The Earl and The Enchantress (An Enchantress Novel Book 1) Read online

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

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  Copyright © 2018 by Paullett Golden

  Excerpt from The Duke and The Enchantress copyright © 2018 by Paullett Golden

  All rights reserved.

  Print ISBN-13: 978-1-7328342-0-0

  eBook ISBN-13: 978-1-7328342-1-7

  Author Photo by LaNae Ridgewell

  Cover and book design by Fiona Jayde Media

  Interior Design by The Deliberate Page

  This book contains an excerpt from the forthcoming novel The Duke and The Enchantress by Paullett Golden. This excerpt has been set for this edition only and may not reflect final content of the forthcoming edition.

  Also by Paullett Golden

  The Enchantresses Series

  The Earl and The Enchantress

  The Duke and The Enchantress

  The Baron and The Enchantress

  The Colonel and The Enchantress

  The Gentleman and The Enchantress

  The Heir and The Enchantress

  The Sirens Series

  A Counterfeit Wife

  A Proposed Hoax

  The Faux Marriage

  All listed titles coming soon

  This book is dedicated to my mother for her endless support and motivation, as well as her willingness to read outside of her preferred genre to offer critiques.

  A special thanks to Ishtar who made this book possible.

  Chapter 1

  May 1790

  London

  Lizbeth’s chest tightened as she searched the room for a means of escape. Over her pounding heart, she could hear the swish of silk and muslin, the click of dancing heels, and the tune of the gavotte. The ballroom oppressed her, full of sweaty bodies, fake smiles, and shrill laughs.

  Safety beckoned from the far corner of the room, a red paneled door. Eyeing the route, she strategized shadowing behind three columns.

  A beast did not pursue her through the glitz of the London ballroom, rather the well-meaning intentions of her family. They were bent on arranging each set with a sympathetic bachelor, namely the aging and infirm who wouldn’t mind dancing with a spinster or wallflower. This set would soon end, and she loathed to see on her aunt’s arm another partner with eyes of pity making his way to her. Escape was the only option.

  She side-skipped to the first column. Coast clear. Two columns remained. As she slipped behind the second column, she could smell freedom over the musty air.

  One step towards the third column and she stopped short. Her sister blocked her path, teeth bared.

  “Don’t you dare, Lizzie.” Miss Charlotte Trethow hissed.

  “Don’t I dare take advantage of a better view of the dance?” Lizbeth flashed her sister a smile of nonchalant innocence then turned her attention to the room, undaunted by the delay and as determined as ever to leave.

  Groups of young girls stood along the sidelines gossiping behind gilded fans while the social matrons studied every dance step for a hint of favoritism towards their charges. Liz curiously noticed none of the women looked at each other while talking. Rather than eye the object of their conversation, their hawkish eyes roamed the room for signs of scandal and for eligible bachelors of wealth and title.

  “Don’t think I don’t know what you’re doing.” Charlotte glowered. “You’re heading for that door. Auntie will suffer a fit of vapors if she finds you hiding in a parlor.”

  Shaking her head, Lizbeth argued, “Aunt Hazel knows I’m a lost cause. Her only concern now is you. You’re enjoying yourself, so don’t let me rain on your sunshine.”

  The dancers slowed to a stop. Liz cast a pleading glance.

  Sighing, Charlotte said, “Very well. Escape before Auntie sees you, but don’t say I didn’t warn you of her wrath.”

  Lizbeth’s sister turned with a huff to follow the perimeter of the room, her embroidered train swishing behind her, a sea of peach pastel and lace. The young hopeful was a sight to behold this evening, her golden-brown ringlets flirting with onlookers and her milky white skin accentuating her dark eyes, a prize for any man in search of a bride. Lizbeth glanced down at her own humble appearance and shrugged.

  Unlike her sister, she wasn’t the least interested in becoming someone’s property, a dependent upon some aloof man who controlled her life but ignored her person, fulfilling his jollies elsewhere.

  Returning her concentration to the red door, she resumed her mission, desperate to flee the smothering room. If she heard one more giggle from a vapid woman or one more wine-infused guffaw, she would scream. The dancers emptied the floor to circulate, and Liz knew she had only moments to spare before her aunt sought her for another arranged set.

  Moving surreptitiously, she sidestepped her way to the door, pressing her back against the cool wood to ease it open, then slipping through the gap towards freedom. The noise muffled as she closed the door behind her. After a moment’s repose, she breathed in deeply the fresh air of her solitude.

  Solitude was far superior to a room full of snots.

  Not a single person in that ballroom would be able to carry on a conversation that suited her palate. She doubted any of them read more than the gossip column. This was the age of enlightenment, after all, and she would wager her dowry that not one of them was enlightened. Not that a lady made wagers, but, then, no one had ever accused her of being a lady.

  Lizbeth surveyed the hallway. Several doors invited inquiry. One of the doors led to a drawing room, she recalled, but the drawing room would be crowded with septuagenarians and their nodding plumes. That wouldn’t do.

