Someone to Romance Read online

  Mary Balogh grew up in Wales and now lives with husband Robert in Saskatchewan, Canada. She has written more than 100 historical novels and novellas, more than 30 of which have been New York Times bestsellers. They include the Slightly sestet (the Bedwyn saga), the Simply quartet, the Huxtable quintet, the Westcott series and the Survivors’ Club series.

  Visit Mary Balogh online:

  www.marybalogh.com

  www.facebook.com/AuthorMaryBalogh

  Praise for Mary Balogh:

  ‘One of the best!’

  Julia Quinn

  ‘Today’s superstar heir to the marvellous legacy of

  Georgette Heyer (except a lot steamier)’

  Susan Elizabeth Phillips

  ‘Ms Balogh is a veritable treasure, a matchless storyteller

  who makes our hearts melt with delight’

  Romantic Times

  ‘Balogh is truly a find’

  Publishers Weekly

  ‘Balogh is the queen of spicy Regency-era romance,

  creating memorable characters in unforgettable stories’

  Booklist

  By Mary Balogh

  The Westcott Series

  Someone to Love

  Someone to Hold

  Someone to Wed

  Someone to Care

  Someone to Trust

  Someone to Honour

  Someone to Remember

  Someone to Romance

  The Survivors’ Club Series

  The Proposal

  The Arrangement

  The Escape

  Only Enchanting

  Only a Promise

  Only a Kiss

  Only Beloved

  The Huxtable Series

  First Comes Marriage

  Then Comes Seduction

  At Last Comes Love

  Seducing an Angel

  A Secret Affair

  The Simply Series

  Simply Unforgettable

  Simply Love

  Simply Magic

  Simply Perfect

  The Bedwyn Saga

  Slightly Married

  Slightly Wicked

  Slightly Scandalous

  Slightly Tempted

  Slightly Sinful

  Slightly Dangerous

  The Bedwyn Prequels

  One Night for Love

  A Summer to Remember

  The Mistress Trilogy

  More Than a Mistress

  No Man’s Mistress

  The Secret Mistress

  PIATKUS

  First published in the US in 2020 by Jove, Berkley,

  an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  First published in Great Britain in 2020 by Piatkus

  Copyright © 2020 by Mary Balogh

  Excerpt from Someone to Cherish copyright © 2020 by Mary Balogh

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  All characters and events in this publication, other than those

  clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance

  to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a

  retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without

  the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated

  in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published

  and without a similar condition including this condition being

  imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book

  is available from the British Library.

  ISBN 978-0-349-42366-1

  Piatkus

  An imprint of

  Little, Brown Book Group

  Carmelite House

  50 Victoria Embankment

  London EC4Y 0DZ

  An Hachette UK Company

  www.hachette.co.uk

  www.littlebrown.co.uk

  Contents

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-one

  Twenty-two

  Twenty-three

  One

  Lady Jessica Archer was traveling alone across England toward London. Alone was, of course, a relative term. If she had been born male, she could have left Rose Cottage in Gloucestershire that morning astride a horse or perched upon the high seat of a sporting curricle, ribbons in hand, and no one would have batted an eyelid. When one had the misfortune to be a woman, however, there were always enough people and enough eyelids to bat up a storm.

  She was seated inside the carriage of her brother, the Duke of Netherby, the ducal crest emblazoned upon both doors, with Ruth, her maid. A brawny footman was seated beside a burly coachman up on the box, both men clad in the ducal livery, which was not subdued in color, to say the least. It blared upon the eye like a clarion might upon the ear.

  And then there were the two carriages bowling along behind her. The first conveyed Mr. Goddard, the duke’s personal secretary, who had the whole of the duke’s authority vested in his person when he was acting on behalf of His Grace, as he was currently doing. The coachman and footman upon the box of that carriage were hardly less impressive in girth than the first two.

  The third carriage bore all the baggage, which could have been squeezed into and upon the other two conveyances with a little effort—but why crowd them when there had been the spare carriage taking up room in the ducal carriage house? There was only a coachman upon the box of the baggage coach, but that might have been because he was a former pugilist and so broad and so fierce-looking with his once-broken nose and one cauliflower ear and several missing teeth that no footman fancied climbing up beside him.

  And then there were the outriders, also in the ducal livery, all of them large men upon large horses and appearing as though they might also have been professional fighters in the not-too-distant past. There were eight of them, two for each carriage and two to spare.

  Any highwayman seeing the cavalcade make its colorful way east along the king’s highway, not even trying to hide itself or tiptoe past any dangerous stretch without being noticed, would have either died laughing or else taken mortal fright and moved his business permanently to another part of the country.

  And this was what traveling alone meant when one was a lady.

  This was how it had all come about.

