Excerpt from "How I Met My Countess" by Elizabeth Boyle

“Still, you might consider returning to London for the Season,” Lucy continued blithering on like her sister, Mariana might, “so as to find a wife.”

“A wha-a-a-t?”

She swore his shudder ran all way down to his boots.

So the Earl of Clifton had a fear of matrimony. That might work in her favor.

“A wife,” she supplied. “A countess. A lady of good bloodlines to supply you with an heir and a spare.”

“Yes, yes,” he said. “I know what a wife is for.”

“Aren’t you worried about leaving your title without an heir?” She paused and lowered her voice. “If you don’t come back, that is.”

He glanced over at her, a hint of annoyance flashing in his eyes.

Oh, she’d hit the mark with that one.

“I have an uncle who is in line,” he said stiffly.

“Excellent. Is he married?”

“Yes.”

“A sensible fellow, then?”

There was a long, measured pause from the earl. “Not particularly.”

“How unfortunate. But perhaps he has heirs with the necessary qualifications?” she asked.

“Yes. Two sons.” The answer came out like a dog snapping at a bone.

Lucy pressed her lips together to keep from grinning. Oh, she had him now. Then she composed her next sally very carefully. If only so it landed like a cannonball at his feet.

“So you’ll marry when you return—that is to say if you return.”

His brows knit together and his arm stiffened.

Lucy wondered if, perhaps, she might have pushed him too far.

“I’ll return,” he said this with a finality that should have been enough right there to end the subject, that is if this had been an ordinary polite conversation.

But it wasn’t enough to stop Lucy.

“Of course you will, my lord. Most certainly,” she said, patting his arm as if consoling him over a lost wager. And a paltry one at that. Then she continued, “What sort of lady will you look for?”

“Excuse me?” He stumbled a bit and Lucy waited for him to get his footing and composure realigned before she once again thrust her question into his chest like a dagger.

“Your countess? However will you know her when you meet her?”

“I haven’t given it much thought.” Again his tone suggested that the subject was finished.

But oh, Lucy wasn’t. “That is where most men fail in these sort of things.”

“Fail?”

“Yes, fail. Utterly. You men don’t give enough consideration into the sort of woman you want to spend your life with. Instead you rather just sort of pick, like one might a race horse.”

“There is more to choosing a bride than that,” he said, in a stuffy sort of manner.

“How so?” she asked innocently, as if such matters were well beyond her ken. Then again, he hadn’t he least notion that she was leading him into a trap.

Both literally and figuratively.

“Well, I suppose I will have to consider a lady’s bloodlines,” he told her, in such a pompous manner that Lucy almost wished Rusty and Sammy would arrive now and save her from this lofty lecture. “Her education should be impeccable, and I will have to examine her suitability, her countenance, the way she holds herself in public.”

“Exactly as I said. Just as one chooses a racehorse,” Lucy pointed out.

“Not at all the same thing.”

She pulled to a stop. “By bloodlines, training and the turn of her lines. Isn’t that what you said?”

His jaws worked together, his gaze fixed and narrowed on the road ahead. “Yes.”

“Just like a racehorse, my lord.” And with that, she tugged him back into the track in the road and they continued on in silence.