by Mary Balogh
“You are taller than I expected,” he said, scooping her up in strong arms and sitting on the sofa with her on his lap. “Clara, my love, I want so much to be able to pledge my life and devotion to you and our child. Our children. But how can I be sure that I will not slip again and again into my old ways?”
“You can’t be sure, Freddie,” she said. “And I cannot vow to be always loving and kind to you. I wonder if happiness would be worth having if it did not have to be constantly worked on. When there is a quarrel or something worse between us, there will always be the joy of making up and the soothing balm of forgiveness. But I won’t ever allow you to feel worthless. You are worth everything in the whole world to me.”
She felt him give in finally to contentment as he settled her head against his shoulder and sighed.
“Besides,” she said, “I want to dance for Christmas and it will have to be with you, Freddie, because Robin claims to know only the Highland fling. I don’t think I will be quite ready for that, this Christmas at least.”
They chuckled together and then she raised her face to him. They kissed each other with deep hunger and with warm affection.
“And I want to go out riding with you,” she said. “With you and beside you when I gain more courage. And I want to lie in the grass beside the summerhouse with you when spring comes, among the crocuses and snowdrops. I will be getting large by that time. Oh, Freddie, I have done so much dreaming alone during the last few months.”
“Dream aloud to me now, then, my love,” he said, “and I’ll make your dreams mine.”
“I want to spend all night every night in bed beside you,” she said.
“Mmm,” he said.
“I want you here in the house with me when our baby is born,” she said. “I want to put him into your arms almost immediately afterward. I want to watch your eyes when you see him for the first time.”
“Or her,” he said.
“Or her. I want to go to London with you and meet your family. I want to go to Camilla’s wedding. I want to go to Primrose Park and see all the places where you played as a child. I want our own children to play there sometimes. With Daniel and Julia’s children. And Camilla and Malcolm’s.”
“Clara,” he said, “my neck is wet. You are not crying, are you?”
“Yes, I am, Freddie,” she said. “I have tried to suppress my dreams all this time. Now they are running riot.”
“Silly goose!” he said softly.
But when she raised her head to look up at him, it was to find that his own eyes were wet too, “A pair of silly geese,” she said. “Kiss me again, please, Freddie. But first say it once more.”
“I love you, silly goose,” he said. “And we will dance for Christmas. It is a promise. We will dance and dance.”
He kissed her again.
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Mary Balogh was born and educated in Wales and now lives with her husband in Saskatchewan, Canada. She has written more than one hundred historical novels and novellas, more than thirty of which have been New York Times bestsellers. They include the Bedwyn saga, the Simply quartet, the Huxtable quintet, and the seven-part Survivors’ Club series.
The Westcott Series
Someone to Love
Someone to Hold
Someone to Wed
The Survivors’ Club Septet
The Proposal
The Suitor
The Arrangement
The Escape
Only Enchanting
Only a Promise
Only a Kiss
Only Beloved
The Huxtable Quintet
First Comes Marriage
Then Comes Seduction
At Last Comes Love
Seducing An Angel
A Secret Affair
The Simply Quartet
Simply Unforgettable
Simply Love
Simply Magic
Simply Perfect
The Bedwyn Saga
Slightly Married
Slightly Wicked
Slightly Scandalous
Slightly Tempted
Slightly Sinful
Slightly Dangerous
The Bedwyn Prequels
One Night For Love
A Summer to Remember
The Mistress Trilogy
More Than A Mistress
No Man’s Mistress
The Secret Mistress
The Horsemen Trilogy
Indiscreet
Unforgiven
Irresistible
The Web Trilogy
The Gilded Web
Web of Love
The Devil’s Web
Standalone Novels
The Wood Nymph
A Chance Encounter
The Double Wager
A Masked Deception
A Certain Magic
An Unlikely Duchess
Lady with a Black Umbrella
Red Rose
Christmas Miracles
Christmas Gifts
Silent Melody
Heartless
Longing
Beyond the Sunrise
A Matter of Class
A Counterfeit Betrothal
The Notorious Rake
The Temporary Wife
A Promise of Spring
Lord Carew’s Bride
Dark Angel
A Christmas Bride
Christmas Beau
The Famous Heroine
The Plumed Bonnet
A Christmas Promise
A Precious Jewel
The Ideal Wife
The Secret Pearl
***COMING SOON***
Continue reading to enjoy excerpts from three new soon-to-be-released eBooks from Mary Balogh.
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Courting Julia
On Sale May 2017
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TEMPTING HARRIET
On Sale July 2017
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THE CONSTANT HEART
On Sale August 2017
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Courting Julia
Chapter 1
“They’ll come rushing from all corners of the globe as soon as I’m dead,” the Earl of Beaconswood said to his granddaughter—to his step-granddaughter, to be more accurate. The earl’s daughter had married Julia Maynard’s father when Julia, the child of his previous marriage, was five years old.
