The Making Of Baron Haversmere

A wolf in gentleman’s clothing…

She might be the making of him

American Joe Steton is visiting his estate in England, bringing his straight-talking attitude and rugged manners with him, much to the ton’s disapproval! Respectable widow Olivia Shaw offers to smooth his edges and make him an English gentleman, and Joe can’t resist such an intriguing instructor. He has wealth and a title—yet how can he give her his heart when his real life is an ocean away?

CAROL ARENS delights in tossing fictional characters into hot water, watching them steam, and then giving them a happily-ever-after. When she’s not writing she enjoys spending time with her family, beach-camping or lounging about in a mountain cabin. At home, she enjoys playing with her grandchildren and gardening. During rare spare moments you will find her snuggled up with a good book. Carol enjoys hearing from readers at carolarens@yahoo.com or on Facebook.

Also by Carol Arens

Dreaming of a Western Christmas

Western Christmas Proposals

The Cowboy’s Cinderella

Western Christmas Brides

The Rancher’s Inconvenient Bride

A Ranch to Call Home

A Texas Christmas Reunion

The Earl’s American Heiress

Rescued by the Viscount’s Ring

The Walker Twins miniseries

Wed to the Montana Cowboy

Wed to the Texas Outlaw

Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk.

The Making of Baron Haversmere

Carol Arens

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ISBN: 978-0-008-90151-6

THE MAKING OF BARON HAVERSMERE

© 2020 Carol Arens

Published in Great Britain 2020

by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

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Dedicated to Wade Matthew.

Your quick-witted humor keeps us laughing.

We are blessed by your loving spirit.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

About the Author

Booklist

Title Page

Copyright

Note to Readers

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Extract

About the Publisher

Chapter One

London—third day of spring, 1890

Lady Olivia Shaw kept a tight hold of her five-year-old son’s hand even though he was capable of keeping pace beside her. This early in the morning fog swirled along the path, twining eerily among the tombs of Kensal Green Cemetery.

Naturally she did not expect a vaporous spirit to slither into view. That was nonsense.

What was not nonsense was the possibility of there being a thief—or worse, a kidnapper—lurking in the mist. Yes, any mother with an ounce of caution would be aware that a man of evil intent might be listening to their footsteps and waiting to pounce.

Perhaps she ought to have waited until the fog lifted and there were other mourners to keep company with.

Of course she could not have. Her appointments for the day were a few too many as it was. In order to visit her late brother’s grave, it must be done at this early hour.

With all her family aboard ship to America, the running of Fencroft fell to her and she intended to do a first-rate job of it.

If only birds would awake and sing, the mood of the place would improve dramatically. Birdsong had a way of brightening any situation, of cheering the bluest heart.

‘Mother…’ Victor wriggled his fingers from her grasp ‘…you are holding too tight.’

She gazed down at her only child, pinned him with a stern look, then reclaimed his hand, gripping it even more firmly.

‘Perhaps so, but you do have a habit of disappearing, my boy. If you pull such a stunt here, I’ll have the devil of a time finding you.’

If she could have, she would have left him back at Fencroft House in the care of his governess, but he no longer had one. The lady had up and married without warning and left Olivia at a loss.

‘I miss everyone,’ Victor said, dragging his feet, which indicated he was about to express a complaint. ‘Why did we not go to visit America with them?’

‘Because it is a very long way across the Atlantic Ocean.’ She could scarcely credit that her sister-in-law, Clementine, had taken her fourteen adopted children on such a journey. ‘They will be gone for a long time. Someone must stay behind and see to the affairs of Fencroft.’

Poor Victor was naturally bored and lonely.

‘But there are cowboys in America!’ Add envious to bored and lonely.

He yanked his hand from hers yet again. Where was her adorable toddler? The one who wanted nothing more than to gain his mother’s approval? Left behind somewhere between his fourth and his fifth birthday, she supposed.

Oh, but he was a handsome child. She cupped his upturned face in her palm. His wavy blond hair and his sky-blue eyes were quite her undoing. She would be for ever grateful that he looked nothing like her faithless late husband.

It was his uncle, Oliver—Olivia’s twin—she saw blinking up at her.

‘You would only be disappointed if you met one, Victor. Cowboys are not the bold heroes you read about in your storybooks.’

