Silent Melody Read online

  Dear Reader,

  Of all my books, Silent Melody seems to be a reader favorite, mainly because of the heroine. She is a deaf-mute living in the eighteenth century, when there was no standard sign language and deaf people were often considered mad and consigned to insane asylums. Lady Emily Marlowe is fortunate enough to belong to a family that loves her and wants her, and she has taught herself to lip-read. However, most of her life is lived internally. I did not see her as a victim or as handicapped. I tried to show how richly her life is lived even though she cannot share that richness—until she meets Lord Ashley Kendrick.

  When Emily and Ashley fall in love, he has much to offer her. Because she had hearing for the first few years of her life, he is able to teach her to speak. And he is able to protect her from all the dangers that threaten over the course of the story. But Emily has at least as much to offer Ashley. She teaches him that silence is rich and teeming with life and color and joy, and she teaches him that companionship and love do not need the medium of words.

  Writing a love story without any real dialogue between the hero and heroine was incredibly challenging, but it was rewarding too. I am delighted that the book is being republished in this lovely edition so that it will be available again to those of you who have read it before as well as those of you who will be discovering it for the first time.

  Mary Balogh

  PRAISE FOR THE NOVELS OF MARY BALOGH

  Silent Melody

  “If emotion is the hallmark of romance, this is without doubt one of the most romantic novels ever written.”

  —Romance Forever

  “Ms. Balogh continues to create unforgettable characters and stories that touch your heart . . . intensely emotional . . . [a] stunning book from an author who consistently sets new standards in the genre, and this latest work is no exception.”

  —Old Book Barn Gazette

  “Truly an enjoyable work.”

  —Regency Romance Reviews

  “Balogh brings a twist to her Georgian romance . . . wonderfully sensitive.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  Heartless

  “Absorbing . . . quietly moving.”

  —Dear Author

  “Sharply drawn characters . . . [a] fast-moving plot.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  Longing

  “Balogh capture[s] the allure of the land and the culture of the proud people of Wales . . . a very different sort of historical romance. Ms. Balogh’s writing has a very lyrical quality to it which draws out the feelings of yearning so that the reader can palpably sense them . . . pretty powerful.”

  —The Hope Chest Reviews

  “A particular favorite of mine.”

  —The Romance Reader

  Beyond the Sunrise

  “Thoroughly enjoyable.”

  —New York Times bestselling author Janelle Taylor

  “Balogh’s . . . epic love story is a winner . . . absorbing reading right up until the end.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “High intrigue, daring exploits, a passionate love affair, what more could you want in a romance? Balogh gives us a humdinger of a tale set during the Napoleonic Wars. Great fun. Highly recommended.”

  —Manderley Magazine

  “Beyond the Sunrise is an utterly absorbing, powerful tale of a love that was once doomed and yet blooms again amidst the intrigue and ordeal of war. With infinite care and deft plotting, Ms. Balogh spins an intricate tale with the skill of a master weaver. She draws you into the era by evoking the aura of the war and the passionate emotions of her characters. If you have never read another book by Mary Balogh, then Beyond the Sunrise will be your introduction to a writer of remarkable talents.”

  —RT Book Reviews

  FURTHER 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

  “A writer whose books belong on every romance shelf.”

  —RT Book Reviews

  ALSO BY MARY BALOGH

  THE SURVIVORS’ CLUB SERIES

  The Proposal

  The Arrangement

  The Escape

  Only Enchanting

  Only a Promise

  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 SAGA

  Slightly Married

  Slightly Wicked

  Slightly Scandalous

  Slightly Tempted

  Slightly Sinful

  Slightly Dangerous

  THE BEDWYN PREQUELS

  One Night for Love

  A Summer to Remember

  THE MISTRESS TRILOGY

  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

  A Matter of Class

  Under the Mistletoe

  Longing

  Beyond the Sunrise

  Heartless

  SIGNET ECLIPSE

  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

  Published by Signet Eclipse, an imprint of New American Library, a division of Penguin Group (USA) LLC. Previously published in a Berkley edition.

