Now a Bride (Short Story) Read online

  Now a Bride is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  A Delacorte Press eBook Original

  Copyright © 2011 by Mary Balogh

  Excerpt from The Secret Mistress by Mary Balogh copyright © 2011 by Mary Balogh

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Delacorte Press, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  This book contains an excerpt from the forthcoming title The Secret Mistress by Mary Balogh. This excerpt has been set for this edition only and may not reflect the final content of the forthcoming edition.

  Delacorte Press is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc., and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

  eISBN: 978-0-440-42369-0

  www.bantamdell.com

  Cover Design : Lynn Andreozzi

  v3.1

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  The Mistress Books

  Jane and Jocelyn

  The Proposal

  The Wedding

  Return to Acton Park

  Viola and Ferdinand

  The Wedding

  Home to Pinewood Manor

  A Final Word

  Series Epilogue

  Excerpt from The Secret Mistress

  MORE THAN A MISTRESS and No Man’s Mistress, first published a decade ago, are the stories of two rambunctious, alpha-male brothers finding love and a calming, enriching influence on their lives with their respective heroines. Jocelyn Dudley, Duke of Tresham, and Lord Ferdinand Dudley have a younger sister, who is already married in both books. Lady Angeline Ailsbury, Countess of Heyward, is loud and bold, with execrable taste in clothes, especially bonnets, and has a way of contradicting herself to a quite dizzying degree as she talks. She will plead with her brothers not to follow through on some particularly mad exploit while at the same time urging them on to succeed at all costs. She complains of her nerves yet always wants to be at the forefront of any daring and dangerous activity. The Earl of Heyward, her husband, a quiet man who nevertheless seems to have his wife’s worst excesses well under control, is known to Angeline’s brothers as a dry old stick. Both brothers agree, however, and with no small degree of incredulity, that Angeline and Heyward are besotted with each other.

  I had no intention of writing Angeline and Heyward’s story. They are already married, after all, and they do not appear on the surface to be a particularly romantic couple. However, a number of readers asked for their story, and, as often happens under such circumstances, I started to wonder … How had they come together? Had it really been a love match? And was it still? How could such a sober, upright citizen as Heyward possibly put up with someone as shatter-brained as Angeline? And how could she bear the dullness of her life with him? Or was it dull?

  In such questions, of course, are the seeds of a new story and a new book. And so, ten years later, their love story has been written as a prequel to the other two. One of the biggest challenges was choosing a title! It needed to have the word mistress in it to match the others, but how was that possible? Lady Angeline Dudley—nineteen years old as she made her come-out into society, sister of the formidable Duke of Tresham—was hardly the sort of young lady who would become any man’s mistress. And morally upright, always dutiful Edward Ailsbury, Earl of Heyward, was not the sort of man to take a mistress. However, authors can be endlessly inventive when they must, and I found a solution. The book is The Secret Mistress. Readers will discover for themselves what the secret is.

  In the meantime, the reissue of More than a Mistress and No Man’s Mistress before the publication of the new book has enabled me to go back and dabble in those books again, to add a few details and scenes that were not in the original books. The contents of the books themselves have not changed, I hasten to add. The changes appear only here, as a small companion to the trilogy.

  THE ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPT of More than a Mistress was longer than the book is now. It had a much fuller ending. However, my editor at the time suggested that the ending would be more effective and more fun if we lopped off whole chunks of the original material, and—with some misgivings—I agreed. I like the ending of the book the way it is, but secretly I have always wanted to provide readers with those scenes that were cut. And a number of readers have protested the “missing” scenes even without knowing that they were originally there.

  At last, here they are—three of them.

  When, in the second-to-last chapter, Jocelyn is trying to persuade Jane to marry him because he has compromised her, they have a nasty argument until, finally, it seems to Jocelyn that Jane is about to capitulate for all the right reasons. He can afford to be generous.

  “Tell me,” he said. “What about you, Jane? What do you want? Do you want me to go away? Seriously? Tell me if you do—but quietly and seriously, not in a passion, so that I will know that you mean what you say. Tell me to go and I will.”

  He feels confident of her answer, but in fact the answer she gives shakes him to the core of his being.

  “I am with child,” she cried. “I have no choices left.”

  He recoils and she glares. And he speaks the final words of the scene:

  “Ah, so,” he said softly at last. “Well, this changes everything, Jane.”

  And that is where the chapter ends—in the book, though not in the original manuscript. The events of the following chapter occur one week later at the come-out ball that has been arranged for Jane by her godmother. During supper the guests—and readers—are treated to a surprise announcement. A former beau of Jane’s has just made a public and unilateral declaration of his engagement to her. But Jocelyn has something to say on the matter:

  “I must protest most forcefully against your imagined betrothal to her, my dear fellow. You see, much as I commend you for the concern you have shown for her well-being, I really cannot permit you to marry my wife.”

  If nothing had been cut from the original manuscript, that announcement would have come as no surprise to the reader, because there was a wedding scene preceding that of the come-out ball.

