didn’t rise. He reached for the gentleman’s boot with a trembling hand, whether to beg, plead, or clutch for balance, it was impossible to say.

“Don’t,” the gentleman hissed, taking one step closer. “Get up.”

Grace’s feet moved before she had fully decided they would. 

“Sir!” she called, her voice sharper than she had heard it in years. “That is enough!”

Both men turned. The kneeling one froze mid-motion. The lord turned slowly, with the controlled precision of someone entirely unshaken. His eyes, which she noticed were green and striking even from several paces, narrowed just slightly in surprise.

Grace walked forward, with a small wicker basket swinging on her arm, and her curls bouncing with the indignation coursing through her. She stopped two paces from him and fixed her gaze, bright and burning, on the man’s face.

“I cannot in good conscience say nothing,” she declared. “I stood there long enough hoping, vainly, that I had misjudged what I was seeing, but no. No, sir. You were berating him. And publicly. A man who is already clearly suffering, and who, I dare say, did nothing to deserve such cruelty from someone.” She scanned his coat, his stance, his arrogant, maddening silence, so accustomed to giving orders, he must believe they come from God himself.

His brow quirked. It was not a frown or a sneer. It was just an eyebrow lifted ever so slightly in amusement, as though she had entertained him. Grace felt heat crawl up her neck like a rising tide. She was not done.

“Oh, I know that look,” she said, folding her arms across her chest. “I know it very well. It is the look of a man who believes civility is a courtesy reserved only for those he deems worthy. A man who believes kindness is wasted on the desperate. A man who thinks he is helping by humiliation, when in truth he is simply enjoying the sound of his own condemnation.”

Still, the gentleman said nothing. His smirk was barely there, but Grace saw it. She felt it prick her like thorns.

“I cannot abide men like you,” she said, her voice rising despite herself. “You believe the weight of your title entitles you to righteousness. You bark orders like judgements. You perform your virtue at the expense of those who can’t fight back. It’s disgusting. No, don’t smile, sir. Not at me. You might wear a cravat and carry yourself like a Grecian statue, but your manners are no better than a tavern brute with a full belly and a foul temper.”

The young man, still lingering uncertainly at her side, looked utterly stunned. A vendor had stopped trimming rosemary mid-snip. Somewhere nearby, a dog barked and was promptly shushed.

The tall man, whom Grace had already named Lord Smirk in her mind, finally moved then. His one hand rose, but only to brush a bit of imagined dust from his coat sleeve. His gaze never left hers, and he said not a word. 

“Do you intend to answer me?” Grace snapped, breath just slightly uneven. “Or is silence part of your condescension?”

His lips curved into something just short of a grin.

“To humiliate someone is not to help them,” she continued. “And if that was meant to be assistance, then I pray Heaven spares me from ever needing your version of help.”

That was when the lord spoke in a voice that was calm, deep, and maddeningly unbothered. 

“Sawyer,” the lord called out to the young man, “would you kindly explain to the lady what has just happened here?”

Grace swallowed heavily. The tone was not mocking, nor particularly warm. It was the sort of tone one might use when requesting the truth be set down plainly, for the record, perhaps even for the benefit of someone who had very recently issued a full-throated monologue on one’s character.

The young man, Sawyer, evidently, had risen to his feet, brushing dust from his knees with a sheepish air. He looked at Grace, then at the tall man beside him, then back to Grace, his face flushing with awkward colour. 

“My Lady,” he began in a tone that seemed to merge embarrassment and apology, “I … I didn’t mean to cause a stir. It wasn’t what it looked like.”

Grace’s brows lifted, her righteous fury still standing sentry behind her eyes. “No?” she asked, too pointedly.

“No,” Sawyer said quickly. “I wasn’t … he wasn’t scolding me, I mean, not really. Not … well, not like you thought.”

He glanced at the tall man again. Lord Smirk, as she had not-so-charitably christened him, remained perfectly silent. His eyes, however, flickered with a faint glint of patience.

