"Think about all the questions you're always putting to me from those books you read. Sometimes you learn things that I haven't even heard of; you expose me to new procedures and practices every day. Think about how powerful it would be if we could bring together more minds like yours. The ideas and growth and studies would be so impactful."
Emelia was beginning to understand, and, more than that, to believe. "You really want to do this. You want to stay close to home and build a college of medicine. But I thought you were so eager to leave this place; to get back to high society."
"I don't care much for high society, but I care a good deal about you and about actually making a difference in people's lives," he said. "I can still help at the clinic and pay house calls, but the college will be my life's work. What better thing to devote a lifetime to, other than you, my dear?"
The implications were only now beginning to soak in for Emelia. She leaned her head against Montgomery's shoulder. "And it means that I will be able to stay by my family, and you will be able to stay by yours."
"I'm not afraid of this place anymore," he said softly. "I'm not afraid of the memories—they are exactly what drive me now to do this remarkable thing. My father would be proud, I think."
"I think so too."
"You two are always sneaking away from my social engagements." Brody's voice came light and teasing from above where the two lovers were seated. He and Hannah were standing arm and arm just a little ways up the hill. As they walked down, Emelia saw the beautiful, filmy fabric of Hannah's gown floating around the slim girl like a cloud. She looked effervescent.
"You must come back and dance," Hannah pressed. "I haven't seen you two dance together since the night of Brody's ball, and you were so completely marvelous. At the time I couldn't understand how you made dull old Montgomery look so graceful."
Emelia widened her eyes in horror, but Montgomery took it in stride as he did all of Hannah's teasing.
"Remember that you danced with me too that night, little sister." He winked. "Think what would have become of us if Brody and Emelia had succeeded in their attempt to bring us star-crossed lovers together."
Hannah winced and mimed a pretend illness. "Heaven help me if that had been true."
"I'm not so bad as all that!" Montgomery protested. "In fact, your sister here thinks I'm a fine enough specimen to marry and spend the rest of her life with."
Emelia couldn't hear another word through Hannah's shrieks of happiness.
THE END
Can't get enough of Emelia and Montgomery?
Then make sure to check out the Extended Epilogue to find out…
How will the hospital that Emelia and Montgomery have funded turn out to become a successful teaching college?
How will the relationship between the two sisters evolve? Will there be any new secrets standing in their way?
What will be Montgomery’s reaction when Emelia comes to reveal some unexpected news?
Click the link or enter it into your browser
http://bridgetbarton.com/emelia
(After reading the Extended Epilogue, turn the page to read the first chapters from “A Fearless Lady Craving Freedom”, my Amazon Best-Selling novel!)
A Fearless Lady Craving Freedom
Introduction
Charlotte Livingston has never known anything but comfort and security. She was raised in a wealthy Regency family, she is engaged to a man of good social standing, and her life seems to be more than settled. However, deep inside she knew that she would gladly give up the wealth and comfort of her position to live an adventure. When she discovers the news that her dearest cousin goes missing, Charlotte's only option is to take action, and set out on an expedition in order to find her. But will she dare to lay aside what society expects of her to embrace the yearning for adventure she's always harboured in her heart?
Ewan Sinclair is old enough to be experienced but young enough to retain youthful vigour. Having fled his home for years now, he is tracing his own path in life, making a name for his ability to find lost people. When two desperate sisters ask for his help in order to find their missing cousin, his financial situation gives him no choice but to accept the offer. Little had he known, before asking the older sister to join him in his investigation, how his life was about to change at that moment. Will he eventually let his prejudice aside and leave a space for love in his heart?
A lifetime adventure soon brings Charlotte and Ewan closer than they ever thought they would be and creates unprecedented emotions between them. But when the situation is about to get harder and harder, will they be ready to conquer their fears? Will they choose to risk everything in the name of freedom and love?
Chapter 1
The seas were wild in the grip of the storm that churned overhead, and the ship bucked and rocked beneath the crew and passengers as though at any moment it was to give up the ghost and sink at last into the depths. I sat below quarters with my hands clenched, white-knuckled, to the rim of the bed where I’d slept every night for the past few weeks. The bed was bolted to the wall and would provide some support if yet another swell slammed against the boat and sent it careening sideways, but I knew in my heart that if the boat were to sink a bolted bed would provide no succour.
I tried to stop shaking with the trial before me; tried to remember that I’d been through worse than this. I closed my eyes and pictured the exotic land from whence I’d just come—the slow, enormous beasts with their long trunks and thundering feet; the lush greenery all around; the bird with the wild colours that had landed so close at hand as I’d passed beneath its tree. I had lived through so much to even make it to this place—I would have to survive one trial more.
