A Fierce Heiress to Tame the Earl (Preview)

Chapter One

James Ravencroft, the Earl of Ravencroft, looked upon Willowbrook Manor, the countryside estate that the Ravencrofts owned. He stood in front of the proud house. The front was full of windows that reflected the sun behind him, and he searched for figures, knowing maids and servants, footmen and stewards, would be going about their duties.

He dragged his eyes over the windows before landing on the closed main entrance.

It ought to be open—he ought to be welcomed by Mrs. Fairfax, the housekeeper.

But he had not replied to the letter that had brought him back to the English countryside. It had been written in the hope of summoning his return. James really should have told them it was received, but he had fled Greece, abandoned his travels, and returned to Willowbrook Manor.

Two hours away, in London, Ravencroft Hall, his townhouse, would be managed by a skeleton staff while it was empty. James had left the running of estates to his stewards in his absence.

In his hand, he still held the letter, written by his lead steward, Robert Cunningham. Glancing over it now, he grimaced.

Lord Ravencroft,

I do hope this will reach you in time, but I am writing with unfortunate news regarding your brother, Lord Theodore Ravencroft, and his abandonment of his wife, Lady Ravencroft. He has escaped England altogether in favor of another lady. As it stands, Willowbrook Manor will remain occupied by Lady Ravencroft unless otherwise indicated by you. Please return home at your earliest convenience, My Lord, for this mess will need to be addressed before the ton hears of it.

There is the manor to oversee and, of course, Ravencroft Hall itself in London.

Come home, Lord Ravencroft. Come back to help your family’s good name. I appeal to you.

Sincerely,

Mr. Robert Cunningham,

Head Steward.

James still refused to believe it. The letter had been sent almost two years ago, yet he had only received it upon getting closer to the European continent once more. He had finished his work and came home at once, but he was two years too late, and, by now, his younger brother, Theodore, could be anywhere.

He had absconded, and James had barely spoken to Theodore since he had begun traveling nine years prior. The meager letter had tried to be exchanged, but with James moving around so much, and Theodore’s repellent attitude toward corresponding in the first place, communication had been difficult.

Now, James stood before the manor he had left behind, the wife that, assumably, would still be inside—a wife James had never had the pleasure of meeting, but heavens help her if she had chosen to marry Theodore—unable to process the utter disgrace that had wrecked his family name while he had been absent.

What was the ton saying?

Would they even still be speaking of it? He should have passed through London on his way rather than ride hard for Willowbrook Manor as soon as he docked in England.

And Theodore’s wife …

What sort of state was she in?

The manor loomed, a ghost from his past he had wanted to escape. Windows that were too open, not foreboding enough for the potential disaster that awaited him inside. Glancing once more between the letter and the estate, James wandered toward the manor.

He was not ready to be back in England, but he had to complete his duty.

He had to be the proper Earl of Ravencroft. He had been gone for too long, had indulged in seeing the world, but now was the time to step up to the task. He had been one and twenty when he left London. Now, at thirty years old, he looked upon the estate his family had spent so long in when the social Season had died down.

It had been managed well by this Lady Ravencroft. The gardens were tended, and the windows were clean. The place was not run-down or left with staff who did not receive good instruction. Flowers bloomed along the main pathway, and the upkeep of the grounds were perfectly hedged, trimmed, and groomed. To the back of the estate, he could hear the distant whickering of horses.

Something in him ached at the memory of riding here with his brother.

His brother, who had now left his family name in tatters.

James wrangled his thoughts back into order, cast another cursive glance over the estate, and approached it to find out what awaited him inside. If Lady Ravencroft had withstood the scandal of being abandoned and stayed in her marital home while the ton judged her, taking ownership of the estate, then he had to admit he was impressed.

Most would fall into hysteria, he thought grimly.

Who on earth was his sister-in-law? Or, rather, former sister-in-law, perhaps. It begged the question of why she was still in Willowbrook Manor. Theodore had written about Lady Ravencroft briefly, few details that made him wonder if the marriage had been a happy one. His mouth twisting, James thought that perhaps not, given the drastic, unspeakable thing his brother had done.