  A faint memory niggled at the edges of her mind. Hadn’t she seen a library the last time she was here? Oh, a library would be divine!

  Determined to find it, she closed her eyes and inhaled a belly breath to let the fantastical scent of freshly printed books guide her to—yes! She was sure she remembered which door. Heading for the second door on the left at the far end of the hall, she walked with purpose to repress any helpful footman’s desire to reroute her to the ballroom.

  The door sighed open at the lightest suggestion of her hand, as if the room had awaited her arrival. A fire flamed in the hearth, the glow lighting the room. Before relaxing, she glanced around the room for signs of life. It appeared vacant.

  Alone at last.

  Leather bindings decorating the walls aromatically romanced her nostrils, and the shelves of bound and color-coded books tantalized her. What would it be like to spend the day with myriad reading choices at her disposal? One goal in her life remained steady—to have her own home library. She wouldn’t stoop so low to sacrifice her independence by marrying a man for his large library, but she couldn’t deny she would be sorely tempted.

  Although a matching chaise posed under a damask draped window, temptingly comfortable, the lighting would be better by the fire, and she was eager to absorb herself into a tale. Two grommet chairs faced the fire, one with its chair-back to her, the oth
er inviting her to nestle into the cracked-leather seat.

  Lizbeth removed one of her gloves to feel the bindings of the books as she browsed the shelves. Her fingertips caressed the gold-tooled spines, trailing along a set of histories with black leather and gold leaf, and atlases of light tan with a flower pattern.

  Two bookshelves over, she found plays and dramas, nine volumes of Stern, five volumes Murphey, nothing that cried out to be read. Wrinkling her nose at Cowper another shelf down, she continued searching until, aha, something she could never read enough of, The Faerie Queen. She freed Spenser from his shelf, inhaled the scent of leather, and touched the wove paper.

  This topped any romance she would ever find in a ballroom. Reading to herself the first lines of the opening canto, she immersed herself quickly and thoroughly.

  Her satin shoes instinctively found their way to one of the chairs in front of the hearth as she read while walking, entranced.

  As she sank into the cool seat of the chair, a deep voice growled.

  “Shouldn’t you be in the ballroom hunting your prey?”

  Chapter 2

  Liz’s head jerked up, eyes wide. A man sat in the opposite chair, one leg crossed over the other, a book held with long fingers in his lap, the gleam in his eyes predatory.

  “I beg your pardon?” Lizbeth questioned, affronted.

  “Has no one told you begging is demeaning?” he replied, his unwavering stare that of a lion eyeing his quarry.

  “How dare you, sir.” She lifted her chin defensively, looking at him down the length of her nose. “Why did you not announce yourself when I entered?”

  The nerve of this man not to say something when he most assuredly heard the door. A respectful gentleman would have left promptly at seeing her, for they’d not yet been introduced and shouldn’t be alone together even if they had.

  “Not to belabor the point,” he challenged, “but you disrupted my privacy, and thus you should have been the one to ascertain if the room were vacant, and if not, take your leave.”

  She bristled, narrowing her eyes. What a horribly rude man!

  The stranger didn’t wait for a response, rather eyed the book in her hands and sneered. “Sentimental drivel, I presume?”

  Refusing to be intimidated, Lizbeth glared, raising her chin a fraction of an inch higher. “Edmund Spenser, actually,” she snapped.

  That should shut him up and give her a chance to flee. The likelihood of him knowing Spenser was slim to none, just as all the other fops and dandies in the ballroom, too busy socializing to read.

  One corner of the stranger’s mouth lifted in a sly smile as he said,

  “And thou most dreaded impe of highest Jove, Faire Venus sonne, that with thy cruell dart At that good knight so cunningly didst rove, That glorious fire it kindled in his hart,”

  Her world turned topsy-turvy in that moment. She gaped at him as he recited from memory The Faerie Queen. Any plans of departure abandoned from the sheer shock of meeting a potentially intellectual person at a human meat market, Lizbeth studied him, stunned, fascinated, even a touch smitten despite his rudeness.

  He certainly didn’t look like a fop with his bronzed skin and crinkles around his eyes as though he spent too much time squinting into the sun. There was something almost feral about him. Conservative clothing framing a powerful build and a tamed mane unpowdered and confined by a large brown ribbon conjured a vision of a caged animal.

  While she couldn’t put her finger on it, there was decidedly something familiar about him, something that invited her to stay despite his obvious attempts to dissuade her from lingering. She had never met him, of that she was sure, but she recognized his wistful tone when he recited Spenser.

  Unfamiliar to her was his Roman nose, almost too large for such a slender face, his sardonic grin, his quizzical eyebrows as he waited for her to respond. Unfamiliar, too, was the color of his eyes, so dark a brown they nearly matched his raven hair.

  Yet as she studied him, those eyes brightening from impenetrable black to an unclouded, intelligent brown, she realized what about him she recognized. His were the eyes of a dreamer, of a thinker, of someone who had stood on the edge of a cliff and wondered what it would be like to fly.

