The Ideal Countess by Katherine Grant - An Excerpt

He couldn’t help it – his eyes went straight to Alice. She looked at him, too. In a way, she was as lovely as she’d been the night before in the duke’s arms: her cheeks blushed red, her green eyes wide and bright. Only then, she had been staring up at a man in joy. What Hugh was receiving was pure hatred. 
He looked away. There was nothing to do but nod along with his mother. Smile at Lady Eastley. Bow to Miss Alice on his way out. And ignore that deep, whirling wish that somehow or another he could reverse her emotions. 
His mother’s plan had never been malicious. It was hardly even a plan, so much as a suggestion. She’d summoned him to her chambers in January, just before he returned to Cambridge, and laid out the grim news: she had fluid in her lungs, the doctor didn’t know how long she would last, and she’d like to see him married before she died. “I know you’ve been distracted by your plan for revolution and all that, but isn’t there some lady who has caught your affection?” 
It was a cruel time to ask him such a question. Hugh was so distraught over her diagnosis that he said the first name that came to mind: Alice. Of course, it wasn’t simply a name that popped onto his tongue. He’d admired Alice since he’d first started noticing girls, when at the Christmas ball she listened to his plans for inventing a machine to clear the roads of snow rather than get trapped in country houses for days on end, and her response was to ask if he could also invent a candy better than peppermint sticks. 
But his mother had reacted as if he harbored a deep-seated love for the girl, when really, he thought about her from time to time, mostly when on the road home in the snow or whenever he smelled peppermint. Yes, she was beautiful; yes, she was smart; yes, she was funny; yet that didn’t add up to Hugh pining to marry her from the bottom of his heart. 
Still, when the Season came around, Lady Windemere had written: Make your mother happy and have a June wedding, won’t you? She’d arranged to open up the house, ordered his new wardrobe, even accepted invitations on his behalf. And when he’d complained about the Marchioness of Leighster’s ball, she’d said, “Just dance with Miss Winpole, won’t you? That will be enough to make me happy.” 
He should have known that wasn’t true. Lady Windemere had never been known to be happy unless she had her way.
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