Holly and Hopeful Hearts Read online

  Holly and Hopeful Hearts

  A Bluestocking Belles Collection

  Amy Rose Bennett

  Jessica Cale

  Susana Ellis

  Sherry Ewing

  Jude Knight

  Caroline Warfield

  Nicole Zoltack

  Contents

  Copyright

  by Jude Knight

  A Suitable Husband

  About A Suitable Husband

  Prologue

  by Susana Ellis

  Valuing Vanessa

  About Valuing Vanessa

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  About Susana Ellis

  Other Books by Susana Ellis

  A Suitable Husband

  Chapter 1

  by Sherry Ewing

  A Kiss for Charity

  About A Kiss for Charity

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Epilogue

  About Sherry Ewing

  Other Books by Sherry Ewing

  A Suitable Husband

  Chapter 2

  By Jessica Cale

  Artemis

  About Artemis

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Epilogue

  About Jessica Cale

  Other Books by Jessica Cale

  A Suitable Husband

  Chapter 3

  by Jude Knight

  The Bluestocking and the Barbarian

  About The Bluestocking and the Barbarian

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  About Jude Knight

  Other books by Jude Knight

  A Suitable Husband

  Chapter 4

  by Nicole Zoltack

  Christmas Kisses

  About Christmas Kisses

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  About Nicole Zoltack

  Other books by Nicole Zoltack

  A Suitable Husband

  Chapter 5

  by Caroline Warfield

  An Open Heart

  About An Open Heart

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  About Caroline Warfield

  Other Books by Caroline Warfield

  A Suitable Husband

  Chapter 6

  by Amy Rose Bennett

  Dashing Through the Snow

  About Dashing Through the Snow

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  About Amy Rose Bennett

  Other Books by Amy Rose Bennett

  A Suitable Husband

  Epilogue

  The Belles would like your help

  Meet the Bluestocking Belles

  Acknowledgments

  Malala Fund

  Find the Bluestocking Belles online:

  Copyright © 2016 to individual authors as named.

  * * *

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only, and may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of these authors.

  * * *

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the author of that part, except for including brief quotations in a review.

  * * *

  ISBN: 9781370533190

  A Suitable Husband

  by Jude Knight

  This bonus story is told, one chapter at a time, in between the novellas in the collection.

  * * *

  As the Duchess of Haverford’s companion, Cedrica Grenford is not treated as a poor relation and is encouraged to mingle with Her Grace’s guests. Perhaps among the gentlemen gathered for the duchess’s house party, she will find a suitable husband?

  Marcel Fournier has only one ambition: to save enough from his fees serving as chef in the houses of the ton to become the proprietor of his own fine restaurant. An affair with the duchess’s dependent would be dangerous. Anything else is impossible. Isn’t it?

  Prologue

  London

  September 1812

  Cedrica Grenford set her portable writing desk on the table. She had freshly prepared quills, a full bottle of ink, and neatly cut sheets of paper, each with the Haverford crest watermarked in the background. She took a deep breath and pushed her glasses farther up her nose. She was ready for this, her first test as confidential secretary and companion to Her Grace, the Duchess of Haverford.

  That is to say, to Aunt Eleanor. Who would have thought that little Ceddie Grenford would grow up to one day call a duchess ‘aunt’? Even if that illustrious personage was remotely connected by marriage.

  She had not imagined such a result when she had written to the duke to beg a refuge for her father, his distant cousin, who was failing in health and confused in mind. Papa was an ill-paid country vicar with a lifetime habit of giving away whatever came into his hands. Now the church he had served so devotedly proposed to put him into a poorhouse. Or an asylum.

  Two weeks ago, the duchess, escorted by her son, the Marquis of Aldridge, descended upon their house and carried Papa off to be cared for in a lovely pensioner cottage near Haverford Castle in Kent, taking Cedrica to London to serve the duchess as a companion. Of course, Cedrica had breathed a grateful sigh of relief… until this afternoon. She might be
a little nervous, but she was determined to do well in her new role.

  “Cedrica, my dear,” said Her Grace, “come here and meet some of the ladies who form our committee.”

  Cedrica managed to acquit herself without disgrace as she was presented to some of the duchess’s legion of goddaughters and their friends. Lady Emily Pembroke stopped her conversation with Lady de Courtenay to smile at Cedrica. Lady de Courtenay gave a friendly wave. Miss Sedgely offered a straightforward handshake, and Lady Elinor Lacey introduced the two bored schoolgirls with them as Miss Louise Durand and Miss Blanche Lacey.

