Only Enchanting: A Survivors' Club Novel Read online

  PRAISE FOR AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR MARY BALOGH

  “Once you start a Mary Balogh book, you won’t be able to stop reading.”

  —New York Times bestselling author Susan Elizabeth Phillips

  “Mary Balogh has the gift of making a relationship seem utterly real and utterly compelling.”

  —Mary Jo Putney

  “Winning, witty, and engaging . . . fulfilled all of my romantic fantasies.”

  —New York Times bestselling author Teresa Medeiros

  “Mary Balogh just keeps getting better and better . . . interesting characters and great stories to tell . . . well worth your time.”

  —The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

  “Mary Balogh is a superb author whose narrative voice comments on the characters and events of her novel in an ironic tone reminiscent of Jane Austen.”

  —Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

  “Mary Balogh reaches deep and touches the heart.”

  —New York Times bestselling author Joan Johnston

  “This is Mary Balogh at her riveting best.”

  —#1 New York Times bestselling author Debbie Macomber

  “[Mary Balogh] writes with wit and wisdom. . . . The Proposal is both moving and entertaining and the beginning of what promises to be an outstanding series.”

  —Romance Reviews Today

  “This sexy, touching book revisits the marriage-of-convenience plot, joining two heroic, conflicted characters who are navigating their own versions of darkness and delivering them to the redemptive power of love. Regency bestseller Balogh once again takes a standard romance trope and imbues it with heart, emotional intelligence, and flawless authenticity.”

  —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

  “This touching, totally enthralling story overflows with subtle humor, brilliant dialog, breathtaking sensuality, and supporting characters you want to know better.”

  —Library Journal (starred review)

  “Balogh can always be depended on to deliver a beautifully written Regency romance with appealing, unusual characters, and the second in her new Survivors’ Club series is no exception. . . . Future series installments promise more compellingly tormented heroes.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “[A] poignant and thoughtful romance.”

  —Booklist

  “A compassionate love story with a unique hero and heroine. . . . The dialogue is snappy, and the climax . . . is exciting and helps bring about the blissful ending. . . . The Arrangement [is] a must read.”

  —Fresh Fiction

  PRAISE FOR UNDER THE MISTLETOE

  “Satisfyingly rich . . . Mary Balogh’s Christmas stories are superb. . . . If you haven’t had the seasonal pleasure of Mary Balogh’s Christmas stories in past years, Under the Mistletoe will be a real treat for you. For those of us who have loved her stories for a long time, this anthology is a must buy.”

  —The Romance Reader

  “Reading a Mary Balogh book, whether a novel or a collection of novellas, is always a great delight! . . . This collection of Christmas-themed novellas is definitely a keeper, and I can’t recommend it highly enough! Each story is a beautifully faceted gem, one not to be missed, but instead savored. . . . As I prepare to enter a new year, I do so with the warmth of these beautiful tales stored in my memory.”

  —A Night’s Dream of Books

  “Ms. Balogh has put together an enchanting book of lovely Christmas stories that will truly mesmerize readers. Each of the stories will touch the heart of every reader and this reviewer definitely recommends having a box of tissues handy for the truly loving emotional tales.”

  —The Romance Readers Connection

  “Charming. . . . I enjoyed this fun holiday collection.”

  —Historical Romance Novel News

  “These five Christmas tales are delightful historical romantic gifts.”

  —The Best Reviews

  “[A] lovely early Christmas gift . . . five exquisitely crafted novellas.”

  —Booklist

  ALSO BY MARY BALOGH

  THE SURVIVORS’ CLUB SERIES

  The Proposal

  The Arrangement

  The Escape

  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 SERIES

  Slightly Married

  Slightly Wicked

  Slightly Scandalous

  Slightly Tempted

  Slightly Sinful

  Slightly Dangerous

  BEDWYN PREQUELS

  One Night for Love

  A Summer to Remember

  THE MISTRESS SERIES

  More Than a Mistress

  No Man’s Mistress

  The Secret Mistress

  THE WEB SERIES

  The Gilded Web

  Web of Love

  The Devil’s Web

  CLASSICS

  The Ideal Wife

  The Secret Pearl

  A Precious Jewel

  A Christmas Promise

  Dark Angel/

  Lord Carew’s Bride

  The Famous Heroine/

  The Plumed Bonnet

  A Christmas Bride/

  Christmas Beau

  The Temporary Wife/

  A Promise of Spring

  A Counterfeit Betrothal/

  The Notorious Rake

  Irresistible

  Under the Mistletoe

  SIGNET

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) LLC, 375 Hudson Street,

  New York, New York 10014

  USA | Canada | UK | Ireland | Australia | New Zealand | India | South Africa | China

  penguin.com

  A Penguin Random House Company

  First published by Signet, an imprint of New American Library,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) LLC

