Marquesses at the Masquerade(86)
Thank you for recounting your delightful dinner with Phoebe and her husband. I always thought that a dashing young gentleman with a passion for the theater would sweep away her heart. It’s rather ironic that she would fall passionately in love with a staid barrister. Alas, what he lacks in drama, he makes up for in kindness, adoration, and taking such good care of her. Her letters are filled with droll domestic stories, and still the ever-glorious Phoebe, she keeps me abreast of the latest London plays. Her accounts are far more amusing than the newspapers’ versions.
I’m grateful that Aunt Sally and her other daughters have come to us. She is recovering quite rapidly from her husband’s death and has been a great help to me in my confinement. She goes into the village and performs the charitable works that I would normally do. Already, she has made numerous friends. All ladies must consult her before buying fabric or having a gown made. I daresay, when you return, you will find that we are becoming the most fashionable village in all of England!
My love, I fear I must take you to task. You did not warn me that our new curate was excessively handsome and single. Before anything could be done about the alarming matter, Shelley’s heart fell victim. Now, the poor man is beyond consolation because he feels he cannot properly provide for her. As I blame you for this sad state, so you must rectify it. I think a wedding in the late summer should tidy up the situation nicely.
Last Friday, I received a letter from Mr. Visser congratulating me on my book’s publication. I had tears in my eyes as I read his fine praise of my work and my father’s. He asks me when I shall publish a second volume. I am wildly flattered, yet I fear that I haven’t the time, but still my head whirs with ideas. My father left so many papers, and the fields and moors here teem with beauty. My father would have loved it here. Sometimes, I imagine him and Mother walking arm-in-arm along the paths.
I love you, my dearest husband. I pray for your safe return to us. A part of me is missing when you are gone. I glance at your dining room chair thinking you will be there, or I start to search for you when I read an interesting article, and then I remember that you are gone. The nights are the cruelest. Away from me, you are even more present in my mind. It is simply not enough to console myself with memories of your tender embraces. I have stored up weeks and weeks of kisses and tender embraces for you when you come home. I’m so impatient that I fear that I will bestow them on you all at once when you arrive. Until that sweet moment, I keep you in my heart.
Your loving wife.
The End
A Note from Susanna
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Dear Gentle Reader, It’s been a true joy and blessing to work with Emily and Grace again. They are wonderfully supportive, creative, and intelligent ladies. Sometimes our writing process makes me feel like I’m ten again, asking my friends to play, except now we play with words instead of dolls and dollhouses.
I hope that you enjoyed Annalise and Exmore’s love story. If you would like to read more of my work, please visit my website to find excerpts from my other stories or sign up for my infrequent newsletter.
Happy reading, Susanna Ives
The Governess and Norse God
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by Grace Burrowes
To those who feel out of place at the ball, even when wearing a mask and carrying a hammer
Chapter One
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“You’ll make all the other Vikings jealous, Papa, for you look splendidly savage.”
Darien St. Ives, Marquess of Tyne, looked—and felt—a proper fool strutting about the nursery in trews, crossed garters, linen tunic, and fur cape.
“My choices were a highwayman, of which there will be dozens, a Titan, which would necessitate indecent attire, or this.”
“My papa is the best Viking ever,” Sylvie declared with the limitless loyalty of a seven-year-old. “Your longboat would be the longest, and the monasteries you sacked would be reduced to… to… mere reticules.”
It’s not that kind of sacking. Miss Fletcher, the girls’ governess, had instructed Tyne on the inappropriateness of correcting Sylvie’s word choices when the child was trying to be gracious. He knelt and scooped up his daughter, the only plunder worth capturing in the nursery.
“You think I cut a dash?”
Sylvie squeezed him about the neck. “The ladies will swoon at the sight of you. When you brandish your long sword, your enemies will tremble with mortal dread.”
The ladies would swoon with boredom. Tyne’s weapon of choice was a sharpened pencil most days, his shield an abacus. Solitude was his preferred fortress and the mathematical error his sworn foe. For a settled widower, the vast reaches of the marquessate’s estate ledger books were adventure enough.
“Papa, you forgot to shave.”
This worried the girl. She was easily worried, having lost her mother at the age of four and not having found Miss Fletcher until six months ago. The intervening two and a half years had been a succession of failures in the governess department, for which Tyne blamed himself.
As heir to a marquessate, he’d had governors and tutors from the age of three. The lot of them had been priggish, sedentary, and forever spouting rules.