Liz Fielding - The Marriage Miracle

About A Surprise Christmas Proposal:

“Liz Fielding’s newest is simply a gem. Sophie is Bridget Jones without self-pity, and Gabriel’s a hero any woman would love to find in her stocking.”

—Romantic Times BOOKclub

About City Girl in Training:

“One of the best Harlequin Romances this reviewer has ever read. This story is exciting, fresh, innovative and a breath of fresh air, yet it is told in the traditional sweet tone of the line, which will make this book appeal to all readers.”

—Romantic Times BOOKclub

And even when he’d realized that tap dancing was not, never would be, part of her repertoire he hadn’t changed, hadn’t started talking to her as if she was witless. Dinner with him would have been a rare pleasure. Sitting together at a candlelit table, she could have pretended for a few dizzy hours that on the outside she was like any other woman. The way she was deep inside. With the same longings. The same desire to be loved, to have a man hold her, make love to her.

She closed her eyes for a moment, shutting out the reminders that she was not, would never be, like other women. Then, with a deep breath, she opened them again.

He’d been there, in her head since the moment he’d taken her hand, held it a touch too long. Been there the minute she’d stopped concentrating on something else.

In A Wife on Paper Francesca Lang’s dreams came true when Guy Dymoke stole her heart. In this equally emotional story by award-winning author Liz Fielding, will Francesca’s cousin Matty find the same success with the man of her dreams…?

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Liz Fielding started writing at the age of twelve, when she won a writing competition at school. After that early success there was quite a gap—during which she was busy working in Africa and the Middle East, getting married and having children—before her first book was published in 1992. Now readers worldwide fall in love with her irresistible heroes and adore her independent-minded heroines. Visit Liz’s Web site for news and extracts of upcoming books at www.lizfielding.com

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

FUNERALS and weddings. Sebastian Wolseley hated them both. At least the first had absolved him from attending the more tedious part of the second. And gave him a cast-iron excuse to leave the celebrations once he’d done his duty by one of his oldest friends.

The last thing he felt like doing was celebrating.

‘You look as if you could do with something stronger.’

He turned from his depressed contemplation of the glass in his hand to acknowledge the woman who’d broken into his thoughts. She was the sole occupant of a table littered with the remains of the lavish buffet. The only one who had not decamped to the marquee and the dance floor. From the cool, steady way she was looking at him he had the unsettling notion that she’d been watching him, unnoticed, for some time. But then she wasn’t the kind of woman you’d notice.

Her colouring was non-descript, mousy. She was too thin for anything approaching beauty, and her pick-up line was too corny to hook his interest. But her features were strong, her eyes glittered with intelligence and it was more than just good manners that stopped him from putting down the glass and walking away.

‘Do you tap dance for an encore?’ he asked.

She lifted her eyebrows, but she didn’t smile. ‘Tap dance?’

‘You’re not the cabaret? A mind-reading act, perhaps?’ He heard the biting sarcasm coming from his mouth and wished he’d walked. He had no business inflicting his black mood on innocent bystanders. Or sitters.

‘It doesn’t take a mind-reader to see that you’re not exactly focussed on this whole “til-death-us-do-part” thing,’ she countered, still not smiling, but not storming off, offended, either. ‘You’ve been holding your glass for so long that the contents must be warm. In fact, I’d go so far as to suggest that you’d look more at home at a wake than at a reception to celebrate the blessing of a marriage.’

‘Definitely a mind-reader,’ he said, finally abandoning the barely touched glass on her table. ‘Although I have a feeling that the wake I’ve just left will by now be making this party look sedate.’

And then he felt really guilty.

First he’d been rude to the woman, and when that hadn’t driven her away he’d tried to embarrass her. Apparently without success. She merely tilted her head slightly to the side, reminding him of an inquisitive bird.

‘Was it someone close?’ she enquired, rejecting the usual hushed, reverential tone more usually adopted when speaking to the recently bereaved. She might just as easily have been asking him if he’d like a cup of tea.

Such matter-of-factness was an oddly welcome respite from the madness that had overtaken his life in the last week and for the first time in days he felt a little of the tension slip away.

‘Close enough. It was my mad, bad Uncle George.’ Then, ‘Well, he was a distant cousin, actually, but he was so much older…’

She propped her elbows on the table, framing her chin with her hands. ‘In what way was he mad and bad?’

‘In much the same way as his namesake, Byron.’

Even in the dusky twilight of a long summer evening, with only candles and the fairy lights strung from the trees for illumination, her face had no softness, nothing of conventional prettiness, but her fine skin was stretched over good bones. The strength, it occurred to him, came from within. She wasn’t flirting with him. She was interested.

‘Mad, bad and dangerous to know. Such a temptation for foolish women. So, was the riotous wake an expression of relief?’ she continued earnestly. ‘Or a celebration of a life lived to the full?’

Too late now to walk away, even if he’d wanted to, and, pulling out the chair opposite her, he sat down.

‘That rather depends on your point of view. The family tended to the former, his friends to the latter.’

‘And you?’

He sat back. ‘I’m still struggling to come to terms with it,’ he said. ‘But how many people, knowing that they have weeks left, would take the trouble to arrange the kind of theatrical exit that would bring joy to their friends and scandalise their family? The kind of extravagant wake that people will be talking about for years?’

‘Theatrical?’ She looked thoughtful. ‘Are we talking black horses? Ostrich plumes?’

‘The works. Queen Victoria would have been proud,’ he said. ‘Although whether she would have been amused by a wake at which nothing but smoked salmon, caviar and vintage champagne is served, I’m not so sure.’

‘Sounds good to me.’

‘Yes, well, he wanted everyone to have a damn good time; an instruction which his many friends are, even now, taking to their hearts.’

‘That doesn’t sound mad or bad to me, but rather wonderful. So why aren’t you?’

‘Having a damn good time?’ Good question. ‘Perhaps because I’m in mourning for my own life.’ She waited, apparently the perfect listener, recognising that he needed someone to talk to, knowing that sometimes only a stranger would do. ‘I’m the one he nominated to clear up the empties—metaphorically speaking—when the partying is done.’