Forgotten Fiancée (London Ladies Book 3)
Page 1
FORGOTTEN
Fiancée
{ London Ladies, Book Three }
JILLIAN EATON
CAN THE FLAMES OF A PASSION REKINDLED
BURN HOTTER THAN EVER BEFORE?
“I loved you!” Dianna cried fiercely. Tears burned in the corners of her eyes. She blinked them away. “It may have been young love, but it was pure and true.”
“You love me still,” Miles said.
“No.” She shook her head vehemently from side to side, sending blonde curls whipping across her flushed cheeks. “No, I do not love you. I despise you.”
“Liar.” Closing the distance between them in one long stride, he yanked her hard against him and claimed her mouth with his own...
Forgotten Fiancée is a work of fiction.
All of the characters, organizations, and events
portrayed in this novel are either products
of the author’s imagination
or are used fictitiously.
Copyright © by Jillian Eaton 2014
2nd Edition © 2020
Cover by Wicked Smart Designs
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All Rights Reserved.
Except for use in any review, the
reproduction or utilization of this work in whole
or in part in any form is strictly forbidden.
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Four stories about four independent, high-spirited women
and the handsome scoundrels who capture their hearts…
Runaway Duchess
Spinster and the Duke
Forgotten Fiancée
Lady Harper
Other Books by Jillian Eaton
London Ladies
Runaway Duchess
Spinster and the Duke
Forgotten Fiancée
Lady Harper
Secret Wallflower Society
Winning the Earl of Winchester
Courting the Countess of Cambridge
Desiring the Duke of Duncraven
Bow Street Brides
A Dangerous Seduction
A Dangerous Proposal
A Dangerous Affair
A Dangerous Passion
A Dangerous Temptation
Duke for All Seasons
The Winter Duke
The Spring Duke
The Summer Duke
The Autumn Duke
Duchess for All Seasons
The Winter Duchess
The Spring Duchess
The Summer Duchess
The Autumn Duchess
Wedded Women Quartet
A Brooding Beauty
A Ravishing Redhead
A Lascivious Lady
A Gentle Grace
Swan Sisters
For the Love of Lynette
Taming Temperance
Annabel’s Christmas Rake
Christmas Novellas
A Rake in Winter
The Winter Wish
The Risqué Resolution
Natalie’s Christmas Rogue
Marquess Under the Mistletoe
Table of Contents
Other Books by Jillian Eaton
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
About the Author
Lady Harper
Chapter One
Prologue
April 1811
“Miles left? What do you mean, he left?” Standing in a pool of white lace and muslin while one seamstress plucked pins from the hem of her wedding dress and another adjusted the length of a sleeve, Dianna met her mother’s fretful gaze in the tall dressing mirror.
Early morning sun spilled through the bedroom window, promising a day filled with light, laughter, and - most importantly of all - love. For today Dianna would finally stand beside the man she’d been engaged to marry since the age of eight. Today she would solemnly repeat the vows of marriage. Today her life as Miss Dianna Foxcroft would end…and her life as Lady Dianna Radnor, wife of Miles Radnor, Earl of Winfield, would begin.
“Mother?” she repeated, the smile she’d been wearing since she woke slowly fading.
The dried flowers on Martha Foxcroft’s hat rustled loudly as she gave a distressed shake of her head. “No one seems to know where he is.”
One of the seamstresses stood up and murmured something around a mouthful of pins. Distracted, Dianna nodded absently. “Yes, whatever you think is best. Mother, I do not understand. Has anyone checked the stables? Or…or the gardens? Perhaps he merely went for a walk to clear his head before going to the church.”
Her expression strained, Martha gestured for the seamstresses to leave. Eyes wide, they hurried quickly from the room, careful to shut the bedroom door behind them.
In the sudden silence that followed their abrupt departure Dianna’s heart began to pound and an icy trickle of fear worked its way down between her shoulder blades despite the warm summer air floating in through the open window. “Mother, you are starting to frighten me. Where is Miles? Where is he?” she pressed when Martha remained eerily silent, her lips pinched in a thin, bloodless line.
“Perhaps you had best sit down,” her mother said at last.
“I do not want to sit down. I - I want Miles. I need to speak to Miles.” Not caring that she sounded more like a whining child instead of a sixteen-year-old bride, Dianna started for the door, but her mother’s next words stopped her cold and tilted her entire world on its axis.
“Miles is gone. I am sorry, darling. I do not know how else to tell you.”
“But…but what about the wedding?” As the very room itself seemed to spin, Dianna staggered over to her bed and sank down on the mattress, heedless of any wrinkles she was creating in her beautiful hand sewn skirt.