Charlotte looked up from the book with a soft gasp and pressed it to her chest. A Life Abroad: the Memoirs of Lady Alice Montgomery had proved every page as fascinating as she’d thought it would be when she first laid eyes on the small brown volume in the village bookstore. She’d gone inside at once after sighting it in the window and demanded to know the content and value.
The bookstore owner, who knew the eldest daughter of Sir Francis Livingston of Pembleton well, had pulled the book off and flipped through the pages with a raised eyebrow.
“I’m not sure I would recommend it to the daughter of Lord Pembleton,” he had said warily. “Your father would probably think it shocking—an English lady of high society travelling the world without a chaperone …”
He had no way of knowing it, but that was the perfect argument to get Charlotte Livingston to buy something. She had always pushed back against what was expected of her, and an argument that hinged on the way society perceived an action always leaned her away from society.
Now, halfway through the memoirs, she was swept up in the life of Lady Alice Montomery, the woman who had laid aside her lace parasols and social occasions and had chosen instead the wilds of other lands and the danger of travel. It was thrilling, every word, and it stirred a desperate desire in Charlotte.
She looked around her at the garden on her family’s beautiful, grand estate. There were trees arching like footman in a perfect line towards the orchards; gorgeous expanses of brilliant green grass, manicured hedges, and pruned rose bushes.
Everything was lovely; cared for. It was beautiful, she couldn’t deny, but it all felt so curated—as though she was just another feature in a museum, something on display without any real purpose. Lady Alice wasn’t in a museum. No, she was travelling the world to see things that were real, not trapped behind glass and societal perfection. Charlotte envied her.
She stood and made her way down the path with the book still open in her hands. It was impossible not to compare herself with the heroine of the memoir. Lady Alice was a tall and dark-haired beauty, so well-known that even before the book Charlotte had been familiar with her name and legacy. She was supposed to have been one of the most sought-after women in the world.
In contrast, Charlotte had always been small for her age, with hair a
little too red to be considered dainty and skin as pale as milk. Her freckles had faded as the years went by, but her mother still chased her around with bonnets and parasols lest a particularly long day in the sun should rouse them again to the surface. At nineteen, she had done absolutely nothing to make a name for herself. She was no Lady Alice, just another daughter in a wealthy family who would make a good marriage one day.
She opened the book again, walking as she read. Her mother hated that little tick of hers.
“Charlotte, a walk is not an opportunity for a young lady to cram more nonsense into her head. It is a chance to look about oneself and find the inner peace so lacking in young women these days.”
But Charlotte didn’t want inner peace. She wanted a rolling ocean and a churning sky. She wanted the wind in her hair and the sun unhindered on her cheeks. She wanted—
“Lottie!”
She heard her little sister’s voice and snapped out of her reverie, closing the book and holding it slightly out of sight behind the fold of her skirt. Lucy Livingstone was walking towards her as quickly as she could manage. Only fifteen years old, Lucy had somehow managed to soak up all the lessons and elegance that Charlotte had been resistant to over the years. Her hair was quite a few shades lighter than her sister’s—more blonde than strawberry—and her eyes were blue instead of the grey-green storminess of Charlotte’s. She would never run when she could walk; never call out when she could speak in a measured tone. It took her a full minute to reach Charlotte’s side.
“Lottie, Mama wants to know why you’re still out here when the dinner party is only hours away. She says you must come inside and get changed at once.”
Charlotte smiled indulgently at her sister, and then raised an eyebrow in friendly competition. “I don’t know anyone named ‘Lottie,’” she said.
It was their oldest battle. Since Lucy had begun speaking she’d tried to shorten her older sister’s name, and Charlotte always pushed back against it. Her full name sounded so much stronger than “Lottie,” and in its original meaning it spoke of freedom. She liked that.
Lucy rolled her eyes as she always did. “You know what I mean.” Her eyes fell on the book half hidden behind Charlotte’s skirt. “Are you still reading that Montgomery drivel?”
“You sound like Mama,” Charlotte said, trying to keep the annoyance out of her voice. Her sister didn’t mean to be condescending, after all—she was only copying the speech and mannerisms of the most elegant woman she knew, Lady Eleanor Livingston, their mother. “And yes, I’m still reading it. You should try picking it up sometime yourself, Lucy. It would be romantic; exciting even, to travel the world. If you only read the stories she describes, you would be won over in an instant.”
