Forgotten Fiancée (London Ladies Book 3) Read online

  “What do we do now?” Leaning up on an elbow once they’d both recovered their breath and were capable of speech, Miles toyed with a blonde curl at the nape of Dianna’s neck, rubbing it back and forth between his thumb and forefinger as his other hand trailed up and down her arm in long, sinuous strokes. Sweat glistened on both of their bodies as they bathed in the aftermath of their lovemaking. Dianna stretched like a cat, arms flinging out to the side and toes unfurling before she gave Miles’ question due consideration.

  “We get married,” she said after a long, thoughtful pause.

  The hand on her arm stilled. “Married?”

  “Yes.” With a bit of effort Dianna rolled herself onto his chest, blonde curls trailing across his cheekbones as she kissed the tip of his nose. “Married. I think our betrothment has lasted quite long enough, don’t you?”

  Miles was silent for a long, lingering moment as he searched her eyes. Apparently satisfied with whatever he saw in the sparkling depths of her sapphire gaze he crushed her against him and rested his chin atop her head. “I would like that very much,” he said gruffly.

  “Only like?” Dianna teased.

  “Love,” he corrected, chest reverberating with a quiet laugh as she playfully skimmed her fingertips across one side of his ribcage. “I would love that very much.” A long pause, and then… “I love you, Dianna Foxcroft.”

  It wasn’t the perfect happily-ever-after Dianna had always dreamed of. There’d been far too much heartache for that. But at long last, nestled in the arms of the one man she loved beyond reason, she knew what true happiness felt like.

  And that was all that mattered.

  About the Author

  Jillian Eaton grew up in Maine and now resides in Pennsylvania. When she isn’t writing, Jillian is doing her best to keep up with her three very mischievous dogs. She loves horses, coffee, getting email from readers, ducks, and staying up late finishing a good book.

  She isn’t very fond of doing laundry.

  www.jillianeaton.com

  Read on for a sneak peek at the fourth and final book in the London Ladies quartet!

  Lady Harper

  Chapter One

  Winfield Estate

  August, 1816

  “I still cannot believe you refused his proposal.”

  “Whose proposal?” Harper replied absently as she turned the page of the book she’d begun two days ago. It was a bit slow for her taste and the heroine lacked a great deal of God given common sense, but the hero was quite dashing. She only hoped he chose someone else in the end.

  Miss Mary Hartley, a petite blonde with porcelain skin and large blue eyes, sniffed loudly. “As if you have received so many you cannot tell one from the other. His proposal, Harper. The Duke of Greenwood!”

  Closing her book with an annoyed snap, Harper set it aside before she sat up off the blanket she was using to protect her dress from grass stains and frowned at her closest friend. A beam of sunlight shimmered down through the leafy branches of the oak they were using for shade, causing her to squint. “Of course I remember it. How could I forget, when it is the only thing you have been talking about for the past three months straight?”

  Mary pursed her lips. “As though there is anything else to talk about.”

  “I am quite certain you could find something if you put your mind to it. You weren’t even at the Farcott ball, remember? You were home sick.”

  Lucky.

  “But Edna was there,” Mary reminded her, “and she saw the whole thing.”

  Not the whole thing, Harper thought as a flush heated the back of her neck. She didn’t see Doyle holding me indecently tight against his hard body…or see his hand wander down to the curve of my bum…or see his tongue glide along the outside of my ear… “Edna would do well to learn how to keep her mouth shut.” And I would do well to stop thinking about Doyle Flynn, she added silently. Unfortunately, it was one of those things that was far easier to say than do.

  Twelve weeks had passed since Doyle wooed her senseless, and she still couldn’t get him out of her head. Irksome man. She wished she’d never met him, and now no matter how hard she tried she was unable to forget him. Especially not with Mary and Edna inserting his name in every other sentence they spoke. Harper loved her friends dearly - they were, after all, the only two she had - but if she heard either one of them mention the Duke of Greenwood one more time…

  “You do know he is coming here next week, don’t you?” Mary asked, her cheeks tinged pink with excitement. Dropping the book she had been pretending to read, she swept the skirts of her printed muslin dress aside and leaned forward onto her gloved hands. “Everyone is talking about it!”