“What happened while I was gone?” James murmured aloud to himself, half fearing the answer.

As soon as he stepped in through the door, he stopped, stock still.

The barrel of a flintlock, small in length but not in lethality, awaited him.

And behind, standing her ground, was a woman with hair the color of embers, and eyes that showed just as much fire as she stared up at him. There was not even a tremor in her hands, not a singular blanch of nerves.

Shock rifled through him, stiffening his spine, immediately sending one hand up—not a surrender but a pause. His eyes met those the color of the finest jade, set into a pale face, made whiter by the sun coming in behind James.

His heart pounded as he slowly assessed her, uncaring of the pistol aimed at him – his shoulder, specifically – and he fought the urge to arrogantly adjust where she pointed the weapon. He faced a strong woman, her stance already proving her assertion.

There was no weeping, hysterical, fragile woman. Those eyes showed only fire and wit, not heartbreak.

“Lord Ravencroft.” Her voice was low yet soft. Soft like a lady, but he had the sense that her softness was not vulnerability. “You have returned.”

“I have,” he said. “You know who I am, even though we have never met.”

“My home contains enough portraits. Nine years, is it, you have been gone? Time and travel seem to have aged you, but I know who you are. The Earl of Ravencroft. My former husband’s elder brother.”

“Indeed.” He let a slow smile spread over his mouth. It was one that usually disarmed a woman immediately. Men, too, when he was speaking of investments and diplomatic connections. It often got him his own way. “And you must be Lady Ravencroft, the scorned wife my brother has abandoned.”

Between two fingers, he held up the summons he had received.

Lady Ravencroft’s eyes flicked to it for merely a second. If James had been thinking clearly, he could have taken her weapon in that single moment of distraction. Yet he found himself amused and intrigued by how solidly she held it aloft, as though it was a natural thing for her to threaten an earl with a pistol.

“Scorned? No. Former wife, yes.”

Interesting, he thought. She speaks so uncaringly about it.

Confidence rang through her words, only enhanced by how she lifted her chin at him. “You are late. Two years late, in fact.”

James’s smile widened. “Twenty-two months, but who is counting?”

“I am.” Her head cocked. “I have counted every single day since your brother walked out of here without so much as a goodbye or decency to explain that his heart was no longer mine to claim.”

Oh. James truly was intrigued. As much as he did not like the challenge in her tone, he couldn’t deny how much he wanted to keep this back-and-forth continuing. It had been a long time since he had felt a deep, honest attraction to a woman. They had been a distraction, something to warm him on colder nights, a mutual, brief acknowledgment that time had to pass, and what better way than to lie next to somebody in such a way?

But Lady Ravencroft …

He could already feel the stirrings of interest. Interest and irritation, for he had returned to claim his land back to begin damage control of the Ravencroft name, yet this woman stood in his way.

“His heart was no longer yours to claim, yet yours does not seem entirely broken,” he noted.

“That is none of your business, I believe.”

James let out a bemused hum of a laugh. “I see. What is my business is your lack of respect, Lady Ravencroft.”

Something flickered over her face at that, a flash of nerves, perhaps. A chink in her armor. James had once been advised by his father that a woman’s weakness was when she was reminded she did not act perfectly as the ton demanded. Yet that flash was gone, and Lady Ravencroft seemed entirely unfazed once more.

“Furthermore,” he continued, “my business is this house. My family’s house. You referred to it as your home.”

“Indeed.” The gun still did not tremble, held supportively with two hands. “My home. I gave up another life to be here, to marry Lord Theodore. Do not presume me to simply duck my head, pander to your return, and walk out of the door with meek apologies.”

“I did not mention such a thing.”

“Yet that is why you have returned,” Lady Ravencroft pointed out. “To see me out of my home.”

“I have returned to fix the damage my brother has wrought.”

“It has been two years, Lord Ravencroft. Perhaps your travels should not take you so far out of reach for correspondence. I have done much damage control myself.”

