Once Upon A Dream (14 page)

The congregation laughed—and applauded. It was an astonishing moment. Applause inside a church at the conclusion of a solemn ceremony? Michael bent
down and scooped Robert up with one arm, and Eleanor wrapped an arm about the shoulders of Georgette, who had moved up close beside her.

"You may," she said softly, looking from one to the other of the children as Michael set his free hand on his daughter's head. "Oh, yes, indeed you may."

And they went off together as a family with their chosen witnesses—Wulfric and the Earl of Ravensberg—to sign the register. And then they were
back inside the church and walking up the nave, smiling from side to side at their guests gathered there, and Eleanor knew that this was without any doubt
the happiest day of her life, as a woman's wedding day ought to be.

"Oh—trouble," she said without any great surprise as they emerged from the church into bright sunshine and looked along the winding path of the
churchyard to the gates and the gathering of numerous villagers beyond them. But within the gates and beneath the shade of the great elm tree that hung
over the path, waited the Bedwyn men and the spouses of the Bedwyn women and a few of the other male house guests and some of the older children too. They
all clutched fistfuls of flower petals, which were soon raining down upon the bride and groom and their children.

"It would be mean-spirited," Michael said, "to saunter along the path as though we did not mind or even enjoyed the experience, would it not? Shriek,
Georgette. Roar, Robert. Take my hand, Eleanor, and prepare to dash."

They broke into a run, laughing helplessly as they went while Georgette obligingly screamed and Robert giggled and clung to his father's neck.

The ordeal was not over when they were through the gates, of course. The open barouche, decorated festively with flowers and ribbons, also bore all the
old, metallic paraphernalia that Eleanor remembered from other people's weddings. As soon as the carriage was in motion, the noise would be deafening. Now
the noise was only joyful. There was the sound of people calling out and laughing, and the church bells were pealing out the news of a new marriage.

They settled in the barouche as the congregation—or what was left of it—began to spill from the church. They were all on the same seat, Robert
on Eleanor's lap, Georgette squeezed between her and her father.

"Lean back for a moment, Georgie," Michael said, spreading one arm over the back of the seat as the barouche rocked into motion. And he leaned across his
daughter and kissed Eleanor on the lips and smiled into her eyes.

The bells pealed joyously, the guests and the villagers cheered the kiss—and an unholy din blocked it all out. His smile turned to laughter as
Eleanor laughed back at him and Robert clapped his hands over his ears and Georgette threw back her head and whooped at the summer sky.

Dear Reader,

May, 2016, will see the publication of
Only Beloved
, the seventh and final book of the Survivors' Club series. Five men and one woman,
variously wounded in the Napoleonic Wars, spent three years together at Penderris Hall in Cornwall, home of the Duke of Stanbrook, recovering from their
wounds and forging a lifelong friendship and support group with the duke and one another. During the following years, each adjusted to a life that had
changed beyond recognition, and each found love and happiness. Now, in the seventh book it is George, Duke of Stanbrook’s turn. He gave of his home,
his time, and his very self for the others, but now he is alone and lonely and restless. He did not fight in the wars, but his only son did and lost his
life—and his wife committed suicide a few months later. George is not sure life can offer him any future happiness, but he surely deserves his
happily ever after.

Dora Debbins first appeared in
Only Enchanting
, Book 4 of the series, as the heroine’s older sister. Dora had given up her youth and her own chance for marriage and happiness in order to
bring up her young sister after their mother ran away from home with a lover. When Agnes married one of the Survivors, Dora was left to her quiet, solitary
life as a music teacher in a small village—and to her memories of a few glorious days when she met and fell in love with the Duke of Stanbrook. She
does not expect ever to see him again. But she too surely deserves some happiness of her own.

George does remember Dora, and he makes a sudden, impulsive decision to travel into the country to see her again. Below is a brief glimpse of what happens
when he arrives there. Dora has just returned home to her little cottage after a day of teaching private pupils, and she is weary. All she wants to do is
sit alone in her sitting room and enjoy a cup of tea.