  Abigail Bennington, née Westcott, Jessica’s cousin and best friend, had given birth to a son, Seth, her first child, in late February, a little less than two years after her marriage to Lieutenant Colonel Gilbert Bennington. The Westcott family had been invited to the christening, a month later, in the Gloucestershire village outside which Abby and Gil lived at Rose Cottage, fortunately not really a cottage but more a manor. Even so, when a number of the Westcotts showed up, it was filled to the rafters, to use the phrase of Uncle Thomas, Lord Molenor. And it was a good thing, Aunt Viola, Abby’s mother, the Marchioness of Dorchester, had said, though a little sad too since neither Camille nor Harry, her other two children, had come, having decided to visit later, after the weather had warmed up a bit. Camille and Joel’s numerous children alone would fill a tent that would take up the whole lawn.

  Jessica had gone with her mother, the Dowager Duchess of Netherby—and a Westcott
by birth—and with her brother and sister-in-law, Avery and Anna, the duke and duchess, and their four children. It had been a jolly week, the only real frustration for Jessica being that it had given her scarcely a moment to be alone with Abby. She had not seen her best friend for an age, though they exchanged long letters at least once a week. Abby had been a bit disappointed too, but it was Gil who had suggested that Jessica stay on for a few weeks after everyone else returned home.

  Simple, right? Jessica silently addressed an invisible someone seated opposite her in the carriage.

  Wrong!

  She would remain at Rose Cottage to give Abby her company awhile longer, Jessica had announced to her family. She was twenty-five years old, after all, and no longer needed to be coddled like a girl. Gil would hire a post chaise for her when she was ready to leave, and she would have her maid, Ruth, for company.

  Her family, alas—at least the vocal part of it (which, interpreted, meant the female part)—saw things quite otherwise. Jessica, for all her advanced years, could not possibly be allowed to remain behind, since that would mean her returning alone. Poor Ruth, apparently, counted for nothing. All sorts of harm might befall Jessica in the form of footpads or highwaymen or rude hostlers at inns or wild beasts or broken axles or torrential storms.

  “Besides which,” her grandmother, the Dowager Countess of Riverdale, had pointed out as though to clinch the matter, “it simply is not done for any lady to travel alone, Jessica, as you must be well aware. Even someone my age.”

  Grandmama was well into her seventies.

  Jessica’s protests had gone unheeded.

  “You cannot possibly stay here,” Jessica’s mother had said at last, a note of finality in her voice, “as much as I understand your longing to spend more time with Abigail—and hers to have you. I cannot possibly remain here with you. The Season is about to begin and I will need to get ready for the removal to London. So will you, Jessica. Perhaps we can arrange something for another time.”

  Jessica had cringed at the very thought of going back to London in order to participate in all the glittering entertainments of yet another Season—her sixth. Or was it her seventh? She had lost count. It was not that she hated balls and picnics and concerts and all the other parties and such with which the ton amused itself during the months of spring, while Parliament was in session. But these entertainments could very quickly become repetitive and tedious. And one tended to see the same people year after year and wherever one went.

  Her continued single state was always more apparent in London than it was in the country.

  “Oh, Mama,” she had protested. Aunt Matilda had been smiling sympathetically at her, but it was not sympathy she had needed. It was a defender.

  That was when Avery—her brother, the duke—had come to her rescue. He had listened in silence to the family conference, sitting in one corner of Gil and Abby’s sitting room holding Beatrice, the newest addition to his family, while she sucked partly on her thumb and partly on one formerly pristine fold of his elaborately tied neckcloth. When he had spoken, it had been with what sounded like a sigh, as though he had found the whole proceeding excruciatingly tedious, as no doubt he had.

  “I daresay,” he had said, “you would all consider Jessica both safe from harm and properly preserved from scandal if she were to travel home in the ducal carriage with her maid while Edwin Goddard followed close behind in another carriage, each conveyance manned with a coachman and a footman upon the box, and half a dozen outriders to serve as escorts.”

  The Marquess of Dorchester, Abby’s stepfather, had chuckled. “All of them clad in the brightest ducal livery, I suppose, Netherby?” he had said.

  “But of course.” Avery had raised his eyebrows as though surprised that the matter could even be in doubt.

  “It is a splendid idea,” Anna had said, beaming at her husband and her sister-in-law. “Avery will send them whenever you are ready to leave, Jessica. How lovely it will be for you and Abby to enjoy some time together after the whirlwind of the celebrations during the past week.”

  And that had settled it. Though Avery spoke only rarely during family gatherings, when he did speak no one ever seemed to question his pronouncements. Jessica had never quite understood it. He did not look like an overwhelmingly powerful man or even behave like one. He was of only average height. He was also slight and graceful of build, with very blond hair and a face of angelic beauty. He might have looked . . . well, effeminate. But he did not, and somehow he wielded a great deal of power without ever having to bluster or bully or even raise his voice. Jessica suspected that most people outside his immediate family feared him but did not understand why any more than she did.

  The result of those few words he had spoken after the lengthy discussion that had preceded them was that now, three weeks after everyone else had left, she was on the road back to London, at the very heart of a cavalcade that drew astonished stares and awed scrutiny in every town and village or hamlet through which it passed.

