A Most Unconventional Match Read Free Page A

he’d had to station himself as far from the enchanting Elizabeth as the confines of the parlour allowed, remaining at the reception afterwards only until he deemed it was politely possible to excuse himself.
    Until he had encountered Elizabeth Wellingford, armoured by a lifetime of scornful treatment at the elegant hands of his beautiful mother, he’d thought himself immune to those pinnacles of perfect female form who so easily enslaved the men around them. Which, for Hal, made Elizabeth Wellingford the most dangerous woman in England. Even knowing what she could and probably would do to him, he’d still been…mesmerised.
    The only sensible response was to stay as far away from her as possible. Over the intervening years, keeping that resolve turned out to be easier than he’d first feared, given that her sister had married his best friend. A few months after Nicky’s nuptials, shunning a Season, Elizabeth Wellingford had chosen to wed a family friend she’d known all her life, a gentleman more than twenty years her senior.
    So, fortunately for his piece of mind, the bewitching Elizabeth had never joined the ranks of the hopefuls on the Marriage Mart, that small section of ton society in which his mother took greatest interest. Each Season Mama had inspected the new arrivals, choosing those she deigned to honour with her friendship, whom she would then parade before her son in the hope, mercifully thus far unrealised, of enticing—or coercing—him into marrying some woman of fashion who might be trusted to try to remake her overly tall, totally unfashionable only child.
    A hopeless task, if Mama would just cease stubbornly refusing to concede the fact. In a society that prized dark, whipcord-slender men like that lisping poet Lord Byron, Hal was too big, too fair-haired, and, from his years of fencing and riding, too firmly muscled to ever be considered one of the ton ’s dashing young blades.
    Prizing comfort and utility above all, he had no patience for coats that required a valet to wrestle him in and out of them, shirts with points so high and stiff they scratched his chin or fanciful cravats that threatened to choke him whenever he swallowed.
    And though, with Nicky’s help, he’d overcome the stuttering that had made his school years a misery, he would never be capable of uttering long flowing phrases full of the elegant compliments so beloved by ladies.
    He sighed. He would always be an embarrassment to Mama and there was nothing to be done about it.
    Shifting his gaze to the matter at hand, he looked back at the funeral notice he still held. So Elizabeth was now a widow. Too young and lovely a lady to be wearing black, he thought, a touch of sadness in his chest at the premature loss she had suffered. Then a startling, highly unpleasant realisation brought him out of his chair and sent him rushing to his desk.
    Impatiently he flipped through the papers until he found Nicky’s note. As he reviewed it, a scowl settled on his face.
    Hell and damnation! He had remembered the dates correctly. Nicholas, Sarah, their children and all the rest of the Stanhopes and Wellingfords—all of Elizabeth’s family—had departed for Europe, it appeared, barely a week before Everitt Lowery’s passing. The family party was not due to return to England for another three months at the earliest.
    There was no help for it. Despite his vow never to willingly place himself again in the same room with the lady who had so shaken his world, that lady was Nicky’s sister-in-law. With her family out of reach, Nicky would expect Hal to call on the widow, ensure that her husband’s lawyer and man of business had her financial affairs well in hand and, in Nicky’s stead, offer to assist her with anything she required.
    Going back to his chair, Hal sighed and downed a large swallow of the wine. Please heaven, let Lowery have left a decent will and employed a competent man