Elizabeth Beacon - One Final Season

I want you and I want you now, Kate challenged him furiously.

But why, Katherine, why do you suddenly want me so much? Edmund asked.

Because She almost let something betraying slip out, but stopped herself just in time, just as she always had when it came to her feelings for him.

Because Im irresistible? Because I make your world shift and brighten whenever I come into the room? Or is it just because Im the first man to get past your ice-queen defenses and make you feel the possibilities of being a real woman? he pressed.

I really cant imagine, she said with a superb attempt at frosty dignity.

Oh, I think you can, Kate, he murmured.

So you can prove to me Im just a foolish woman like any other you might care to kiss in the dark? I think you just did that, she said quietly.

If that was all I wanted, I could have done it perfectly well three years ago and got it out of the way, he said flatly.

Arrogant, boasting braggart that you are?

Adult, realistic man that I am now, he corrected.

One Final Season
Harlequin Historical #311July 2011

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 familys 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 cant 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.

One Final Season

ELIZABETH BEACON

Available from Harlequin Historical and
ELIZABETH BEACON

An Innocent Courtesan #221

Housemaid Heiress #230

A Less Than Perfect Lady #247

Captain Langthornes Proposal #255

Rebellious Rake, Innocent Governess #267

The Rake of Hollowhurst Castle #289

One Final Season #311

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Author Note

Welcome to One Final Season, the story of Miss Katherine Alstone and handsome, disillusioned Viscount Shuttleworth, in London to find a suitable wife as unlike the heartless beauty who carelessly dismissed him three years ago as she can be. While Kates story stands alone, her elder sister was featured in A Less Than Perfect Lady, and Kate also appeared in Rebellious Rake, Innocent Governess. By the end of that book, I knew Kate must have her own story one day.

The passionate, argumentative Alstone family have been special to me from the moment they sprang to life on the page, so I hope you like reading prickly, loyal Kates love story as much as I did writing it. And, as for Edmund, Lord Shuttleworth, Ill leave you to judge if hes worth enduring one final season for!

Contents

Chapter One

L ord Shuttleworth! Eiliane, the Marchioness of Pemberley and formerly Lady Rhys, exclaimed as she recognised with unaffected delight the vigorous young gentleman strolling towards them across Lady Finchleys ballroom. What a pleasure to see you again; it seems such an age since I saw you that I hardly recognised you.

I would have known you anywhere, my lady, and must offer my belated congratulations on your remarriage, the most desirable viscount currently on the marriage mart replied easily, whilst briefly eyeing the lady at Eiliane Pemberleys side as if trying to place her. Miss Alstone, I trust you are well?

Very well indeed, I thank you, my lord, Kate Alstone replied coolly, for if he hoped to fluster her by watching her with frost and mockery in his grey-green eyes he was doomed to disappointment.

Nonsense, Eiliane swept on, as if she had no idea Kate and Lord Shuttleworth had the least reason to be awkward together and were being over-polite out of sheer perversity. You sent a very proper letter and a handsome present, one I didnt have to consign to the back parlour for my own peace of mind, either, in case it gave me nightmares. You should see the epergne my new sister-in-law chose, probably for that purpose! Kate saw itisnt it a horror, my dear?

Indeed it is, but perhaps wed better not let her know we said so.

Shuttleworth wont tell her, and hes sure to agree with me when he finally sees it anyway; such a pity you couldnt attend our wedding, my boy, although it was a very quiet affair as Pemberley and I were both married before.

Aye, a very quiet affair for about two hundred of your closest friends, Kate muttered darkly, casting her far-too-innocent-looking friend and mentor a sharp look as she realised shed invited Lord Shuttleworth to her wedding last summer and not told her chief bridesmaid.

Not that hed condescended to accept, she added to her silent displeasure with both of them, because he doubtless knew she would be included in Eilianes vast adoptive family and obviously had no desire to meet or converse with her. That much had become very clear when shed glimpsed him exiting the first evening party shed attended this Season very shortly after she had arrived with a group of friends. Then there had been a trip to the theatre when hed chosen to visit a box no lady could dream of drifting into by design or accident and she wasnt fool enough to think he hadnt noticed her sitting in the one opposite. Watching him enjoy the company of one of the highest steppers of the demimonde and her current keeper had, Kate told herself, been almost amusing. If his lordship wanted it to make it perfectly plain he hadnt been wearing the willow for Kate these last three years, he was quite welcome to do so. At the very least it would provide an antidote to the ennui yet another Season might have held for her without his antics enlivening it.

And you know perfectly well that keeping it to even that number took the wisdom of Solomon and the tact of a whole diplomatic corps, Eiliane reminded her friend, with a reminiscent shudder at the very thought of arranging her own wedding to her and her new lords satisfaction.

Oh, I do, Kate agreed fervently, since shed been caught up in trying to defuse far too many arguments once the Marquiss relatives realised their twenty or thirty closest friends would not be added to the guest list so they could boast of attending the most exclusive and fiercely anticipated society wedding of the year.

Still, its done now, Eiliane said of her triumphant second marriage to a man who adored her as fervently as she did him.

Kate wondered how anyone could begrudge them such happiness and was secretly pleased that Edmund Worth obviously did not, at least if the warmth of his smile as he eyed her rather smug-looking friend was anything to go by.

Again, I congratulate you on that fact very sincerely, he said as a prelude to moving on, but Eiliane wasnt going to let him escape so lightly.

We will see you later, no doubt, as nobody could describe this affair as a crush and itll be impossible to avoid bumping into ones friends all night, dont you think? she said artlessly.

I do my best to avoid anything so unfashionable, he returned blandly, but Kate could see the tension about his firm mouth and the hunted expression in those silvery-green eyes even if her most partisan supporter wouldnt.

Eiliane deployed her most unexpected weapon, an awkward silence she quite failed to fill in her usual easy manner.

I think I see Julia Deben over there, Eiliane; perhaps we should join her before someone else annexes the best seats in the room and youre left with a mere rout chair, Kate managed in the hope of filling that horrible quietness and giving his lordship an excuse to go.