I snorted. He was already behind me, lifting my hair and kissing my neck. “I saw your texts only after my parents left. Or I’d have booted them out much sooner.”
“I’ll never live down the big poufy dress.”
“Don’t. It’s already one of my favorite memories of you.”
He unzipped the costume and disentangled me from the enormous skirt. Underneath I had on my camisole and my jeans—the weather was still too cool for going around in nothing but crinkly tulle.
Wrapping his arms around me from behind, he sighed and held me against him. The sweetness in my heart rivaled that of all the maple syrup in Vermont. I reached back and looped an arm about his neck. “I actually bought some chocolates in Montreal for my friends. I’ll totally shortchange them for you.”
“If that’s not true love,” he murmured against my ear, “then I don’t have one of the most viewed asses on the Upper East Side.”
I giggled and turned around.
He cupped my face. “Can I tell you again how much I love being rescued?”
I tugged his earlobe. “Anytime. But you know, rescuing you is hard work. Do you have a bed I can lie down on for a few minutes?”
He laughed softly. “Of course. This way, Your Highness.”
We stopped a few times to kiss along the way, but finally arrived in his bedroom. “Hey, it’s that drawing!” I exclaimed. The framed charcoal rendering of my ‘princess’ picture, a good eighteen by twenty-four inches, took up his entire nightstand. “I’ve been wondering whether you ever bought it.”
He scooped me up and laid me down on the bed. “Of course I bought it.”
“Has it been in this house all along?”
He pulled off my boots. “Why do you think we did it in the kitchen that first time? I was terrified you’d see it if I brought you in here, even if I hid it under the bed.”
“Aww.”
“I know. But what we did that night was so hot, I might have developed a taste for kitchen sex.” He stretched out beside me. “Can you stand naked against that wall again tonight?”
“Sure. And I’ll look at you with extra hungry eyes.”
He caressed the entire length of my arm. “Now that is everything I hoped for.”
I pulled him close and kissed him. “If…if ever you ask me a question and I find it difficult to answer, will you give me some time?”
“Of course,” he said, his gaze deep and clear. “Let me know that it’s difficult and I’ll wait.”
My heart overflowed with sunshine and tenderness. “Thank you for being so easy to rescue. And thank you for giving a damn that I was stuck and couldn’t see my way out.”
“I’ll always give a damn.” Gently, he traced his thumb over my cheekbone. “I love you. I love everything about you.”
I kissed him again, my agent of chaos who had brought so many wonderful and necessary changes to my life. “I love everything about you too. Everything.”
Epilogue
“WOW,” SAID BENNETT AS WE walked into the house on 81st Street. “Nice.”
Life-size cardboard cutouts of Aragorn, Legolas, and Boromir stood in the corners of the living room. A banner with the white tree of Gondor hung from the rafters. And a large, detailed map of Middle-earth was spread on an ottoman, in case our newbie needed to consult it.
We bustled in and out of the kitchen, loading the coffee table with our marathon-watching feast—although it was a slightly less copious feast than usual, as we’d spent the previous day at Bennett’s parents’ place. The Somersets were serious about Thanksgiving. And dinner had been extra plentiful, since it was Bennett’s first one back in the fold, Mr. Somerset’s first after the heart attack, and my first as the newest member of the family—Bennett and I did get married in August after all, after he finished his fellowship and I earned my tenure.
It was a lovely wedding, but my favorite part might have been the invitations, which, inspired by Mrs. Asquith’s photo book, had my princess picture on the right side, his Eton image on the left, and the two of us looking toward each other. In the middle was written, At the time these photographs were taken, Evangeline and Bennett each had someone else in mind. But from now on they will always be thinking of each other.
When all the food and drinks were in place, Zelda’s phone pinged with an incoming text. “It’s Larry,” she said, “wishing us a great movie marathon.”
Larry and Zelda had been taking things slowly. But she was going to England next month and they’d probably spend a good bit of time together.
