The Enraptured Heir (The Secrets of Nedworth Hall Book 2) by Merry Farmer

Author:Merry Farmer [Farmer, Merry]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-07-30T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Six

The race was on. Angeline was as determined to get Rafe to smile as Lady Yvette was to discover the identity of Lord Carshalton’s heir. Few of the guests were making headway in uncovering the heir, though Mr. Covington, Lord Carnlough’s valet, Mr. Crymble, and Miss Benning, for some reason, were considered the most likely candidates at the moment.

Angeline tried to bring herself to care about the mysterious heir during several games and diversions intended to unmask the person, but all she truly cared about was coercing Rafe into a smile. He hadn’t smiled once during the tennis match, though. Not even when she deliberately made a ninny of herself by twirling and posing and adding dance steps to her playing. Miss Benning and Lord Bygrave had been in stitches, but Rafe hadn’t smiled once.

Rafe didn’t smile when she made a little scene on her plate out of her vegetables during supper that night, then made certain he saw it. He didn’t smile at all that week, not when they took another walk together and she told humorous stories of her cousins, Shannon, Marie, Colleen, and Chloe.

He didn’t smile the next week, when Lady Cambourne had them perform comedic scenes from Shakespeare and she played Olivia opposite Lady Eleanor’s Viola in a scene from Twelfth Night. He didn’t even smile in church, two Sundays later, when she sneezed in the middle of the long and boring sermon. None of her new friends could keep a straight face for the entire rest of the sermon, which ended with them being glared at by the parson as they left the church.

But the true result of Angeline’s efforts to make Rafe smile over the next several weeks was that she had ample opportunity to spend time with him, getting to know him and sketching his character. Not a day went by for four whole weeks in which they didn’t spend at least some time with each other. Even on days when the gentlemen wandered off to partake in their own activities separately from the ladies, or when other events of the party caused a stir.

With each conversation that they had about the few places in London they had both visited, or the latest gossip about which of their fellow guests had behaved suspiciously, which were growing fond of each other, or which might be the mysterious heir, about the goings on of Parliament, and a few spirited debates about The Irish Question, Angeline fell even more in love with Rafe. He was dour at times and guarded, but the more she spent time with him, drawing him out of his shell, the more she could see the good, noble, somewhat sad man that he was underneath his gruff exterior.

“Do you know, Lord Rothbury,” she said one Tuesday afternoon in the fifth week of the house party, as a few of the ladies sat at easels in the garden, sketching the flowers—or in Angeline’s case, Rafe himself, “I think this may be the very first time when your grave countenance is perfectly appropriate.

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