by Barbara Metzger, Connie Brockway, Casey Claybourne; Catherine Anderson
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
A Perfect Fit
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Glad Rags
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Something Special
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Epilogue
Beautiful Gifts
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Epilogue
Say “I do” to these four stories of wedded bliss from your favorite authors. . . .
Barbara Metzger
“A doyen of humorous, Regency-era romance writing, Metzger pens in the witty tradition of historical romance authors Marion Devon and Marion Chesney.”
—Publishers Weekly
Connie Brockway
“[Her] work brims with warmth, wit, sensuality, and intelligence.”
—Amanda Quick
“Connie Brockway’s powerful characters grab you by the heartstrings and pull you into their world, their hearts, and their love.”
—Betina Krahn
Casey Claybourne
“A writer of extraordinary talent. [She] crafts stories you’ll cherish forever.”
—Christina Dodd
Catherine Anderson
“[She] is an amazing talent. Her love stories are tender and earthy, passionate and poignant—and always unusual.”
—Elizabeth Lowell
“An Anderson book is a guaranteed good read.”
—Romantic Times
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First published by Onyx, an imprint of New American Library, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
First Printing, November 2005
Copyright © Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 2005
A Perfect Fit copyright © Barbara Metzger, 2005
Glad Rags copyright © Connie Brockway, 2005
Something Special copyright © Casey Mickle, 2005
Prologue, Epilogue, and Beautiful Gifts copyright © Adeline Catherine Anderson, 2005
All rights reserved
eISBN : 978-1-101-09873-8
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Prologue
Catherine Anderson
Scotland, 1790
By the flickering light of the kitchen fire, Aileanna MacEwan ran her gaze over the wedding gown that she had only just finished making. It was a glorious dress, each stitch as fine as the ivory silk and delicate lace from which it had been fashioned. It had taken her weeks to complete the garment, and normally she would have been proud of her workmanship. But now she felt only melancholy as she draped the gown over her arm and pushed wearily up from the stool that had served as her perch these last six hours.
Mayhap it was exhaustion that darkened her mood. The upstairs clock had long since chimed the midnight hour. But deep down, she knew it was more than that. Her heart had been breaking ever since she’d started the gown, and now that the task was complete, there would be no stopping the young mistress of the house from setting her wedding date.
“ ’Tis not to be borne,” she muttered as she swatted the wrinkles from her threadbare skirt. “The blood of a sorceress flows in my veins. Yet here I am, playing lady’s maid to the spoiled, selfish daughter of an English aristocrat, a lass who wouldn’t know the meaning of true love if it bit her on the arse.” Aileanna pushed angrily at her dark hair, which hadn’t seen a brush since early the previous morning. “Ach!” she cried. “ ’Tis my wedding gown that this should be. Instead, I’ll be handing it over to that haughty Bertrade so she can marry the man of my dreams. She’ll make his life a misery. Why can he not see that?”
Tears threatened to fill Aileanna’s eyes, for even as she bridled against the injustice, she knew that her feelings for the blond and blue-eyed Halford Bainbridge would bring her naught but grief. He was a highborn English gentleman, destined to wed a woman of equal rank, not a lowborn Scottish maid with chafed hands and a patched skirt who’d been driven from her Highland home to make way for sheep and now groveled like a commoner in order to survive.
Oh, Halford had been kind to Aileanna, never failing to smile when they passed each other in the great hall, sometimes even touching a knuckle to his forehead in respectful greeting. Perhaps in another time and place he might have paid her court, but in the present situation, with the Highland Clearances at full tilt and evicted crofters scurrying to emigrate to avoid persecution, such an alliance was utterly impossible.
Never one to remain gloomy for long, Aileanna gazed thoughtfully into the fir
e. Perhaps nothing could be done to change her situation, but that wasn’t to say nothing could be done for other young lasses who might one day find themselves in equally hopeless straits.
It had been half a decade since Aileanna had studied the art of benevolent witchcraft at her grandmother’s knee, but her memory was fine. Why not cast a spell on this dress to ensure the marital happiness of any lass who ever chanced to wear it? Such an incantation wouldn’t improve Aileanna’s own dismal future, but perhaps, by effecting a change of heart in Bertrade, the spell would spare Halford a lifetime of woe.
