He held out his arm and she took it. "We're off to see the wizard.

Oooff."Was that?Leo whirled - and was promptly hit in the face by a second snowball. Holy shit. Was the princess of Eldovia really throwing snowballs at him?

Oh my god, you are from a fake Hallmark country," Leo deadpanned.

The earl narrowed his eyes as he hopped off his bay gelding and surveyed the deep green expanse of lawn surrounding the ancestral home. The graceful house, built atop and around an ancient abbey, wore its centuries of accretion with aplomb, as if it had always perched atop thisgentle slope. In the slanting late afternoon sun, the fading red-brick walls glowed. “My God, I hate the country,” he said.

The Earl of Blackstone didn’t seem particularly mysterious to Emily. In fact, as he stood there silently—except for that sneering laugh he’d tried to cover up—she could think of several other adjectives to add to the list next time Sarah was searching for one: rude, self-important, boorish. And, if one could judge by the slightly slack-jawed way he stared at her, perhaps even “simple.

Girls need love, not braids.

I think," he drawled. "This Hallmark movie is about to get a lot more interesting.