“I don’t need to read them,” Lucy said, tossing her blonde curls and sliding her slender arm into the crook of her sister’s elbow. “You’ve talked about nothing but Lady Alice Montgomery since you got that book, and you’ve told me tale upon tale of her adventures. Not one of your stories has made me want to run off and emulate that woman. I can’t imagine giving up the comforts of home for an unpleasant adventure such as she describes.”
“What?” Charlotte pretended to be shocked, although she knew her sister’s feelings well by now. “You wouldn’t want to ride horseback over the African plains?”
“Dusty; smelly …”
“You don’t yearn to see the world and smell the sharp tangy salt air in your nostrils?”
“In the belly of a ship, at the mercy of all sorts of strangers? No, thank you.”
“And what about interesting people and cultures. There’s something so intoxicating about the idea of not knowing anyone or anything, and learning as you go.” Charlotte shut her eyes for a moment and imagined herself wandering through the lowlands of India and the jungles in the mountains.
“You really oughtn’t to use words like ‘intoxicating,’” Lucy said with almost comical severity. “It’s vulgar.”
Charlotte opened her eyes and levelled a laughing glance in her sister’s direction. “I would gladly give up the wealth and comfort of my position to go on a voyage of exploration.”
“I know you would.” Lucy shrugged, “I just don’t understand it.”
They walked for a few more moments in silence, and then Lucy lapsed into one of her favourite topics in a teasing voice.
“And what does your fiancé think about this yearning of yours?” she asked in a sing-song tone. “Is he desirous of travelling all around the world and seeing the dusty deserts of Africa and the wild, open ocean?”
Charlotte forced a smile. “General Wallace has already done all those things,” she said softly. “He’s already been to Africa and gone out on the wild seas. He would understand.”
“Or he would know enough of the wilderness to want to avoid a return trip,” Lucy said. Charlotte knew the young girl was only teasing; carrying on with the fun, but unknowingly the girl had hit on one of Charlotte’s deepest misgivings about her intended.
She’d agreed to marry General Lionel Wallace after a brief courtship for a number of reasons. Firstly, he was her father’s long-time friend and confident, a good man with a solid reputation and a career of fighting that had moved into diplomacy on English soil. It was a reasonable match for a girl as wealthy as Charlotte Livingston, and the General wasn’t a bad sort of man. Charlotte didn’t even mind the fact that he was much older than her nineteen years of age—it was normal, even expected for girls of wealth and circumstance to marry more distinguished gentlemen. He was kind in a distant sort of way and had said some pretty things about her appearance and grace on their first few meetings, but he was also stiff and mired in the ways of society.
Charlotte had agreed to the arrangement at her parents’ bidding, and she tried to have a good attitude about it all. What’s done was done, and she saw no way out of it. Blessed with an optimistic train of thinking, she had decided to make the best of the situation and think of ways to accept the life ahead of her with some measure of happiness. On most days, though, it felt like more of an effort than she’d thought love would be.
“The General understands that I like to read,” she said slowly.
“Mama said he told you at the last dinner engagement that you read quite a bit too much for a young girl,” Lucy said quickly. There was no malice in her voice, just that earnest, engaged way little sisters have of trying to be the one with the most inside information at all times.
Charlotte remembered that conversation. He’d also told her that there was no place for dreamers in high society; that if she would always be talking about the poets and the wilds of other cultures, she would push away those in her particular sphere who were uncomfortable with such topics of conversation.
She’d listened quietly to his gentle scolding, and he’d ended it at last with a rather paternal pat on the head and a murmur about what was going on in “that pretty head of hers.” It had galled her and worried her deeply. She felt sometimes as though she was marching ever steadily towards a cage, and there was no turning to the right or the left. The days of reading Alice Montgomery’s memoirs and walking in the garden were close to an end.
She put another weak smile on her face and nudged her sister in the side. “Let us speak no more of fiancés, little one. Tell me—if you don’t want to go travelling the world and discovering new adventures, what is it that you wish to do with your youth?”
“Marry young,” Lucy said promptly. “Mama says I’ll make a good match; that I’m taking to my lessons well and that my accomplishments are just what a young man would like.”
“And after marriage?” Charlotte probed. “Then what?”
“Why babies, of course,” Lucy let go of her sister’s arm and gave an impulsive little twirl. “And everlasting happiness. What else?”
What else indeed. That was the question that chased Charlotte down even when she was most eager to hold on to optimism and have a good attitude about what her life held. What else was there for
a girl in a society like this? She secretly held onto hope that everyone around her was misguided; that there was adventure after all to be had for those that would step up and take it.
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