Excerpts

Chapter One Summer had settled over southern England in a most agreeable manner, with long days of warm sunshine, gentle breezes, and just enough rainfall to help the crops yield a bountiful harvest and to keep trees, lawns, and pastures fresh and green. Flowers bloomed in colorful abundance, whether wild over hedgerows and walls, in ditches and meadows, or cultivated with loving care in gardens and beds. The English, of course, could never quite relax into full enjoyment of such a perfect summer. How long could one expect it to last, after all? There would always be pessimists squinting off to the west, whence most weather approached, nodding sagely as though they could see something beyond the bent horizon invisible to everyone else, and predicting that they would pay for such a perfect spell. Even the optimists were ready to admit it could not last forever, and in that at least they were bound to be right sooner or later. The Ware family of Ravenswood Hall in Hampshire, the inhabitants of the village of Boscombe just across the river from it, and residents of the surrounding countryside became especially anxious when June passed into July and there was still no break in the beautiful weather. For it seemed impossible that it could last a whole month longer. Yet a continuation of the perfect weather was all they asked for. They would not be greedy. There was to be a grand fete in the neighborhood on the last Saturday of July, and everyone looked forward to it with an almost sick longing. For eight long years had passed since the last one. The Ravenswood summer fete had once been an annual event and for most people their very favorite day of the year, even including Christmas. It had offered feasting and music and dancing and varied contests and entertainment for all ages from the middle of the morning until late at night. The weather had always cooperated with bright sunshine and blue skies and the gentlest of breezes and warmth without searing heat. Always. Ask any old-timers and they would tell you it was so. How everyone hoped the eight-year break would not destroy that string of good fortune. It might rain with their blessing on the Sunday following the fete, but please, please let the sun shine on the Saturday. Eight years ago the fete had come to an abrupt and horrible end in the middle of the grand ball with which the day's festivities always culminated. Devlin Ware, Viscount Mountford at the time, son and heir of the Earl of Stratton, the genial and well-loved owner of Ravenswood, had come upon his father engaged in a blatantly improper embrace with a lady guest out in the temple folly on top of the hill close to the ballroom. But instead of keeping his shock and outrage to himself until it could be dealt with privately at a more appropriate time, Devlin had confronted his father very publicly outside the open French windows of the ballroom, in the sight and hearing of his family and virtually every neighbor for miles around. To call it a shocking scene would be a severe understatement. It had ended in disaster for the Ware family and in intense embarrassment for everyone, even neighbors and village folk who had no reason to be embarrassed. Except that they had always set the Wares of Ravenswood upon some sort of pedestal. They had seemed the perfect family, virtuous and happy among themselves, amiable toward all, impeccably well mannered, unfailingly charming leaders of the community. They had always been generous about sharing their home and the spacious park surrounding it for community events that ranged from the extravagant grandeur of the summer fete and the joyful warmth of the Christmas party and ball to the fun of the Valentine's treasure hunt and tea and the impromptu and less formal invitation to public days, when everyone was welcome to enjoy the beauty of the park for picnics and walks. Everything had changed after that night. The guest who had been caught with the earl, a supposed widow and newcomer to the village, had disappeared overnight. Devlin had left abruptly the following morning with his elder half brother, not to be seen again in the neighborhood for more than six years. Clarissa, Countess of Stratton, who had always been warm and hospitable, the perfect hostess, had withdrawn into her home and into herself and was rarely seen in public except at church on Sunday mornings. Her sons Nicholas and Owen had left soon after their elder brothers, one to begin his career as an officer with a prestigious cavalry regiment, the other to attend boarding school. The elder daughter, Lady Philippa Ware, a happy-natured beauty sparkling on the edge of womanhood, had become suddenly subdued and eventually almost a total recluse. The youngest child of the family, Lady Stephanie Ware, only nine years old at the time of the fete, had kept mainly to herself and her family and her governess except for her involvement with the youth choir at the church. The Earl of Stratton himself-handsome, openhearted, and