Virginia Heath - Her Enemy At The Altar

Kissing Aaron Wincanton was nothing like she’d expected kissing to be.

Not only did she feel it on her lips, she felt it in her legs as well. They were oddly unsteady. Connie did not notice the passing of time, nor exactly when the kiss changed into something more visceral, but one moment she was standing in his arms, upset, and the next she was almost reclining on the sofa, with her hands fisted in his dark hair and his large, warm palm sliding over the silk of her stockings until it rested scandalously on the bare skin above her garter. It felt glorious to be wanted this way, and by a man who had no interest in her dowry or her prospects.

He was kissing her.

Connie.

And she could tell by the way his breathing was ragged and the way his heart hammered against his ribs that he was as lost in the kiss as she. Finally she was attractive and desirable to someone. She felt beautiful and womanly and alive.

Author Note

Shortly after my daughter started school she came home worried. When I asked her what had happened she held up her hands and said that she thought there was something wrong with her. ‘My hands and feet are too big.’

This had all come about because her teacher had innocently thought that it might be a good idea to measure all the new students, take handprints and footprints, and create a graph in the classroom showing their varying sizes. Whilst I’m sure she meant well, it served to enlighten my daughter to the fact that she was different—she was tall—and it took years for that self-consciousness to go.

Any normal person would not dream of walking up to a complete stranger and saying, ‘You’re fat, aren’t you?’ Or, ‘you’re ugly.’ Or, ‘You’re bald.’ However, the majority of the population think it is perfectly acceptable to say, ‘You’re tall, aren’t you?’ As if the person they are speaking to is somehow not aware of that fact!

My heroine, Constance, is also tall. In a world where the ideal woman is supposed to be delicate and fragile, she stands out—and desperately wishes that she didn’t. She is convinced that no man will ever want her, so behaves in a way that actively discourages any potential suitor in an attempt to guard her heart. Fortunately Aaron Wincanton is not the slightest bit afraid of her, something Connie finds most disconcerting …

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When VIRGINIA HEATHwas a little girl it took her ages to fall asleep, so she made up stories in her head to help pass the time while she was staring at the ceiling. As she got older the stories became more complicated—sometimes taking weeks to get to their happy ending. One day she decided to embrace her insomnia and start writing them down. Virginia lives in Essex with her wonderful husband and two teenagers. It still takes her for ever to fall asleep …

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For Katie.

And all of the other beautiful tall girls out there.

Contents

Cover

Introduction

Author Note

Title Page

About the Author

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

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Extract

Copyright

Chapter One

A London ballroom—November 1815

He was surrounded by the usual gaggle of giggling girls who found him charming. Fortunately, mused Lady Constance Stuart as she watched him from the opposite side of the ballroom, she was not one of them. Like his father, Aaron Wincanton had hair as dark as night and a heart as black as sin, and Constance was predisposed to hate him with a vengeance. But there was something about Aaron Wincanton that had always grated. Perhaps it was his cocky arrogance, or perhaps it was the way he constantly flirted with any woman in possession of a pulse, or maybe it was simply the fact that he was the most irritatingly handsome man in the room, but whatever it was she had developed a deep well of loathing reserved especially for him.

The gaggle of silly girls all stepped back at his command and Constance watched in reluctant fascination as Aaron Wincanton held an unopened champagne bottle upright in his palm. He had obviously procured a sword from someone and held it aloft in his right hand with far more flourish than was necessary. The blade glinted in the light of the chandeliers above, attracting even more attention to the exciting spectacle at the edge of the dance floor. He lay the flat of the blade against the side of the bottle and his mewling disciples began to count out loud in squeaking excitement. ‘One... Two...’

On three he slid the blade swiftly upwards against the glass, slicing off the cork and the neck of the bottle in one, deadly clean cut. Foaming champagne spilled from the top of the bottle like a fountain and the audience all held out their wine glasses for him to fill or clapped at the audaciousness of the trick.

As if he knew that she would be watching him, his eyes languidly lifted and locked on hers. Before she could look away, he was already smiling smugly and winked at her in that oh-so-arrogant way of his that suggested that he just knew she had been staring at him again. It was galling.

Irritated beyond measure at the man, and at her own stupidity at being caught gawping at him yet again, Constance forced her eyes to another part of the ballroom. The part that she had been deftly avoiding. For the third time this evening she spied her new fiancé, the Marquis of Deal, leering down Penelope Rothman’s ample cleavage. Despite the fact that her father had already instructed her to ignore it, explaining that a good wife understands that a husband might—from time to time—seek the company of other women, Constance still struggled to do so. She and the marquis had been engaged less than a fortnight. And he had chosen her over Penelope. Surely he could keep his urges under control for such a short period of time out of respect for his future wife?

Unless this was a bitter taste of the life she was destined to have with the man? Despite the fact that the marriage had been arranged, Constance had hoped that they might find some sort of happiness together. Secretly, she had nurtured the belief that he might, one day, actually fall in love with her. That the Marquis of Deal would see beyond the hard exterior she had always presented to the world as a defence mechanism, find some beauty in the unruly, unsubtle, red hair that did its own thing and the tall, gangly, unimpressive figure, and uncover the real woman who lay beneath. The one who felt things a little too deeply and worried constantly that she was not quite good enough. What an idiotic, hopeless fool she was to have such a ludicrous dream!