“Oh, Grandpapa,” Julia said, closing the book from which she had been reading aloud and frowning at the old man as he reclined back against his pillows and tried to smooth the sheet across his chest with gnarled and feeble hands. “Don’t say such things.”
“They’ll come racing all right,” he said. “And weeping pailfuls and roaring fury at you for not summoning them sooner, Jule. But we’ll cheat ’em, girl.” His chuckle turned into a cough.
“I meant don’t say that about dying,” Julia said, standing up to fold the sheet neatly and bending over him to kiss his forehead. His bushy white eyebrows tickled her chin.
“It’s true enough,” he said. “The body is worn out, Jule. Time to turn it in for a new one.” He chuckled again. “Time to turn up my toes.”
“You will be getting better now that the warm weather has come,” she said briskly. “Though I still think we should let everyone know that you are poorly, Grandpapa. 1 have had to lie to both Aunt Eunice and Aunt Sarah in the past month, assuring them both in reply to their letters that you are very well, thank you. It is not right. They should know. And it would be a comfort to you to have a little more company.”
“Bah!” he said, frowning ferociously from beneath bushy white eyebrows. “Company is what I don’t need, Jule. Everyone tiptoeing around and whispering and looking Friday-faced. And bringing me this gruel to make me feel better and that gruel and the other gruel. Bah!” He paused and wheezed for breath.
“Well,” Julia said after watching him in some concern until he had succeeded, “I am not going to change your mind about it, am I?” Though she would be the one blamed for it afterward. He was right about that but she did not express the thought out loud. After what? her mind asked and shied away from an answer. “Are you enjoying Gulliver’s Travels?”
“No better than 1 did when I first read it fifty years or so ago,” he said. “That Gulliver was a fool if ever there was one. No, I’ve been lying here thinking, Jule.”
She clucked her tongue. “So I was reading for nothing,” she said. “You were not even listening.”
“I like the sound of your voice,” he said. “Besides, you were reading for your own entertainment too, girl, or you are a fool for wasting a sunny afternoon sitting up here with a dying old man.”
“It is not a waste,” she said. “Grandpapa, you will get better. You were feeling quite spry yesterday. You said so.”
“Feeling spry these days means seeing a pretty chambermaid and knowing that once upon a time the sight would have meant something,” he said with another chuckle that turned into a cough.
“For shame,” Julia said, sitting back down again. "1 am not going to give you the satisfaction of blushing, Grandpapa.”
“You ain’t married,” the earl said, frowning and looking keenly at his granddaughter from beneath his eyebrows. “You know what that will mean after I am dead, Jule.”
She sighed. “Let’s not start on that topic again,” she said. “Would you like some tea, Grandpapa? Cook has made some of the little currant cakes you like so well. Shall I go and fetch some?”
“How old are you?” the earl asked.
Julia sighed again. Nothing would distract Grandpapa once he was launched upon his favorite topic. And he knew very well how old she was. “Twenty-one,” she said. “Aged and decrepit, Grandpapa. And definitely a spinster for life. Don’t start. Please?”
But he was already started and well launched. “You came back from your Season in London with your nose in the air and all your beaux rejected,” he said. “That was all of two years ago. And you have turned up your nose at every respectable young man I have brought here for your inspection since. You’ll be lucky if you really don’t end up a spinster, Jule.”
“I have never turned up my nose,” she said indignantly, falling into the trap of arguing with him, as she always did. “I have just not met anyone I cared to spend the rest of my life with, Grandpapa. There are worse fates than ending up a spinster, you know.”
“Are there?” he said gruffly, “You want to be turned over to the Maynards, Jule?”
No, she certainly did not. Her father’s elder brother and his wife and five children lived far to the north, almost in Scotland, and they had always made it clear that they would not relish having to take responsibility for Julia. Though they would if they had to, of course. They were all the direct family she had.
Julia held her peace and glared sullenly at her grandfather.
“It’ll be the Maynards after I am gone," the earl said. “You can’t expect my family to take you under their wing, can you, Jule?”
Grandpapa’s family consisted of two sisters and a sister-in-law on his side, and a brother-in-law and sister-in-law on Grandmama’s side, plus spouses and numerous nephews and nieces. Julia had grown up as one of them. Only in recent years had she realized fully that in truth she did not belong at all. Grandpapa had kept her constantly reminded with his repeated attempts to marry her off.
“You had better take Dickson while I am still alive to give a dowry,” the earl said. “He is steady enough, Jule. And respectable. I’ll have him summoned tomorrow. He’s less than ten miles away.”
“You will do no such thing,” Julia said crossly. “I would rather marry a frog than Sir Albert Dickson. If you won’t have tea, Grandpapa, then it is time for your sleep. You are tired and you have been talking too much. You know what the doctor said.”
“Old fool,” he said. “I don’t have too much longer to talk, Jule. It’s Dickson or the Maynards, girl. I don’t have time to find someone else for you.”