‘Yes, they are, Mother. I know it!’

Around a bend in the path a stone angel kneeling in prayer at the foot the Fifth Earl of Fencroft’s tomb came into view. How odd that it appeared to move when fog whorled about cold damp marble.

It was only good common sense that made her certain it was a trick of shadow and mist that made the wings appear to tremble. If she did not know better, she would think they were about to unfurl and take to the heavens.

To fly away suddenly, just as Oliver had. But it had not been so sudden, really. Her brother had been sick for most of his life. It only seemed sudden because he had been laughing and smiling over a game of whist—and then he was just gone.

‘Here we are.’ She knelt, placing the bouquet of roses she carried at the foot of the tomb. ‘Would you like to say something to your uncle?’

‘Where is he?’ Victor frowned at the sculpture. If she knew her son at all, and she did, he was wondering if his uncle had somehow turned into a marble figure.

‘That is not him. Uncle Oliver is in Heaven.’

‘Then why are we here? Ought we not go talk to him in Heaven?’

‘That is not how it is done. We talk to him here and he hears us there.’

‘Oh,’ he said with a nod. ‘Good morning, Uncle. I miss you. I suppose you know all your dead neighbours by now. Might there be any cowboys here I can talk to?’

‘Victor Shaw!’ Even as she opened her mouth to scold her son, she heard, not with her ears, of course, but rather a faraway echo in her heart of her brother’s laughter.

Oliver saw humour in everything.

‘I’m sure there are no cowboys in Kensal Green.’

‘Might be.’

There was more likely to be a criminal lurking about than a cowboy. She glanced about, wishing her nerves were not so on edge.

Perhaps she ought to have accepted her carriage driver’s offer to accompany her, but Mr Creed had spent a late night in the stable with a newly purchased horse who was nervous about unfamiliar surrounds. It was only right for him to remain in the carriage and get some rest while she paid her call on Oliver.

Now though, with the cemetery grounds so damp and still, with shadows that might be hiding—things—she rather wished for his large presence.

Even knowing, as she now did, that the Abductor who was rumoured to have plagued London recently was not in fact an actual villain, she had been scared by the incident. London was a large and dangerous city. There might still be evil men who would kidnap innocent children—her innocent child, not to put a fine point on it.

The mother of an adventurous boy could not be too careful.

‘I’m going to have a few words with your uncle. You can play nearby, but only where I can see you.’

‘May I have a puppy, Mother?’

‘What? No, you may not!’

‘If I had one, he could follow me and when you wanted to find me he could bark.’

‘How would he know—? The point is, you will stay close by while I speak with your uncle.’

‘Heaven is quite far off. I do not think he will hear you.’

‘Oh, but he will, my dear, with his heart. Hearts hear things that ears cannot.’

‘Dogs can hear everything with their ears and mostly cowboys have dogs.’

What was there to do but shake her head, sit on the bench beside the tomb and laugh inside at his persistence?

Perhaps she would get him a small pup, after all. Getting him a cowboy was quite beyond her, but a puppy, yes, she could manage that.

‘Hello, Oliver,’ she murmured softly, staring at the cross which the angel knelt in front of.

The marble bench felt chilly, hard and cold even through layers of clothing. She would speak with her brother for a short time and then take her son back to the coach, to warmth and security.

Really, she ought not to be so fearful. She was sturdier than that. Or had been at one time.

Life—the behaviour of men, to be more precise—had changed her. The brother she was here to visit being one of them.

There was Heath, of course. She did trust her younger brother, but he was off to America. Which left her feeling more vulnerable than ever. Until he returned, any problem that arose for the estate would be hers to deal with.

‘You left quite a mess behind when you died. I was angry at you for a time. But you needn’t worry. I have forgiven you and it has all been sorted out thanks to the Macooishes from America. Our brother went through with the marriage which you had intended to be our financial salvation—not to Madeline, but to her cousin Clementine. It is because of her that the destitution you left us with is settled in our favour. I cannot imagine why you thought that college chum of yours was qualified to handle the estate funds. Did you know that creditors came knocking upon our doors? Yes, but I did say I forgive you and I will speak no more of it. Everything down here is going rather splendidly for now. Although all the family has sailed off for a holiday in America. And when I say all—well, let me tell you how the family has grown…’

Fog in this cemetery was a different breed of mist than what Joe had grown up with in the wilds of Wyoming. A body would expect London fog to be a more docile sort, citified and tame, but it wasn’t so. Back home the stuff was fresh, cool and moist to breathe.

