Her Secret Fantasy Read online

  CONTENTS

  TITLE PAGE

  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

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  EPILOGUE

  READ ON FOR A SPECIAL NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR…

  ALSO BY GAELEN FOLEY

  PRAISE FOR GAELEN FOLEY

  COPYRIGHT

  CHAPTER

  ONE

  England, 1818

  “The poor ladies! They’re doomed, aren’t they? Whatever shall they do now?”

  “Sell the old manor, I suppose, though God knows it is a ruin.”

  “But it is their home—they’ve nowhere else to go!”

  “Tsk, tsk, the ills of cards and drink, my dear.”

  “Yes, well, that is not the ladies’ fault. Oh, it is so sad to see a once-great family slip into decline…”

  The whispers were coming from a pew two or three rows behind her. Slowly the hushed exchange penetrated Lily Balfour’s grief, drawing her attention away from the empty feeling in her heart, and the lulling patter of the rain against the tall, clear windows of their little parish church, and the droning eulogy from Grandfather’s middle-aged heir, the new Lord Balfour—a stranger to her side of the family.

  Behind the half-veil of black netting that gracefully draped her small hat, her dazed look of loss turned to shock and then pure indignation as the whispers continued.

  What’s this? she thought, listening in outrage. Someone was gossiping about her family, right here in the middle of Grandfather’s funeral?

  What a pair of busybodies!

  She tried to recall which of her neighbors from among the local Quality had filed into the nearest pews behind her, but her mind was a blank. Indeed, she had spent the past two days in a fog, numb with sorrow and exhausted after months of caring for her dying hero.

  For so many years, her grandfather, Viscount Balfour, had seemed larger than life. Being forced to watch him shrink day by day into a sick old man—being forced to watch him die—had been almost more than she could bear.

  But he was gone now—at peace, she trusted—and as his heir’s eulogy dragged on, her neighbors resumed their speculation on her family’s fate. This time, Lily cocked her head slightly and listened with irked curiosity.

  “Perhaps the new Lord Balfour will assist them. He seems a good-hearted fellow,” one of the matrons suggested sympathetically, but the other snorted under her breath.

  “Lady Clarissa would never accept it. The two branches of the family haven’t spoken a civil word to each other in years. I thought this was common knowledge!”

  “Yes, well, he can’t leave them to starve. Oh, it’s all so sad,” her companion lamented softly. “First Master Langdon dead in India, and then the nephew in that horrid duel. Perhaps there is something to the old Balfour curse!”

  “Nonsense. It’s their own fault for being too proud. The answer is right before them if they would not turn their noses up at it.”

  “What answer? What ever do you mean?”

  Yes, indeed? Lily frowned, wondering the same thing.

  “One of the girls could still make an admirable match,” the first lady explained in a brisk and reasonable whisper. “Well, not the elder cousin, perhaps,” she admitted. “Miss Pamela is nearly forty, and very odd. But the younger one, Lily. Impeccable breeding, and she’s got her mother’s looks. I daresay an infusion of gold by way of the marriage mart could remedy their situation in a trice.”

  At these words, Lily felt the blood drain from her face; her entire body tensed, or rather recoiled, at the suggestion, and her fist closed hard around her crumpled handkerchief. No.

  “But, dear, they could never afford a Season for her now. How they shall afford this funeral, I scarcely know.”

  “Well, it’s now or never, if you ask me. The girl is nearly five and twenty. By the time she’s out of mourning for her grandsire, she’ll be on the shelf. Honestly, why she hasn’t married yet is quite beyond all reckoning. She cannot lack for offers.”

  None of your blasted business, Lily thought, her jaw clenched.

  “Perhaps Lady Clarissa did not deem any of her daughter’s suitors fine enough for the old Balfour blood.”

  “No doubt. All the same, she is past the age of needing her mother’s consent, is she not? I cannot speak for you, dear, but I should regard myself as derelict in my duty if I were in her shoes.”

