Marriage Reclaimed: Marriage at a Distance / Marriage Under Suspicion / The Marriage Truce
Marriage at a DistanceJoanna had been an inexperienced 18-year-old when she'd married Gabriel Verne. She'd loved her new husband but had been devastated to discover that he'd simply married her out of duty. When the honeymoon was over, so was their marriage….But then Gabriel returned home to claim his inheritance– and his wife! By the terms of his late father's will, he and Joanna must live together as man and wife for a year. Joanna was determined to resist, but Gabriel wanted her back– whatever it took!Marriage Under Suspicion"Your husband loves another woman."The note was signed "A Friend," but no friend would ever do that to another woman. Could it be true? Was Kate Lassiter's marriage falling apart? She still loved her husband, Ryan, still thrilled at his touch, but how long was it since they'd last made love?On the surface they had it all: successful careers, a lovely home and the perfect marriage. But if Ryan had committed the ultimate betrayal, then revenge was no answer. Kate wanted her husband back and she was prepared to fight to keep him. Because while her marriage was under suspicion there was no way she could tell Ryan she was expecting his baby!The Marriage TruceJenna is happy to be her cousin's bridesmaid, but she wishes someone had warned her that the best man is going to be Ross Grantham. Ross is the man she once exchanged marriage vows with – in the very same church! It's two years since she last saw him; two years since Ross betrayed their vows. The air between them crackled with fiery attraction. Can they call a truce for the bride's sake?
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Former journalist SARA CRAVEN published her first novel ‘Garden of Dreams’ for Mills & Boon in 1975. Apart from her writing (naturally!) her passions include reading, bridge, Italian cities, Greek islands, the French language and countryside, and her rescue Jack Russell/cross Button. She has appeared on several TV quiz shows and in 1997 became UK TV Mastermind champion. She lives near her family in Warwickshire – Shakespeare country.
Marriage Reclaimed
Marriage at a Distance
Marriage Under Suspicion
The Marriage Truce
Sara Craven
Table of Contents
Marriage at a Distance
THE air in the study was stale and cold. It was gloomy, too, with the curtains at the long windows half drawn against a February dusk.
But the girl who sat curled up in the big leather chair beside the fireplace had not switched on any of the lamps, or lit the neatly laid fire waiting in the grate.
Her only response to the chill in the room had been to spread an old velvet smoking jacket over her legs like a rug. And every so often she looked down at it, touching the worn pile gently, breathing the faint aroma of cigars that rose from it.
Impossible to think that Lionel would never wear it again. That he would never come in through that door, large, loud and unrelentingly kind, rubbing his hands together and exclaiming about the weather, his face red from tramping over the hills with the dogs, or riding out on his latest hunter.
When the new chestnut had come back yesterday without him, Sadie, his girl groom, had said dourly that she’d warned him the horse was too fresh. But the worst they’d expected was that Lionel had been thrown, perhaps suffered a broken collarbone.
Instead, as Dr Fraser had told them, the massive heart attack that he’d suffered had probably knocked him from the saddle. It was also, he’d added gently, the way Lionel would have wanted to go.
Joanna could accept that. Lionel had always been restless, she thought. Always active. Since his retirement as chairman of Verne Investments five years ago, he’d been forever looking for ways to fill his days. He would never have wanted to be chronically ill, perhaps bedridden, the rush and bustle he’d thrived on denied him.
But that did not make it any less of a shock for those left behind, she thought, the muscles in her throat tightening.
And the question endlessly revolving in her tired mind was, What’s going to happen to me now?
Because Lionel’s death had changed everything. Taken all the old certainties away with him.
Until yesterday she’d been Joanna Verne, his daughter-in-law. The girl who ran the house for him and dealt with all the boring domestic issues he hated to be plagued with.
Twenty-four hours later she was little better than a displaced person. The estranged wife of Lionel’s son and heir, Gabriel Verne, who had spent the last two years of their inimical separation storming round the globe, building on the success of Verne Investments, turning his father and himself from the merely rich to the mega-rich.
Gabriel, who would now be coming back to claim Westroe Manor, and also to rid himself finally of the wife he’d never wanted. And her stepmother, she acknowledged wryly.
In the distance she heard the doorbell jangle, and she pushed the encumbering folds of the jacket away and got to her feet.
She’d asked Henry Fortescue, Lionel’s solicitor, to call, and she didn’t want him to find her lurking here in the dark like this. She owed it to herself—and to Lionel—to put a brave face on things.
She moved swiftly, rattling the curtains along their poles to exclude the last remnants of grey daylight, switching on the central pendant, and kneeling to put a match to the kindling. By the time Mr Fortescue was shown into the room by Mrs Ashby, the flames were licking at the coal and the study looked altogether more cheerful.
Henry Fortescue’s face was strained and sad. He and Lionel had been close since boyhood, she remembered sympathetically as she rose from the hearthrug, dusting her hands on her denim jeans.
He came across to her and took her hand. ‘Joanna, my dear. I’m so sorry—so very sorry. I can still hardly believe it.’
‘Nor I.’ She patted his sleeve. ‘I’m going to have a whisky. Will you join me?’
The surprise on his face brought a reluctant smile to her lips. She said with gentle irony, ‘I am old enough. And I think we could both do with one.’
‘And I’m sure you’re right.’ He smiled back at her with an effort. ‘But only a very small one, please. I’m driving.’
‘Highland water with it?’ Joanna busied herself with the decanter and glasses on a corner table.
