Always Remember: Ben's Story (A Ravenswood Novel, Band 3) - Softcover

Balogh, Mary

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0593638409 ISBN 13: 9780593638408

Verlag: Penguin Publishing Group, 2024

Inhaltsangabe

Lady Jennifer Arden and Ben Ellis know that a match between them is out of the question. Yet their hearts yearn for the impossible. Discover a new heartwarming story from New York Times bestselling author and beloved “queen of Regency romance” Mary Balogh.

Left unable to walk by a childhood illness, Lady Jennifer, sister of the Duke of Wilby, has grown up to make a happy place for herself in society. Outgoing and cheerful, she has many friends and enjoys the pleasures of high society—even if she cannot dance at balls or stroll in Hyde Park. She is blessed with a large, loving, and protective family. But she secretly dreams of marriage and children, and of walking—and dancing.

When Ben Ellis comes across Lady Jennifer as she struggles to walk with the aid of primitive crutches, he instantly understands her yearning. He is a fixer. It is often said of him that he never saw a practical problem he did not have to solve. He wants to help her discover independence and motion—driving a carriage, swimming, even walking a different way. But he must be careful. He is the bastard son of the late Earl of Stratton. Though he was raised with the earl’s family, he knows he does not really belong in the world of the ton.

Jennifer is shocked—and intrigued—by Ben’s ideas, and both families are alarmed by the growing friendship and perhaps more that they sense developing between the two. A duke’s sister certainly cannot marry the bastard son of an earl. Except sometimes, love can find a way.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Mary Balogh has written more than one hundred historical novels and novellas, more than forty of which have been New York Times bestsellers. They include the Bedwyn saga, the Simply quartet, the Huxtable quintet, the seven-part Survivors’ Club series, and the Westcott series.

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Chapter One

Summer had settled over southern England in a most agreeable manner, with long days of warm sunshine, gentle breezes, and just enough rainfall to help the crops yield a bountiful harvest and to keep trees, lawns, and pastures fresh and green. Flowers bloomed in colorful abundance, whether wild over hedgerows and walls, in ditches and meadows, or cultivated with loving care in gardens and beds.

The English, of course, could never quite relax into full enjoyment of such a perfect summer. How long could one expect it to last, after all? There would always be pessimists squinting off to the west, whence most weather approached, nodding sagely as though they could see something beyond the bent horizon invisible to everyone else, and predicting that they would pay for such a perfect spell. Even the optimists were ready to admit it could not last forever, and in that at least they were bound to be right sooner or later.

The Ware family of Ravenswood Hall in Hampshire, the inhabitants of the village of Boscombe just across the river from it, and residents of the surrounding countryside became especially anxious when June passed into July and there was still no break in the beautiful weather. For it seemed impossible that it could last a whole month longer. Yet a continuation of the perfect weather was all they asked for. They would not be greedy.

There was to be a grand fete in the neighborhood on the last Saturday of July, and everyone looked forward to it with an almost sick longing. For eight long years had passed since the last one. The Ravenswood summer fete had once been an annual event and for most people their very favorite day of the year, even including Christmas. It had offered feasting and music and dancing and varied contests and entertainment for all ages from the middle of the morning until late at night. The weather had always cooperated with bright sunshine and blue skies and the gentlest of breezes and warmth without searing heat. Always. Ask any old-timers and they would tell you it was so. How everyone hoped the eight-year break would not destroy that string of good fortune. It might rain with their blessing on the Sunday following the fete, but please, please let the sun shine on the Saturday.

Eight years ago the fete had come to an abrupt and horrible end in the middle of the grand ball with which the day's festivities always culminated. Devlin Ware, Viscount Mountford at the time, son and heir of the Earl of Stratton, the genial and well-loved owner of Ravenswood, had come upon his father engaged in a blatantly improper embrace with a lady guest out in the temple folly on top of the hill close to the ballroom. But instead of keeping his shock and outrage to himself until it could be dealt with privately at a more appropriate time, Devlin had confronted his father very publicly outside the open French windows of the ballroom, in the sight and hearing of his family and virtually every neighbor for miles around.

To call it a shocking scene would be a severe understatement.