How could Miles be gone? Why, just last night they’d sat side by side, celebrating their pending nuptials with both of their families. Unbidden, an image of his laughing green eyes and charming smile rose inside her mind.
Gone? No. He couldn’t be gone.
“Darling.” Coming to sit beside her daughter, Martha took Dianna’s cold hands in hers and squeezed. Their gazes met, and what Dianna saw in her mother’s clear blue eyes caused a tiny wail of despair to slip from between her lips.
“No,” she whispered. “Please do not say it. Please do not.”
But Martha had no choice. “There is not going to be a wedding.”
Chapter One
October 1815
Wedding Reception of the
Duke & Duchess of Ashburn
“Miles… What are you d-doing here?” The moment the words were out of her mouth Dianna regretted them. She’d spent the past four years practicing precisely what she would say if she ever saw Miles Radnor again, and ‘what are you doing here?’ had not made the list.
; It hadn’t even been close.
‘Where have you been, you bloody bastard!’ was her top pick, followed closely by ‘I have absolutely nothing to say to you’. If all else failed she’d planned on simply turning on her heel, tipping her nose in the air, and walking away…except now she’d ruined it. Four years of preparation wasted. If she were still capable of tears she would have cried, but they’d all been wasted long ago on the man standing before her. The man who she had planned to marry. The man who she had loved. The man who had broken her heart. The man who she had once prayed every night would return to her…and the one man she’d hoped never to see again.
“You cut your hair.” His voice was deeper than she remembered. Rougher. Huskier. It was the voice of a man who’d seen world. The good, the bad, and everything in-between. A man who had truly experienced life. A man who had known both hardship and reward. Yet for all the differences between this voice and the one she remembered, the sound of it still caused her knees to tremble and her heart to pound.
Stop it, she told herself crossly even as her fingers crept self-consciously to the pale blonde curls at the nape of her neck. You do not love him anymore, remember? He means nothing to you.
“It has been this length for over a year,” she said briskly.
Which you would know if you’d been here like you promised.
“I like it,” Miles said, surprising her for the second time in less than a minute.
He’d always loved her long hair. He used to run his fingers through the silky curls whenever no one was watching, whispering a string of endless compliments in her ear. Which was why, on what would have been their third wedding anniversary, Dianna had hacked it all off with a pair of blunt shears and worn it short ever since.
“What are you doing here?” she repeated. In the distance she heard laughter and the happy chatter of friends and family, a reminder that even though it felt as though time had stopped the very second she saw Miles’ hauntingly familiar face across the crowded ballroom, her Aunt Abigail’s wedding reception was still very much ongoing.
The sounds of celebration and revelry filled the warm autumn night, carrying all the way down to the stable courtyard where Dianna and Miles stood squared off like boxers preparing to go a round; their body’s stiff, their eyes locked.
Had she known he would follow her after their eyes met across the brightly colored sea of swirling couples, Dianna never would have fled the safe confines of Ashburn Manor.
Most definitely not.
Well…probably not.
Behind her in neatly tended stalls filled with sweet smelling straw, horses either dozed or contentedly chewed their hay. Dianna had never much liked horses – they always seemed to know she was afraid of them and took full advantage – but she drew on their sleepy calmness now, using it to slow the rapid beating of her heart and the quick flutter of her pulse.
If she could survive the public humiliation of being left at the altar, then surely she could get through this. After all, she was no longer the weak, simpering girl who’d cried buckets of tears into her pillow every night. She was a strong woman who knew what she wanted and what she didn’t.
And right now she wanted Miles to leave.
She wanted him to leave and never come back.
Unfortunately, it did not seem as though he was receiving her silent message. Or, knowing him - or at least knowing the boy he’d been - he was simply ignoring it.
“You look well,” he said. “You have not changed at all.”
But you have, she thought silently as she attempted to study his countenance without making it appear as though she were studying his countenance. When her hands began to fidget, an old habit she thought she’d rid herself of years ago, she tucked her arms behind her back and bit down hard on the inside of her cheek.
A young lady does not fidget, she reminded herself sternly. A young lady is always calm and collected.
Dianna had begun giving herself tiny boosts of whispered confidence soon after Miles left. The silent mantras had helped her when faced with a drawing room filled with pitying stares and whispered condolences, neither of which she would have ever been forced to endure if not for the man standing before her now. The man so very different from the boy she’d loved…and yet so heartbreakingly the same.
