title: The Count
author: Dela, Helena
description: They Say Married Life is Full of Surprises...
  
  
  What a proposal! Marry this fabulously wealthy, totally hunky guy who's a bona fide count in need of an heir. Have his baby. Live in luxury the rest of your life. Well, okay, there's a catch: thanks to a pesky family curse, the marriage is destined to be short-lived. Literally.
  
  Meet Ella, who doesn't believe in silly curses--until she spends a few months living in the ancestral castle, with frequent spectral visits from the lively bunch of former countesses who came before her. When they can tear themselves away from their favorite pastime, watching soap operas, her spirited predecessors convince her that she doesn't stand a ghost of a chance to get out of this marriage alive--and just when she was beginning to actually fall for her husband, too. But, then, what's one little curse in the face of true love?
  
  The Proposal
  
  
  He hesitated. "I know this must appear unusual to you--Dr. Schuber has explained that my family is regarded as unlucky, yes? It may not matter to you, but the Drachenfels are not without their honor, and I will do everything I can to ensure you are kept well, in a manner of your choosing. You will marry me?"
  
  It was hardly a romantic proposal, but the fact that there was doubt in his voice, that he had not assumed that I would jump at the chance, at the money, won me over.