Today I’m offering you an excerpt from Loving My Lady, the Regency novella which came out last week. Hope you enjoy it.

 

I do not think that I knew what love was before that moment. I had loved my father, of course, with the obligation of a righteous daughter; the romantic love the poets write of, though, had never previously touched my life.

She stepped down.

The one and only “she” there would ever be for me. My eyes met hers for a second, and I was first to look away. This was not the elderly lady I remembered from my childhood. Who, then, was she?

“You are most welcome,” I stammered. “Um… Lady Dennyson…”

“Yes?”

“…is expected shortly, I imagine?”

“I beg your pardon?”

She strolled toward me. I would have died for a dress such as the one she wore with so much elegance.

“When do you expect Lady Dennyson?” I asked shyly.

There was a pause, followed by the most beautiful laughter I had ever heard — even though it was at my expense.

“My dear!” she exclaimed. “Cordelia — I may call you that, may I not?”

My voice too unsteady for words at the sound of my name on her lips, I nodded.

“I am Lady Dennyson.”

“But…”

“Surely you did not expect my mother-in-law?” she laughed.

Mother-in-law? Then she was… then my cousin Adam (unknown, therefore unavoidably unmissed) must… must be married — married and dead.

“Lady Dennyson?”

She smiled.

“That is indeed my name.”

Unbidden, unexpectedly, I curtsied — as if I were a maid. Well, perhaps a companion was on such a level.

“My lady.”

One hand pinched my chin, the other slid luxuriously down my arm like velvet.

“You need not call me that. I am Lady Juliet, and you are my Cordelia.”