We settled down to start the first movie. “Make sure you point out Rosie to me,” said Bennett, reaching for a cream scone.
“What’s that?” asked Zelda.
“Since you’re Frodo, and I’m Sam,” I answered, nudging a jar of clotted cream toward my husband, “that makes Bennett Rosie, the one Sam married.”
Bennett had finished the books—and quit smoking—a month before we exchanged vows. On the day of the wedding, as I was getting dressed, a note had come from him. Dear Sam, Good luck on the quest with Frodo. I will always be here. Your Rosie.
And I knew then that I had made the best choice of my whole life.
Zelda pressed play. Bennett took my hand in his. I kissed his cheek and laid my head on his shoulder.
Before our eyes, the epic adventure unspooled.
Thank you for reading The One in My Heart.
Want to know when the next Sherry Thomas novel will be released? Sign up for her newsletter at www.sherrythomas.com. You can also follow her on twitter at @sherrythomas and like her Facebook page at http://facebook.com/authorsherrythomas.
A review at Goodreads or at a venue of your choice would be greatly appreciated.
The One in My Heart is Sherry’s first—and so far, only—contemporary romance. But if Bennett’s almost divorced great-great-grandparents sound like interesting characters, their story is told in her book Private Arrangements, a historical romance set in the 1890s. If you would like to skip ahead to an excerpt of Private Arrangements, click here. To see a list of Sherry’s other books, click here.
Acknowledgments
Tiffany Yates Martin, for being the awesome editor she is.
Janine Ballard, for always demanding my best.
Kristin Nelson, for rejecting the first draft in 2010—or thereabouts. And Meredith Duran, for providing the concurring opinion that it really did suck.
Shellee Roberts, for making me get off my ass and rework the opening.
Dr. Pei-Lee Ee, for being a fantastic expert medical consultant.
Emily McKay, for sharing her knowledge on backyard poultry.
Kristan Higgins, for serving as my reservoir of knowledge on all things New England. And for the lovely cover quote.
Mike Ruprich, for recommending Salamanca as a good locale for a fictional exchange student.
My friends in the ARWA NaNoWriMo group, for providing a fun, supportive environment, and for double-checking my Spanish and Italian phrases.
And as always, if you are reading this, thank you. Thank you for everything.
About the Author
***
Sherry Thomas writes both romance and young adult fantasy.
On the romance side, she is one of the most acclaimed authors working in the genre today, her books regularly receiving starred reviews and best-of-the-year honors from trade publications. She is also a two-time winner of Romance Writers of America’s prestigious RITA® Award.
On the young adult side, The Immortal Heights, book 3 of the Elemental Trilogy, releases October 2015.
Sherry writes in her second language. She learned English by reading romance and science fiction—every word Isaac Asimov ever wrote, in fact. She is proud to say that her son is her biggest fanboy—for the YA fantasy, not the romances. At least, not yet…
You can receive email updates on Sherry’s upcoming books, contact her, and find her on the web at http://www.sherrythomas.com/contact.php.
Private Arr
angements: an excerpt
Chapter One
London
8 May 1893
Only one kind of marriage ever bore Society’s stamp of approval.
Happy marriages were considered vulgar, as matrimonial felicity rarely kept longer than a well-boiled pudding. Unhappy marriages were, of course, even more vulgar, on a par with Mrs. Jeffries’s special contraption that spanked forty bottoms at once: unspeakable, for half of the upper crust had experienced it firsthand.
No, the only kind of marriage that held up to life’s vicissitudes was the courteous marriage. And it was widely recognized that Lord and Lady Tremaine had the most courteous marriage of them all.
In the ten years since their wedding, neither of them had ever uttered an unkind word about the other, not to parents, siblings, bosom friends, or strangers. Moreover, as their servants could attest, they never had spats, big or small; never embarrassed each other; never, in fact, disagreed on anything at all.