“Have you now?” he challenged.

He was still incredibly taken aback at being faced with such a predicament. Not finding a haunted, jilted wife who ghosted through the lonely halls had sent him off-kilter. But somehow, this was both infinitely better and worse. A challenge he didn’t need; a challenge he had yearned for throughout the growing sameness of travel.

“If you think you are returning to find a simpering woman, you are mistaken.”

He looked at her, taking in her simple, emerald-green day gown. Her hair was elegantly styled but practical. No stray hairs or too much length getting in her way, as if she could not bear to be distracted by something so foolish as hair.

“I do not think such a thing,” he told her. “Two years is a long time, but family names do not forget disaster.”

“They do not,” she agreed, fixing him with a hard stare. “And yet I have held your family name in respect for the past two years.”

“I can see that.” James eyed the gun pointedly. “Do you threaten every man you meet with a flintlock?”

“No,” Lady Ravencroft answered. “Only the earls who are not welcome in my home.”

“I think you will find I still own the estate.” The urge to nudge her weapon down was growing with each moment. The ire she sparked within him grew. Who was she to claim his estate? Yes, he had all but gifted Willowbrook Manor to Theodore, hoping it would settle their grievances that had developed over the years as James grew up with duty and responsibility, and Theodore had wanted all that he had, but the estate was still one of James’s own assets.

“And I have made it mine,” she said. “I have kept it in good order these last two years. Even before that, you did not even care to visit your townhouse, from what I have heard.”

“My brother’s jealous stories about me must have kept your bed warm at night,” James drawled. “For it seems he did not.”

The gun moved closer. He ought to feel a slash of fear, but he didn’t.

“You will not shoot me,” he already surmised.

“Would you care to find out for certain?”

“I already know.” His eyes caught hers. He found nothing but defiance in them, not one ounce of defeat or worry. It was impressive, really, the steel something he had only ever witnessed far from England. “If, as you say, you have done a lot of damage control and respect my family’s name, then you will not undo all of that by firing a bullet. I do not think you wish to make yourself a scorned wife and murderer.”

Her eyes narrowed, her mouth curling into a hard, displeased shape. “You do not know me, nor what I am capable of, Lord Ravencroft.”

He opened his mouth to reply, but she was not done. “I will not be forced out of Willowbrook Manor, not when I spent so long making it my home, not when I have put my everything into it. You will not see me out of that door, and—I repeat—you are not welcome here.”

 

Chapter Two

Lady Ravencroft Hartwell—for she was not really a Ravencroft any longer—did everything she could to banish her nerves. While her resolution remained steadfast, worry threaded through her, and it was a wonder her hands did not shake.

She stared down Lord Ravencroft, the mysterious earl who had been nothing but a story for the past two years. Even before then, during the brief month-long marriage she had actually tried to enjoy, and the even briefer courtship before that.

Lord Ravencroft was nothing like his younger brother, Theodore. Where Theodore had been blond-haired and blue-eyed—eyes that had charmed her first before his smooth way with words ever had—and apparently had looked more like the former Countess of Ravencroft, the man before her was his polar opposite.

His dark hair was windswept, a few errant waves falling over his forehead just shy of hanging into cerulean eyes that were so deep they were almost gray. In this light, she could see that his hair was actually dark brown, not black, as she had first thought.

When he cocked a brow at her threat, she noticed that a scar lived above the left one, a white line above the thick line of hair.

“I see,” was all he said for a moment.

His nonchalance and arrogance made Helena want to scream. How could he not care that she was armed? Her eyes flicked to the flintlock she kept on hand in the entrance hall, there for a sense of security as a woman living alone in a house that was too big and too vulnerable.

Her only saving grace was being out in the countryside, a couple of hours outside London.

She was safe because she made herself safe.

Until Lord Ravencroft showed up.

“Tell me,” he said, tucking the hand he had held up to her upon his entry behind his back as though she held a pen, not a gun. As if they were about to exchange pleasantries, not threats. “What were you doing before I entered?”

