The Subtle Craft of Courting Kate

Chapter One

Northampton, England

It was not the first time that Kate Littlefield had driven her sheep out to pasture only to find Lord Elliot sleeping upon the hillside and reeking of spirits, and she doubted it would be the last.

How it was possible for him to find any rest at all splayed out as he was in the itchy grass with the morning sun full in his face was beyond her understanding.

His coat was bunched beneath him, his cheek pillowed upon what appeared to be a rather large stone protruding from the ground, and he’d clearly lost one of his boots during whichever misadventure he’d gotten up to evening last. And yet, against all odds he was sleeping soundly, with a deep, rumbly snore curling up from his chest with every breath.

The sheep were long accustomed to this occasional intrusion into their grazing pasture, and mostly ambled around him, unbothered.

Kate, too, was long accustomed to it, though she found herself possessed of somewhat less grace about it than her sheep.

With a roll of her eyes and an exasperated sigh, Kate turned the shepherd’s crook in her hand, poked it against the sleeping man’s ribcage, and barked, “Elliot Holbrook, you get up this minute and get your miserable arse out of this field.”

A groan split the air, interrupting the steady stream of snores. Elliot lifted one hand to scratch at his tousled blond hair. “For Christ’s sake, Katie, have mercy on me. You’ve no idea what sort of night I’ve had.”

Kate gave a disdainful sniff. “Judging by the lingering stench of ale, I’d say a better one than you deserve.” Using the crook to brace herself, Kate crouched down beside him. “What mischief have you gotten yourself into this time? You were meant to be in London for the Season.”

All too briefly, his coffee-brown eyes flashed open. His brow wrinkled, nostrils flaring as he squinted against the advent of the morning sunlight, and he gave a dramatic flail of one arm as he draped it down over his eyes. “London is damned dangerous, Kate,” he drawled in a morose, pitiful tone.

Kate pursed her lips against the smile that threatened. “What, were you set upon by footpads?”

“Worse,” he said, with a little shrug of his shoulders that made his rumpled coat ride up further, scrunching beneath his back. “Mothers.”

“Not yours, surely,” Kate said.

“No, no.” A blasé wave of one hand. “Mother is still traveling on the continent. Per her last letter, she is enjoying Italy excessively. It’s other mothers that plague me at present.”

“Other mothers?”

“It’s the Season, Katie,” Elliot said with a delicate shudder, like some fragile maiden about to be overcome with a fit of the vapors. “There’s dozens and dozens of ladies on the market, all angling for a husband.”

“Is that all? You’re of an age to marry.

” And he had been for years. Twenty-eight at his last birthday, nearly half a year past now.

Kate set her crook aside and settled upon the grass on her bottom.

The sun hadn’t quite burned off the last of the morning dew just yet, but she had thick layers of petticoats beneath her dress, and what was left of the moisture wasn’t enough to permeate them.

“You’re a lord,” she said. “You know well enough what the Season entails.” Or he ought to have.

“I’m a younger son,” he said with a petulant frown. “I’ve only got a courtesy title, for Christ’s sake.”

A courtesy title—and a respectable inheritance from his father, which he had come into some years earlier. Perhaps the allowance he had received from his eldest brother prior to attaining his majority hadn’t been tempting enough, but his inheritance certainly would be.

As if he had sensed that sympathy for his plight would not be forthcoming, Elliot pitched his voice to a doleful tenor and said, “Devon says it’s past time for me to marry. Can you credit it, Katie?”

Devon was the current Duke of Longthorpe; the eldest of the three Holbrook brothers.

There was just a year between each of them; Devon, Andrew, and Elliot—and they had been raised here in Northampton, at Longthorpe Manor.

Kate had grown up alongside them, after a fashion, along with many of the other village children.

They’d been friends of a sort for twenty years at least, though naturally the familiarity they had had as children had diminished somewhat—at least with the elder two Holbrook brothers—as they’d aged of out of childhood. “Devon’s right,” she said.

“Et tu, Katie?” One dark eye peered reproachfully at her from beneath the muscle of his arm. “Besides, Devon isn’t even married! And Drew is older than I am—”

“Not by much.”

“But has Devon pressed him to marry? No!”

“Drew is a physician,” Kate said as she plucked at her skirts, which wanted to ride up over her folded knees. “He has got a respectable career in London. Probably he hasn’t got the time for a wife at the moment.”

“And I have?”