Sawyer scratched the back of his neck, his voice rough with feeling now. “I used to work in his stables, a while back. But I was dismissed. Gambling debts, you see. I … I was a fool about it. I lost wages, lost more than I could afford. I didn’t stop even when I should’ve, and word got around.”

Grace’s expression wavered, her arms still crossed, but her posture shifted slightly. 

“I couldn’t find work since,” Sawyer continued. “No one wants a man with a bad debt name. My family’s near ruin now. My mother’s near blind, and my sister’s got a little one she can’t feed regular. We’re barely holding on.”

He swallowed hard. “He … Lord Blackmere … he came to find me this morning. He said he’d heard of our trouble, said he’d arranged a position for me with one of his friends in Devon who keeps a stable for breeding hunters. He told me he’d already sent the funds to cover our rent until the post begins.”

Grace tried to blink the incredulity away, but that was easier said than done.

Sawyer smiled, wet-eyed and uneven. “And he told me I had to give it up, the gambling. He said this was the last chance I’d be given, that he wouldn’t recommend a man to honest work who wouldn’t stay honest himself. He was angry, yes. He had every right to be. But I was down there not because I feared him, My Lady. I …” he exhaled shakily, “I was thanking him. I didn’t know how else to show it.”

The silence that followed was somehow louder than the market. Grace stood still. Her hands slackened at her sides. She could feel the sun warming her shoulders, the light wind stirring her skirts, yet her mind remained entirely motionless, as if something inside her had been gently yet terribly arrested.

“Do forgive me, My Lady,” Lord Blackmere said, just loud enough to reach her but not the widening ring of bystanders, “I had not realized you were taking confessions in the market square today. Should I kneel too?”

Grace froze. He stood in front of her now, not close enough to crowd, but close enough to command the air between them. That faint smirk had returned, but this time, it curled with sharper edges and controlled sarcasm.

“I spoke in defence of a man I believed to be in distress,” she said with her shoulders stiffening. “Forgive me for assuming you were the cause of it.”

“Ah,” he murmured. “A heroine of impulse and high decibel. Very fashionable these days, I’m told.”

She turned then, just slightly, enough to catch the full impact of that sardonic lift of his brow. But before she could sharpen a retort, he moved. It wasn’t towards her, but to her side, stepping just slightly into the half-circle of villagers now pretending to busy themselves with onions and embroidery thread, yet very clearly invested in the drama unfolding before them.

Lord Blackmere folded his hands behind his back and addressed Sawyer again, this time in a louder, clipped tone that carried.

“You’ll speak to Mr Henley in Totleigh by Wednesday,” he ordered. “You’ll work until you drop and not touch a penny that isn’t yours.”

Sawyer nodded quickly. “Yes, My Lord.”

“Good. And if anyone asks, tell them exactly why I gave you the place. And exactly what I told you would happen if you fail again.”

“Yes, My Lord.”

A moment passed, and Grace frowned slightly, not understanding the shift, until she realized what he had done. To the casual observer, she had not just accosted a man in righteous error. No, she had witnessed a very public act of stern charity. She had spoken in the midst of a negotiation, perhaps even as an advocate. 

What happened was that he had, without saying it, shielded her.

Her gaze snapped back to him. He met her eyes briefly and offered a single, precise nod, which was neither approval nor apology. It was merely an acknowledgement. And then he turned from her without a word more and walked off, his coat catching the morning breeze like a banner of unread intentions.

Grace remained still.

She was mortified, yes; horribly, deeply, abjectly so. But that wasn’t the only feeling pressing against her ribs. Intrigue twisted like a vine through the wreckage of her pride, for what sort of man dismissed public praise, endured public censure, and never once defended himself? What sort of nobleman snapped like a commander and gave like a brother?

She watched him vanish around the corner of the butcher’s stall, then looked down at her basket. The oranges, bruised from jostling, shone up at her like small, infuriating symbols of optimism.

She exhaled, adjusting the ribbon. Horatia would still have her birthday. And Grace Hutcher, widow, mother, poet, and public firebrand, had just met a man who turned her certainty to fog with nothing more than a raised brow and an irritating sense of purpose.

