“Bawdy songs and all?”
“Because one needs variety.”
“And hope.” She spread her arms wide upon the mattress and grinned at him. “What do you say to a new motto then? Dance with abandon—”
“And with delight.”
He nodded and gave her a quick buss on the lips. “Sing in the dark and the light.”
“Live loving all.”
“For all that we are.”
“Truly, for all we are together.”
Her old watchword no longer applied. One year and she had become this different person. The Countess of Charlton, the wife of the most tender caring man she'd ever met. And she’d known it the first moment she'd met him.
Fabled but real, it was love at first sight.
A nibble of LADY MARY’S MAY DAY MISCHIEF
Book 2 in Four Weddings and a Frolic
No. 21, Queen Square
Bath, England
Lady Mary Trentham-Little-Finch bent over her garden box and cursed the letter that crinkled in her garden apron pocket. She needed no reminders of her latest failure.
She jabbed her trowel into the damp soil. She would count her assets.
Not that letter she’d gotten this morning. Along with the newspaper that bore the announcement of Esme Harvey’s engagement and coming wedding. Or that other page that told of the Princess of Wales’ marriage next week to a German prince. Both reminded her of her failure.
Curse it. What had happened to her matchmaking abilities? Fizzled, like a damp fire.
She saw men for what they were. Women, too. What they needed in a spouse.
Yes, Esme was getting married. Not to the man Mary had encouraged to court her, but to another whom her friend, Lady Fiona Chastain favored. Esme was the fifth of Mary’s friends to marry in as many years. All of them near the time of this annual May Day Frolic Esme’s parents hosted. But Esme was also the second to find a different man more appealing than the one Mary had proposed.
And yes, there was that other irritant.
With the back of her hand, she wiped away telltale moisture from her cheek.
Everyone was getting married. Finding love and companionship.
“Do not say the obvious,” she warned herself about her own state of affairs. “There are benefits to spinsterhood.”
She pushed up her floppy garden hat with her forearm. “First—very liberating, too, if I say so myself—a woman who need not flirt with any creature in trousers need not attire herself slavishly in the latest fashion. That saves money, a useful relief to the strains on one’s limited monthly income.”
She sank her trowel into the fine loam of her seedling box. True, too, few liked her taste in clothes. Save her parrot, Caesar.
Then there was that other benefit. Spinsterhood also saved a person endless hours of preening one’s feathers to attract a man whom one did not necessarily know well enough to accompany to the altar. “Or to bed. And that, Mama said, should be a race to the bedroom.”
A third benefit…
She considered her little green sprouts of celery, kale and cauliflower. Frowning at how small they were this year, she peered upward at the ice blue April sky. “Is there another asset to being an unmarried lady?”
Yes, of course. Tedious attempts to enchant a prospective groom meant that one was free to state raw truths.
She approved of that. Bending to her work, she carved a straight line in her soil with her hand trowel. But stopped again.
Calling a spade a spade—she chuckled at that—had often gotten her into trouble. Despite popular opinion, in her nearly twenty-five years, she’d held her tongue on many occasions. Largely to please her mother. Or her father. Or their friends. But now…
Now that both her parents were gone, and those loved ones who remained were her friends who understood her foibles, was she not free of the thankless obligation to be charming and witty and wise and ever so politic?
She had focused on her one grand ability to find husbands for her friends. Until she failed with that match of two years ago. And the one she’d learned of this morning.
The announcement she’d read in the Bath newspaper over breakfast had brought a tear to her eye. She never cried. But her cumulative losses overtook her and a few tears had wet down her toast. Soggy toast was not tasty. But she had reason to shed a tear or two. The loss of her parents, affectionate and kind. Her brother, studious and smart, gone at Badajoz. Her best friend, gone nearly ten years now to school and the wars, a ghost who’d managed a regular correspondence. Written from battlefields, splattered with the rain and mud of struggle and death. And then…after he’d come home two years ago after his own father died, he’d found solace in her company. Kissed her. Often. Then Napoleon returned to Paris from Elba. He’d returned to his duties. Since then, Blake Lindsey, Captain Lindsey of the Royal Engineers and a recently minted baron, had stopped writing. She knew not why. Years of his letters that sat upstairs in her trunk, tied together in fraying pink ribbons, revealed no reasons her dearest friend no longer wished to communicate.
She jabbed her trowel into the dark earth.
Oh! She hated grievances she could not cure. She liked growth, excitement, spring flowers and shoots of kale and cabbage.
But reading the news of weddings this morning had caught her unawares and stabbed her with grief.
Not because she hadn’t chosen Northington for Esme. Not because she wanted Northington for herself. For goodness sake, he was her distant cousin!
Not because she hated Esme, either. Esme might be peculiar, yet she had charms none of which were worthy of ridicule.
But because…
Well, hell’s bells!