Kate issued a light laugh. “More than Drew, I’d imagine. When was the last time he spent all evening getting soused at the tavern?”

“Probably never,” Elliot allowed in a sulky mutter.

“Or overspent his allowance betting on cards?”

“I haven’t done that in years!” Elliot said defensively, his chin thrust out in a mulish expression.

“Or—”

Elliot heaved a sigh, casting his head back in defeat.

“Blast it, Kate, I do take your meaning. Drew is perfectly perfect in every conceivable regard, and I am the incurably irresponsible black sheep of the family—oof.” He wheezed as a straggling lamb pranced across his midsection in its efforts to catch up to its mother further up the field.

Kate smothered a giggle behind her palm.

It was true that Elliot had long been something of a scapegrace.

Even as a child, he had more or less always been into some scrape or another, causing minor scandals here and there with his irrepressible penchant for mischief.

Kate had long suspected that he had inherited every bit of wickedness that had skipped his elder brothers, causing enough trouble for any three children on his own.

That penchant for roguishness had followed him straight out of childhood, and clung to him still.

But despite it all, he was fun and kind, and in possession of a teasing smile and a flawless dimple which he had long learned to flash with a hapless shrug of his shoulders in such a manner that saw him swiftly forgiven for all manner of foibles.

Kate settled her chin in her palm. “So Devon has ordered you to marry?”

“Not as such,” Elliot grumbled as he extended his hand to her. “Help me up, Katie, there’s a damned boulder in my back.”

Kate grasped his warm hand in hers and helped him wrench himself upright into a seated position. “If you had not decided to nod off in the pasture—”

“It wasn’t a decision so much as an inevitability,” Elliot grunted as he yanked at his wrinkled coat. “Before you judge, Kate, perhaps you ought to try walking back home from the tavern six ales deep.”

“No, I thank you. And what has happened to your other boot?”

Elliot looked down at his stockinged foot and wiggled his toes, his brow furrowing in confusion. “I’ve no idea. But he made it known to society at large.”

Now it was Kate’s turn to be confused. “I beg your pardon?”

“Devon,” he said acidly. “He damned well made me into a sacrificial lamb upon the altar of marriage. Told anyone who would listen that I was seeking a wife. Might as well have put out an advertisement in the paper.” His head canted to one side as he cast his gaze upward reflectively.

“Now that I think on it, he truly might’ve done,” he said.

“At least I wouldn’t dare put it past him. ”

Kate wouldn’t have, either. Devon had always had a shrewd, serious bent, and even if she hadn’t much been in his company in recent years owing to the fact that he was now the duke and had a great many more responsibilities than he had had when they had all been children together, she could easily imagine the discerning, calculating boy she had once known now as a man grown, systematically dismantling problems still more efficiently.

The present problem, of course, being his ne’er-do-well youngest brother.

“I suppose it was a kindness,” she said. “He might’ve cut you off entirely.”

“Oh, no,” Elliot said snidely, with a disdainful curl of his lip. “I would rather he had. I could get by just fine with only my inheritance, you know. Perhaps I’d have to economize a bit—”

“No more betting on horse races, then?”

“Haven’t done that in ages,” Elliot said as he brushed a few stray bits of grass from the fine wool of his coat.

“I never was much good at it, besides. But I have got investments of my own, and the means to live comfortably even if Devon had decided to snip the financial strings he might otherwise pull. No,” he said caustically, “Devon decided to dangle me before the Ton like a choice cut of meat in a butcher’s window.

I had anticipated a pleasant Season, and he made it into a nightmare from the very first event I attended. ”

Fascinated, Kate tugged the end of her dark plait over her shoulder and worried the frayed bit of ribbon that bound it between her fingertips. “How so?”

“The mothers, Katie. The mothers!” Elliot threw up his hands in agitation. “Every mama with a marriageable daughter in London for the Season wasted no time at all in lobbing their precious little darlings straight at my head!”

Kate sniffed back a laugh and bit the inside of her lip in an effort to restrain her mirth. “Surely not directly at your head.”

“I assure you,” Elliot said severely, “had any of them had a trebuchet convenient to hand, I most likely would not have made it back here in one piece.”

“Pity,” Kate said, though she knew by Elliot’s deepening glower that she had not been entirely successful in disguising her amusement, “I have always enjoyed your stories of London. You’ve been gone little more than a week. Have you anything amusing to impart?”