Chapter Two

Noah Morton, Earl of Blackmere, stood at the window of his study, with his fingers curled tightly around a glass of brandy he had no intention of drinking. 

The crystal caught the last of the afternoon light and refracted it in shallow bursts across the rug. Still, his gaze was somewhere else, refusing to acknowledge the rolling hills that framed his estate. It also chose to ignore the haphazard stack of correspondence littering his desk and instead focused on the memory of her.

She had arrived like a thunderclap in the middle of an already tedious morning. Then, out of nowhere, she started flinging her outrage like a flag before her. All of that was followed by a rebuke so blistering and perfectly enunciated, he might have applauded it had he not been the subject of its fury.

“… your manners are no better than a tavern brute with a full belly and a foul temper,” he repeated her insult, word for word. 

It wasn’t her error that needled him. That he could forgive. Because a misunderstanding, even a dramatic one, was not uncommon. What lingered in his mind like the ache of an old wound was her tone, her conviction, and also the authority with which she judged him, a man she didn’t know.

He let out a low sound, which turned out to be something between a scoff and a sigh, and then stalked across the room to the hearth. The fire had died down to embers, but he stoked it with unnecessary force.

And yet …

She had stood between him and a man on his knees. There was no hesitation in her voice, and no flinching on her beautiful face. He felt that she’d do the same in front of a firing squad if she believed herself right. That kind of protectiveness and the immediacy of it were not common. It wasn’t among ladies of his acquaintance, and certainly not among the sort who attended operas and called card games a cause for feminine distress.

So beautiful and passionate, he thought. 

He had noticed it in a detached sense at first. She possessed that elegant posture, the striking contrast of pale skin and dark eyes with a small birthmark by her right eye, and the curls that refused to lie obediently flat beneath her bonnet. But it was her fury that had made her luminous, as though anger clarified her.

She deserved an explanation, not silence. But his tongue had stilled in his mouth the moment he’d looked into those eyes, black as ink in a moonless well, and realized if he said anything, she’d merely sharpen her blade further. And he wanted to see what she would say next. 

Fool, he thought, rubbing a thumb along the glass’ rim.

A knock on the door broke the thought clean in two.

“Come in,” Noah called, being brought back to the present moment. 

The door creaked open, revealing his faithful butler Higgins, who bowed respectfully before speaking. “My Lord, Doctor Hayes is here for you, with his wife.” 

Noah didn’t remember sending for the doctor, but perhaps it wouldn’t hurt to discuss his headaches and nightmares with someone who might make sense of them, or better yet, who might make them disappear. 

“Show them in, Higgins,” Noah nodded, and a moment later, Dr Samuel Hayes revealed himself in the doorway, with his hat tucked under his arm and his spectacles slipping slightly down his nose, wearing an expression of well-worn concern. The two had been long-time friends, and most of the time, their conversations drifted from friendly banter to an official doctoral visit. 

“Lord Blackmere,” Dr Hayes said by way of greeting, “pardon me for saying, but you look as if you have just lost a duel.” 

“Worse,” Noah muttered. “I won one and was accused of murder in the process.”

Dr Hayes stepped inside, followed closely by his wife, Margaret, whose sharp eyes were already scanning the study like a general surveying a battlefield.

“Good afternoon, Lord Blackmere,” she said, smiling faintly in the manner of someone who had been perhaps not a friend, but still someone Noah considered a close acquaintance, if by nothing else than by way of marriage to Dr Hayes. “Or is it still morning for you?”

“I’m uncertain,” he said, setting the untouched glass aside. “The sun seems to come and go as it pleases, Mrs Hayes.”

Dr Hayes dropped his hat on a chair and lowered himself carefully into another, already reaching for his physician’s bag. 

“Margaret insisted I come,” he said. “And since I make it a habit not to argue with my wife, I’m here.

Margaret snorted delicately and took a seat near the window, smoothing the skirts of her blue dress. “Don’t let him pretend virtue. He’s been worried, too.”