  Copyright © Mary Balogh, 2014

  Excerpt from Beyond the Sunrise copyright © Mary Balogh, 1992

  Excerpt from Longing copyright © Mary Balogh, 1994

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA

  ISBN 978-0-698-15608-1

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Version_1

  Contents

  Praise

  Also by MARY BALOGH

  Title page

  Copyright page

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter
16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Excerpt from ONLY A PROMISE

  Excerpt from BEYOND THE SUNRISE

  Excerpt from LONGING

  1

  At the age of twenty-six, Agnes Keeping had never been in love or ever expected to be—or even wished to be. She rather chose to be in control of her own emotions and her own life, such as it was.

  At the age of eighteen she had chosen to marry William Keeping, a neighboring gentleman of sober address and steady habits and modest means, after he had very properly called upon her father to make his offer and had then made her a very civil marriage proposal in the presence of her father’s second wife. Agnes had been fond of her husband and comfortable with him for almost five years before he died of one of his frequent winter chills. She had mourned him with an empty sort of desolation for longer than the requisite year of wearing her black widow’s weeds and still sadly missed him.

  She had not been in love with him, however, or he with her. The very idea seemed absurd, suggestive as it was of a wild, unbridled sort of passion.

  She smiled at her image in the glass as she tried to imagine poor William in an unbridled passion, romantic or otherwise. But then her eyes focused upon herself, and it occurred to her that she had better admire her splendor now while she had the chance, for once she arrived at the ball, it would be instantly apparent that in reality she did not look very magnificent at all.

  She was wearing her green silk evening gown, which she loved despite the fact that it was far from new—indeed, she had had it when William was still alive—and had not been in the height of fashion even when it was. It was high waisted with a moderately low neckline and short puffy sleeves and was embroidered with silver thread about the hem and the edges of the sleeves. It was not shabby despite its age. One did not, after all, wear one’s best evening gown very often, unless one moved in far more elevated social circles than Agnes did. She had been living for several months now in a modest cottage in the village of Inglebrook in Gloucestershire with her elder sister, Dora.

  Agnes had never attended a ball before. She had been to assemblies, of course, and it could be argued that a ball was the same thing by another name. But really there was a world of difference. Assemblies were held in public halls, usually above an inn. Balls were private entertainments hosted by those rich and socially prominent enough to inhabit a house with a ballroom. Such people and such houses did not abound in the English countryside.

  There was one close by, however.

  Middlebury Park, a mere mile from Inglebrook, was a stately mansion belonging to Viscount Darleigh, husband of Agnes’s new and dear friend, Sophia. The long wing east of the massive central block housed the state apartments, which were dazzlingly magnificent—or so they had appeared to Agnes when Sophia had given her a tour one afternoon not long after they first met. They included a spacious ballroom.

  The viscount had succeeded to his title when his uncle and cousin died a sudden and violent death together, and it was only now, four years later, that Middlebury Park had again become the social center of the neighborhood. Lord Darleigh had been blinded at the age of seventeen when he was an artillery officer in the Peninsular Wars, two years before the title and property and fortune became his. He had lived a retired life at Middlebury until he met and married Sophia in London in the late spring of this year, just before Agnes herself moved to the neighborhood. His marriage and perhaps a growing maturity had instilled in the viscount a confidence he had apparently lacked before, and Sophia herself had set about the task of assisting him and at the same time making a new life for herself as mistress of a large home and estate.

  Hence the ball.

  The two of them were reviving the old tradition of a harvest ball, which had always been held early in October. It was being spoken of in the village, however, as more of a wedding dance and reception than a harvest celebration, for the viscount and his wife had married quietly in London a mere week after they met, and there had been no public celebration of their nuptials. Even their families had not been in attendance. Sophia had promised soon after she arrived at Middlebury that a reception would be held at some time in the foreseeable future, and this ball was it, despite the fact that Sophia was already increasing, a condition that could no longer be quite hidden despite the current fashion for dresses with loosely flowing skirts. Everyone in the neighborhood knew, even though no official announcement had been made.