  The Belvoir sisters, Lady Sophia and Lady Felicity, also greeted Cedrica warmly. “I am to act as chairman, and Lady de Courtenay will make a third with you and I,” Lady Sophia said. “This committee has much work to do, Miss Grenford, and the three of us most of all.”

  Lady Sophia introduced Miss Lockhart, who in turn made Miss Kate Woodville known to the company. Miss Woodville, it seemed, was a teacher at a young ladies’ academy. Perhaps teaching might be a future for Cedrica. She would make a point of talking to the young woman.

  “Aunt Eleanor, I brought my friend, Miss Baumann,” Lady Felicity said, “Esther has a great interest in education for girls, and that is why we are here, is it not?”

  The duchess smiled. “You must be Mr. Nathaniel Baumann’s daughter, Miss Baumann. You are most welcome to our number. Shall we be seated, ladies?”

  This is no different to taking notes for the meetings of the Ladies’ Altar Society, or the Mothers’ Union, or the Vestry. So Cedrica had been telling herself for days, but these were not farmers’ wives and shopkeepers; these were fine ladies in fashionable silks with upper-class vowels and curious eyes.

  And if the ladies were terrifying, the gentlemen would be worse. Lord Aldridge had suggested that she regard the proposed house party as an opportunity to meet a suitable husband and had promised to pay a dowry if such a gentlemen could be brought to propose. His money was safe enough. She preferred not even to speak to gentlemen of the ton if she could avoid it.

  Cedrica sat in front of her desk, at the left hand of the duchess and the right of Lady Sophia, who took the head of the table and opened the meeting.

  “Ladies, you know why we are here. Several of us were talking about the dearth of opportunities for women in all classes, should they want more of an education than the skills that our world deems ‘appropriate for a woman.’ We do not think ourselves less capable of great learning than our brothers, nor do we consider ourselves extreme examples of our kind. We believe that women who wish to study the arts or the sciences should be able to do so, as have some of us ourselves.”

  Goodness. Had such ideas been suggested at a Vestry meeting, the speaker would have been laughed out of the room, with her father leading the mirth. Even the Ladies’ Altar Society would have been shocked. But these grand ladies were all nodding, even Her Grace.

  “But talk butters no parsnips,” Lady Sophia continued. “We agreed that we needed a fund to support schemes for assisting girls to be educated beyond the sphere to which their sex, class, or both assign them. Her Grace has kindly agreed to be patroness of this fund and has an idea for announcing it to the world and, at the same time, raising money to support it. Ladies, you, your family and friends, and anyone who is in the least likely to support us are invited to Hollystone Hall in Buckinghamshire this December for a holiday house party and a New Year’s Eve Charity Ball.”

  The explosion of delighted comments that filled the room flowed over Cedrica. A ball. How on earth would she ever manage that, much less the house party that would precede it?

  Valuing Vanessa

  by Susana Ellis

  The Hertfordshire Hoydens, Book 2

  By Susana Ellis

  * * *

  Facing a dim future as a spinster under her mother’s thumb, Vanessa Sedgely makes a practical decision to attach an amiable gentleman who will not try to rule her life.

  * * *

  The last thing widower George Durand thinks he wants is another wife, but his difficult daughter is proving hard to handle. In any case, the admirable Miss Sedgely is far too young for him. A love match is not even a remote consideration for these two. Or is it?

  Chapter 1

  By the time Nicholas had been dropped off at his Mayfair townhouse, the streets were deserted except for the night watchmen patrolling underneath bright street lamps, and George was exhausted. Recalling the days of his youth when he had the run of London and could fritter away the night with his Oxford cronies without the slightest effort, he felt a twinge of nostalgia for that too-brief period of time when he had total and utter freedom from the responsibilities that now weighed him down. These days he did indeed feel his age—next year he would be forty and decidedly middle-aged. Genny had been gone for two years now, and he was still at point non plus with their daughter. His business was thriving, but it seemed to require an increasing amount of his time, which he had only recently realized was a contributing factor to his problems with Louise.