  And then the story in its original form ended with a chapter that showed Jocelyn and Jane’s return to Acton Park, his home and estate in the country. He had not been there since the age of sixteen except for two funerals—his father’s and then his mother’s—and he had sworn never to go there again. It held too many painful memories of the incident that had put an abrupt end to both his boyhood and his innocence. But under Jane’s influence he has acknowledged that he must go back, and that he actually wants to go back. He said so during that quarrel when he was trying to persuade her to marry him:

  “Jane, I long to go home. To go back to Acton—with you. To start creating our own memories and our own traditions there. You thought you knew my dreams. But this is my dream. Will you not share it with me?”

  It seemed fitting to end the book with their return. But the decision was made to end it instead with Jocelyn and Jane waltzing at her come-out ball after the announcement of their marriage, while the ton looks on.

  How lovely it is now to be able to have my cake and eat it. Here are the three scenes that were cut when More than a Mistress was published in 2000.

  JANE GLARED AT him in the silence that followed her words.

  “Ah, so,” he said softly at last. “Well, this changes everything, Jane.”

  She was not deceived by the quietness of his voice. For all the nastiness of their quarrel, he had for the last few
minutes been Jocelyn again, the vulnerable, feeling man she had come to know and love during the last week they had spent in his love nest. And she had felt all the pull of his anxiety, his need, his love. He did love her. She had known it then, and she felt it now. He had even said it. But he had let her down when she most needed him. He had discovered her real identity and what she stood accused of, and he had lashed out at her verbally, refusing to believe that she would have confided in him, that she would have trusted him. But because she was Lady Sara Illingsworth rather than plain Jane Ingleby, of course, he must offer her marriage and insist that she accept. It was perfectly fine for Jane to be his mistress, but only marriage would do for Lady Sara. She would have fought him tooth and nail on the issue if she could. But she could not, of course. Not indefinitely, anyway. For she was with child. She had suspected it soon after she left him. Now she was as certain as she could be without actually consulting a physician.

  He had spoken quietly when she told him. But she was not deceived. For suddenly he was no longer Jocelyn—he was the Duke of Tresham, that nasty, arrogant, overbearing aristocrat who believed he could have his own way on any matter upon earth. And the trouble was that he could. Though not with her. Never with her. Until now.

  “Yes,” she said bitterly in response to his words. “I suppose it does. For I no longer have that choice you offered me, do I—tell me to go and I will. Now you will insist upon marrying me, not only because I am Lady Sara Illingsworth, but because I am with child.”

  “Damn it all, Jane,” he said, “of course I will insist.”

  “I could still say no,” she said. “You could not force me.”

  They were foolish words, of course. The Duke of Tresham in any normal state of mind would not have even dignified them with a response. He would merely have lofted one eloquent eyebrow. But he was not in a normal state of mind. His hands reached out and closed about her upper arms and hoisted her a few inches nearer to his cold face and contrastingly blazing eyes.

  If Jane had been in a normal frame of mind, she might actually have been afraid of him for once—especially when he spoke in a quieter voice even than before.

  “Try me, Jane,” he said. “Try me. You have a child of mine within your womb, and you will have my ring on your finger before many days have passed.”

  She braced her fingertips across his chest in order to maintain some distance between them.

  “And tell me, Your Grace,” she said, “if the ring would have been seen as a necessity if I had remained merely Jane Ingleby. Of course it would not. I was your mistress, and the contract we had agreed to made provision for any children of our liaison. It did not include any mention of marriage between those children’s parents. You need not be so righteous now, blaming me for withholding this from you for almost a month—and I can see you are blaming me. It was a man and his mistress who conceived this child, not the Duke of Tresham and Lady Sara Illingsworth.”

  “You would go back, then, to being my mistress, Jane?” he asked.

  And somehow his eyes no longer blazed and his face was no longer cold, and his voice, though still quiet, was no longer menacing. He was Jocelyn again. Oh, he did not play fair. He did not.

  She had already opened her mouth and drawn breath. She released it on a sigh. She blinked furiously lest her eyes fill with tears again. Oh, how she hated him.

  “We were happy,” he said. “For one whole week I had never been happier in my life, Jane, or even nearly as happy. And you were happy too. Tell me you were.”

  “Yes,” she said and sighed again. “I was happy. Happier than I had ever been before.”

  “And desperately unhappy too,” he said, “because you were a fugitive accused of murder and you were frightened and lonely and had still not quite steeled your nerve to confide in me.”

  “Yes.”

  “I would have gathered you right into my heart,” he said. “I would have made you safe, Jane. I would have cleared up the whole nasty mess for you. I would have held you in my heart for the rest of both our lives.”

  Oh, yes, yes, the powerful, gallant male and the timid, helpless female—his eternal worldview. The fact that he had put all right for her when she had been doing a poor job of it for herself made her no less indignant.

  “And yet,” she said, “when you learned the truth about me from that horrid Bow Street Runner, you spurned me.”

