Someone to Cherish Read online

  Praise for the Westcott series

  Someone to Remember

  “Wistful yet hopeful, the story is a needed addition to a genre that usually celebrates the romances of younger protagonists.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “A charming novel, slowly paced and sweet, perfectly reflecting the gentle middle-aged woman at its center.”

  —Shelf Awareness

  Someone to Honor

  “A strong, compassionate heroine and a hero who learns to appreciate his worth discover the true meaning of love in this tender, perceptive, and infinitely entertaining romance that delightfully continues the saga of the unconventional Westcotts.”

  —Library Journal (starred review)

  “Poignant, heartrending, hopeful, and quietly profound, the latest exquisitely written installment in Balogh’s Regency Westcott series is another sure bet for the author’s legion of fans as well as an excellent introduction for new readers to Balogh’s effortlessly elegant and superbly romantic brand of literary magic.”

  —Booklist (starred review)

  “This warmhearted addition to the Westcott series adds depth to a complex, congenial family.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Someone to Honor is classic Mary Balogh—the exquisite character development, the slow romantic angst, the clever plot, the myriad of interesting characters.”

  —All About Romance

  “Someone to Honor has top-notch characters with a deeply moving story about love and family. This type of storytelling with characters whose stories suck you in is what makes a Mary Balogh novel so addictive.”

  —Fresh Fiction

  More praise for award-winning author Mary Balogh

  “The sheer perfection of Balogh’s prose in the fifth superbly written installment in the Westcott series marries her rare gift for crafting realistically nuanced characters to produce another radiant Regency historical romance by one of the genre’s most resplendent writers.”

  —Booklist (starred review)

  “A story that is searing in its insight, as comforting as a hug, and a brilliant addition to this series. Another gem from a master of the art.”

  —Library Journal (starred review)

  “One of the best!”

  —New York Times bestselling author Julia Quinn

  “Today’s superstar heir to the marvelous legacy of Georgette Heyer (except a lot steamier).”

  —New York Times bestselling author Susan Elizabeth Phillips

  “A romance writer of mesmerizing intensity.”

  —New York Times bestselling author Mary Jo Putney

  “Winning, witty, and engaging.”

  —New York Times bestselling author Teresa Medeiros

  “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

  “I loved this book. I read it in one sitting and it made me smile a lot and cry a little.”

  —Smart Bitches Trashy Books

  Also by Mary Balogh

  The Westcott Series

  someone to love

  someone to hold

  someone to wed

  someone to care

  someone to trust

  someone to honor

  someone to remember

  someone to romance

  The Survivors’ Club Series

  the proposal

  the arrangement

  the escape

  only enchanting

  only a promise

  only a kiss

  only beloved

  The Horsemen Trilogy

  indiscreet

  unforgiven

  irresistible

  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

  a matter of class

  the temporary wife / a promise of spring

  the famous heroine / the plumed bonnet

  a christmas bride / christmas beau

  a counterfeit betrothal / the notorious rake

  under the mistletoe

  beyond the sunrise

  longing

  heartless

  silent melody

  A JOVE BOOK

  Published by Berkley

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  penguinrandomhouse.com

  Copyright © 2021 by Mary Balogh

  Excerpt from Someone to Love copyright © 2016 by Mary Balogh

  Excerpt from Someone Perfect copyright © 2021 by Mary Balogh

  Penguin Random House 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 Random House to continue to publish books for every reader.

  A JOVE BOOK, BERKLEY, and the BERKLEY & B colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Ebook ISBN: 9781984802422

  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.

  pid_prh_5.7.1_c0_r0

  Contents

  Cover

  Praise for Mary Balogh

  Also by Mary Balogh

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Family Tree

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty
-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Excerpt from Someone to Love

  Excerpt from Someone Perfect

  One

  When he was twenty years old, Harry Westcott succeeded to the title Earl of Riverdale upon the sudden death of his father. With the title he inherited several properties, including Brambledean Court in Wiltshire, and a vast fortune his father had accumulated through a combination of prudent and reckless investments. Harry became head of the Westcott family, though he also acquired a guardian to manage his affairs until he reached his twenty-first birthday—Avery Archer, Duke of Netherby.