Enjoy the excerpt—and the book.

Mary Balogh

www.marybalogh.com

www.facebook.com/AuthorMaryBalogh

She picked up her cup and sipped her tea. But it had grown tepid and she pulled a face. It was entirely her own fault, of course. But she hated tea that
was not piping hot.

And then a knock sounded on the outer door. Dora sighed. She was just too weary to deal with any chance caller. Her last pupil for the day had been
fourteen-year-old Miranda Corley, who was as reluctant to play the pianoforte as Dora was to teach her. She was utterly devoid of musical talent, poor
girl, though her parents were convinced she was a prodigy. Those lessons were always a trial to them both.

Perhaps Mrs. Henry would deal with whoever was standing on her doorstep. Her housekeeper knew how tired she always was after a full day of giving lessons
and guarded her privacy a bit like a mother hen. But this was not to be one of those occasions, it seemed. There was a tap on the sitting room door, and
Mrs. Henry opened it and stood there for a moment, her eyes as wide as twin saucers.

"It is for you, Miss Debbins," she said before stepping to one side.

And, as though her memories of last year had summoned him right to her sitting room, in walked the Duke of Stanbrook.

He stopped just inside the door while Mrs. Henry closed it behind him.

"Miss Debbins," He bowed to her. "I trust I have not called at an inconvenient time?"

Any comfort Dora had drawn during those few days last year from a realization that he was kindly and approachable and really quite human fled without a
trace, and she was every bit as smitten by awe as she had been when she met him for the first time in the drawing room at Middlebury Park. He was tall and
distinguished looking, with dark hair silvered at the temples, and austere, chiseled features consisting of a straight nose, high cheekbones and rather
thin lips. He bore himself with a stiff, forbidding air she did not remember from last year. He was the quintessential fashionable, aloof aristocrat from
head to toe, and he seemed to fill Dora's sitting room and deprive it of most of the breathable air.

She realized suddenly that she was still sitting and staring at him all agape, like a thunderstruck idiot. He had spoken to her in the form of a question
and was regarding her with raised eyebrows in expectation of an answer. She scrambled belatedly to her feet and curtsied. She tried to remember what she
was wearing and whether her garments included a cap.

 "Your Grace," she said. "No, not at all. I have given my last music lesson for the day and have been having my tea. The tea will be cold in the pot
by now. Let me ask Mrs. Henry—"

But he had held up one elegant staying hand.

"Pray do not concern yourself," he said. "I have just finished taking refreshments with Vincent and Sophia."

With Viscount and Lady Darleigh.

"I was at Middlebury Park earlier today," she said, "giving Lady Darleigh a pianoforte lesson since she missed her regular one while she was in London for
Lady Barclay's wedding. She did not say anything about your having come back with them. Not that she was obliged to do so, of course." Her cheeks grew hot.
"It was none of my business."

"I arrived an hour ago," he told her, "unexpected but not quite uninvited. Every time I see Vincent and his lady, they urge me to visit any time I wish.
They always mean it just as they never expect that I will come. This time I did. I followed almost upon their heels from London, in fact,
and, bless their hearts, I do believe they were happy to see me. Or not see in Vincent's case. Sometimes one almost forgets that he cannot
literally see."

Dora's cheeks grew hotter. For how long had she been keeping him standing there by the door? Whatever would he think of her rustic manners?

"But will you not have a seat, Your Grace?" She indicated the chair across the hearth from her own. "Did you walk from Middlebury? It is a lovely day for
air and exercise, though, is it not?"

He had arrived from London an hour ago? He had taken tea with Viscount and Lady Darleigh and had stepped out immediately after to come… here? Perhaps he brought a message from Agnes?

"I will not sit," he said. "This is not really a social call."

"Agnes—?" Her hand crept to her throat. His stiff, formal manner was suddenly explained. There was something wrong with Agnes. She had miscarried.