However, every year some cheeky debutante fresh from the schoolroom would point out—as if it weren’t common knowledge—that Lord and Lady Tremaine lived on separate continents and had not been seen together since the day after their wedding.
Her elders would shake their heads. Foolish young girl. Wait ‘til she heard about her beau’s piece on the side. Or fell out of love with the man she married. Then she’d understand what a wonderful arrangement the Tremaines had: civility, distance, and freedom from the very beginning, unencumbered by tiresome emotions. Indeed, it was the most perfect marriage.
Therefore, when Lady Tremaine filed for divorce on grounds of Lord Tremaine’s adultery and desertion, chins collided with dinner plates throughout London’s most pedigreed dining rooms. Ten days later, as news circulated of Lord Tremaine’s arrival on English soil for the first time in a decade, the same falling jaws dented many an expensive carpet from the heart of Persia.
The story of what happened next spread like a well-fed gut. It went something tantalizingly like this: A summons came at the Tremaine town house on Park Lane. Goodman, Lady Tremaine’s faithful butler, answered the bell. On the other side of the door stood a stranger, one of the most remarkable-looking gentlemen Goodman had ever come across—tall, handsome, powerfully built, an imposing presence.
“Good afternoon, sir,” Goodman said placidly. A representative of the Marchioness of Tremaine, however impressed, neither gawked nor gushed.
He expected to be offered a calling card and a reason for the call. Instead, he was handed the gentleman’s headgear. Startled, he let go of his hold on the doorknob and took the satin-trimmed top hat. In that instant, the man walked past him into the vestibule. Without a backward glance or an explanation for this act of intrusion, he began pulling off his gloves.
“Sir,” Goodman huffed. “You do not have permission from the lady of the house to enter.”
The man turned around and shot Goodman a glance that, to the butler’s shame, made him want to curl up and whimper. “Is this not the Tremaine residence?”
“It is, sir.” The reiteration of “sir” escaped Goodman, though he hadn’t intended for it to happen.
“Then kindly inform me, since when does the master of the house require permission from the lady to enter into his own domain?” The man held his gloves together in his right hand and slapped them quietly against the palm of his left, as if toying with a riding crop.
Goodman didn’t understand. His employer was the Queen Elizabeth of her time: one mistress and no master. Then the horror dawned. The man before him was the Marquess of Tremaine, the marchioness’s long-absent, good-as-dead husband and heir to the Duke of Fairford.
“I do beg your pardon, sir.” Goodman held on to his professional calm and took Lord Tremaine’s gloves, though he was suddenly perspiring. “We have had no notice of your arrival. I shall have your chambers prepared immediately. May I offer you some refreshments in the meanwhile?”
“You may. And you may see to the unloading of my luggage,” said Lord Tremaine. “Is Lady Tremaine at home?”
Goodman could not detect any unusual inflection in Lord Tremaine’s tone. It was as if he had simply come in from an afternoon snooze at his club. After ten years! “Lady Tremaine is taking a constitutional in the park, sir.”
Lord Tremaine nodded. “Very good.”
Goodman instinctively trotted after him, the way he’d trail a feral beast if it happened to have made it past the front door. It was only half a minute later, as Lord Tremaine turned about and raised a brow, that Goodman realized he had already been dismissed.
Something about his wife’s town house disturbed Lord Tremaine.
It was surprisingly elegant. He had half-expected to see the kind of interior he’d become accustomed to in the houses of his neighbors on lower Fifth Avenue: grandiose, gilded, aiming only to recall the last days of Versailles.
She had a few chairs from that era, but they had held their share of velvet-clad bottoms and looked comfortable rather than luxurious. Neither did he encounter the heavy sideboards and unchecked proliferation of bric-a-brac that were firmly associated, in his mind, with English homes.
If anything, her residence bore an uncanny resemblance to a certain villa in Turin, at the foot of the Italian Alps, in which he had spent a few happy weeks during his youth—a house with wallpapers of soft antique gold and muted aquamarine, faience pots of orchids atop slender wrought-iron stands, and durable, well-made furniture from the previous century.