“I was sitting in the drawing room, enjoying my peace,” she told him. “Until it was shattered by you.”

Her voice was soaked in disdain. “So you are rather comfortable living without a husband under the protection of my estate.”

“My estate,” she corrected once again. Her anger lit as surely as the flintlock should have. The earl did not need to know it was no longer functional. All he had to believe was that she had the nerve to shoot. “Lord Ravencroft, you have been abroad for years. Almost a decade. You left this estate to Lord Theodore. In turn, it has been left to me with his careless, wretched absence.”

“A slight correction,” he drawled, those eyes dragging over her condescendingly. She didn’t flinch. “I did not leave it to him. I gifted it to him. My name remains on the deeds. As thus, it is not your home, but mine.”

“Then why did you not come back to it?” She challenged, setting her jaw. “If it is yours, then why have I spent the last two years taking care of it? I have kept this house running. I have kept it intact. Not you. Not Lord Theodore. Me.”

“You are rather protective of it, are you not?”

Helena could hear how the question wasn’t one to be answered. A smirk tugged the corners of Lord Ravencroft’s mouth. He stood so confidently, so annoyingly assured, in his dark blue tailcoat and matching cravat, his dark shirt and darker waistcoat. Breeches clung to his legs, a smear of dirt, no doubt from riding back as soon as he had received the letter. His boots were slightly muddy, and Helena wanted to snap at him to take better care of the polished floors.

“You would be too if it were all you had left,” she stated. “But it is not. You have your townhouse.”

“Ah, do you mean to send me off? Get rid of me so you can return to your isolation and heartbreak?”

He was riling her up, she knew it. Her teeth flashed in a wide, unruffled smile. “Heartbreak does not linger here, Lord Ravencroft.”

At least not anymore, Helena thought, and hoped the thought did not show on her face. The slow, steady way the earl looked at her suggested otherwise. His head tilted to the side, intrigued. Her nerves fluttered through her stomach. Her mind turned, whirling this way and that, turning over suggestions and possibilities.

Why had he taken so long to return?

Had the delay been purposeful, perhaps waiting for the worst of it to blow over?

She had never met Lord Ravencroft, who had promised to attend his brother’s wedding to Helena, only to leave Theodore furious when he did not show up. Helena had been a little upset, once excited at the prospect of meeting her new brother-in-law—former now, though—but looking at him now, she knew she had not missed much.

His mere presence – the earl stood there, with the door still open behind him as if he expected Helena to walk past and be on her way, made her antsy. She did not know this man, mentioned only in stories. She didn’t know how to anticipate him or guess at his actions.

“Your brother painted you as a charming man,” she said, hoping to push him away further. If she riled him up so greatly, then perhaps he would leave her alone, thinking her not worth the trouble. “Charming and carefree, a man with dreams of traveling the world. Except all I am having the displeasure of meeting is somebody who cannot stop calculating for a moment. I can see it in your eyes.”

“Then perhaps you should stop looking if you do not like what you see.”

His words shot an unexpected jolt of something through her. Something she couldn’t name, but made her pulse flutter in her wrists, made her back straighten and her smile tighten into something colder to hide the flurry happening beneath.

Helena swallowed, averting her gaze from the handsome, infuriating earl.

“Lower your pistol,” he told her.

“No,” she answered, firmly, not stubbornly. “Not until you leave. I am defending what is mine.”

“There is no threat here, Lady Ravencroft. You did not even let me speak a word regarding the estate before you were aiming.”

“A woman living alone must defend herself where she can,” Helena said without missing a beat. “I will not be blamed for that.”

Another beat of silence passed between them as they each sized one another up. He was finely tailored and put-together despite the travel he must have already done. A boat, certainly, a carriage perhaps, afterwards, but his boots suggested a hard ride from wherever he had docked.

“How have you managed the estate?”

Lord Ravencroft’s question caught her off guard. She frowned, looking around the entrance hall. The gray, papered walls and tall ceiling with the windows above drenched the place in a light hue, making it feel livelier than it ought to be in this situation.