  She knew, then, the reason behind the sense of familiarity, for she knew his eyes as well as she knew her own reflection in the mirror. His initial intimidation waned with this realization. He wasn’t a rude or abrasive man, rather someone like her, someone who preferred solitude over company, someone who enjoyed reading over socializing.

  Or she could be misreading him.

  Relaxing her guard, albeit cautiously, she smirked, changing her tactic, desirous to test her theory.

  “Well recited.” Lizbeth set her book in her lap and awarded him a slow clap, mocking his cleverness with an arched brow. “But you can’t fool me. Cupid has not struck you with an arrow today.”

  “Can you be so sure?” He remarked, his smile broadening, teasing. “It’s not every day that a woman sequesters herself in a room with me...alone.”

  Lizbeth snorted inelegantly, her gaze dropping to the book in his hands. “And how’s your sentimental novel progressing?”

  He scoffed, closing his book and leaving it to rest on his crossed thigh. “You would hardly be familiar with what I’m reading. John Locke—a far cry from feminine reading preferences. I’m surprised to see you with Spenser and not Samuel Richardson, a favorite of yours, I’m sure.”

  Refusing to take umbrage at his goading, especially from a man with a faint Scottish burr, the rolling r’s hinting at a northern dialect, but eager to prove her literary prowess, she accepted his implied challenge.

  Casually, as though she had such conversations daily with strangers in a library, she said, “Personally, I’m not a believer of Locke’s philosophies, but not from ignorance of them. And funny you should imply that I’m a reader of Richardson rather than Locke, when Richardson’s book embodies the very philosophies of Locke’s tabula rasa.”

  Touché! She thought.

  Perhaps she felt starved for quality conversation, or perhaps she wanted to best a man. Either way, her tongue sharpened for the duel. She would prove this stranger’s assumptions of her intelligence, or lack thereof, wrong.

  “I’m intrigued.” He prodded, “What similarities do you see between Locke’s book on human nature and Richardson’s silly romance?”

  She took the bait. “Locke asserts we are all born blank slates, molded by experience. Essentially, we are who others make us, nothing more than victims of chance. I would like to think I was born of sterner nerve than to let experience alone influence me.”

  He uncrossed his legs and leaned forward.

  The movement invited her to admire his shapely thighs, thick and pressing against the taut satin breeches. Don’t be distracted. She schooled herself. Focus. She had never been in a room alone with a man, much less a man such as this, physically powerful and mentally stimulating. Focus.

  Focus renewed and determined to champion in the duel, she sat up straighter, eyeing him to ensure he was impressed. “Richardson’s Pamela,” Liz asserted, “epitomizes a woman born as a blank slate, influenced only by the people around her, a victim of social mores rather than personal values. I do not believe that people are passive creatures to which cruelty and kindness are inflicted, helpless without recourse.”

  His dark eyes lit with intelligence and intrigue. “You of all people should know the victimization of the sex.”

  “No one is completely helpless. We can all change our situations, carve our own destinies. Women can control their fates as well as any man.” Lizbeth leaned forward in her chair, gripping her book. “Consider this past October. Women marched on Versailles! Women revolted in the streets against the powers that constrained them!”

  “Yes, yes, but Pamela, as Richardson writes her, is the only kind of woman
I’ve ever known. Show me a woman who is not false fronted or a victim of circumstance.” He waved his hand in the general direction of the ballroom.

  Before she could respond, he continued, “I’m surrounded by eyelash-batting frauds. Can you honestly imagine any of those ladies in the ballroom marching? Can you see them dragging cannons, carrying small arms? Preposterous. They have been molded into what they are, simpering sheep. Not a single brain amongst them, all because society dictates silent and ignorant women are more marriageable. Society made them what they are.” He leaned back against the chair, smug victory etching his features.

  Parrying, she said, “So, you admit you’ve read Pamela.”

  He snarled.

  The silence that followed presented the perfect opportunity to end the conversation, however entertaining, and make her exit, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it. She had never enjoyed teasing or even conversing quite so much as with this man.

  Gone was the need to prove herself, replaced with the delight to share her opinions without being mocked or ridiculed. This conversation needed never to end as far as she was concerned.

  Afraid he, too, might see this as the perfect time to end the moment and leave, she launched into a rebuttal, taking the conversation one step too far.

  “I agree most women of my acquaintance wouldn’t be amongst the revolutionists, but that’s not my point. These women are Pamela made flesh, following the crowd instead of following their own mind. Once we cease fearing society, we can carve our own path. Locke’s essays are hogwash! We may be influenced by others, but only we can determine what we do with our lives. No one and nothing controls us or commands who we are.”

  His face darkened. He withdrew into his chair, retreating. Lizbeth could feel the shared moment pass, as well as see the transformation in his physique—a tightness in his jaw, a deepening furrow of his brow, a subtle shift in his eyes. The depths of those eyes she had just admired shadowed.

  Goosebumps rose on her arms from the change in the air around them, companionable to tense. She hit a nerve, however unintentional.