The Regency Season: Scandalous Awakening: The Viscount's Frozen Heart / The Marquis's Awakening
Undone by a single touch…The Viscount's Frozen HeartLuke Winterley has been trapped within a loveless marriage and now his emotions are hidden behind a wall of ice. Having returned home to fulfil his aunt’s last request he is once more faced with Chloe Wheaton, his first love. This bewitching waif promises to thaw the Viscount’s heart but marriage between a noble and his housekeeper is all but impossible!The Marquis's AwakeningTom Banburgh, Marquis of Mantaigne, reluctantly returns to his childhood home, Dayspring Castle, only to find Polly Trethayne camped out under his roof! Polly is a goddess in breeches: she awakens feelings he thought he’d locked deep inside. Can Polly storm the barricades Tom has erected and bring her fresh vitality to his lonely world?
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Table of Contents
Elizabeth Beacon
THAWED BY HIS HOUSEKEEPER’S KISS
Luke Winterley, Viscount Farenze, is duty-bound to fulfill his beloved aunt’s last request—even though it concerns bewitching housekeeper Chloe Wheaton. Years ago they fell in love, but the battle between duty and desire drove them apart.
He’s embittered by a loveless marriage, so can the ice around Luke’s long-buried emotions ever thaw? A marriage between a housekeeper and a viscount should be impossible, but maybe the warmth of Chloe’s touch can bring a new beginning for them both….
A Year of Scandal
A gentleman for every season
ELIZABETH BEACON lives in the beautiful English West Country, and is finally putting her insatiable curiosity about the past to good use. Over the years Elizabeth has worked in her family’s horticultural business, become a mature student, qualified as an English teacher, worked as a secretary and, briefly, tried to be a civil servant. She is now happily ensconced behind her computer, when not trying to exhaust her bouncy rescue dog with as many walks as the Inexhaustible Lurcher can finagle. Elizabeth can’t bring herself to call researching the wonderfully diverse, scandalous Regency period and creating charismatic heroes and feisty heroines work, and she is waiting for someone to find out how much fun she is having and tell her to stop it.
Luke Winterley, Viscount Farenze, turned to help his daughter down from the carriage and watched Eve eye the fine house nestled into the rolling Wiltshire hillside like a jewel bedded on winter-pale green velvet.
‘If only I had remembered Farenze Lodge was this beautiful I’d have teased you to bring me here a long time ago, Papa. I do recall Aunt Virginia giving me a sugarplum after I fell down the steps and cut my knee as a little tot, but that’s about all,’ she said and he had to smother a pang of guilt as he handed Eve’s small but formidable maid from the carriage before answering, since he had kept Eve away so he wouldn’t have to spend any more time here than necessary.
‘No wonder that event stuck in your memory, but, yes, it is a very fine house,’ Luke said with the second look the Palladian villa’s neat elegance always deserved.
He had to brace himself for the empty feel of it without the last Viscountess Farenze here to make it a home, though. It was his duty to see Eve didn’t feel the loss of her great-great-aunt even more acutely here, despite his own sorrow and frustration, and the less anyone knew about that second, rough-edged emotion and how hard it always bit him under this roof, the better.
‘It doesn’t seem anywhere near as vast to me now as it did back then,’ Eve said, as determined to be cheerful for him as he was for her.
‘No, it was built as a home, for all its grace and classical proportions,’ he replied rather absently. It was currently home to a full complement of grieving staff and one very inconvenient housekeeper.
The mere thought of Mrs Chloe Wheaton waiting inside this serenely lovely house made him want to groan out loud, but somehow he kept silent and smothered another pang of guilt that he was about to make her homeless. He couldn’t live under the same roof as Chloe Wheaton, yet still he felt this urgent need to see her again, if only to find out if she was as bitterly overwound by ten years of avoiding each other as he was.
‘Virginia and Virgil liked their comfort, although I’m sure she would have done her best to love Darkmere if he really wanted to live there. Luckily he was always far happier in the home they made together here,’ he told his daughter.
Somehow he must distract himself from Mrs Chloe Wheaton’s presence here one more time, or he would end up wanting her almost beyond reason again. She was a widow with a young daughter. He had no right to long for her with this nagging, nonsensical ache whenever they were in the same county, let alone the same house.
‘I don’t remember your Uncle Virgil, Papa, but he looks far too rakish and cynical in that portrait of him in the gallery at home to fall deep in love with anyone, however lovely Aunt Virginia must have been sixty years ago.’
‘Ah, but that was painted before they met and Virginia was a woman of character as well as an exotic beauty if her portraits are to be believed. I thought them the most deeply devoted couple I ever encountered and I’m far more of a cynic than Virgil ever was,’ he said with a smile that went awry as he missed them both for the first time now Virginia had joined her beloved the other side of eternity.