  Copyright © Mary Balogh, 1997

  Excerpt from Heartless copyright © Mary Balogh, 1995

  Excerpt from Only a Kiss copyright © Mary Balogh, 2015

  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 complyin
g 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.

  SIGNET ECLIPSE and logo are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) LLC.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA:

  Balogh, Mary.

  Silent melody / Mary Balogh.

  pages cm.

  ISBN 978-0-698-15626-5

  I. Title.

  PR6052.A465S522 2015

  823’.914—dc23 2015011799

  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

  Letter to the Reader

  Praise

  Also by Mary Balogh

  Title Page

  Copyright

  PROLOGUE

  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

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  An Excerpt from Heartless

  An Excerpt from Only A Kiss

  About the Author

  PROLOGUE

  1756

  IT was hard to leave. But it was impossible to stay. He was leaving from choice because he was young and energetic and adventurous and had long wanted to carve a life of his own.

  He was going to new possibilities, new dreams. But he was leaving behind places and people. And though, being young, he was sure he would see them all again someday, he knew too that many years might pass before he did so.

  It was not easy to leave.

  Lord Ashley Kendrick was the son of a duke. A younger son, and therefore a man who needed employment. But neither the army nor the church, the accepted professions for younger sons, had appealed to him, and so he had done nothing more useful with his twenty-three years than sow some wild oats and manage the estate of Bowden Abbey for his brother, Luke, Duke of Harndon, during the past few months. Business had always attracted him, but his father had forbidden him to involve himself with something he considered beneath the dignity of an aristocrat—even of a younger son. Luke felt differently. And so Ashley, with his brother’s reluctant blessing, was on his way to India, to take up his new post with the East India Company.

  He was eager to go. Finally he was to be his own man, doing what he wanted to do, proving to himself that he could forge his own destiny. He could hardly wait to begin his new life, to be there in India, to be free of his dependence on his brother.

  But it was hard to say good-bye. He did it the day before he left and begged everyone to let him go alone the following morning, to drive away from Bowden Abbey as if on a morning errand. He said good-bye to Luke; to Anna, Luke’s wife; to Joy, their infant daughter; to Emmy . . .

  Ah, but he did not really say good-bye to Emmy. He sought her out and told her he was leaving the following day, it was true. But then he set his hands on her shoulders, smiled cheerfully at her, told her to be a good girl, and strode away before she could make any reply.

  Not that Emmy could have replied verbally even if she had wanted to. She was a deaf-mute. She could read lips, but she had no way of communicating her thoughts except with those huge gray eyes of hers—and with certain facial expressions and gestures to which he had become sensitive during the year he had known her, plus others they had agreed upon as a sort of private, secret, if not entirely adequate language. She could not read or write. She was Anna’s sister and had come to Bowden soon after Anna’s marriage to Luke.

  Emmy was a child. Though fifteen years old, her handicap and her wild sense of freedom—she rarely dressed or behaved like a gently born young lady—made Ashley think of her as a child. A precious child for whom he felt a deep affection and in whom he had been in the habit of confiding all his frustrations and dreams. A child who adored him. It was not conceit that had him thinking so. She spent every spare moment in his company, gazing at him or out through the window of the room in which he worked, listening to him with her wonderful, expressive eyes, following him about the estate. She was never a nuisance. His fondness for her was something he could not put satisfactorily into words.

  He was afraid of Emmy’s eyes the day before his departure. He did not have the courage to say good-bye. So he merely said his piece and hurried away from her—just as if she were no more to him than a child for whom he felt only an indulgent affection.

  He regretted his cowardice the following day. But he hated good-byes.

  He got up early. He had been unable to sleep, his mind tossing with the excitement of what was ahead of him, his body eager to be on the way, his emotions torn between an impatience to be gone and a heaviness at leaving all that was familiar and dear behind him.