“It was easy,” she told him. “I dismissed most, if not all, of the staff who were loyal to Theodore. I did not need any ties to him.” Her walls went high, her defenses strong, and she would never show vulnerability to this entitled earl. Would he side with his brother, or was he ashamed to do that? Damage control did not mean he opposed his brother’s actions.

She hadn’t wanted anyone around her who had served her faithless husband loyally. Helena hadn’t been able to help questioning who had known, who had not spoken up, and who had not saved her from some heartbreak.

“I kept Mrs. Fairfax,” Helena continued, thinking of the old housekeeper whose hands trembled while she worked, but she never once refused to sit down, not while the house still stood. “While she had loyalty to Theodore, her loyalty to your family overall was bigger. Along with her, I kept Mr. Ashby.”

The butler and housekeeper had been allowed to stay on in their employment, with Helena having assigned them a wing of the house for themselves. The place was too big for just her. If she had been able to provide them with more comfort, then she was happy to do so. It meant she barely had to interact with them, but that was fine by her.

She was all but a spinster, a woman without a social calendar to maintain properly, like a lady ought to. Nobody needed to remind her of an engagement that day, or prompt her to complete a duty like arranging dinner. It was only ever Helena there alone.

“And the gardens?” Lord Ravencroft prompted. His brows had risen in surprise at her ruthless reduction of the house’s staff.

“I hired temporary workers from Willowbrook Village,” she snapped, hating his prying. “Only when needed, and only for a short time.”

“Heavens.” The earl laughed. “You cannot manage a full household of staff, then? Is that it?”

Helena’s jaw clenched. It hadn’t been that at all. She hadn’t wanted to endure questioning the staff’s loyalty or giving them fuel to start whispers. She didn’t want her authority questioned, a woman without a husband, still clinging desperately onto her security by name alone.

“Well?” Lord Ravencroft prompted, but Helena was saved from admitting her true intentions and vulnerability by footsteps off to her right. Her head jerked to the side to find Mrs. Fairfax with her old, tired eyes widened in shock, and Mr. Ashby, his shoulders hunched and mouth set into a frown.

“Lord Ravencroft,” Mrs. Fairfax greeted, both relieved and shocked. “You—you have returned. Heavens, it has been some time.”

“Nine years,” Mr. Ashby added on, his voice faint with surprise. “You are looking well, Lord Ravencroft. It is good to have you back at—”

His eyes caught Helena, who glared at him.

“You are dismissed,” she told them. She was not an unkind mistress, but she couldn’t have them pandering to the earl, welcoming him back. This was her home, and she would not see herself out of it. She would not face such humiliation. She would not be a four- and twenty-year-old spinster, forced to return to her parents’ townhouse, knowing she had no chance back in a ballroom to find another husband.

No, she was desperate. Helena could not afford to lose Willowbrook Manor. Not when she had lost everything else, too.

As Mrs. Fairfax and Mr. Ashby retreated quickly, Helena caught the raised brow of Lord Ravencroft. She couldn’t tell if he was impressed or displeased with her command. Meeting his gaze boldly, Helena let him see that he had not returned to find a fool, even if she felt guilty for glaring and speaking so harshly.

Her chin lifted.

“Well?” Helena prompted. “Will you leave?”

“No,” he answered. “Not yet at least. I must see the full estate. The front looks impeccable, the entrance hall neat, but what of the rest of the rooms?”

“All nineteen of them are accounted for, kept clean or covered in sheets,” she answered, surprising him with her quick knowledge of the number of rooms. “I am a good mistress of this estate, Lord Ravencroft. I do not need to prove myself to you.”

He simply looked back at her as if to question that. He had gone from being the brother of her husband, alive in the background of Theodore’s stories, noted on portraits in the family gallery, his name curled through Theodore’s bitterness. She had never really taken too much notice except to sympathize with her former husband over his jealousy.

