Jo Leigh - Confessions Bundle

MUCH LATER THAT NIGHT, on a blanket on the beach behind Juliet’s cottage, Blake lay with Juliet beside him, his arm cradling her head, while they looked up at the stars.

“I want to know everything about her.”

“I have scrapbooks with pictures and journal entries for every major event,” she told him. “I told myself I’d send them to you when she turned eighteen.”

He couldn’t get upset with that. He understood that those books were Juliet’s way of keeping him with her when her fear was forcing him away. Her fears, her life’s experiences and conditioning—his choices—had forced her to raise their daughter alone. But her heart had insisted that she share the time with him anyway.

“When does school start?” he asked.

“In a couple of weeks.”

The cool breeze coming in from the ocean felt glorious on his heated skin.

“Doesn’t give us long to plan a wedding.”

“Flights go from San Diego to Vegas every hour.”

“Can you get off work tomorrow?”

“At the moment, I just lost my biggest client,” she told him, sounding as if she was grinning. “How about you?”

“I’d already cleared my calendar in case of an extended vacation.”

Juliet didn’t say anything and he wondered if she’d come up with some other challenge to block her trip to happiness. Whatever it was, he wasn’t going to let her do it twice.

“I know we said we’d wait, but I can’t,” she finally said, her voice fraught with pain.

He turned to look at her. “Wait for what?”

“This.”

With a heavy groan, she rolled on top of him. “I just can’t wait anymore.” Very slowly she lowered her head to his, opened her mouth and took them both back nine long years—to a beach and a night and a moment that they had never forgotten.

No one had ever been like Juliet, nothing like the way he felt in her arms. Or she in his.

“Mary Jane,” he muttered when he could form a coherent thought.

“Is a very sound sleeper.”

Blake didn’t stop for another thought until the dawn was coming up over the ocean.

“We’ve done it again,” Juliet said, sitting beside him on the blanket with her recently donned clothes skewed and wrinkled.

He hoped so. God, he hoped so. Including the very same consequences they’d had nine years before.

Only this time, Daddy would know.

By Margaret Moore

TORONTO • NEW YORK • LONDON

AMSTERDAM • PARIS • SYDNEY • HAMBURG

STOCKHOLM • ATHENS • TOKYO • MILAN • MADRID

PRAGUE • WARSAW • BUDAPEST • AUCKLAND

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

Lincolnshire, 1868

“Oh, Miss Barton, how wonderful to see you! Isn’t it simply dreadful?” the unfortunately familiar female voice declared pleasantly.

Grace Barton smiled noncommittally as she turned to face Miss Myrtle Hurley and her silent twin sister, Miss Ethel, who were now blocking her way as formidably as any brick wall.

As always, the elderly women wore virtually identical black bombazine dresses, gray wool cloaks, ratty fur muffs they had apparently owned since the Regency, and corresponding black bonnets. Their thick white hair was dressed the same way, and to a stranger, they would look like mirror images of the same, sweet elderly woman.

Unfortunately, Grace knew from long experience that neither the brisk April breeze blowing from across the fens and tugging at her thin wool cloak and bell skirt, or the smell wafting toward them from the nearby fishmonger’s, would cause them to move until they had said what they wanted to say.

“Good afternoon,” she said evenly, wondering what particular piece of salacious gossip the Hurleys would regale her with today.

“Good afternoon,” Miss Myrtle, the eldest of the twins by a full five minutes, said breathlessly. She always spoke breathlessly, and she always smiled, no matter how terrible the tale she was going to relate, or how damning her criticism.

Grace often felt that was how the Hurley girls-who had been “girls” for the past seventy-five years-managed to avoid criticism themselves. If any other person who did not look like the epitome of sweet seniority said the things they did and revealed the secrets they told, they would be shunned.

“It’s just too distressing!” Miss Myrtle exclaimed. “Not for us, of course, but for so many others!”

“What has happened?” Grace asked, keeping her tone carefully neutral as she shifted her basket into her other kid-gloved hand, partly because she was impatient, but also because Miss Ethel was trying to peek inside, and Grace didn’t want her to see the contents. It was none of the woman’s business that the fish Grace had purchased was the cheapest she could find.

“It’s the rents,” Miss Myrtle announced, not without a sense of importance. “Sir Donald is raising them-most definitely! I heard it from Mrs. Banks herself not two hours ago.”

Grace swallowed hard. As well as the holder of the largest estate in the country, Sir Donald was also the landlord of Barton Farm. For once, the Hurleys’ news was important and, if it came from his housekeeper, likely to be true.

“I do so hate to be the bearer of bad tidings,” Myrtle Hurley said eagerly, a pleasant smile still on her round face. “But everyone will know sooner or later. Sir Donald came home yesterday, and he has already spoken with some of his tenants!”

How typical of the Hurleys to treat this news of a raise in rents as just another fascinating piece of gossip! Grace thought, keeping any sense of her displeasure from her face. The Hurleys had nothing to fear, for their parents had made quite a tidy fortune in the wool trade, which they had bequeathed to their daughters. Sir Donald could triple the rent, and they would not suffer.

Not so herself and Mercy. Her family had been the major landholders here for over three centuries-the village Barton-by-the-Fens was even named for them. Sadly, in her grandfather’s time, a series of investments had turned out to be disasters. Her father had done his best to recoup, to no avail. Little by little, their land had gone to Sir Donald, until all they were left with upon their parents’ deaths three years ago was one acre and their house, and all they had to live on was the interest from her mother’s dowry, not very much at all.

“Do you know how high he intends to raise them?” Grace asked, her voice quite cool and calm in spite of her inner turmoil.

“No, I don’t how much he intends to raise them,” Miss Myrtle said rather primly. “It is improper for ladies to discuss business matters.”

“Improper,” Miss Ethel murmured.

Grace didn’t point out that they were discussing business matters at that very moment, and as far as she was concerned, if the Hurleys wanted to be the unofficial town criers, they should expect to be interrogated. “Do you know when?”

“It’s none of our business,” Miss Myrtle answered affably. “Perhaps when he does, he will pay for more policing. The chief constable claims he is unable to do anything about the vagrancy problems unless he can hire more help.”