Heart's Desire

Chapter One

June 1817

Julian Lyons, Viscount Wrotham reached for the ledger he'd glanced through a moment before. Something had caught his eye. Frowning at the numbers, he tried to find what it was that seemed unusual. They hadn't much changed these past nine years. The total expenses were the same, so what was this niggling sense that something was off?

"Kellaway, either stop your fidgeting or go out into the hall," Julian barked as his man of business' chair creaked. Again.

"Yes, milord."

Barely hearing the reply, Julian's eyes went down the list of wages for his staff at Shepridge End. The place had come to him through his mother. Upon her demise, when he was sixteen, it became his.

Julian's eye caught and held at a name. "Who is Miss Emma Hollings?"

"A local girl, I believe my lord."

"And how did she come to find herself in my employ?"

"I believe Lady Wrotham hired her, my lord." Kellaway was behaving in a cagey manner.

Julian's brows pinched together, and he sat back in his chair at the reminder of the stranger he'd wed nearly ten years prior. His elbows came up to bracket the page, and his fingers formed a steeple over the ledger. With steely eyes, he looked over them and at the man who'd brought that woman's presence to the fore.

After all these years, Julian had nearly managed to put the deceitful chit out of his mind completely. At twenty, he should have shown more caution in those who claimed to be friends. The old wound caused by betrayal opened every time that woman or her brother were mentioned.

For nine blissful years, Julian had thought of her as his ward or dependent, but never as Lady Wrotham, his wife. It had worked well. He'd lived the life of a soldier in the Peninsular Wars, then as a bachelor around town after Napoleon had been defeated a final time.

All that changed when Julian took up his seat in the House of Lords last fall. Recently, the specter of the stranger he'd wed was raised time and again. Curious compatriots and allies asked after Lady Wrotham, and so the existence of the once invisible and forgotten woman was increasingly dug up, screaming for attention. He suspected his grandfather was behind the reminders. The old man had long held that Julian needed to beget his heirs before he expired.

William Lyons, the 6th Earl of Trevene, was a force to be reckoned with. He still held his seat in the House of Lords and ruled from his perch with an iron fist. It was shortly after Easter that Julian's grandfather returned to town and began to voice his ultimatums in earnest. The old man sang the praises of Lady Wrotham, said the chit had more backbone than Julian's father had. It needled when his grandfather said that with her bearing the next round of heirs the weakness of Julian's mother would be bred out of the line. It was true that his mother had been of weak character, but the charge still stung.

And so, Julian began to feel the pressure, not only from his grandfather but from those in the House of Lords who held the power to see the bill he sponsored succeed or fail. That Lord Trevene was behind this sudden push for reconciliation was never a doubt in his mind.

Julian's excuses for Lady Wrotham's continued absences were no longer working. Even as he realized he needed to fetch her, his whole being balked. Perhaps he could manage to garner enough support without his grandfather's influence.

However, the current unlucky fellow who'd uttered the woman's name was not a peer. Julian's eyes narrowed as he studied his man of business. The thought that the earl had infiltrated his household took hold.

Under the close scrutiny of his employer, Kellaway ran a finger under his cravat. It was a nervous gesture that Julian found most annoying. His man of business squirmed once more, causing the leather on his chair to creak.