  “Oh, come.”

  “No, really. What is she waiting for, a prince? A knight in shining armor? I had three children by the time I was her age.”

  Lily winced at their all-too-true reproach and ventured a tentative sideways glance at her mother.

  Aged forty-four, Lady Clarissa Balfour was not yet ready to give up her reign as one of the most beautiful women in the south of England. Many also considered her one of the fiercest.

  Her ramrod posture as she sat in the wooden pew assured her daughter that she, too, had heard the impudent whispers. But unlike the meeker and far more obedient Lily, Lady Clarissa slowly turned her blond head and leveled a withering glare at their gossiping neighbors. Her look must have struck them like an icy blast of Nordic wind.

  How…dare…you?

  Lily heard small mortified gasps behind her and was not at all surprised. She knew that look.

  She sank down in her seat a bit, quite familiar with being on the receiving end of one of her mother’s bone-chilling stares. She was only glad that this time it was not directed at her.

  Her mother was the daughter of an earl—a fact that no one in her presence was permitted to forget—and was too well bred, thank you very much, ever to raise her voice. Of course, there was no need, when she could fling daggers from her eyes.

  When Lady Clarissa Balfour turned forward again oh-so-serenely, her flawless face was a marble mask, hard and white against the black lace of her high-necked mourning gown. Having handled the insubordination from the locals, she slipped Lily a small sideward glance of cold satisfaction.

  That’s Mother for you, Lily thought.

  She responded with a tiny, rather hapless nod. Then she tried to return her attention to the eulogy, but in truth, it was very difficult to listen to the new Lord Balfour’s empty platitudes about a man he barely knew, a man whom Lily and everyone for miles around had loved.

  Well, except maybe her mother. Lady Clarissa had been a dutiful daughter-in-law to the old viscount, but even as a child, Lily had sensed how they had blamed each other for her father’s death. She had always felt caught in the middle between them. Indeed, sitting here, lost in her thoughts before her neighbors had so rudely interrupted, she had been woefully trying to decide which funeral was worse, this one or her father’s.

  In truth, it was no contest. Today her heart was broken, but it still could not match the loss that she had suffered fifteen years ago as a child of nine. Though she had loved her grandfather dearly and had tended him in his frailty day by day, she had been even closer to her father—two peas in a pod, her nurse used to say.

  Besides, her grandfather had been old and ill, and Lily had known his death was coming. Years ago, she had been but a little girl, unaware of death, and had believed her marvelous Papa was off having a grand adventure in India, riding elephants and meeting glittering mahar
ajahs. That was what he had told her.

  He had promised to come back with a sack full of rubies for Mother and one full of diamonds for her. “My little princess. Princess Lily! One day you’ll be the grandest girl in all the land…” Handsome, charming, and a thoroughgoing dreamer, Langdon Balfour had always tended toward hyperbole, but at nine, Lily had taken her father at his word.

  About a year later, news of his death as a result of monsoon fever had brought her young world crashing down.

  Perhaps that was why it was so difficult to listen to the new Lord Balfour’s speech. It should have been Papa standing up there, telling everyone about his father, Lily thought resentfully. It should have been Papa inheriting the title and taking up his rightful role as male head of the family. They might still have been bankrupt, and mutually embarrassed of their family’s decline, but at least they would have been together.

  Instead, all she had left of him were fading memories of the fairy tales he used to tell her, and a garden folly that he hadn’t quite managed to complete before he ran out of money…and time.

  Now they were a household of women with precious little income to sustain them.

  God help us, Lily thought as her gaze slowly fell.

  Their anonymous neighbor was probably right. They were doomed.

  That quickly, guilt set in. Familiar guilt. Maybe her gossiping neighbors had a point. You could fix all this if only you weren’t so selfish, her conscience reproached her. Why shouldn’t you marry when it could solve everything? Just look at poor Mother. Hasn’t she suffered enough? Look at her pride. She wasn’t born to be poor.