If Miles had been handsome before, he was devastatingly so now. In the four years since she had seen him last his long, lanky body had finally filled out. He’d grown taller. Broader. His eyes were the same vivid green she remembered, but his hair was darker and several inches longer. Unkempt, it touched the collar of his white linen shirt over which he wore only a waistcoat without a customary cravat, leaving his neck and a scandalous amount of tanned chest exposed. A pair of snugly fitting breeches, the color undeterminable in the moonlight, and knee high leather riding boots polished to a dull sheen, completed his casual attire.
Hating that he made her feel overdressed when it was clear he should have worn something far more formal to befit the occasion, Dianna fought the urge to smooth an invisible wrinkle from the skirt of her pale blue gown.
A young lady does not touch her own clothing.
She was falling to pieces.
Again.
The familiar fluttering sensation of panic began to unfurl in her chest, like a thousand butterflies frantically flapping their wings, looking for an escape that did not exist. She closed her eyes for a fraction of a second, and in an instant was plunged back into the memory of that day, the one she’d vowed to forget.
The day Miles had left her bewildered and broken-hearted.
The day she’d learned happily-ever-after’s did not exist.
The day her life as she knew it had changed forever.
Now the man who’d done the changing was standing a mere two steps away, and it was more than she could possibly bear. More than she should have to bear, she told herself bitterly. For what right did Miles have to come to her tonight? What right did he have to speak to her after all this time? What right did he have to even look at her?
None, she decided. None at all.
“You need to leave.” She spoke quietly, but the underlying command was unmistakable. It was a command she never would have dreamed of making as a young girl with her eyes full of stars and her heart full of love. But she was a woman now.
A woman left.
A woman scorned.
A woman forgotten.
A horse struck out at its stall, the sound of hoof hitting wood echoing in the sudden silence. Startled by the loud noise, Dianna could not help but flinch. In a single powerful stride Miles was beside her and had his hand clasped over her shoulder, the warm weight of it pressing down reassuringly.
“It is only one of the horses moving about.”
“Do not touch me!” She stumbled clumsily out of his grasp and rubbed the spot where his hand had been, as though by doing so she could erase the sudden flood of memories his touch had invoked.
Once she would have relished the gentle caress of his fingertips sliding across her flesh. Once she would have returned the gesture in kind without thinking. But that was then, and this was now. Things were different. She was different. And he had no right to touch her as he once had.
“Don’t,” Miles said roughly. Green eyes flooded with an emotion not easily deciphered, he held out one hand, long, tapered fingers lightly flexing. “Don’t turn from me.” Silver moonlight kissed his muscular forearm, revealing thin blue veins pulsing on one side and a pelt of dark hair on the other.
Staring at his upturned palm as though it held a coiled snake, Dianna gave a jerky shake of her head. “Do not presume to tell me what to do. You have no right. No right,” she repeated. Anger burned like a ball of fire inside her chest, spurring her to say all of the words she’d been holding inside all this years. Words that had played through her mind every night as she lay on her back staring up at the ceiling, silently praying for Miles’ safe return even as she cursed him for leaving her.
“I c
ame here so we can talk about what happened,” he began. “So I can explain-”
“You are too late. I have nothing to say to you,” she spat, her voice lashing the air like a whip. “Do you hear me? Nothing!”
Beneath his scruffy shadow of beard, Miles’ jaw clenched. “You must hear me out.”
“Must I?” she mocked, her slender body vibrating with suppressed rage and a hurt so deep it ran all the way down to her very core. Much like an apple infested with a worm, she was shiny on the outside…but empty where it counted. Empty where it mattered most.
Because of Miles.
He’d broken her when he left. No, not broken, Dianna thought bitterly. Things that were broken could be fixed. Things that were broken could be repaired. He’d shattered her. Mind, body, and soul. Through sheer will and determination she’d managed to put most of the pieces back together, but there were some that could never return to the way they’d been, no matter how hard she tried to make them fit.
“Dianna-” He reached for her again. She twisted away, deftly avoiding his grasp.
“I loved you!” she cried fiercely. To her horror, she felt tears burning in the corners of her eyes. She blinked them away. “It may have been young love, but it was pure and true.”
“You love me still,” Miles said.
“No.” She shook her head vehemently from side to side, sending blonde curls whipping across her flushed cheeks. “No, I do not love you. I despise you.”
“Liar.” Closing the distance between them in one long stride, he yanked her hard against him and claimed her mouth with his own.
For a moment, one blissful, reminiscent moment, Dianna allowed herself to be lost in the kiss. She even returned it, lips moving hesitantly beneath his. Her hands flattened against his chest in slight restraint, holding herself back. Then he deepened the kiss and passion flared, burning as brightly between them as it ever had.