Noah leaned against the hearth. “It’s nothing.”

Dr Hayes ignored the comment and instead asked, “Headaches again?”

Noah hesitated, then nodded. “Worse. They come on without warning, usually late. As if a vice were clamped across my temples. I can’t think when they strike.”

“Mhm …  Sleep?”

“Intermittent. Dreams.”

“What kind?”

Noah crossed his arms. “Nothing coherent, just fragments. A staircase, wind under a door, sometimes music, wrong notes, badly played. Oh, and fire.”

Dr Hayes’ pen scratched across a small notebook. “The same dream?”

“Variations,” Noah said quietly. “But always the same feeling when I wake, like something’s chasing me and I’ve forgotten how to run.”

“I can rightly assume you’ve been under strain,” Dr Hayes met Noah’s gaze as he spoke. 

Noah’s mouth twisted. “I’ve been alive. That seems sufficient.”

Dr Hayes stood and crossed the room with the familiarity of a man who had done so a hundred times before. He opened the black leather satchel he’d set on the desk, his fingers deft among the glass vials and packets of paper-wrapped powders.

“Headaches aside,” he said, tone shifting back into the easy cadence of medical habit, “your sleep, or better yet, the lack of it, is likely the source of most of your trouble. When the body doesn’t rest, the mind begins to rattle in its cage. You’ve always been more prone to that than most.”

Noah gave a quiet grunt that might’ve been agreement.

“I’m going to leave you a tincture,” Dr Hayes went on, withdrawing a slim, pale bottle stoppered in wax. “Valerian root and skullcap, mostly. There’s laudanum in it, but only the smallest touch. You’ll sleep deeply, but not so long you can’t rise with the house.”

Noah accepted the bottle, turning it in his hand, then eyeing the handwritten label.

“It’s not addictive,” Dr Hayes clarified, answering the unasked question. “Unless you take a liking to dreams without any danger.”

“That sounds … strangely disappointing. I have almost come to like my nightmares. Their routine recurrence is reassuring in a way.”

Dr Hayes chuckled. “You’ve always had a talent for romanticizing your miseries.”

“I’m an aristocrat. It’s expected of us.”

Margaret was now seated near the window, and she offered a dry smile. “If you do insist on romantic agony, perhaps do so over something more productive than nightmares and headaches, like poetry or a young lady with sharp eyes and a sharper tongue.”

“Speaking of which …” Noah started, with his tone casual in the way a blade could look harmless when sheathed. 

Dr Hayes glanced up. “Mm?”

“There was a woman like that in the village yesterday.” Noah’s jaw shifted slightly, then he looked off towards the dark glass of the window, where late sunlight smeared itself lazily across the pane. “She intervened in the matter with Sawyer. Rather boldly and forcefully so, and at considerable volume.”

Margaret’s brows arched, and Dr Hayes’ eyes flickered with interest.

“She mistook what was happening,” Noah continued, his voice more thoughtful now than irritated, though both remained in the undertone. “She thought I was threatening the boy, even humiliating him. She charged in like a crusader in mourning trim and gave me a dressing-down the likes of which I’ve not received since I was ten and overturned my tutor’s wine decanter.”

Margaret pressed her lips together. Dr Hayes smirked faintly.

“She was, uhm,” Noah gestured with a flick of his fingers, “elegant, plainly dressed but dignified. Dark hair, black eyes, with a small birthmark by her right eye. Graceful, though I can’t say it matched the force with which she threw herself into my path.”

Margaret smiled suddenly but said nothing.

Dr Hayes tilted his head. “Birthmark on her face?” He stopped there, pondering the identity of the spirited rebel. “I know of only one lady with such a birthmark, but I couldn’t imagine her being so … outspoken.”      

“Who is it?” Noah enquired curiously.           

“The lady in question could be Grace Hutcher,” Dr Hayes said, nodding. “Widow of Edmund Hutcher of Haversleigh Park, but not that well known in the ton. Margaret knows her better than I do, as I remember the name being mentioned a few times …” He turned to his wife before continuing.  “She attends the women’s literary circle, doesn’t she?”

