When a Girl Loves an Earl (Rescued from Ruin Book 5) by Elisa Braden Page B

would relent and converse with her, as he had about fishing, but those moments of connection were all too brief and infrequent. While she winced at his persistent rejections, she craved his company too much to abandon her Tannenbrook Hunt.
    Now, as she attempted to stitch the tail of a trout on her uneven square of linen, she felt three months of failure weighing upon her until her shoulders wanted to sag with it, until her throat swelled nearly shut with it. She could delay no longer. Papa deserved to be happy with Mrs. Cumberland. He deserved to see his daughter safely married after paying for a second season he could ill afford, to say nothing of the expense of traveling all the way to Northumberland.
    If she could not bring James around to accepting her as his wife before the end of the house party, then she would be forced to marry another. It was the only fair course for Papa.
    Every inch of her skin, every ounce of her blood, every thought in her mind rejected the notion of taking another man as her husband. Letting another man kiss her. Touch her. Father her children. No. She could not bear it.
    “If you take a bit more care with your needle, you should be able to draw the threads back through without knotting—”
    “Mrs. Cumberland,” Viola snapped. “Thank you, but I shall manage well enough on my own.”
    The woman’s mouth tightened, and she nodded primly before returning to her own work, smoothly pulling the thread tight on another perfect, invisible stitch.
    Aunt Marian awakened with a snort. “Have we arrived yet?”
    “The gatehouse is just ahead, Mama,” Penelope replied, her voice surprisingly low as she cast Viola an acidic glare. “Thank heavens.”
    A short while later, as they entered the grand hall, Viola took a deep breath and closed her eyes, savoring the relief of exiting the cramped coach. She stood alone and still in the center of the room. Behind her, Papa inquired after Mrs. Cumberland’s comfort, and Penelope honked out a laugh at something her mother said. The butler—a lanky, rust-haired man named Nash who managed to be both haughty and obsequious at once—directed footmen in the unloading of their coach.
    Viola stood apart from all of them. In the very center of the room, she opened her eyes and gazed up at wood-paneled walls rising twenty feet into a majestic vaulted ceiling. An enormous fireplace—larger than any she’d ever seen—anchored the right side of the hall while three arched openings at the back apparently led to a gallery of windows or glass doors, judging by the bright light streaming onto the floor.
    Distantly, she heard the clacking tick, rapid and scrambling, of paws upon polished stone. Spinning in a full circle, she looked about for the source of the sound.
    “Humphrey! Do calm yourself.” Lady Wallingham’s distinctive voice called moments before a waist-high, droopy-faced hound bounded through the left arch, charging straight for Viola. “Your enthusiasm is most undignified.”
    Upon seeing the folds and jowls flapping in rhythm with the dog’s pendulous ears, Viola’s heart skipped a beat. Upon being knocked nearly on her backside by the dog’s momentous leap, and receiving copious snuffling kisses with a long, wet tongue, she fell in love.
    “Humphrey! That is quite enough.”
    Viola could not help it. She giggled and hugged his neck, scratched his ears, and kissed his brown head. Dark, soulful, droopy eyes gazed up at her adoringly.
    “Like most males, you are making a cake of yourself over Miss Darling. Slobbering upon her will only result in her rightful disgust. Stop it at once.”
    Laughing in delight, Viola shook her head and gently eased the dog’s front paws to the floor. She bent forward and took his sweet face in her hands, touching his forehead with her own. “Later, we shall take a walk together,” she whispered. “Would you like that?”
    His tail wagged his hips comically as he emitted a deep whine of agreement.
    She gave his