  The image of the pretty blonde Miss Sedgely came to mind, along with a whimsical wish to be a decade or so younger. No milk and water miss she! He liked that about her, that she was not afraid to speak her mind. That she had more on her mind than routs and fashion and husband-hunting. He’d often thought it was a shame that society offered few options for women except through marriage, and even then their role was limited to the home and serving as pretty decorations at social events. But then, he couldn’t see her in the same vein as the independent Lady Hester Stanhope either. Miss Sedgely would be an outstanding wife for a man who had the presence of mind to appreciate her outspokenness and her fearless determination to become personally involved with the poor and needy and not just write checks from a convenient distance.

  As the carriage approached the modest residence he kept in Town for the times when it was too late to make the thirty-mile trip to St. Albans, he sighed deeply, feeling the weight of the world on his shoulders. He had enough problems without adding a romantic entanglement into the mix, the principal of which was his daughter Louise.

  At fifteen, she was a miniature of her mother, a dark-haired, petite beauty with dainty features and coffee-colored eyes that flared up like fireworks when she was angry… which was most of the time these days. She had reason to be angry, he acknowledged, having lost her beloved mother two years ago in a carriage accident, and then, after she had finally settled into a stable existence with his sister’s family, she’d been unceremoniously pulled out again to live with a father whose life was his work and who had no real understanding of his own daughter.

  Perhaps he should have left her with his sister’s family after all. Eliza loved her like a daughter, and Louise, with no siblings of her own, had eagerly adopted her younger cousins and appeared to be thriving when he’d decided to bring her home. A less selfish man might have given her leave to remain there. But when Eliza’s husband was appointed to the diplomatic staff of Lord Cathcart in St. Petersburg, George found he could not allow her to go.

  It had been a major bone of contention between them. Louise had always yearned for the sort of exotic, lavish, aristocratic lifestyle she thought she deserved as the granddaughter of a French comte—an attitude inherited from her unhappy mother and grandmother. His stomach hardened as he recalled how the bitterness of his mother-in-law at having her aristocratic heritage so violently wrenched from her had eaten away into his marriage.

  As Genny became more and more dissatisfied with her position as the wife of a lowly solicitor, their quarrels escalated to the point where she began to spend most of her time with her sister, who, as the wife of a duke’s younger son, lived in a fine house and socialized among the ton. He felt conscience-stricken to recall how relieved he’d been when she’d been gone. Plunging into his work had the double benefit of contributing to the financial success of his business as well as helping him to avoid stewing over his guilt and unhappiness over his marriage.

&n
bsp; It hadn’t always been like that. They’d married young—he’d been nearly three and twenty and she eighteen—but those first few years had been good ones, especially with the birth of Louise. Genny had been a doting mother, and, as far as he knew, showed no signs of being discontent with her life in those early days. There hadn’t been much money then, but they’d employed a cook, a maid, and a nursery maid for the babe. Genny made the social rounds of St. Albans—such as they were—and they attended a handful of balls and assemblies during the social season. Once or twice a year, they made their way to Norfolk to the Durand family estate to visit his cousin, the 4th Viscount Faringdon. He wondered if that tempting glimpse of the grandiose life might have contributed to her restlessness.

  Contributed, perhaps, but it wasn’t the primary culprit. That dubious honor went to her mother, the displaced Comtesse d’Aumale, who resided alternately with the families of both her daughters. While living with his family, the bitter countess railed against him, his income, the house they lived in, the small town and the paysans who lived in it, and just about everything around her. She berated her daughter for marrying beneath her, and held up Genny’s sister Juliette’s husband—heir to a duke, although his brother the duke might still conceivably produce a son—as a far superior choice.

  Frankly, this was something George couldn’t understand. The comtesse had escaped the guillotine, along with her daughters, when her husband had not. The glittering Versailles of the past no longer existed—the revolutionaries and Napoleon had swept it all away in favor of a new “republican” aristocracy where he and his family and cohorts reigned supreme. The comtesse wasn’t likely to ever win her property back, and even if she did, it would be run into the ground with no money left to put it in order again. George was a practical man, and he thought it foolish in the extreme for his mother-in-law—and then his own wife—to brood over the past so much that they could no longer see the advantages of the present. Ah well. The comtesse and Genny—as well as Juliette—had lost their lives in that horrific carriage accident, and that was that, he had thought at the time. Grief-stricken and relieved that Louise had not been in the carriage as well, he’d had no inkling at the time that Louise would suffer from the same malady as her mother and grandmother.