“She does,” Margaret confirmed. “And she’s just like my husband said, not very outspoken, but rather the contrary. She is very serene and speaks in low tones. One almost has to stop thinking to hear her words.” 

Noah almost chuckled. That certainly wasn’t the lady he had met at the market.

Noah gave a noncommittal grunt, but inside, something twisted, a spark of recognition that felt too much like interest for comfort.

“Perhaps the fact that she’s been fighting her uncle for nearly two years now has hardened her in a way,” Dr Hayes went on. “Her uncle, Lord Lymington … do you know him?”

“By name only,” Noah said, his voice cooling at the mention.

“Well, he’s been trying to wrest custody of her daughter, Horatia, and claim legal control over the estate. He claims the estate’s too much for a woman to manage alone. He’s been circling her like a vulture since the husband died.”

Noah’s frown deepened. That didn’t seem fair. “And the court hasn’t settled it?”

“There’s nothing conclusive to settle. The will gave her temporary stewardship, but there’s enough ambiguity in its language that Lymington has found a legal foothold. He claims she’s emotionally unstable, ill-equipped … the usual slanders.”

“She’s neither,” Margaret said firmly.

“I never said she was,” Dr Hayes replied with a smile.

Noah looked back at the fire. He pictured her again with her dark eyes flashing, her voice sharp as flint, and her spine as straight as her sense of justice. There had been nothing fragile in her.

“She’s impressive,” he admitted after a moment. “Fiercely protective. Intelligent, I think, though rather too quick to leap into judgement.”

Margaret raised an eyebrow. “She misread the situation, My Lord. That’s not the same as being unthinking.”

“True, it is not,” Noah allowed. “But she seemed … touchy, easily offended. Also, sharp-tongued in defence and disinclined to reconsider.”

“Perhaps that’s because she’s fighting battles every day,” Margaret pointed out wisely. “From what I’ve heard, Lord Lymington has been speaking to anyone who’ll listen, magistrates, solicitors, local landowners, anyone who is willing to listen to him painting Grace as unbalanced and even erratic. He claims she’s emotionally unfit to oversee a household, let alone an estate. Says she’s taken to wandering the woods and scribbling in journals, that she forgets things, that she’s isolating her daughter, that she’s suffering from melancholia.”

Noah’s jaw clenched. The woman he’d met didn’t seem to be suffering from any of those maladies. 

“She’s suffered,” Margaret continued as if reading his mind, “but she’s not mad. She’s been forced into independence in a world that punishes women for it. She manages Haversleigh like a steward, holds her ground with the tenants. She even opened the estate school again this spring, and he calls that instability.”

“He calls intelligence dangerous,” Noah realized.

“Exactly,” Margaret said. “And because she’s not playing the grieving, pliable widow, he’s attempting to discredit her entirely.”

Noah exhaled slowly. The hearth glowed red at the edges of the ash.

“She’s holding her own, but it’s costing her,” Margaret went on. “She doesn’t trust easily. She hardly speaks about her late husband, though from what little I’ve gathered, the marriage was … not cruel, but cold. And Lymington’s pressure has only made her retreat further into caution.”

“Come now, dear …” Dr Hayes swept by his wife and gently wrapped his arm around her waist, forcing her to stand up and turn towards the door. “I think that’s enough gossip for one day.” 

“That’s not gossip,” his wife pouted, but she still leaned closer to him. 

Dr Hayes smiled at his wife, then turned to Noah. “Take the tincture tonight. And try not to brood.” 

Noah remained still for a long moment after the door had shut behind them.

Then he returned to the window once more. The sky had fallen into dusky violet, the fields fading to shadow. The image of Grace Hutcher rose again in his mind, but not Grace in fury, rather Grace by firelight, reading some quiet poem aloud to her child, with a voice as soft as the raindrops on a dewy morning.      

And he thought how much he would like to see that version of her, too.