This creeping vapour was neither. There was a yellow taint to it that made a man cough if he breathed too deeply.

He figured it hid a lot of secrets.

‘It would, I reckon,’ he said to Sir Bristle. The wolfish dog trotting beside him glanced up, swishing his broom-like tail. ‘It is a graveyard.’

One which he would rather not be visiting. Wouldn’t be if it were not for the fact that the woman who gave birth to him was laid to rest here.

Joe’s boots, the leather well worn and feeling more familiar to his feet than bare ground did, crunched the gravel and broke the early morning stillness.

Reading the names on the tombstones while he walked, he tried to summon an image of his mother. It was a sad thing that he could not.

It hurt that he did not recall what she looked like, or smelled like even. What had her voice sounded like singing him a lullaby? He knew none of the things a boy should know.

All he did know was what his father had told him. Mother was as pretty as a porcelain doll, more angel than woman. Father’s heart had shattered when she died a month before giving birth to their second child. Not of the complications of childbirth as sometimes happened, but of a lung ailment.

Grandmother Hampton blamed her daughter’s death on Pa. Had he not brought her delicate child to such a damp place, she would not have sickened. It was because of Lady Hampton that Mother was buried here in London and not at the estate near Grasmere.

Pa always said her grief had been bitter and so he had allowed his wife to buried in London, hoping to give the woman a bit of relief.

‘“Evan Green, Viscount Clament”,’ he read, then passed by searching the shadows for the one he sought. ‘“Lady Emily Thornton”—not you either.’

Pa had told him to look for a standing angel, her marble arms wrapped about a woman cradling her infant.

‘Sure are a lot of stone angels.’ The dog huffed a soft woof in apparent agreement.

Joe passed by no less than a dozen marble guardians keeping eternal watch.

A small path turned off the wide, central one he strode down. It looked pretty, lined with trees whose newly leafed branches formed a wisp-like canopy in the fog.

He turned down it. The gravestones here were less ornate than the ones on the central path. Barons did not rate as high as dukes, he’d been told. Growing up, Joe had never paid a lot of mind to life across the ocean. As an adult, cattle ranching took up the greater portion of his attention.

As interesting as he found London to be, he longed to return to the great open spaces of Wyoming, where the land was as big as the sky, where he could gallop across open ground on his horse, to shout out loud and feel one with the wind.

‘What do you think, Sir Bristle? Will we go home by summer’s end?’

Drizzle caused by the heavy mist tapped the brim of his Stetson.

The dog shook himself, but did not answer one way or another.

‘I suppose it depends upon how long it takes to—’

Ah, just there. The tomb he’d been searching for loomed suddenly in front of him. He took off his hat, held it in his fist and read the name on the marker just to be sure.

‘“Violet Hampton Steton, Baroness Haversmere”.’

He hadn’t expected his heart to weep, but it did. Somehow seeing his mother’s name upon the stone brought tears to the corners of his eyes.

Being not quite three years old when she died, he could not recall anything about her, but he must remember…her.

There was not a bench to sit on so he settled on the wet grass beside the tomb. He touched the marble, Sir Bristle pressed close beside him, whining and trying to lick his face. ‘I reckon you were expecting Pa.’

He didn’t know for a fact that his mother could hear him, but he went on as if she could. It was a thing folks did in a cemetery, speak out loud to the dead. For some reason it seemed right.

‘Pa wasn’t feeling up to making his usual trip so he sent me to tend to business at Haversmere.’ Maybe Joe ought to have made the trip to England with his father once or twice, but Pa had needed him to remain on the ranch and keep it going in his absence. ‘He said to tell you not to worry about him. He’s only feeling tired and will pay you a call when he comes next year.’

A sudden breeze came up, ruffled his hair, then faded as quickly as it had risen. It was the oddest sensation, almost as if his hair had been tenderly stroked.

‘Was that you?’ he asked over the lump swelling in his throat.

It had to have been a trick of imagination, but he did wonder why Sir Bristle suddenly looked up and thumped his tail.