Aileanna winced at the thought. Was this truly what she wanted, to cast a spell that would ensure Halford’s happiness in the arms of another woman? No, her heart protested. But even as the thought entered her mind, she pushed it away. She was a witch, born into a mystical aristocracy, and with the gifts bestowed upon her by blood came a solemn and weighty responsibility to rise above her human frailties and selfish desires.
Warming to the idea of sparing Halford the trials of a joyless marriage, Aileanna glanced over her shoulder to make certain she was alone in the cavernous kitchen. Then she collected some water in a cup, laid out the dress on the cook’s worktable, rubbed her palms together to generate warmth, and splayed her hands over the silk and lace.
Closing her eyes, she softly chanted, “I call upon the powers that be to make something more of this dress—and me.” She needed all the help God could give her, and that was a fact. It wasn’t easy to be selfless when her heart was fair breaking. “Lace and pearls, ruffles and skirts, let young lasses endure no more hurt.”
She wrinkled her nose. Surely she could do better than that. She consoled herself with the thought that it was the meaning of the words that counted, not how nicely they rhymed. Dipping her fingertips into the cup, she pressed on.
“With this sprinkle of water, I call upon the forces of goodness to heed my words. Upon this dress, I cast a charm. Let no maid who possesses it come to harm.”
Oh, how it rankled to say those words when she knew the first maid to possess the gown would be the selfish Bertrade. Aileanna swallowed back a rush of jealous resentment and forced herself to continue.
“Instead let her find the man of her dreams and live a life as fine as these seams, laughing and dancing, safe in his arms.” Aileanna let her eyes fall closed again and smiled slightly, imagining all the young lasses in future whose lives would be transformed by the simple wearing of this gown. “O’er the mountains and across the sea, no distance too great for this dress shall be. With time, the lace shall weather well, the fabric itself a magical spell.
“Down through the years, through many hands it shall pass, moving about from lass to lass. There one moment, and gone the next, let this dress drift like a tendril of smoke, fulfilling its destiny as I have bespoke.”
After falling silent, Aileanna remained motionless, her eyes still tightly closed. Ah, but it felt marvelous to use her powers again. She could have sworn she felt a tingle of warmth moving up her arms and through her body.
With a start, she realized that the tingle was real. She gasped and jerked her hands away from the dress, staring in baffled confusion at the silk and lace. Before she could collect her thoughts, a door to the kitchen banged open. Aileanna whirled to see Halford standing in the doorway, his blond hair gleaming in the firelight, his eyes as hot and blue as the base of a flame.
“We must talk, Aileanna,” he said tautly.
“Howe’er did ye gain entrance? ’Tis the middle of the night.”
“I bribed a servant to leave a door unlocked.” He waved a hand. “How I got in isn’t important. I knew you’d be working late on that dratted wedding dress, and I need to talk with you. I can’t go on like this, always passing you by in the great hall as if you’re invisible, pretending all the while to love another when it’s you and only you who possesses my heart.”
Aileanna gulped. “But, Halford, what of Bertrade? Ye’ve publicly announced yer betrothal to her. If ye back out now, there’ll be a monstrous scandal!”
“I cannot marry Bertrade. Have you no eyes in your head? She’s a bratty little witch. Nothing pleases her.”
Aileanna’s eyes went wide, for it was she, not Bertrade, who was a witch. She threw an appalled glance at the wedding dress, wondering if the spell she’d just cast upon it was responsible for Halford’s sudden avowal of love. Had she misspoken during the incantation and gotten part of it wrong? It had been a long while since she’d practiced her craft. Mayhap her skills were a wee bit rusty.
“This cannot be,” she cried, and began wringing her hands. “Ye’re not thinking clearly, Halford.”
“Please,” he whispered. “I know it may be difficult for us.”
“Difficult? Impossible, more like.”
He shook his head. “Even if my father disinherits me, which he most assuredly will, I won’t be entirely penniless. I have a trust from my grandmother, a paltry sum by most standards, but if we’re frugal, the monthly stipend will be enough to keep us in tea and biscuits with a roof over our heads. I love you, Aileanna. I have for months, perhaps from the first instant I saw you.”
