Catching Captain Nash (Dashing Widows #6)(42)

Everyone, adults and children, started to move toward the makeshift course to watch the fun. All except Morwenna and Robert who lingered behind on the rise with their new daughter. Amy was right. Morwenna was besotted. And so, she was delighted to note, was Jane’s papa.

“Anthony’s playing umpire again,” Robert said, frowning into the sun. At the finish line, Anthony Townsend, Lord Kenwick, towered over his delicate blond wife Fenella.

“At least he’s big enough to stop any fights,” Morwenna said with a fond laugh.

“Not that he gets much practice with his perfect wife and perfect children,” Robert said wryly. “He should come and pour oil on troubled waters at my house. That would really test his skills.”

Morwenna cast him a sardonic glance. “Your children are perfect.”

He rolled his eyes. “When they’re asleep. Maybe.”

“You wouldn’t have it any other way.”

He shook his dark head. “No, I love their spirit. They get it from their mother.”

She arched her eyebrows. “Are you saying she’s not perfect either?”

His smile held such a wealth of unconditional love, her breath caught. “She’s perfect for me.”

“Oh, Robert…” Even after all these years, he maintained the ability to turn her heart to syrup.

He leaned in, juggling the baby, and kissed her. “I love you, my darling.”

“And I love you.” She blinked away the misty haze in front of her eyes. “We’ve been lucky, haven’t we?”

They had, despite their years of heartbreak and separation. Robert had needed a long time to recover from his captivity and find his way on land instead of on the water, but they had made a good life in Devon. And Morwenna could never doubt how much he loved his family. And her. “Yes, we’ve been blessed.”

Holding Anne with one powerful arm, Robert slung the other around his wife’s shoulders. As Helena called “go” to start 1837’s Dashing Widows Stakes, Morwenna leaned against her husband in perfect contentment. She barely spared a glance for the riders down in the field.

As far as she was concerned, it didn’t matter a fig who won the Dashing Widows Stakes today. What mattered was that in the game of life, all the Dashing Widows had emerged victorious.



THE END





Continue reading for an excerpt from:





Pursuing Lord Pascal





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Book 4 in the Dashing Widows series



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Golden Days…



Famous for her agricultural innovations, Amy, Lady Mowbray has never had a romantical thought in her life. Well, apart from her short-lived crush on London’s handsomest man, Lord Pascal, when she was a brainless 14-year-old. She even chose her late husband because he owned the best herd of beef cattle in England!



But fate steps in and waltzes this practical widow out of her rustic retreat into the glamour of the London season. When Pascal pursues her, all her adolescent fantasies come true. And those fantasies turn disturbingly adult when grown-up desire enters the equation. Amy plunges headlong into a reckless affair that promises pleasure beyond her wildest dreams – until she discovers that this glittering world hides damaging secrets and painful revelations set to break a country girl’s tender heart.



All that glitters…



Gervaise Dacre, Lord Pascal needs to marry money to rescue his estate, devastated after a violent storm. He’s never much liked his reputation as London’s handsomest man, but it certainly comes in handy when the time arrives to seek a rich bride. Unfortunately, the current crop of debutantes bores him silly, and he finds himself praying for a sensible woman with a generous dowry.



When he meets Dashing Widow Amy Mowbray, it seems all his prayers have been answered. But his mercenary quest becomes dangerously complicated when he finds himself in thrall to the lovely widow. Soon he’s much more interested in passion than in pounds, shillings and pence. What happens if Amy discovers the sordid truth behind his whirlwind courtship? And if she does, will she see beyond his original, selfish motives to the ardent love that lies unspoken in his sinful heart?





Prologue





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Woodley Park, Leicestershire, November 1828



To a farmer, even winter’s dreary beginning had its purpose.

Or so Amy, Lady Mowbray, told herself as she stared out of the morning room window onto the landscape of her childhood. It was early on a gray day. Around her, the old house was blessedly quiet. That would change, once everyone was up.

Nash friends and family gathered to celebrate the christening of her brother Silas’s fourth child. The revels had extended late last night, but Amy, used to rising with the birds to tramp her fields at Warrington Grange, couldn’t sleep.

So she didn’t expect the door to open and reveal Sally Cowan, Countess of Norwood. “Lady Mowbray, I didn’t think anyone else was awake.”

Amy didn’t know Sally well. Recently the attractive widow had become friends with her sister-in-law Morwenna. Morwenna mostly lived in seclusion in Portsmouth, but she and Sally both supported a charity for indigent naval widows.