It had ended in disaster for the Ware family and in intense embarrassment for everyone, even neighbors and village folk who had no reason to be embarrassed. Except that they had always set the Wares of Ravenswood upon some sort of pedestal. They had seemed the perfect family, virtuous and happy among themselves, amiable toward all, impeccably well mannered, unfailingly charming leaders of the community. They had always been generous about sharing their home and the spacious park surrounding it for community events that ranged from the extravagant grandeur of the summer fete and the joyful warmth of the Christmas party and ball to the fun of the Valentine's treasure hunt and tea and the impromptu and less formal invitation to public days, when everyone was welcome to enjoy the beauty of the park for picnics and walks.

Everything had changed after that night. The guest who had been caught with the earl, a supposed widow and newcomer to the village, had disappeared overnight. Devlin had left abruptly the following morning with his elder half brother, not to be seen again in the neighborhood for more than six years. Clarissa, Countess of Stratton, who had always been warm and hospitable, the perfect hostess, had withdrawn into her home and into herself and was rarely seen in public except at church on Sunday mornings. Her sons Nicholas and Owen had left soon after their elder brothers, one to begin his career as an officer with a prestigious cavalry regiment, the other to attend boarding school. The elder daughter, Lady Philippa Ware, a happy-natured beauty sparkling on the edge of womanhood, had become suddenly subdued and eventually almost a total recluse. The youngest child of the family, Lady Stephanie Ware, only nine years old at the time of the fete, had kept mainly to herself and her family and her governess except for her involvement with the youth choir at the church.

The Earl of Stratton himself-handsome, openhearted, and genial-was the only one among them who had carried on as though nothing untoward had happened, as though he had not been exposed in the most humiliatingly public manner imaginable as an almost certain adulterer and a probable philanderer on a larger scale. Everyone knew, after all, that for most of his married life he had spent the spring months of each year in London for the parliamentary session, while his wife and children remained in the country. After the incident at the ball, several people admitted to having always felt uneasy about that arrangement. Was it realistic, they asked themselves, to have expected that their earl would remain celibate during those lengthy separations from his wife, when London abounded with members of the ton eager to amuse themselves at the myriad entertainments of the Season?

Life as usual after the catastrophe had not lasted long even for the earl, however. He had collapsed at the village tavern one evening while he drank ale and chatted jovially with his neighbors. According to those neighbors, he had been dead before he hit the floor.

The biggest change the catastrophe of that summer fete had brought to those who lived in the village and countryside around Ravenswood, however, had been the complete cessation of all the social activities for which the earl and countess had opened their home since their marriage more than twenty years before. The countess had organized and hosted those events, and the earl had paid for them. No longer. Open days, two or three times each week, had never officially been canceled, but they had come to an end anyway. At first no one had wanted to intrude upon what was obviously a difficult time for the family. And who wanted the embarrassment of coming accidentally face-to-face with one or more of them and having to say something? After a while, it had seemed just too awkward to go back there.

Then the earl died.

Two years had passed after his death before Devlin, the new Earl of Stratton, returned home, looking very different from the quiet, pleasant, essentially unremarkable young man his neighbors remembered. He had come home, at the age of twenty-eight, looking dour, even morose, and rugged and battle-scarred. He had purchased a commission in a foot regiment after leaving home and had gone to Portugal to fight in the Peninsular Wars. His elder half brother, Ben Ellis-his elder, illegitimate half brother, that is-had gone with him, nominally as his batman. The allied armies had fought their way across Portugal and Spain and over the Pyrenees into France until Napoleon Bonaparte surrendered and abdicated as emperor after the Battle of Toulouse in 1814. Devlin had sold out then, the wars apparently over, and come home. Ben had been married and widowed during the six years they had been gone, and brought an infant child home with him. He had not stayed at Ravenswood. He had...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Penguin Publishing Group
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2024
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0593638409
• ISBN 13: 9780593638408
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 400
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: BERKLEY; https://www.penguin.com/?s=BERKLEY; ; Unit 2 Limavady Business Park; Limavady; County Londonderry; BT49 0HR; Vereinigtes Königreich
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