A Count for Christmas: The Seldon Park Christmas Novellas, #6

By Bethany M. Sefchick

Lady Grace Rowe, the dowager Countess of Colbourne, is ready to indulge in an affair.  Still in the late blush of youth and after a loveless marriage to a man old enough to be her grandfather, she believes that is the least she deserves.  She also believes that the dowager Duchess of Winterset's "Night of a Thousand Stars" ball at Highburn Castle during the Christmas season is the place to conduct such an affair – if only she knew who she wished to conduct it with!

Lord Marcel Blanchard, Count Aris, is half French, half English and not the sort of man given to brief affairs.  Lonely and searching for a place to call home, Marc isn't certain that he wants a wife, but he does know he desires something more permanent than one night in a lady's bed.

When Grace and Marc meet in a shadow hallway with Highburn Castle, sparks fly between then.  She wants an affair.  He doesn't know what he wants.  The only thing they are both certain of is that they want each other.  Is there a future for them outside of the magical Christmas castle or is one night together all they will ever have?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bethany M. Sefchick
• Release date: Dec 10, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386378945

Bethany M. Sefchick

Making her home in the mountains of central Pennsylvania, Bethany Sefchick lives with her husband, Ed, and a plethora of Betta fish that she’s constantly finding new ways to entertain. In addition to writing, Bethany owns a jewelry company, Easily Distracted Designs. It should be noted that the owner of the titular Selon Park - one Lord Nicholas Rosemont, the Duke of Candlewood, a.k.a. "The Bloody Duke" - first appeared in her mind when she was eighteen years old and had no idea what to make of him, or of his slightly snarky smile.  She has been attempting to dislodge him ever since - with absolutely no success. When not penning romance novels or creating sparkly treasures, she enjoys cooking, scrapbooking, and lavishing attention on any stray cats who happen to be hanging around. She always enjoys hearing from her fans at: [e-mail]

Book preview

Chapter One

Mid-December 1821

Highburn Castle

Yorkshire

Risking a decided lack of decorum, Lady Grace Rowe pushed the traveling coach’s curtains aside and peered out the window excitedly for her first glimpse of Highburn Castle.  As the dowager Countess of Colbourne, she had a reputation for strict propriety.  For once, however, she could not resist doing as she pleased and not as Society expected.

Her Aunt Martha had always spoken in glowing terms of this place, though this was Grace’s first opportunity to see the castle for herself.  On the journey here, she had wondered more than once if this place would truly live up to all of the praise her beloved late aunt had heaped upon it.  It did.  Without question.

With the line of waiting carriages still stretching down the drive and the arriving guests apparently taking their time disembarking, Grace had plenty of time to study the castle for as long as she liked.  And she did want to study Highburn because something about this place had made her normally rational and logical aunt turn into a fanciful little girl during each visit.  According to her aunt, dreams, hopes, and wishes came true here.  While Grace did not believe in such things, she now had to admit that if there were a place on this earth touched by magic, it would be the magnificent castle sprawled out before her.

The towering gray structure should have been dark and dismal.  Foreboding, even.  The place was hardly small and was obviously meant to be intimidating.  It boasted eight turrets and what looked like three dome-topped spires, along with a parapet that ran along the front of the building and around to the back.  The sides of the castle were also crenelated, and part of the first floor of the east side seemed to curve outwards and then back in on itself as if a passage had been added so that one could reach what looked like an orangery hiding in the distance without leaving the safety of the castle itself.

Those parts and pieces were all remnants of the different eras in which the castle had been constructed, renovated, and rebuilt.  After all, the place had been ransacked by the Scots twice and nearly burned to the ground once by long-forgotten forces – however the faint scorch marks from the event were still evident on the castle’s west side.

So yes, Highburn Castle should have been intimidating.

Perhaps in the dark of January, it was.  But not this evening.

No, this evening candles danced in nearly every window and festive – but massive – pine wreaths with enormous red bows dangled down from the castle’s parapet from thick rope, welcoming all of the guests for the dowager Duchess of Winterset’s annual Night of a Thousand Stars Christmastide house party and ball.

The fountain in the courtyard had been wrapped with holly garland and more red bows, and the curved drive was lined with lanterns to guide the way to the carved double front doors that featured a sun and starburst design.  Large red and gold ribbons festooned the hedges lining the front of the castle, lending an additional festive air.  Servants in red livery trimmed with gold braid scurried about, unloading carriages and escorting guests into the castle.

The entire place was alive with activity and joy, and Grace understood why her aunt had found this place so magical, especially during the Christmastide season.  She only wished that she could feel some of that magic for herself.

Perhaps that was why the dowager duchess had once more extended the invitation to Grace, the first she had ever accepted.  Perhaps, since the dowager and Aunt Martha had been such close friends, the duchess now wanted Grace to feel some of that same magic.  Lord knew, her life was in sore need of it.