  It was no exclusive honor to have been invited to the ball, for almost everyone else from the village and the surrounding countryside had been invited too. And Dora had quite a close connection with the viscount and his wife, since she gave both of them pianoforte lessons as well as instruction in the violin and harp to Lord Darleigh. Agnes had been Sophia’s friend ever since they had discovered a mutual passion for art, Agnes as a watercolorist, Sophia as a very clever caricaturist and illustrator of children’s stories.

  There were to be other, more illustrious guests at the ball than just the people from the neighborhood, however. Lord Darleigh’s sisters and their husbands were coming, as well as Viscount Ponsonby, one of the viscount’s friends. Sophia had explained that the two men were part of a group of seven persons who had spent several years together in Cornwall recovering from various war wounds. Most of them had been military officers. They called themselves the Survivors’ Club and spent a few weeks of each year in company with one another.

  Sophia had family members coming too: her uncle Sir Terrence Fry, a senior government diplomat, and another uncle and aunt—Sir Clarence and Lady March—with their daughter.

  It all sounded very imposing and had Agnes looking forward to it with something bordering on excitement. She had never thought of herself as a person who coveted social splendor, just as she did not think of herself as someone who would ever fall in love. But she was eagerly anticipating this ball, perhaps because Sophia herself was, and Agnes had grown very fond of her young friend. She earnestly wanted the ball to be a great success for Sophia’s sake.

  She looked critically at her hair, which she had dressed herself. She had managed to coax some height out of her curls and had left a few tendrils to wave along her neck and over her ears. The style could hardly be called elaborate, nonetheless. And there was nothing remarkable about the hair itself, a nondescript midbrown color, though it did have a healthy shine to it. There was nothing particularly remarkable about the face beneath the hair either, she thought, smiling ruefully at her image. She was not ugly, it was true. Perhaps she was not even quite plain. But she was no ravishing beauty. And, good heavens, had she ever wanted to be? This going-to-a-ball business was turning her head and making her giddy.

  She and Dora arrived early, as most of the outside guests did. Being late was fashionable with the ton during the Season in London, Dora had commented when they set out ten minutes earlier than the early start they had planned. Or so she had heard. But in the country people tended to have better manners. So they were early.

  Agnes was feeling rather breathless by the time they reached the doors of the ballroom. The state apartments looked somehow different and far more magnificent with banks of flowers and hanging baskets everywhere and candles blazing from every wall sconce.

  Sophia was standing just inside the double doors, receiving her guests with Lord Darleigh beside her, and Agnes instantly relaxed and smiled with genuine warmth. Although she did not expect to fall in love herself, she could not deny that such a state existed and that it could be beautiful to behold when it did. Lord and Lady Darleigh positively glowed with a romantic affection for each other, though they never openly demonstrated their feelings in public.

  Sophia looked gorgeous in a turquoise gown that perfectly complemented her auburn hair. That hair had been boyishly short when she was first married. She had been growing it ever since.
It was still not long, but her maid had done something clever with it to make it look sleek and elegant, and for the first time it struck Agnes that her friend was more than just pretty in an elfin kind of way. She beamed at Dora and Agnes and hugged them both, and Lord Darleigh, blind though he was, seemed to look directly at them with his very blue eyes as he smiled and shook them by the hand.

  “Mrs. Keeping, Miss Debbins,” he said, “how very kind of you to come to make our evening perfect.”

  As though his guests were the ones doing him a favor. He was looking elegant and handsome in black and white.

  It was not difficult to pick out the strangers in the ballroom. One result of living in the country, even when one had been here for only a few months, was that one tended to see the same people wherever one went. And the strangers had brought high fashion with them and quite cast Agnes’s best green gown into the shade, as she had fully expected. They outshone everyone else too, except one another.

  Mrs. Hunt, the viscount’s mother, kindly undertook to take Dora and Agnes about to introduce them, first to Sir Clarence and Lady March and Miss March, all of whom were looking very distinguished indeed, even if the height of Lady March’s hair plumes was rather startling. They nodded with stiff condescension—the plumes too—and Agnes followed Dora’s lead and curtsied. Then there were Sir Terrence Fry and Mr. Sebastian Maycock, his stepson, both of whom were smartly but not ostentatiously clad. The former bowed politely to them and remarked upon the prettiness of the village. The latter, a tall, handsome, personable-looking young gentleman, flashed his teeth at them and pronounced himself to be delighted. He hoped to engage them in some dancing later in the evening, though he did not make any definite appointment with either of them.