“Good,” she said tartly. “That is one small mercy, at least.”
But he grasped feebly for her wrist as she stood up, and tears sprang to her eyes. His hand was a thin, bloodless claw. Grandpapa had always been robust.
“Jule,” he said, “I wanted to see you settled, girl, before I go on my way. I feel an obligation to you because of your stepmother. She loved your father and you. And your papa left nothing. I love you as my own granddaughter.”
“I know, Grandpapa,” she said, swallowing tears. “Don’t worry about me. It is time for your sleep.”
He looked at her broodingly. “But I do worry,” he said, “What is going to happen to you, Jule?”
“I am going to go from this room,” she said, bending to kiss him once more, “so that you can rest. And then I am going to go outside for some air and sunshine. That is what is going to happen to me. Aunt Millie will look in a little later to see if you are awake and need anything.”
“I’ll be sure to be asleep, then,” the earl said. “Millie always shakes my pillows until they are all lumps and kicks the bed with her slippers so that all my bones jangle.”
Julia chuckled as she let herself quietly from the room. But amusement faded quickly. Grandpapa really was failing fast. She could no longer pretend, as she had all winter, that he would rally again once spring came. It was June, more summer than spring, and he was weaker than ever. He had not left his room since just after Christmas. He had not left his bed in three weeks or a month.
He really was dying, she thought, admitting the truth to herself for the first time. It was difficult to imagine the world without Grandpapa in it. And it was still difficult to realize that he was not really her grandfather at all. He had always treated her as if he were, perhaps because he had no grandchildren of his own. Her papa and her stepmother had died together in Italy three years after their marriage. There had been no children of the marriage. All they had left behind were debts.
Julia tapped on the door of Aunt Millie’s sitting room—Aunt Millie was Grandpapa’s maiden sister—opened the door quietly, and found her aunt asleep in her chair, her mouth open, her cap tilted rakishly over one eye. Julia closed the door softly. She would be sure to come back inside to check on her grandfather herself within the hour.
She proceeded on her way outside for a stroll in the formal gardens without stopping to pick up a shawl. It was a warm day despite the breeze. She breathed in the scent of flowers as she crossed the cobbled terrace and descended the wide stone steps to the gardens. It was going to be hard to move away, to have to stop thinking of Primrose Park as home. It had been home since she was five years old. She could not remember any other with any clarity.
Julia changed her mind about strolling along the graveled paths between the flower beds and box hedges and sat down instead on the second step from the bottom, clasping her knees and gazing across the colored heads of flowers. It seemed self-centered to be thinking about losing her home when Grandpapa was dying. As if her grief over what was happening had less to do with him as a person than with what he represented to her—comfort and security.
But she need not feel such guilt, she knew. She loved him dearly. He was the only parent figure she had known since the age of eight. There was Aunt Millie, of course, but Aunt Millie had always been all adither. Even as a child Julia had felt protective of her, almost as if their supposed roles were reversed.
Perhaps for Grandpapa's sake, Julia thought, she should have made a more determined effort to choose a husband. She could have been reasonable about it, choosing the least objectionable candidate. But the trouble was that she could not choose a husband with her reason. She was a romantic. A foolish one. For in looking for romantic perfection she knew that she was very likely to end up as a spinster, as Grandpapa always warned. Indeed, she was one and twenty already. But no, even to please G
randpapa she could not have married anyone who had yet shown an interest in her—or in the dowry Grandpapa was prepared to offer with her.
She did not really believe his threats. Grandpapa loved her and would not doom her to having to go to live with relatives who did not want her. No, he would provide for her, she was sure. She did not know details, but she did know that Grandpapa was enormously wealthy and that a great deal of his wealth and some of his property—including Primrose Park—was at his disposal, to be left to whomever he chose. He would leave her an allowance sufficient to enable her to live independently. She knew he would. In fact, he would probably leave her even more than that.
She was not really afraid for her future but only depressed by it. Soon there would be no Grandpapa and no Primrose Park. And no husband either. No grand romantic passion to set her on the path to the happily ever after. Sometimes life seemed very dreary. And her mood was not improved at all by the fact that she had disappointed her grandfather. He would have liked to see her contentedly married before he died.
Julia's attention was caught suddenly by movement beyond the gardens. A carriage had emerged from the trees far down the driveway and was making its way toward the house. Not a wagon or a gig, but a fine traveling carriage. Who was coming? It could not be any of the family, surely.
Grandpapa had given strict orders that none of them be informed of the poor state of his health, and the family never came until July or August.
She stood up and watched the carriage approach the terrace, shading her eyes against the sun.
He felt rather like a vulture, the Viscount Yorke thought as the house came into view. Primrose Park, with its neat Palladian manor and well-kept formal gardens and picturesque park, was neither the largest nor the most accessible of the Earl of Beaconswood’s estates, but it was the one where he had elected to live most of his life. And so it had become the focal point of family life, the place where everyone tended to gather during the summer months.