The Contrary Contessa — Susanne Marie Knight

Lexia Cappello, a Sicilian young lady, believes in Fortuna, or Lady Luck. When she was a child, she experienced Fortuna's hand--the gift of four colors of roses--and now believes her English stepbrother, Robert Weston, is destined to become her husband. The fact that she has seen Robert only once, on the day their parents married, doesn't deter her. Nor does it bother her that Robert is scornful of his father's new family, and has never troubled himself over the years to meet the additions to the Weston name: two daughters and a son. Even when she married an old Sicilian count and became the Contessa di Fabrianni, she never considered her marriage as anything but a minor detour toward her goal. Now a widow, plus the guardian of her recently orphaned sisters and brother, Lexia waits for Fortuna to somehow make good on its promise. Robert Weston, the Marquess of Rutherford, is a lover of all things British. Unfortunately, he is also intolerant of things that are not. Disgusted by his father's lack of civic duty by marrying a foreigner and living on the “primitive” island of Sicily, Robert administers his father's estate but refuses to have anything to do with his new family. Even his father's death three years ago doesn't soften Robert's heart toward his non-English relatives. However, when the woman his father married dies, Robert is forced to take action in the form of journeying to Sicily to “rescue” his two half-sisters and half-brother. As Westons, the children belong in England, not in a savage, foreign land. At first Robert is annoyed, then intrigued by his new-found Sicilian stepsister. The more he resists her, the more he finds he yearns to possess her. Can he overcome his pride to admit the error of his ways and win the Contrary Contessa's heart? Can Lexia convince this obstinate lord that his ignoble prejudice stands in the way of his future happiness?