“It’s the dress,” she tried to explain.
A heated gleam slipped into Halford’s blue eyes, and he walked determinedly toward her. “It’s not that awful dress you’re wearing, I assure you. Marry me, Aileanna. Say you will be my wife. I know you return my love. I’ve seen it in your eyes. We won’t be rich, but I swear, I’ll garb you in fine wool, not rags, and you’ll never have to pander to someone like Bertrade again. We can leave this godforsaken place and start over somewhere else, perhaps in America, as so many others are doing.”
Aileanna’s last thought just before Halford gathered her into his strong arms and kissed her was that this couldn’t be happening. Then every bit of common sense she possessed seemed to abandon her. Halford. Oh, how she loved him. The kiss was everything she’d dreamed it might be and more.
When Halford finally let her breathe again, she angled her head to glance over her shoulder. To her amazement, the dress no longer lay on the work surface behind her. She wriggled from Halford’s arms to peer under the table, thinking the gown might have slipped to the floor.
“Where has it gotten off to?” she muttered. “The wedding dress! ’Twas right here, and now it’s gone.”
Halford tried to reclaim her lips for another kiss. “Who cares where the blasted dress is?”
Aileanna cared, for it appeared to her that the gown had vanished into thin air—like a tendril of smoke.
A Perfect Fit
Barbara Metzger
Chapter One
1813, Devon, England
The wedding gown was still the prettiest thing Katie Cole had ever seen or owned. She had thought so the first time she’d unwrapped the ivory silk and lace, of unusual style and exquisite workmanship, when it was delivered by mistake from her dressmaker. The modiste had claimed it was no design of hers, so Katie had set it aside, with regrets, to wait for the magnificent gown’s rightful owner. Then the dressmaker’s shop had burned down, along with Katie’s trousseau and her own pink satin gown. With so little time before her wedding, the ivory silk would have to do.
Katie remembered feeling like a princess when she held it up to herself, the luckiest, most beautiful bride in all of creation. Even now, as she knelt in the dust of the low-ceilinged attic to pull the dress from the bottom of an old trunk, she could feel the same tingle she’d felt before her marriage—the hope, the joy, the certainty that her future would be filled with happiness. How could it not be, when the mysterious gown had arrived so auspiciously and seemed to be a perfect fit?
Unfortunately, Katie never wore the gown.
Her betrothed was killed in a coaching mishap mere days before the wedding. Her mother said she was better off without the drunken, devil-may-care lout. Her father said that fortune-hunting Frederick had been driving his racing phaeton in the wrong direction, away from London and the church, as f
ast as his horses would go, once he discovered that Katie’s dowry was to be held in trust. Her aunt said it served Katie right for stubbornly insisting on marrying a man her family had only reluctantly approved. Her grandmother said she was too young, anyway, at seventeen, to know her own mind. Katie’s old nanny said Katie was pregnant.
Papa had sent her away to Devon. He’d have sent her to Hades if he could, but her mother had insisted. Katie had a new name—heaven forbid she’d ever mention the Bainbridge one again—a wedding band, and a meager allowance, if she stayed gone.
Katie, Mrs. Katherine Cole, as she had been known for the last eighteen years, wondered again what other choice she might have made. Give up her baby? Throw herself into the Thames? Beg in the streets? No. Her little cottage was comfortable, her neighbors kind to the widow of a heroic officer in the Navy, her precious daughter the light of her life. She could afford food and firewood, a small staff, and lessons for Susannah as she grew. She could not afford elegant gowns such as the one she carefully unwrapped from its tissue.
Katie touched the covered buttons down the front of the dress, marveling again at the workmanship, and at her own stupidity in believing Feckless Frederick and his words of love. Just touching the gown, though, still made her feel that True Love truly existed and that a happily-ever-after was possible—for her little girl.
Susannah was all grown up, a sweet young lady of comely looks and genteel manners, and the same stubborn pride as her mother. Katie wished the girl would wait to marry—Katie was not ready to part with her darling, who was a curly-haired infant just yesterday, it seemed—but she knew Susannah would not wait. Katie had not, after all. So Mrs. Cole was planning the wedding, and Susannah would wear the beautiful gown.