Born the daughter of a poor baron, Grace had always been the toast of her small village back in the Lake District.  Her family had sent her to London for a Season at the tender age of eighteen in hopes that she might attract an offer of marriage from a wealthy peer, a gentleman that might also be amenable to saving her father’s deeply in debt barony.  After all, out of all of her siblings, Grace was by far the most beautiful and, after some time at an expensive finishing school, she was also the most well-suited to catch a wealthy husband.  Or heiress, in the case of her brothers, as her father wasn’t choosy about where the funds to save him came from.  Time in London before the Season began also provided Grace with the polish she had otherwise lacked with her country manners.

All of that time and effort and expense exerted in the hopes of securing a title for herself and funds for her father.

And Grace had attracted offers of marriage – several of them.

Handsome gentlemen of elegance and taste had offered for her.  She had men in trade vying for her hand, as well.  She also had a young viscount promise her his heart and soul – and she had foolishly promised him hers in return.  Back then, Grace had thought herself in love with the young man, though now she knew those feelings had been little more than lust.

Still, those early days in London had been, well, magical, for lack of a better word.

Unfortunately, her father had rejected all of those early offers for her hand, including the one from the viscount, whom Grace did actually care for a great deal.  The prospective suitors were either not wealthy enough or, if they did have a surplus of funds, the gentlemen in question were not eager to spend those funds to save a barony that was deep in debt and only becoming more so.

However, when Lord Richard Rowe, the elderly Earl of Colbourne, a man nearing his seventh decade, had offered for Grace’s hand, along with the assurances that he would pay off her father’s debts and add a bit more coin to the coffers as additional incentive, Grace had found herself saying her vows not quite a sennight after meeting the earl.  The very next day, she had departed London for Northumberland where she had become more nursemaid that wife to a dying man who had only bedded her once on their wedding night, and even then, just barely.

In short, Grace had been sold into marriage like the broodmare her father believed all women to be without a say in the rest of her life.  At the tender age of eighteen, all of her dreams had died and with them, any hope of the love and affection from a husband that she had longed for as a little girl.

On her wedding day, Grace had no way of knowing that the earl had been seeking a young woman to care for him in his dying days or that the earl already had three sons and two daughters and didn’t want or need more children.  Nor did she know that hers was to be a marriage in name only and that the only reason the earl had consummated the relationship was so that Grace could not claim the earl had neglected her in that fashion.  Or that the marriage was not legal.  But she had learned all of that very quickly in the days that followed, much to her disappointment.

If there was one bright spot, however, it was that Grace got on well enough with her new step-children, many of whom were older than she was.  She would hardly have called them close or loving, but they were cordial enough, which was something, she supposed.  When the earl passed away eight years later and left Grace a widow at the age of five and twenty, that favorable relationship continued, even if the old earl’s family was more inclined to view her as a nurse than a widow.

The new earl, Richard’s son Harry, also honored his father’s wish that Grace be given her own cottage at Wisteria House, one the many unentailed estates attached to the title.  Though she was more or less forbidden from seeking out a new husband and greatly discouraged from even discreetly taking a lover, Grace was otherwise free to do pretty much as she pleased.  She could live with, or at least tolerate, the lack of companionship, though she was quite often lonely.  She also suspected that her step-son was, to some degree, keeping her around and financially bound to him and the rest of the family in the belief that Grace could serve as his nursemaid in his later years as well.

Though Harry had accepted Grace as his father’s new wife and they got on well, Grace had always believed that the new earl thought himself just a bit better than she, as she had grown up in what had been close to poverty while he had been raised in extreme luxury.

To Harry, Grace was a commodity to some degree and while that bothered her, she was content to live as she was.  Or, if not content, too afraid to try to change her circumstances and defy what was expected of her by both the earl and Society.  In truth, she knew nothing else and wondered where on earth she might go if she did leave the safety of the earldom.  So she did not think or dream about such things.  There was little point.

Until the day the funds ran out.

Unlike his father, Harry had no sense of accounting or the value of money, and a wife who liked to spend that same money as if it grew freely on trees.  As the earldom sank deeper into financial distress, the new earl took money from various sources to keep himself out of debtors’ prison – including from the funds set aside by her late husband that were supposed to care for Grace into her own old age.  Those funds had been the one true kindness Richard had done for her.  He had provided her with an enormous settlement, likely because he felt guilty about essentially purchasing a nursemaid under the guise of securing a wife.  And a young wife at that.

Those funds should have lasted Grace until she was in her dotage.  Except they couldn’t when they were gone, pilfered and then spent by the new earl to keep his wife happy.  Grace also should have had a roof over her head for that same length of time but she didn’t.  The unentailed property where Grace had lived following her husband’s death had been sold three years ago in order to raise more funds to keep Colbourne afloat.

Grace, unable to face her step-son without flying into a rage, had worried that she might be cast out onto the streets.  It was not unheard of for dowagers to die in poverty, especially ones that had married much older men at a very tender age as she had done.  Fortunately for