  None of these new acquisitions remained his for long, however. A private investigation launched by his mother to find and pay off the bastard daughter her husband had supported all their married life, supposedly without her knowledge, resulted in what she and Harry and her two daughters came to think of ever after as the Great Disaster—they always spoke of it as though those two words would be capitalized if written down. For Anna Snow, the secret daughter, then twenty-five years old and teaching at the orphanage in Bath where she had grown up, knowing nothing of her true identity, was not, as it turned out, illegitimate. The late Earl of Riverdale had been married to her mother before he wed Harry’s, the present countess—and he had still been married to his first wife when he wed the second. The abandoned first wife had died of consumption shortly afterward, but the damage had been done for all time.

  The late earl’s marriage to his supposed countess of twenty-three years had been bigamous, and the offspring of that marriage had no legal legitimacy. Harry was stripped of title, properties, and fortune, his headship of the family, and his very identity. So were his sisters, the former Lady Camille and Lady Abigail Westcott. His mother resumed her maiden name of Kingsley and fled to Dorsetshire to live with her brother, who was a clergyman there. Camille and Abigail went to live with their maternal grandmother in Bath.

  Harry, after getting very drunk the day he learned the news, took the king’s shilling from a recruiting sergeant and prepared to join the ranks of a foot regiment about to be shipped off to the Peninsula to face the vast armies of Napoleon Bonaparte. He was rescued from such a fate, much against his will, by his guardian and sent to the same regiment—and the same destination—as a commissioned officer.

  It was a tumultuous time, to say the least.

  All that turmoil was so much water under the bridge by now, however, for it had happened almost ten years ago. Somehow everyone who had been caught up in those events had moved onward with their life. Most of them had prospered. Some had settled down happily to lives that were very different from anything they could have expected. But how could one reasonably expect anything of the future when even at the best and most tranquil of times it was a vast unknown? It was nothing short of amazing, in fact, how the human spirit could be rocked to its core by the most catastrophic events life could throw its way and yet steady itself and recover—and then thrive.

  The title had passed to Alexander Westcott, Harry’s second cousin, though he had been very unhappy about it. He had worked conscientiously in the intervening years to bring Brambledean Court back to prosperity after decades of neglect. Several years ago he and Wren, his wife and countess, had begun a new tradition of welcoming the whole family there for Christmas. Everyone loved it. This year, however, the family was not complete, for the illegitimate branch of it—which the legitimate branch vociferously refused to acknowledge as any less a part of the family than it had ever been—was absent. Viola, the former countess, with the Marquess of Dorchester, her present husband, went instead to spend the holiday in Bath with her daughter Camille and her husband, Joel Cunningham, and their nine children. Yes, the number had increased from seven during the past summer with the adoption of twin girls. Viola’s second daughter, Abigail, and her husband, Gil Bennington, and their three children went there too.

  So did Harry.

  It was perfectly understandable, the rest of the family agreed, swallowing their disappointment. It would not have been easy, after all, for Camille and Joel to pack up nine children and an entourage of accompanying nurses and baggage for the journey to Wiltshire, especially in winter, when one could not be sure of either the weather or the roads. The Westcotts enjoyed their Christmas at Brambledean anyway, though they frequently talked about the absentees and wished they were there too.

  In particular, they talked about Harry.

  They were worried about him.

  Major Harry Westcott had survived the Napoleonic Wars—barely. He had been severely wounded a number of times, but at the Battle of Waterloo he had come as close to death as it was possible to get without actually crossing over to the other side. His life had teetered on the brink for two whole years after that brutal, bloody day before finally Alexander and Avery had taken matters into their own hands. They had brought him back from the convalescent home for British officers in Paris, where he had been languishing, and settled him at Hinsford Manor, his childhood home in Hampshire. He had lived there ever since and had gradually recovered his health and strength. All had ended well, one might say.

  His Westcott relatives would not say any such thing, however.

  For Harry, the always cheerful, sunny-natured, lighthearted, beloved boy they remembered, had become a recluse. He almost never left Hinsford. It was amazing he had even gone as far as Bath this year for Christmas. He did not always come to Brambledean, and when he did, he was usually the last to arrive and the first to leave. He showed no interest in reclaiming whatever could be reclaimed of his position in society. He showed no interest in marrying and setting up his nursery and living happily ever after. It was all nothing short of heartbreaking. It was as though in ten years he had done nothing more than survive.