  You can do this, it persisted, trying to rally her. You can save them. You know you can, if only you’d forget about the past and stop being afraid.

  But she was afraid. Experience had shown that a healthy mistrust of people and the world was necessary for survival. Indeed, if her father had owned a measure of sensible fear, perhaps he’d be alive today. Fear was good.

  Before long, the funeral service had ended. The gossiping matrons had fled by the time the grief-stricken congregation turned to watch the pall-bearers march out, somberly carrying their beloved lord’s casket.

  While the gentlemen swarmed into the adjoining churchyard to bury the viscount, the ladies climbed up into their carriages for the short drive over to Balfour Manor, where Lily’s family would offer a modest reception.

  Her mother marched ahead in regal fashion, lifting the hem of her black skirts above the mud puddles while one of their loyal family footmen—who had not been paid in several months, alas—hurried after her, holding an umbrella over her black-bonneted and sleekly coiffed head.

  “Come, Lily,” Lady Clarissa summoned her. “We must be ready for our guests.”

  She made no move to follow. “I’d rather walk, actually. I need…” Her words trailed off at her mother’s exasperated glance.

  “Lily, it’s raining. Don’t be absurd.”

  “I have my umbrella. I’d really like to take a few minutes alone, i-if you don’t mind, Mother.”

  Lady Clarissa swept about-face and stared at her. “Of course I mind! I need you to receive our guests as they arrive. I shall be in the drawing room pouring the tea. You will stand in the entrance hall!”

  “Aunt Daisy said she’d take my place. I’ll only be a moment.”

  Lady Clarissa glanced dubiously at her stout and usually helpless but kind-hearted sister-in-law.

  “Y-yes, I will mind the door,” Aunt Daisy piped up.

  Lady Clarissa rolled her eyes.

  “Oh, let her be, Clarissa,” Aunt Daisy pleaded. “The poor girl wants to say good-bye.”

  Lady Clarissa flicked a haughty glance toward the graveyard, then shrugged. “Don’t dawdle about it,” she ordered. “In twenty minutes, we’ll have a house full of guests, and I need you there.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Lily nodded, casting Aunt Daisy a grateful look as her mother turned away. Then Lady Clarissa and the two remaining members of her entourage—bustling and prattling Aunt Daisy and bookish Cousin Pamela, wrinkling her nose and drying her rain-flecked spectacles—all climbed into their weathered black coach and set off for Balfour Manor.

  The grand brick house was only a stone’s throw up the country road. The gabled roof was visible from here beyond the trees.

  It’s not a ruin, Lily thought defensively. So the roof had a hole or two. So what?

  As she watched the line of carriages moving slowly toward it, she reflected in lingering amazement on the revelation in Grandfather’s will. He had skipped her mother and left Balfour Manor, his one unentailed property, to Lily.

  Of course she knew why he had done it. Not because she had taken care of him, nor even because she shared his blood, while her mother was only his daughter-in-law. It was because he had wanted to make sure that if indeed Lily stood by her vow never to marry, as well she might after what had happened to her, then at least she would always have a place to live, a home to call her own.

  Not even Mother would be able to throw her out, as she had once threatened to do. Memories of her mother’s cold reproach still made Lily tremble, though it had happened nearly ten years ago, when she was but a frightened fifteen-year-old. She still suffered keenly over the private shame she had brought upon her proud family; but under her grandfather’s strict orders, they had closed ranks and kept her secret all these years, protecting her from any taint of scandal for the sake of family honor.

  All of them had done their best to sweep it under the carpet. Not even her mother had mentioned it in at least eight years. But the knowledge of her sin was always there, beneath the surface in the polite and genteel war zone of her home. Life had gone on as it was wont to do, but Lily was left wondering if there was any way that she could ever be redeemed for her mistake.

  This, in truth, was what she had lingered behind to ponder—not the loss of her grandsire, but the nagging guilt that still chafed after her neighbors’ words.