  “I did,” he admitted. “Have you ever noticed, Jane, the obnoxious way time has of only moving forward and never back? If only occasionally it would move backward, we would have a chance to relive those scenes in our lives of which we are deeply ashamed. I am deeply ashamed, Jane, of how I reacted to what that greasy little man told me. I doubt I will ever completely forgive myself. But I cannot go back.”

  “No,” she said.

  “Forgive me, Jane,” he said. “Please forgive me.”

  She dipped her head and nodded, her eyes closed.

  “I cannot swear,” he said, “that I would have married you anyway, Jane. Our life together was idyllic for that one week. That house was paradise to me. I might have wanted my mistress and my family to be there forever so that I could step into paradise whenever I wished. I do not know. Now it seems inconceivable to me that I would not have wanted to marry you anyway when I knew about the child—or even if there had been no child. Now I can think only of the impossibility of living my life without you in the center of it every moment of every day. And is this all about me, Jane, and what I want? Am I that selfish? Do you not want me?”

  There was such uncharacteristic uncertainty, such humility in the question that Jane opened her eyes and raised her head.

  “Because I am Jane,” she said, “and you are Jocelyn. I really do not care about those other two people with their toplofty titles. Because it is me and it is you. Because I love you and it is the only thing that really matters. My mother loved my father and he her, and I want no less for myself. I want no less for my children than what I had with my parents. This child is not an accident or a nuisance, Jocelyn. This child is precious beyond words, and I would rather defy all the powers that be and remain an unmarried mother than trap him in a respectable family life that can offer no real joy.”

  He dropped his hands from her arms then, and she lowered hers from his chest. He gazed into her eyes for a few moments and then took her completely by surprise by dropping to his knees in front of her. He spread both hands over her abdomen and then set his forehead over his hands. She heard him inhaling deeply and exhaling again.

  “I will never discourage him from playing the pianoforte or painting,” he said. “He may even take up embroidery if he so chooses. Or knitting, heaven help me.”

  Jane smiled. “And will you allow her to fight duels and race a curricle?” she asked him.

  He tipped back his head and frowned up at her.

  “Don’t test my patience at such an affecting moment, Jane,” he said.

  She laughed at him and cupped his face with her hands. She leaned down and kissed him on the lips.

  “And since I am down here anyway,” he said when she had finished, “I might as well make a complete ass of myself so that you may inform our grandchildren that their grandpapa made the extravagantly romantic gesture of getting down on both knees before they grew arthritic with age. My dearest, most beloved Jane, will you marry me? And you will note that I am not asking Lady Sara Illingsworth—she does not even sound like you. I am asking Jane Ingleby, my onetime nurse and mistress and my alltime lover. Will you?”

  “Oh, Jocelyn.” She leaned over him and set her hands on his shoulders. “Oh, my love. Oh, my love, yes.”

  She blinked furiously again, but this time the tears would not be contained. It did not matter. He leapt to his feet, caught her up in a tight hug, and lowered his lips to hers in an open-mouthed kiss that left her breathless.

  “Within the week,” he said. “By special license.”

  “Not until after the week is over,” she said. “There
is my come-out ball in one week’s time, and Aunt Harriet has been so very kind to me. She is working extremely hard to make it all a grand success.”

  “It may be a wedding ball instead,” he said.

  “No,” she said. “That would be discourteous of us. And it is so important to her that everything be done correctly now after all the near scandal of the last few weeks. No, Jocelyn, the wedding will have to wait.”

  “Someone may challenge me again in the meanwhile and put a bullet through my brain,” he said. “And I am not leaving behind a bastard child, Jane. You cannot ask it of me.”

  She drew breath, but he held up a staying hand.

  “We will compromise,” he said. “You see how you have changed me, Jane? When did the Duke of Tresham ever compromise? I am surprised to find that the word is even a part of my vocabulary. We will compromise and marry on the day of your come-out ball.”

  “Jocelyn!” she said, exasperated.

  “And that,” he told her, “is my final word on the matter.”

  “A fine compromiser you are,” she said.

  “Give me time, Jane,” he said meekly.

  And grinned at her.

  “ARE YOU PLANNING to be ready any time soon?” Jocelyn asked with deceptive sweetness.

  Michael Quincy, his secretary, was not deceived. He shot to his feet from behind his desk at Dudley House, where he had been sorting the morning’s post.

  “I am ready, Your Grace,” he said, and Jocelyn, looking him over from head to foot and seeing that indeed he was, was denied the opportunity to bark and display some open bad temper.

  His valet had shaved him with extra speed as well as all the usual caution this morning, he had noticed, and had dashed for each item of his clothing with almost ungainly haste, even though Jocelyn had spoken scarcely a word to him after an initial curt greeting. His butler and the footman on duty in the breakfast parlor had served him with punctilious care while seeming to make every effort to blend into the woodwork, even though Jocelyn had uttered not one word of complaint.