genial-was the only one among them who had carried on as though nothing untoward had happened, as though he had not been exposed in the most humiliatingly public manner imaginable as an almost certain adulterer and a probable philanderer on a larger scale. Everyone knew, after all, that for most of his married life he had spent the spring months of each year in London for the parliamentary session, while his wife and children remained in the country. After the incident at the ball, several people admitted to having always felt uneasy about that arrangement. Was it realistic, they asked themselves, to have expected that their earl would remain celibate during those lengthy separations from his wife, when London abounded with members of the ton eager to amuse themselves at the myriad entertainments of the Season? Life as usual after the catastrophe had not lasted long even for the earl, however. He had collapsed at the village tavern one evening while he drank ale and chatted jovially with his neighbors. According to those neighbors, he had been dead before he hit the floor. The biggest change the catastrophe of that summer fete had brought to those who lived in the village and countryside around Ravenswood, however, had been the complete cessation of all the social activities for which the earl and countess had opened their home since their marriage more than twenty years before. The countess had organized and hosted those events, and the earl had paid for them. No longer. Open days, two or three times each week, had never officially been canceled, but they had come to an end anyway. At first no one had wanted to intrude upon what was obviously a difficult time for the family. And who wanted the embarrassment of coming accidentally face-to-face with one or more of them and having to say something? After a while, it had seemed just too awkward to go back there. Then the earl died. Two years had passed after his death before Devlin, the new Earl of Stratton, returned home, looking very different from the quiet, pleasant, essentially unremarkable young man his neighbors remembered. He had come home, at the age of twenty-eight, looking dour, even morose, and rugged and battle-scarred. He had purchased a commission in a foot regiment after leaving home and had gone to Portugal to fight in the Peninsular Wars. His elder half brother, Ben Ellis-his elder, illegitimate half brother, that is-had gone with him, nominally as his batman. The allied armies had fought their way across Portugal and Spain and over the Pyrenees into France until Napoleon Bonaparte surrendered and abdicated as emperor after the Battle of Toulouse in 1814. Devlin had sold out then, the wars apparently over, and come home. Ben had been married and widowed during the six years they had been gone, and brought an infant child home with him. He had not stayed at Ravenswood. He had purchased the manor of Penallen by the sea thirty miles away, spent a year or so renovating it, and finally settled there with his daughter. The new Earl of Stratton, meanwhile, so forbidding in looks and manner, had surprised his neighbors. At a tea his mother had dutifully arranged to welcome him home, he announced that Ravenswood would once again be open for public days and social events, and he carried through on his promise almost immediately by offering the ballroom for an upcoming assembly. It had been a great blessing to the villagers, for the assembly rooms above the inn were small and cramped and always so congested on those evenings that it was difficult to find space in which to dance. There was to be a difference, however, from the old assemblies at the hall. At Devlin's suggestion, the planning was done not by his mother but by the landlord of the inn and his wife, with the help of a committee of villagers. Those who attended paid an admission charge to cover costs incurred. The present earl's only contribution was the venue. It was not a sign of meanness on his part. Quite the contrary. Everyone was delighted by the new arrangement, even though it had involved them in a great deal of work and some small expense-or perhaps for those very reasons. Older people remembered the time when it had always been that way, when they had all participated in organizing their own entertainments, and the involvement of the Wares of Ravenswood had been minimal. They had done it again during the years following the great upset at the hall, even if it had been a bit halfhearted, as though they had feared somehow offending the family by ignoring them and carrying on with their lives as if the Wares and Ravenswood itself did not exist. The social life of the neighborhood had been altogether more robust and cheerful in the two years since Devlin's return. Everyone had continued to have a hand in their own individual and communal activities, but also Ravenswood had become a warmer, happier, more welcoming place than it had ever been. The Earl of Stratton had married at