  He got up early to take a last fond look at Bowden Abbey, his home since childhood. But not his, of course. It was true that he was heir to it all, that Luke and Anna’s firstborn had been a daughter. But they would have sons, he was sure. He hoped they would. Being heir was not important to him, much as he loved Bowden. He wanted his own life. He wanted to build his own fortune and choose his own home and follow his own dreams.

  But he loved Bowden fiercely now that he was leaving it and did not know when he would see it again. If ever. He strode away behind the house, watching the early-morning dew soak his top boots, feeling the chill wind whip at his cloak and his three-cornered hat. He did not look back until he stood on top of a rise of land, from which he had a panoramic view down over the abbey and past it to the lawns and trees of the park stretching far in all directions.

  Home. And England. He was going to miss both.

  He descended the western side of the hill and strode toward the trees a short distance away and through them to the falls, the part of the river that spilled sharply downward over steep rocks before resuming its wide loop about the front of the house.

  He had spent many hours of the past year at the falls, seeking solitude and peace. Seeking purpose. Seeking himself, perhaps. A little over a year ago, he had been in London. But Luke had returned from a long residence in Paris, rescued him from deep debts and a wild and aimless life of pleasure and debauchery, and ordered him to return to Bowden until he had decided what he wished to do with his life.

  He climbed to the flat rock that jutted over the falls and stood looking down at the water as it rushed and bubbled over the rocks below. Emmy had spent many hours here with him. He smiled. He had once told her that she was a very good listener. It was true, even though she could not hear a word he said to her. She listened with her eyes and she comforted with her smiles and with her warm little hand in his.

  Dear, sweet Emmy. He was going to miss her perhaps more than any of them. There was a strange ache about his heart at the thought of her, his little fawn, like a piece of wild, unspoiled nature. She rarely wore hoops beneath her dresses and almost never wore caps. Indeed, she did not often even dress her hair, but let it fall, blond and loose and wavy to her waist. Whenever she could get away with doing so, she
went barefoot. He did not know how he would have survived the year without Emmy to talk to, without her sympathy and her happiness to soothe his wounded feelings. He had felt despised and rejected by Luke, his beloved brother, and his own sense of guilt had not helped reconcile him to what he had considered at the time to be unwarranted tyranny.

  He drew a deep breath and let it out slowly. It was time to return to the house. He would have breakfast while the carriage was brought around and his trunks were loaded, and then he would be on his way. He strode back through the trees in the direction of the house. He hoped everyone would honor the promise not to come down to see him on his way. He wished that he could just click his fingers and find himself on board ship, out of sight of English shores.

  He wished there did not have to be the moment of leaving.

  • • •

  Ashley had told her yesterday that he was leaving today. It had not been unexpected. For weeks past he had been excited over the prospect of joining the East India Company and going to India. There had been a new light of purpose in his eye and a new spring in his step, and she knew that she had lost him. That he no longer needed her. Not that he ever avoided her or turned her away. Not that he stopped talking to her or smiling at her or allowing her to walk about the estate with him or to sit in his office while he worked. Not that he stopped holding her hand as they walked or stopped calling her his little fawn. Not that any of the affection had gone out of his manner.

  But he was going away. He was going to a new life, one that he craved. One that he needed. She was glad for him. She was genuinely glad. Yes, she was. Oh, yes, she was.

  Lady Emily Marlowe curled up on the window seat in her room and gazed out on a gray and gloomy morning. She tried to draw peace from the sight of the trees and lawns. She tried to let them soothe her aching heart.

  Her breaking heart.

  She did not want to see him today. She would not be able to bear seeing him actually leave. It would hurt just too much.

  And yet instead of peace, the only feeling that would come to her was panic. Had he left yet? She could not see the driveway or the carriage house from her room. Perhaps even now the carriage was before the doors. Perhaps even now he was stepping inside after hugging Anna and Luke—would they have taken Joy down too for him to kiss? He would be looking about him for her. He would be disappointed that she was not there. Would he believe she did not care? Perhaps he was driving away—now. At this very minute.