She winced at the iridescent sky and spoke the bald truth she’d kept locked away inside her. Once she’d been fearless. At six, she’d saved her hunting dog Rolf from drowning when he’d been but five weeks old. At ten, she’d hauled her friend Blake from the same river when he’d fallen in and might have drowned, had she not pumped his chest and forced out the mess he’d swallowed. At twelve, she’d grabbed the fire bucket in the hall at Miss Shipley’s to throw on a blaze, then rolled her friend Fifi in a blanket to douse the flames that could have scarred her pretty face. At twenty, she’d nursed her ailing mother when the doctor told her all hope was lost of that lady’s recovery from a wasting in the stomach. At eighteen and nineteen and twenty-two, she helped three friends secure loving husbands.
However for the past two years, she had performed no feats. She’d stopped aiding her friends when one of her plans—a feint, actually—failed. Ricocheted, more to the point.
She jabbed her trowel into the rich earth and glared at the wispy silver clouds that rolled onward, blithe, uncaring of her desire.
“My lady!” her butler called to her from the kitchen door.
She caught her broad straw hat from whipping away in the wind. “Yes, Thompson?”
“You asked not to be interrupted, ma’am, but Lady Fiona Chastain has arrived. She says it’s urgent she see you.”
I expected her to rush in an hour ago. “Did you tell Cook she’s here?”
“Yes, milady. I’ll bring a tray up to you within minutes.”
“Good.” Long ago, Mary had learned the best way to help Fifi deal with any event was to order a complete tea whenever she called. Her friend loved to eat, especially delicacies that Mary’s Cook created. Today, she had expected Fifi to fly to her as soon as her friend read the announcement of Northington and Esme’s impending nuptials in this morning’s paper. “I’ll be right in.”
He ambled away.
With a tug at her gardening gloves, Mary bent to whisper to her sprouts. “This afternoon I shall return.”
With a nod at the clouds and the sun and the universe that always blossomed here at least into rich results under her hands, she left her tender aspirations in her garden.
Then she limped toward her house.
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Who is Cerise DeLand?
> Cerise DeLand
Cerise DeLand loves to write about dashing heroes and the sassy women they adore. Whether she’s penning historical romances or contemporaries, she has received praise for her poetic elegance and accuracy of detail.
An award-winning author of more than 50 novels, she’s been published since 1991 by Pocket Books, St. Martin’s Press, Kensington and independent presses. Her books have been monthly selections of the Doubleday Book Club and the Mystery Guild. Plus she’s won nominations and awards for Best Historical of the Year, Best Regency and scores of rave reviews from Romantic Times, Affair de Coeur, Publisher’s Weekly and more.
To research, she’s dived into the oldest texts and dustiest library shelves. She’s also traveled abroad, trusty notebook and pen in hand, to visit the chateaux and country homes she loves to people with her own imaginary characters.
And at home every day? She loves to cook, hates to dust, goes swimming at least once a week and tries (desperately) to grow vegetables in her arid backyard in south Texas!
Also by Cerise DeLand
Regencies
Lady Starling’s Stockings
The Stanhope Challenge, Regency Quartet, box set
Regency Romp Series:
Lady Varney’s Risque Business, #1
Rendezvous with a Duke, #2
Masquerade with a Marquess, #3
Regency Romps, box set of #1-#3
Interlude with a Baron, #4
Christmas Belles, Romantic Comedy Series:
The Earl’s Wagered Bride, #1
The Viscount’s Only Love, #2
The Duke’s Impetuous Darling, #3
The Marquess’s Final Fling, #4
The Butler’s Forbidden Fancy, #5
Aunt Gertrude’s Red Hot Christmas Beau, #6
Delightful Doings in Dudley Crescent, Romantic Comedy Series:
Her Beguiling Butler, #1
His Tempting Governess, #2
His Naughty Maid, #3
Erotic Regency Romances:
His Delectable Cook
Sense and Sensibility
Victorian Romances
Those Notorious Americans Series:
Wild Lily, #1
Daring Widow, #2
Sweet Siren, #3
Scandalous Heiress, #4
Ravishing Camille, #5, Spring 2020
Medievals
Swords of Passion Series:
At Her Service, #1
For Her Honor, #2
With Her Kiss, #3
* * *
Military Romances
7 Brides for 7 SEALs Series:
You Were Always Mine, #1
No Getting Over You, #2
SEALs Going Hot, box set
Burning for Nero
Conquering Zeus
A Long Time Comin’ (erotic romance)
Hard Drivin’ Man (erotic romance)
Contemporaries
Is That a Gun in Your Pocket? (erotic comedic suspense)
Tall, Hard and Trouble, box set
Tall, Hard and Mine, box set, Coming Soon!
Tall, Hard and Fierce, box set, Coming Soon!
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Lady Fiona's Tall, Dark Folly: Four Weddings and a Frolic, Book 1 Page 14