  “Who?” Harper said suspiciously.

  “Well, I heard from Edna who heard from Lady Cecily who said she-”

  “No,” Harper said with an exasperated shake of her head that sent loose tendrils of silky black hair sliding over her shoulders, “not who is talking about it, who is coming here next week!”

  “Oh.” Mary blinked. “The Duke of Greenwood, of course.”

  “He certainly is not!” Doyle Flynn, come here? It was unthinkable. It was horrible. It was-

  “He is.” Looking quite smug, Mary sat back. “Well,” she amended, pale brows drawing together over the bridge of her nose, “perhaps not precisely right here, but he will be taking up residence at Longmeadow Park for the remainder of the summer.”

  Harper’s chest lifted and fell as she breathed a sigh of relief. Longmeadow Park, a sprawling manor of twelve hundred acres (and but one of Doyle’s rumored half dozen estates), was at least ten miles away in the neighboring town of Brayberry. The odds of crossing paths with him here, at Winfield, were slim to none.

  Particularly if I never leave the grounds.

  It wouldn’t be a hard sacrifice for her to make, for it wasn’t as though she’d had any other plans for the next few weeks beyond reading the books she’d acquired during her time in London and working on her own manuscript, a fledgling thing of thirty pages that had more sentences crossed out than were written down. It was a romance. At least, that’s what it was supposed to be. The heroine - a high spirited, rebellious young woman named Lady Elle - all but wrote herself, but the hero…the hero was regrettably lacking in all of the characteristics that, to Harper’s mind, made up a good hero. To put it quite bluntly, Sir Edgar Thomas was a bore. He wasn’t dashing like Tom Betram from Mansfield Park or brooding like Mr. Darcy in Pride and Prejudice (two of her most favorite novels). Even his name was boring, although for the life of her she couldn’t think up a better one.

  The problem, Harper mused as she reclined all the way back on the blanket and stared up at the piercing blue sky through a shifting bramble of glossy green leaves, was that all of the men she’d encountered thus far - with the exception of her brother, although Miles could certainly have his moments - were irrefutably boring. Each and every one of them. Well, almost each and every one.

  Doyle hadn’t been boring. Infuriating, yes. Arrogant, certainly. But boring? No. Not that.

  For the first time in her life she’d felt…alive. Yes, that was a good word. Alive and exposed and exhilarated and dizzy, all at once. And then angry. A little angrier than she’d had a right to be, but it was rather hard to check one’s emotions when one was feeling alive and exposed and exhilarated and dizzy, all at once. When Doyle had taken her in his arms… She blew out a breath. The spark she’d felt then was the same exact spark that was lacking between Lady Elle and Sir Edgar Thomas now. A spark she couldn’t seem to capture, no matter how many ways she went about setting up their first meeting where everyone knew all good sparks began.

  The main problem, as Harper saw it, was that she simply did not have the experience required to write a male character deserving of Lady Elle. As the saying went, writers wrote best when they wrote what they knew…and she didn’t know what it felt like to be a handsome, dashing, arrogant rake.

  But someone else did.

 
As an idea began to form - a very foolish, very hair brained idea - Harper sat up on her elbow and slanted Mary a speculative glance. “When is he due to arrive?”

  Distracted by the crown of flowers she was busily weaving, it took Mary a few seconds to reply. “Who, the Duke of Greenwood?” At Harper’s nod she quickly set the half-finished crown aside and, biting her lip in poorly disguised anticipation, said in a rush, “Lady Cecily told Edna who told me that he should be arriving this afternoon! Do you want to go introduce ourselves? I’m sure my father could get us an invitation!”

  Though not a lord of the realm, Mary’s father - Sir Betram Hartley - was an influential member of Parliament and had a seat in the House of Commons. As such, he - and by turn, Mary and her mother - were often granted audiences with some of England’s most notable peers. Given that Harper’s own brother was an earl she could have no doubt garnered an invitation on her own merit, but then it would seem as though she wanted to see Doyle again. Which she didn’t. Not even a little bit. But for the sake of her writing…well, no sacrifice was too great.

  “Yes,” she said slowly. “Yes, I think we should. After all, it is only the neighborly thing to do.”