Enticing the Earl by Nicole Byrd

her head, Lauryn made her way out of the carriage. When she could look up, she gazed in astonishment at the landscape before her.
    The land stretched out as flat and green as a billiard table. Waving fields of some type of grain moved in the constant breeze that made her glad for her warm navy jacket and, even then, she wrapped her arms about her body.
    And the sunlight—the sky was so amazingly blue and the light so clear and brilliant that she narrowed her eyes. After a moment she realized that the usual dulling coal smoke that always clouded London’s skies was absent, and the land was so flat, lacking the hills and dales of Yorkshire most familiar to her, that the sky seemed a bowl, surrounding them with an aura of pure sunlight. The light was clear and golden, slanting toward sunset but not yet turning rosy, and she thought she could hear a skylark faintly trilling with exuberant notes high above them in some distant corner of the sky. Dazed, she thought she might, like the bird, break into song.
    Looking much less forbidding than usual, Sutton smiled. With a slight shock, she realized that he loved his home shire.
    â€œIt’s beautiful,” she said slowly. “Yet…”
    â€œYet?”
    â€œI’ve always heard…”
    She hesitated again, and he waited.
    â€œI’ve always heard how dismal the Fens are,” she said, daring to be honest.
    â€œOh, they often are, offering gray dank days in winter when the winds howl, or even perilous when the spring floods come and overflow the canals built to drain the natural lowlands.” He nodded toward the flat lands around them. “But the land is very rich.” He leaned over and picked up a handful of soil, letting her see the deep black sod that he crumbled within his fingers before allowing it to fall back to earth. “It rewards the farmers, if you know how to treat it, how to humor its moods. And the land has its own beauty.”
    She could not dispute that, looking at the undulating grain and the flat land that stretched as far as she could see, though now she could also see ribbons of water stretching through the vegetation, and streaks of black earth showing beneath what she decided must be growing barley.
    She shivered as the wind gusted, and he motioned her back to the carriage. “Come, we’re quite close now to home,” he told her.
    Back in the shelter of the carriage, she leaned to look out the window as the team broke once more into a trot, and the vehicle jolted back into motion. If she lived here, would she ever get used to the flatness, after growing up in Yorkshire?
    What a strange thought—she was only staying a few weeks!
    Shaking her head at herself, she shivered again and wondered what the earl’s seat would look like.
    Within the hour, her questions were answered.
    The great house was built on a slight rise, like a small island amid the flat land that surrounded it. Probably built in the seventeenth century, she thought, a large house with wings reaching out to each side, and a central building with columns rising on either side of its massive doors.
    Horses’ hooves and wheels crunching on the gravel drive, the carriage pulled up in front of the great house, and Lauryn was eager to get out and stretch her limbs. She was conscious of the weariness caused by the long drive and of cramped muscles brought on by sitting for so long in the tight space.
    As footmen came out to untie the luggage and bring it in, the earl had already dismounted. A groom hurried up from behind the house, and Sutton tossed him the reins so that the servant might take the steed, now tossing its head wearily, away to the stables.
    â€œGive him an extra ration of oats, Wilson,” the earl said. “He has had a long ride.”
    Then the earl turned back and offered her his arm.
    Stern he might be, but he did not lack for manners, Lauryn thought, accepting with a grateful smile.
    â€œYou must be