fettle. It sounds as though they’re putting off a move to Barnstaple for the present.”
Mr. Boothroyd had wed Mrs. Bainbridge not long after Neville and Clara had married. “It’s cheaper than hiring another companion,” Neville had overheard Teddy joke to Alex.
The truth was, Mr. Boothroyd and Mrs. Bainbridge were quite fond of each other. They were also rather fond of Justin and Helena’s new baby.
“Boothroyd won’t leave the Abbey,” Neville said. “Not n-now he’s seen Honoria.”
“No. I didn’t expect he would. That baby has worked a spell on everyone in residence.” Clara turned to the next page of Jenny’s letter. “She has news of Teddy. He’s thriving in France, apparently. Alex has found an art teacher for him.” Her eyes drifted down the page. Color bloomed in her cheeks. “The rest is about us.”
His brows lifted. “What about us?”
Clara folded the letter and returned it to its envelope. “Only that she hopes we’ve found contentment here.”
“Are you content?” he asked.
She certainly seemed so. Just as content as he was in their new marriage. The friendship of it. The growing intimacy. He’d never imagined it could be so sweet. So perfect.
“More than content,” she said.
He took her hand in his, bare skin against bare skin, warmed by the summer sunshine. “What more is there?”
“There’s happiness.” Clara rested her head on his shoulder. “There’s this. Every day. With you. For the rest of our lives. The stuff of dreams.”
Neville turned his face into her hair. The scent of orange blossoms tickled his nose. “Then I pray I shall n-never wake up.”
An Excerpt from Gentleman Jim
Turn the Page for a Sneak Peek of Mimi Matthews’ new Regency Romance.
Coming Autumn 2020
Beasley Park
Somerset, England
Spring 1807
Beaten and bloody, Nicholas Seaton sat on the straw-covered floor of the loose box, his legs drawn up against his chest and his forehead resting on his knees. There was no possibility of escape. The doors of the loose box had been bolted shut and the wooden walls were made strong and thick, built to hold the most powerful of Squire Honeywell’s blooded stallions. Even so, Nicholas had wasted the first fifteen minutes of his imprisonment trying to force his way out, slamming his shoulders against the doors and striking out at the walls with all of his remaining strength, earning nothing for his exertions but a fresh set of cuts and bruises.
He’d spent the next fifteen minutes pacing the confines of the loose box like a caged lion, clenching and unclenching his fists, grinding his teeth, and mentally cursing every member of the landed gentry and aristocracy.
“I’ll see you hang for this, Seaton,” Frederick Burton-Smythe had said after driving Nicholas into the loose box at the end of his whip.
And they would hang him. Nicholas was as certain of that fact as he’d ever been of anything in his whole life. Only two years ago a young man no older than himself had been hanged for the paltry crime of stealing chickens from Fred’s father, Sir Roderick Burton-Smythe. To have stolen three priceless pieces of heirloom jewelry from Squire Honeywell’s only daughter, Miss Margaret, was surely grounds for drawing and quartering.
It made no difference that Nicholas hadn’t stolen anything. What good were his protestations of innocence? He was nothing but a lowly groom in Squire Honeywell’s stables. A servant. Even worse than a servant, in fact, for he was the bastard son of Squire Honeywell’s scullery maid, Jenny Seaton.
Jolly Jenny, as she was known, who—before arriving at the kitchen door of Beasley Park eighteen years ago, big with child and begging for scraps of food—had plied her trade at a hedge tavern in Market Barrow. A hedge tavern that had once been a favored haunt of the notorious highwaymen Gentleman Jim.
“The mother a whore and the father a villain,” the vicar’s wife was fond of telling anyone who would listen. “Nicholas Seaton will come to no good, you mark my words.”
No. No one would believe he was innocent. Especially when his accuser was Frederick Burton-Smythe himself.
Nicholas and Fred had