  Being a woman—or, rather, being a lady—certainly had its frustrations despite the luxury of cushions that wrapped her in comfort and the springs that made the passage of the carriage over English roads almost a smooth one. She knew she was being treated as a child, although she was not one. Mr. Goddard, Avery’s extremely efficient secretary, transacted all the business along the way, with the result being that Jessica had scarcely opened her mouth since the flurry of hugs and tearful goodbyes that had accompanied her departure that morning from Rose Cottage. Ruth was no real companion. Though excellent at her job and loyal to a fault, she had always insisted upon keeping a proper and respectful distance from her mistress. She never prattled on about anything and everything the way it seemed other ladies’ maids did. She rarely spoke at all, in fact, unless spoken to.

  It had been a very quiet journey.

  It had given Jessica far too much time to think.

  She had never dreamed, growing up, that she would still be unwed at the age of twenty-five. Like most young girls, she had dreamed of growing up and falling in love and marrying and beginning a family of her own, all long before she was twenty. But when she was seventeen and within a year of making her longed-for come-out into society, the Great Disaster had happened. She always thought of it as though the words would have to be capitalized if written down. Her uncle, Humphrey Westcott, Earl of Riverdale, had died, and twenty-year-old Harry, his son, had succeeded him in title and property and fortune. Until, that was, the ghastly discovery had been made that Uncle Humphrey had already been secretly married to someone else when he wed Aunt Viola, Harry’s—and Camille’s and Abigail’s—mother, more than twenty years before. Aunt Viola’s marriage, unknown to everyone except Uncle Humphrey himself, had been bigamous. Harry was stripped of his title and everything else, and Camille and Abigail lost their titles and their dowries. All three lost their very legitimacy. They no longer belonged in the ton.

  The whole of the Westcott family had been thrown into turmoil. But it had always seemed to Jessica that she suffered more than any of the others, except for Aunt Viola and Camille, Harry, and Abigail, of course. For Abby was her very dearest friend. They had always been more like sisters than cousins. They had dreamed of making their come-out together, even though Abby was one year older than Jessica. They had dreamed of falling in love and marrying at the same time, perhaps even in a dazzlingly grand double wedding. They had dreamed of living happily ever after, always as the dearest of friends.

  The Great Disaster had put an abrupt and cruel end to those dreams.

  Avery, Harry’s guardian at the time, had purchased an officer’s commission in a foot regiment for him, and Harry had gone off to Spain and Portugal to fight in the Peninsular Wars against the forces of Napoleon Bonaparte. Camille, in addition to everything else, had been rejected by her fiancé, the dastardly Viscount Uxbury. Abby never did have a come-out Season but went with Camille to live in Bath with their maternal grandmother. Aunt Viola had fled for a while
to live with her clergyman brother in Dorsetshire.

  And Jessica, untouched in all material ways by the disaster, had been left bereft. Alone and desolate, with crushed hopes and lost dreams. She had been uninterested in continuing with anything to which her privileged status as Lady Jessica Archer, sister of the Duke of Netherby, entitled her. She had lost all interest in a come-out Season of her own, in courtship, and in marriage. For Abby could not share any of the glitter and excitement with her but was rather incarcerated in her grandmother’s house in Bath. Incarcerated had not seemed too harsh a word.

  Perhaps worse for Jessica, though, than the lost dreams and the desolation had been the inexplicable sense of guilt, as though everything that had happened to her cousins, and particularly to Abby, was her fault. As though she had somehow wanted to assert her superiority over them. She had hated the fact that she remained unscathed, that her life and her smooth path forward to a dazzling future remained what they had always been. There was nothing to stop her from making her come-out as planned. There was nothing to stop her from making a brilliant marriage or from living happily ever after. She could still expect to live a life of luxury and privilege for the rest of her days.

  Unlike Abby.

  It had seemed so, so, so unfair.

  She had never been able to do it, in fact, in the eight years since then. She had never found a man to tempt her into being selfish. She had chosen instead to stand in solidarity with her cousin, whom life had treated so unfairly. If Abby must be forever unhappy, as surely she must, then the least Jessica could do was be unhappy too. She had never fallen in love. Now she doubted she ever would or could.

  Yet two years ago Abby had found both love and happiness with Gil Bennington. She lived in that spacious manor with its lovely name and its flower-filled garden on the edge of an idyllic English village. She had a husband she clearly adored, a stepdaughter she loved as her own—Katy, Gil’s daughter by a previous marriage, that was—a new baby who was plump and gorgeous, and . . .

  And Jessica had nothing. Even though she had everything. A strange paradox, that, and ridiculously self-pitying. Even more ridiculous was the fact that in unwary moments she found herself feeling a niggling resentment of Abby. As though her cousin had betrayed her by finding love and happiness when Jessica had sacrificed both for her sake.