But now …

Now, the Earl of Ravencroft watched her inscrutably, as if she were the portrait to be observed and known. He was imposing, and she despised it. She wanted him to be angry—both at her for remaining there, and at his brother, but he was collected, poised. Even worse, he was not deterred by the pistol but amused.

He looked down at it now, his hand twitching, as if he wished to lower it as he had asked her to before.

Helena felt a flare of defiance in her chest. She would not be intimidated by this man, Earl of Ravencroft or not.

“You defend it well,” he told her, surprising her. She fought to keep it from showing on her face. “Willowbrook Manor and your subsequent fortune, I suppose. A true lady of the house, indeed.” His eyes glanced over the pistol. “Is this yours or one of my brother’s?”

“My own.”

“Hmm.” He nodded slowly. “Peculiar.”

“Necessary,” she corrected with a snap as he took a step toward her, sensing the threat coming. His eyes met hers again, sending a flare of warmth through her, putting it down to her anger and nothing more. Definitely not how his eye contact made her feel slightly off-kilter. As though she had taken a step where there was no floor and had fallen through a hole.

She hated it. Her anger tethered her to her senses, and she truly wished she could fire a warning shot. It would teach the patronizing earl a lesson. Quickly, she filed the thought away, knowing it was only her nerves and surprise at his arrival.

His brother may have betrayed Helena. but she was not defenseless. She was not weak.

Helena had survived this. She had pulled herself to her full authority and had done what was necessary to retain her title and fortune. The Earl of Ravencroft would not take any of that from her.

“Go on,” he murmured. “What is it you wish to do with that pistol? You hold it well.”

I know, and I do not need your validation for it, she thought.

Wordlessly, Helena met his gaze and adjusted her grip on the gun to point the barrel to his chest instead of his shoulder. Surprise raised his brows again, and she found she rather enjoyed that look: she liked having that power.

Slowly, almost mockingly, she kept lowering the pistol until the earl’s smirk deepened, and then she stopped.

“I am not to be tested, Lord Ravencroft,” she warned him.

“I am not here to test you,” he told her. “Like I said, I only return to fix the damage my brother has caused.” Yet his eyes swept the house around her, and there was a small smile on his face—a smile Helena knew to be calculating. She had seen it on suitors’ faces enough times. The smile of a man planning.

But Lord Ravencroft merely nodded at her before striding onwards, past her, and deeper into the house.

“Have a good day, Lady Ravencroft. I must clean up from my travels but do find me if you grow bored of pointing your broken pistol. If you are so fond of them, I am certain I can give you a functional one.”

With that, he walked past her, leaving her stricken and dumbfounded, staring out at the front walkway that led down to the boundary of the estate and onward to Willowbrook Village. Her heart pounded, and her fury blazed through her. She dropped the pistol onto a shelf in the entrance hall with a gasp.

Her hands tingled from gripping the metal so tightly; her hands finally shaking now that she was no longer holding the weapon. She leaned against the wall, steadying both her panting breaths and racing heart as she stared up the staircase where Lord Ravencroft had so easily disappeared.

How seamlessly he could just return and reinsert himself into the estate after nine years.

Anger coursed through her.

Helena would not have it. She had already lost her husband, her security through marriage. She would not lose the home she had come to love. It was hers, and she would not go down without a fight. Still, her eyes followed the staircase, imagining the earl returning to a chamber he would have claimed years ago. Both furious and fascinated by his presence, Helena tried to force the earl from her mind.

Around her, memories swirled. She imagined Theodore walking out of the manor that night two years—twenty-two months—ago, his schemes and carelessness rife while Helena slept unaware of the betrayal playing out right under her nose. But what other memories did this house hold? Helena’s arrival, and then further back: the Ravencroft family growing up here, the manor rightfully theirs.

Helena refused to be the outsider.

The air in the manor already felt changed as if the place knew a master had returned. Helena did not leave anything to fate or hope. No, she would keep her place at Willowbrook Manor, and she would show the Earl of Ravencroft that she was not easily pushed aside.