"Your sister appeared to be glowing with good health when I saw her a few days ago," he said. "I am sorry if my sudden appearance has alarmed you. I came
to ask a question."

Dora clasped both hands at her waist and waited for him to continue. A day or two after she had played for the guests at Middlebury last year he had come
to the cottage with a few of the others to thank her for playing and to express the hope that she would do so again before their visit came to an end. It
had not happened. Was he going to ask now? For this evening, perhaps? Suddenly she forgot her weariness.

"I wondered, Miss Debbins," he said, "if you would do me the great honor of marrying me.”

“I do not ask this boon of you lightly.”

Elias, Duke of Sedgemere, strolled along, damned if he’d embarrass Hardcastle with any show of sentiment in the face of Hardcastle’s wheedling.
Hardcastle was, after all, Sedgemere’s oldest and dearest friend too.

Also Sedgemere’s only friend.

They took the air beside Hyde Park’s Serpentine, ignoring the stares and whispers they attracted. While Sedgemere was a blond so pale as to draw the
eye, Hardcastle was dark. They were both above average in height and brawn, though Mayfair boasted any number of large, well-dressed men, particularly as
the fashionable hour approached.

They were dukes, however, and to be a duke was to be afflicted with public interest on every hand. To be an
unmarried
duke was to be cursed, for
in every ballroom, at the reins of every cabriolet, holding every parasol, was a duchess-in-waiting.

Thus Sedgemere endured Hardcastle’s importuning.

“You do not ask a boon,” Sedgemere said, tipping his hat to a fellow walking an enormous brindle mastiff. “You demand half my summer,
when summer is the best time of year to bide at Sedgemere House.”

They had known each other since the casual brutality and near starvation that passed for a boy’s indoctrination at Eton, and through the wenching and
wagering that masqueraded as an Oxford education. Hardcastle, however, had never married, and thus knew not what horrors awaited him on the way to the
altar.

Sedgemere knew, and he further knew that Hardcastle’s days as a bachelor were numbered, if Hardcastle’s estimable grandmama was dispatching him
to summer house parties.

“If you do not come with me, Sedgemere, I will become a bad influence on my godson. I will teach the boy about cigars, brandy, fast women, and
profligate gambling.”

“The child is seven years old, Hardcastle, but feel free to corrupt him at your leisure, assuming he does not prove to be the worse influence
on—good God, not these two again.”

The Cheshire twins, blond, blue-eyed, smiling, and as relentless as an unmentionable disease, came twittering down the path, twirling matching
parasols. 

“Miss Cheshire, Miss Sharon,” Hardcastle said, tipping his hat.

Sedgemere discreetly yanked on his friend’s arm, though nothing would do but Hardcastle must exchange pleasantries as if these women weren’t
the social equivalent of Scylla and Charybdis.

“Ladies.” Sedgemere bowed as well, for he was in public and the murder of a best friend was better undertaken in private.

“Your Graces! How fortunate that we should meet!” Miss Cheshire gushed. The elder by four minutes, as Sedgemere had been informed on at least a
hundred occasions, she generally led the conversational charges. “I told Sharon this very morning that you could not possibly have left Town without
calling upon us, and I see I was right, for here you both are!”

Exactly where Sedgemere did not want to be.

“We’ll take our leave of—” Sedgemere began, just as Hardcastle winged an arm.

“A pleasant day for pleasant company,” Hardcastle said.

Miss Cheshire latched on to Hardcastle like a Haymarket streetwalker clutched her last penny’s worth of gin, and Miss Sharon appropriated
Sedgemere’s arm without him even offering.

“You weren’t planning to call on us, were you?”

Miss Sharon posed exactly the sort of query a man who’d endured five years of matrimonial purgatory knew better than to answer. If Sedgemere admitted
that he’d no intention of calling on anybody before departing London, the Cheshire chit would pout, tear up, and try to shame him into an
apology-call. If he lied and protested that, of course he’d been planning on calling, she’d assign him a time and date, and be sure to have her
bosom bows lying in ambush with her in her mama’s parlor.