up to their rooms and cuddled with her for a pleasant hour, and she’d come right.
“Does this mean we must bide here in dreary Dorsetshire for the whole winter?” Ash asked.
“I don’t want to take you away from your family,” Della said as Uncle Hawthorne told Uncle Oak to walk the plank.
“You are my family, and besides, this lot will be returning to their various abodes in another few days. I would like to have you to myself for a while, no pirate uncles, no nosy Haddonfields dropping around, just the two of us.”
“I would like to have you to myself too, and Lisbon sounds delightful.”
Lisbon was worth a try, and to Ash’s great relief, his blue devils weren’t as bad when he broke up the winter with some sunshine and sea air. Della did get the vapors on board ship—both directions—also mal de mer, or something like it, that persisted for a few weeks even on dry land.
In addition to periodic bouts of worry, Della in subsequent years endured four bouts of childbirth, Ash at her side through every hour of every travail. The prescription of wife and children did alleviate the worst of his melancholia, though some years were harder than others.
Della was his partner in exploration as they assessed the benefits and burdens of walks in nature (beneficial), gardening (some benefit), dancing (quite beneficial), improving tomes (useful as a soporific), and chocolate (much discussion), among other experiments. What worked one year was sometimes less useful the next, but then Della or Ash would have a new idea to try. Season by season, they weathered the passing showers, the storms, and even the occasional gale.
What did not change was their determination to share life hand in hand, through both the mess and the glory, in sickness and in health, in joy and in woe (and in that peculiar combination of joy and woe known as parenting), until both Ash and Della knew their love was equal to any and all challenges, and they lived lovingly—and mostly happily—ever after.
To My Dear Readers
Ash and Della led me such a dance, but I hope you agree with me that their story was the right one for them, and worth the wait. No pressure, Sycamore… (He blows us a kiss.)
To my surprise, Sycamore’s story is not the next in the True Gentlemen line-up. Daisy Dorning Fromm decided that she needed a real romance too (things with the squire haven’t been a bed of roses). Truly Beloved (except below) comes out in January 2021, and Sycamore’s tale will follow shortly after that—I hope.
But you don’t have to wait until January for our next happily ever after. The Truth About Dukes, book five in the Rogues to Riches series, will hit the shelves Nov. 10, and has already earned a starred review from Publishers Weekly. This is the story of Constance Wentworth and Robert, Duke of Rothhaven. They each have difficult pasts which they must overcome together if they are to have the luscious future they deserve. Excerpt below.
And yes, Stephen Wentworth’s book, How to Catch a Duke (April 2021), is already up for pre-order because Stephen is precocious like that. (Stephen nods regally, the wretch.)
I am also getting together my thoughts on a new series, tentatively titled Mayfair Knights, which you should start seeing links for by the end of the year, and yes, I’m still working on my Lady Violet Mysteries, though I have no idea where that project will end up. Do I have the best job ever, or what?
Happy reading!
Grace Burowes
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Truly Beloved—Excerpt
Fabianus, Viscount Penweather, has not journeyed to Dorsetshire in the dead of winter to engage in yet another dalliance with yet another lonely widow. Being a trifle lonely himself—only a trifle—he’s looking for a fresh start in fresh surrounds…
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The lady stalking across the frozen garden had apparently passed from the brave phase of widowhood into the indomitable phase. Her unrelievedly black attire showed in stark contrast to the winter-white landscape, and her brisk movements contrasted to deep stillness surrounding her.
Fabianus Haviland, Viscount Penweather, sensed the woman’s determination from her stride, her posture, the measured speed with which she covered the dreary ground. An indefinable instinct told him she’d been recently bereaved. This was not a dowager of longstanding, but rather, a woman new to her grief and bent on besting it.
“My sister comes to pay her weekly call,” Grey Dorning, Earl of Casriel said,