Christmas a few months after his return, and the wedding in the village church had been a joyful occasion for all. For the bride had been Gwyneth Rhys, daughter of Sir Ifor and Lady Rhys of Cartref, the estate adjoining Ravenswood to the east. Sir Ifor was the church organist and conductor of the various village choirs, and both he and his wife were much beloved by everyone who knew them. Lady Philippa Ware, at the advanced age of twenty-two, had finally gone to London with her mother the following spring for a come-out Season and had met and married the heir to a dukedom. Before the year was out, Gwyneth, Countess of Stratton, had given birth to a son, Gareth, Viscount Mountford. Lady Philippa, now the Duchess of Wilby, had been delivered of twins, a girl and a boy, early in the spring of this year. The Ware family had moved forward from the dark, gloomy years that had followed the last summer fete. They seemed happy with one another again and open to their neighbors and friends. A new generation was in the nursery. And now the transition was to be complete with the resumption of the annual summer fete and its busy entertainments for all. Not all the events would happen at Ravenswood itself. Some would center upon the village green. The day would begin there, in fact, in front of the church instead of on the terrace outside the hall. The maypole dancing would happen on the village green, a more appropriate setting than the lawn before the house. And the green would be surrounded by the various booths and stalls at which the villagers and their children would be enticed into parting with their pennies. Other events-especially those needing more space, like the children's races, the archery and log-splitting contests, and the baking, needlework, and wood-carving competitions-would take place as before at Ravenswood. The evening ball would of course be held in the west wing of the house itself. The ballroom there was the only room for miles around large enough to hold all who would attend. But everything depended almost entirely upon the weather. The family at Ravenswood was as eager as anyone else for the resumption of the annual fete. They were already busy with plans for those parts of it that were to be their responsibility. But it was still a few weeks away, and they had other, more imminent pleasures to occupy their minds and their time. Owen was already home after his second year at Oxford, but he was expecting a friend and fellow student to join him for a few weeks. Nicholas-Major the Honorable Nicholas Ware, that was-had been granted a few weeks' leave from his regiment, which was a part of the occupation force stationed near Paris. He was to spend those weeks at Ravenswood with his family, whose members had not seen him since before the Battle of Waterloo last year. Lucas and Philippa, Duke and Duchess of Wilby, were coming with their young twins all the way from Greystone Court, the ducal residence in Worcestershire. And Ben, who had at first sent word that he would stay home at Penallen for the summer, had changed his mind and was coming with his daughter after all. Viscount Watley, Owen's friend, would not be the only guest from outside the family. Lady Catherine Emmett was a longtime friend of Clarissa, Dowager Countess of Stratton, though they had seen each other only rarely since meeting during a London Season when they were both young brides. They had met again last year when they were in London. Lady Catherine's niece, Lady Jennifer Arden, with whom she lived, had become a close friend of Philippa, and then Philippa had married Jennifer's brother, and suddenly they all seemed like one family-very much to the delight of the two older ladies. Lady Catherine and Lady Jennifer had accepted an invitation to spend as much of the summer as they could spare at Ravenswood. It was going to be lovely to have all the family at home together again. However, the situation would not be perfectly ideal, for Lucas and Philippa, as well as Lady Catherine and Lady Jennifer, were in mourning for the old Duke and Duchess of Wilby, who had died within an hour or two of each other on the night following the christening of the twins back in the early spring. They had been Lady Catherine's parents and Lucas and Jennifer's grandparents. It would not be entirely appropriate, then, for them to participate in all the festivities of the fete. However, as Lucas had explained in his correspondence with Devlin, it was important to his wife that they spend a few weeks at her girlhood home. She would enjoy showing off her children to family, neighbors, and friends. And both of them needed a break after the busy months of settling into their new ducal roles. They would take pleasure from their visit and simply abstain from any activity that did not feel appropriate-dancing at the ball on the night of the fete, for example. Excerpted from Always Remember: Ben's Story by Mary Balogh All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.