He’d caught the scent of a squirrel foraging his breakfast, more than likely.

‘I wish I remembered you…you and me…together.’

He sat silently, trying to.

It wasn’t as if there had not been a woman he called ‘Ma’ for most of his life.

His father had left Haversmere behind, having been being broken with grief and guilt over his wife’s death. What if the climate had been the cause of it just as her mother claimed? He’d purchased a ranch in Wyoming hoping for a new start.

He’d got one. When Joe was seven years old, Esmeralda Viella came into their lives. She healed what was broken in both of their hearts. When she and Pa added Roselina to the family, life became complete again.

‘I could use some help, if you are able to influence anything here below.’

He listened for a moment, but nothing happened to make him think she was able.

‘I need to find a husband for Roselina. You might know that she is my sister.’ Again, no breeze, no odd turning of a leaf, gave hint of what she did or did not know of this conversation. ‘My stepmother has given me the task of finding her a suitable fellow. She’s set on her daughter making a society marriage.’

Ma had worked towards this goal for the better part of two years. She had even hired an instructor to teach Roselina proper deportment and current fashion.

His sister took to the training well, but Joe wasn’t sure if she went along with the tutelage because she wanted to be a ‘lady’ or if she longed for a bit of adventure.

In her eighteen years on the ranch she had seen little of gentle society. Parties were few and far between. If Joe made a guess, his sister was looking for fun more than marriage.

For all that Ma had told him not to bring her home without a title, he was not sure this was anything he had control over.

He could not help but wonder why Ma would want this. If his sister did marry a British fellow, she probably would not come home.

The thought made him hope he did not succeed in finding her a husband.

He might not, especially once they made the trip north to the Lake District. He wasn’t sure how many eligible nobles would come calling at Haversmere. Wasn’t London the place they looked for brides?

For all that he had never been to Haversmere, he understood the area to be sparsely inhabited, with more sheep than folks.

Sir Bristle had never seen a sheep. Joe couldn’t help but wonder how he would react to seeing a critter as woolly as he was.

All of sudden the dog stood up, cocked his big head, ears twitching.

‘What is it, boy?’ Joe came to his feet, glancing about.

The dog took this stance when there was something he felt Joe needed to attend to. More often than not it was a straying calf. Once it had been a lost kitten, but once it had been Roselina, so Joe always paid attention to the dog’s message.

‘Take me to it.’

With a woof the dog set off at a trot. Joe dashed after him, back to the main path, then down a narrower one that twisted half-a-dozen times. The further down it he went the darker it got. This part of the cemetery appeared to be neglected and densely overgrown with vegetation.

‘Good boy,’ he said to the dog.

It was always amazing to Joe that Sir Bristle was able to hear a sound from so far away and find his way to it.

After five minutes of twists and turns, the dog stopped, sniffed the ground, then disappeared behind a chipped and mossy tomb.

‘Wolf!’ a young, high-pitched voice screeched.

On a dash, Joe rounded the grave. A young boy crouched on the ground, his face buried in his arms while he wept in apparent terror of the beast sniffing his shoulder.

‘Howdy, son,’ he said. ‘Get yourself lost?’

The boy looked up. His tear-streaked face broke into a wide grin.

‘And so, last autumn was an adventure since our brother did turn out to be the Abductor. But, of course, he was not the fiend people believed him to be.’ Olivia glanced up from her story to make sure Victor was still hunting for bugs under damp stones. ‘Victor? Come out where I can see you. As you can expect, Heath was arrested when his wife accidentally—Victor?’

He ought to have answered by now. What on earth was she to do with him? It was one thing for him to wander off at the town house, but quite another out here where—‘Victor!’

She sprang up from the bench, spun about looking left, then right. Was it her imagination that the fog had grown even thicker while she spoke to Oliver?

It was not! How could she have failed to notice the change? Worse, how could she have failed to hear her son sneak away?

What a thoughtless, inattentive mother she was! She knew her son’s proclivity to hide and she had let down her guard.

He had sneaked off to find a cowboy. She would bet her life on it. But who might he have come across instead?

‘Victor!’

She dashed along the path, trying to stave off the panic constricting her chest. So many smaller paths led off from this central one. Which could he have taken?

Was he still in the cemetery or had someone carried him off? How was she to go on if he had been…?