Seducing Mr. Heywood Read Free

not yet.” Lewis Alcott assured his patient as he checked the large bump, the size of a goose egg, at the back of Charles’s skull. Lewis laughed.
    “It may be vastly amusing to you, Lewis.” Charles Heywood grimaced as his friend touched the grotesque swelling. “But it is hardly cause for such raucous laughter.”
    “Tell me again how you came to be the object of the beauteous widow’s wrath, Charles,” Lewis urged, a wicked gleam showing through his wire-rimmed spectacles.
    Charles glared at the burly, sandy-haired physician, who looked more like a coachman or a farm laborer than the excellent surgeon he was in truth. “I knew that I would regret detailing those unfortunate circumstances to you! I do hope you have the discretion to keep this embarrassing business to yourself.”
    Lewis adjusted his eyeglasses. “I never betray a patient’s confidences, Charles, you know that.” He continued to grin, nonetheless, enjoying the vicar’s discomfiture, for all that he was a good friend. Jovial Lewis could not resist teasing, and he especially could not resist teasing the more sober-tempered Charles Heywood.
    Charles groaned, running his long fingers through histousled hair, a nervous habit from childhood that he had never overcome. “How can I ever apologize? Lady Sophia will not want to see my face again.”
    “Ah, but, Charles,” Lewis teased, “it is such a nice, handsome face. Rumor has it that the wicked baroness is partial to handsome faces.”
    “Most unchristian of you, Lewis, those remarks. Very uncharitable, unworthy in a man of your profession. Lady Sophia is hardly wicked, and as for your allusion to her…er…habits—” Charles shook his head, unable to go on, then groaned at the discomfort the slight movement caused him. He might not have cracked his skull, as Lewis had assured him, but it certainly felt as though he had.
    “At any rate,” Lewis continued blithely, “you shall have to face the lovely Lady Sophia again. You are now, per the will of your late mentor, Baron Rowley, the legal guardian to her two sons. You have become part of the family.” He squeezed his good friend’s shoulder in close, comradely fashion and chuckled, ignoring the murderous glare the vicar sent his way.

Chapter Two
    I tell you truly and sincerely, that I shall judge of your parts by your speaking gracefully or ungracefully. If you have parts, you will never be at rest till you have brought yourself to a habit of speaking most gracefully, for that is in your power.
    —Lord Chesterfield, Letters to His Son, 1774
    Lady Sophia’s breakfast of eggs and ham lay cold and congealed on the delicate blue tracery of the Wedgwood plate. She took a tentative sip of lukewarm China tea and frowned, pondering her future. Her grim future; she would rusticate forever at Rowley Hall in the wilds of north Yorkshire, which was not at all as she had planned.
    The baron’s death was not unexpected; he’d been ailing for a long time. The Rowleys were not a long-lived family, and all of his cousins had died years before. No, the surprise had been the defection of her lover, Sir Isaac Rebow. The betting books at White’s and Brooks’ had been overturned. Overturned as she had been overturned, bested by a slip of a country girl, Isaac’s young ward, Mary. He had fallen madly, inappropriately in love and had cast Sophia aside without a moment’s hesitation. Isaac and she had been together a very long time. She swallowed. The strong black tea was bitter in her mouth.
    She had wanted Isaac Rebow as she had never wanted any of her three husbands. Her father, a dissolute earl addicted to gambling, had traded her youth and beauty three times for money. The first husband spent moretime with his horses than he did with his bride, a blessing, for when he was with her, he was a crude and brutal sort; how ironic that one of his cosseted horses had given him the coup de grace. He’d died with his boots on, hunting the fox unto