During an entire boyhood of decamping from one domicile to the next, the villa had been the only place, other than his grandfather’s estate, where he’d felt at home. He had loved its brightness, its uncluttered comfort, and its abundance of indoor plants, their breath moist and herbaceous.
He was inclined to dismiss the echoing similarity between the two houses as a coincidence until his attention shifted to the paintings that adorned the walls of her drawing room. Between the Rubens, the Titian, and the ancestral portraits that occupied disproportionate acreage on English walls, she had hung pieces by the very same modern artists whose works he displayed in his own town house in Manhattan: Sisley, Morisot, Cassatt, and Monet, whose output had been infamously likened to unfinished wallpaper.
His pulse quickened in alarm. Her dining room featured more Monets and two Degases. Her gallery made it look as though she had bought an entire Impressionist exhibit: Renoir, Cézanne, Seurat, and artists no one had ever heard of outside the most gossipy circles of the Parisian art world.
He stopped midway down the gallery, suddenly unable to go on. She had furnished this house to be a fantasy-come-true for the boy he had been when he married her, the boy who must have mentioned, during their long hours of rapt conversation, something of his preference for understated houses and his love of modern art.
He remembered her spellbound concentration, her soft questions, her burning interest in everything about him.
Was the divorce but a new ruse, then? A cleverly sprung trap to re-ensnare him when all else had failed? Would he find her perfumed and naked on his bed when he threw open the door to his bedchamber?
He located the master’s apartment and threw open the door.
There was no her, naked or otherwise, on his bed.
There was no bed.
And nothing else either. The bedchamber was as vast and empty as the American West.
The carpet no longer showed depressed spots where chair legs and bedposts had once stood. The walls betrayed no telltale rectangles of recently removed pictures. Thick layers of dust had settled on floor and windowsills. The room had stood vacant for years.
For no reason at all, he felt as if the breath had been kicked out of his lungs. The sitting room of the master’s apartment was sparkling clean and fully equipped—tuft-backed reading chairs, shelves laden with well-read books wrinkled at the spines, a writing desk freshly supplied with ink and paper, even a pot of amaranth in bloom. It made the void of the bedchamber all the more pointed, a barbed symbol.
The house might have been, once upon a time, designed with the single-minded goal of luring him back. But that was a different decade—another age altogether. He had since been eviscerated from her existence.
He was still standing in the doorway, staring into the empty bedchamber, when the butler arrived, two footmen and a large portmanteau in tow. The nothingness of the chamber made the butler blush an extraordinary pink. “It will take us only an hour, sir, to air the chamber and restore the furnishing.”
He almost told the butler not to bestir himself, to let the bedchamber remain stark and barren. But that would have said too much. So he only nodded. “Excellent.”
The prototype of the new stamping machine Lady Tremaine had ordered for her factory in Leicestershire refused to live up to its promise. The negotiation with the shipbuilder in Liverpool dragged on most unsatisfactorily. And she had yet to answer any of the letters from her mother—ten in all, one for each day since she’d petitioned for divorce—in which Mrs. Rowland questioned her sanity outright and fell just short of comparing her intelligence to that of a leg of ham.
But that was all expected. What made her head pound was the telegram from Mrs. Rowland three hours ago: Tremaine came ashore at Southampton this morning. No matter how she tried to explain it to Freddie as something par for the course—There are papers to sign and settlements to be negotiated, darling. He has to come back at some point—Tremaine’s arrival portended only trouble.
Her husband. In England. Closer than he had been in a decade, except for that miserable incident in Copenhagen, back in ‘88.
“I need Broyton to come in tomorrow morning to look at some accounts for me,” she said to Goodman, handing over her shawl, her hat, and her gloves as she entered the town house and walked toward the library. “Kindly request Miss Etoile’s presence for some dictations. And tell Edie that I will wear the cream velvet tonight, instead of the amethyst silk.”
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