  “An infusion of gold by way of the marriage mart would fix their situation in a trice…”

  Once more, the Balfour family honor was in jeopardy, not by scandal this time but by financial ruin. Years ago, it was she who had endangered the family’s good name, but her kin had protected her. Now that they stood once more on the brink of disgrace, didn’t she owe it to her family to save them if she could? Didn’t she owe it to Grandfather?

  As the line of carriages pulled ahead, she glanced over her shoulder at the men gathered in the churchyard.

  Tears filled her eyes as she watched them lowering his casket into the earth. Lifting her fingertips to her lips, she looked ahead again while the rain softly drummed her black umbrella.

  At length she continued walking homeward, setting each foot carefully in the precarious metal patens that barely kept her shoes above the mud.

  What am I to do? I don’t wish to be selfish…

  She barely knew where to begin, thinking about how to pay for Balfour Manor’s upkeep, a colossal expense even when its inhabitants dwelled meagerly. It was all hers now. Selling it was absolutely out of the question, but how she was going to pay the taxes, let alone fix the leaky old roof, she had no idea.

  Maybe I should start looking for a husband, she thought uneasily. Whatever happened, she could not bear to lose her home on top of everything else. Her moldering house and this sleepy village were the only places on earth where she felt truly safe.

  Besides, the whimsical folly that Papa had left half-built still stood at the back of the overgrown garden. If she had to sell the house, the new owners would probably demolish it, and that would be like losing her father all over again, along with most of her childhood memories, the innocent part of her youth.

  On the other hand, if she didn’t do something fast, she would lose the house for certain.

  “One of the girls could still make an admirable match…”

  At that moment, Lily heard a carriage clattering up the road and turned to look as she moved out of
the way.

  Through the gloom came a quartet of prancing white horses drawing a distinctive pink barouche with squat, rounded lines. When Lily saw the bright vehicle rushing toward her, she smiled for the first time that day. Her godmother, Mrs. Clearwell, had come all the way from Mayfair.

  She knew her mother’s faithful childhood friend had been invited to stay with them for a few days; eccentric as she was, Mrs. Clearwell always came in times of crisis.

  Somehow the rain paused magically as the coachman, Gerald, drew the high-stepping team to a halt beside her. He tipped his hat with a cheerful, “Good day, Miss Lily!”

  As she nodded to him, her godmother suddenly stuck her gray head out the window. “Oh, Zeus, I’m late! Lily, dearest, how perfectly awful of me! Have I missed the entire service? Get in, get in, my girl! You silly goose, what are you doing, walking in the rain?”

  “I find the rain enjoyable, ma’am, and yes, I’m afraid you missed the service. But no matter.” She could not suppress a wry grin. “You’re just in time for tea and cakes up at the house.”

  “Well, thank goodness for that!” Mrs. Clearwell hopped out of the carriage and ducked under Lily’s umbrella.

  The short, plump, bejeweled lady held Lily by her shoulders for a moment, searching her face with a gaze that poured out the most heartfelt sympathy, and then, in a spontaneous rush of emotion, she captured her in an effusive hug. “My dear, dear girl. Poor creature! You bore the brunt of his illness, didn’t you? Of course you did,” she said with a sniffle. “You were there when he went?”

  “Yes.” Tears filled Lily’s eyes at her warm-hearted godmother’s kindness. “He would not take his medicine. He said he would meet death with his wits intact.”

  “Oh…a hero to the end.”

  Lily nodded. “He was in so much pain.”

  “Well, he’s in Heaven now with your papa. There, there, sweet child. Are you all right?”

  Lily managed a nod and wiped away a tear.

  “Brave girl.” Mrs. Clearwell patted her cheek.

  She was Mother’s cousin and was the only person that Lily had ever seen who truly knew how to manage Lady Clarissa. Their friendship had always rather puzzled Lily. The two women could not have been more different.