  Most alarming of all to the family was the fact that Harry was approaching thirty. That was still young, of course, as the senior members of the family were swift to point out, but it was nevertheless a significant barrier. Thirty was a precarious age for a man who was still single and living alone and uninterested in changing either condition.

  The family was worried. While Harry, blissfully unaware of clouds looming upon the horizon, celebrated Christmas with his mother and sisters in Bath, he became the focus of a number of lengthy conversations at Brambledean. Inevitably, an unofficial sort of family committee formed to do something about it. Equally inevitably, that committee was composed entirely of females and headed, as usual, by Matilda, Viscountess Dirkson, the late earl’s eldest sister.

  The men stayed above the fray. Or perhaps they merely held their peace and hoped their wives and sisters would not notice them. Avery, Duke of Netherby, maintained an almost total silence, as he usually did during family conferences, and looked bored. Lord Molenor looked amused. Viscount Dirkson patted his wife’s hand whenever she looked to him as though for an opinion and smiled fondly at her. The Earl of Lyndale raised his eyebrows whenever he caught his wife’s eye, but refrained from offering any opinion, at least in public. Adrian Sawyer, Dirkson’s son, but not by birth or marriage a Westcott, was rash enough to comment upon one occasion that whenever he saw Harry Westcott, which was not often, admittedly, Harry always looked perfectly cheerful and contented. He said no more after intercepting grins from both Colin, Lord Hodges, and Alexander and receiving no encouragement from the ladies to enlarge upon his opinion.

  The basic questions to be decided upon, the ladies soon unanimously agreed, were two. First, what were they going to do to celebrate Harry’s birthday, which occurred in April, after Easter, when the Season would be just swinging into action in London? Second, what were they going to do about his single state and the sad lethargy into which his life had sunk?

  But what they needed to discover first, Mildred, Lady Molenor, Matilda’s youngest sister, pointed out, was whether Harry
could be lured to London for the Season or even a small part of it. If he could be, they would be able to plan a grand party there for him. It would be relatively easy to accomplish once they had decided upon a time and place, for they would have no trouble whatsoever persuading guests to come. Harry, though illegitimate, had after all been brought up in the earl’s household as his son and educated accordingly. Besides, almost all his relatives on the Westcott side were both titled and influential. And, besides again, he was a handsome young man and personable when he chose to be.

  “But he always is, Aunt Mildred,” Jessica, Countess of Lyndale, protested. She was the daughter of Louise, Dowager Duchess of Netherby, Mildred’s elder sister. “Harry may be a near recluse, but he is never morose or bad-tempered. He is always quite jolly, in fact.”

  “Such a party would, of course, be held at our house,” Anna, Avery’s wife and the Duchess of Netherby, said. “Harry is my brother—my half brother, anyway—and Avery was once his guardian.”

  No one was about to argue.

  “There could be no better setting than Archer House to make a firm statement to the ton,” Louise, Avery’s stepmother and Dowager Duchess of Netherby, agreed. “Everyone will come. And among us all we can surely compile a list of eligible young ladies for Harry to consider. He will, in fact, be spoiled for choices. Perhaps we ought to pick out three or four to bring particularly to his attention.”

  “But for this option to work, Louise, Harry must come up to town,” Elizabeth, Lady Hodges, Alexander’s sister, pointed out. “That is by no means assured.”

  “Far from it,” Jessica agreed. “He will never consent to come, especially if he gets a whiff of a birthday party.”

  “We will have to see to it that he does not suspect, then,” Althea Westcott, Alexander and Elizabeth’s mother, said. “But what can we say to lure him?”

  “I fear there is nothing,” Anna said with a sigh, breaking a short silence. “I believe my dream of hosting a party for him at Archer House will be dashed after all. If anyone knows any other man as stubborn as Harry, I would be surprised.” For ten years Anna had been trying to persuade her half brother to accept his share of the vast fortune she, as the lone legitimate child of the late Earl of Riverdale, had inherited from their father. For the past four of those years she had also been trying to persuade him to take ownership of Hinsford Manor, which was legally hers, though he had lived there most of his life and lived there now. It was his home, for goodness’ sake.