Always remember, p.1
Always Remember, page 1
Also by Mary Balogh
The Ravenswood Series
Remember Love
Remember Me
The Westcott Series
Someone to Love
Someone to Hold
Someone to Wed
Someone to Care
Someone to Trust
Someone to Honor
Someone to Remember
Someone to Romance
Someone to Cherish
Someone Perfect
The Survivors’ Club Series
The Proposal
The Arrangement
The Escape
Only Enchanting
Only a Promise
Only a Kiss
Only Beloved
The Horsemen Trilogy
Indiscreet
Unforgiven
Irresistible
The Huxtable Series
First Comes Marriage
Then Comes Seduction
At Last Comes Love
Seducing an Angel
A Secret Affair
The Simply Series
Simply Unforgettable
Simply Love
Simply Magic
Simply Perfect
The Bedwyn Saga
Slightly Married
Slightly Wicked
Slightly Scandalous
Slightly Tempted
Slightly Sinful
Slightly Dangerous
The Bedwyn Prequels
One Night for Love
A Summer to Remember
The Mistress Trilogy
More Than a Mistress
No Man’s Mistress
The Secret Mistress
The Web Series
The Gilded Web
Web of Love
The Devil’s Web
Classics
The Ideal Wife
The Secret Pearl
A Precious Jewel
A Christmas Promise
Dark Angel / Lord Carew’s Bride
A Matter of Class
The Temporary Wife / A Promise of Spring
The Famous Heroine / The Plumed Bonnet
A Christmas Bride / Christmas Beau
A Counterfeit Betrothal / The Notorious Rake
Under the Mistletoe
Beyond the Sunrise
Longing
Heartless
Silent Melody
BERKLEY
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Copyright © 2024 by Mary Balogh
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Balogh, Mary, author.
Title: Always remember / Mary Balogh.
Description: New York : Berkley, [2024] | Series: A Ravenswood novel
Identifiers: LCCN 2023013949 (print) | LCCN 2023013950 (ebook) | ISBN 9780593638385 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780593638392 (ebook)
Subjects: LCGFT: Romance fiction. | Historical fiction. | Novels.
Classification: LCC PR6052.A465 A78 2024 (print) | LCC PR6052.A465 (ebook) | DDC 823/.914--dc23/eng/20230327
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023013949
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023013950
Cover design by Katie Anderson
Cover image by Lee Avison / Trevillion Images
Book design by George Towne, adapted for ebook by Kelly Brennan
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
pid_prh_6.1_145871953_c0_r0
Contents
Cover
Also by Mary Balogh
Title Page
Copyright
The Ware Family of Ravenswood
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
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
About the Author
_145871953_
Chapter One
Summer had settled over southern England in a most agreeable manner, with long days of warm sunshine, gentle breezes, and just enough rainfall to help the crops yield a bountiful harvest and to keep trees, lawns, and pastures fresh and green. Flowers bloomed in colorful abundance, whether wild over hedgerows and walls, in ditches and meadows, or cultivated with loving care in gardens and beds.
The English, of course, could never quite relax into full enjoyment of such a perfect summer. How long could one expect it to last, after all? There would always be pessimists squinting off to the west, whence most weather approached, nodding sagely as though they could see something beyond the bent horizon invisible to everyone else, and predicting that they would pay for such a perfect spell. Even the optimists were ready to admit it could not last forever, and in that at least they were bound to be right sooner or later.
The Ware family of Ravenswood Hall in Hampshire, the inhabitants of the village of Boscombe just across the river from it, and residents of the surrounding countryside became especially anxious when June passed into July and there was still no break in the beautiful weather. For it seemed impossible that it could last a whole month longer. Yet a continuation of the perfect weather was all they asked for. They would not be greedy.
There was to be a grand fete in the neighborhood on the last Saturday of July, and everyone looked forward to it with an almost sick longing. For eight long years had passed since the last one. The Ravenswood summer fete had once been an annual event and for most people their very favorite day of the year, even including Christmas. It had offered feasting and music and dancing and varied contests and entertainment for all ages from the middle of the morning until late at night. The weather had always cooperated with bright sunshine and blue skies and the gentlest of breezes and warmth without searing heat. Always. Ask any old-timers and they would tell you it was so. How everyone hoped the eight-year break would not destroy that string of good fortune. It might rain with their blessing on the Sunday following the fete, but please, please let the sun shine on the Saturday.
Eight years ago the fete had come to an abrupt and horrible end in the middle of the grand ball with which the day’s festivities always culminated. Devlin Ware, Viscount Mountford at the time, son and heir of the Earl of Stratton, the genial and well-loved owner of Ravenswood, had come upon his father engaged in a blatantly improper embrace with a lady guest out in the temple folly on top of the hill close to the ballroom. But instead of keeping his shock and outrage to himself until it could be dealt with privately at a more appropriate time, Devlin had confronted his father very publicly outside the open French windows of the ballroom, in the sight and hearing of his family and virtually every neighbor for miles around.
To call it a shocking scene would be a severe understatement.
It had ended in disaster for the Ware family and in intense embarrassment for everyone, even neighbors and village folk who had no reason to be embarrassed. Except that they had always set the Wares of Ravenswood upon some sort of pedestal. They had seemed the perfect family, virtuous and happy among themselves, amiable toward all, impeccably well mannered, unfailingly charming leaders of the community. They had always been generous about sharing their home and the spacious park surrounding it for community events that ranged from the extravagant grandeur of the summer fete and the joyful warmth of the Christmas party and ball to the fun of the Valentine’s treasure hunt and tea and the impromptu and less formal invitation to public days, when everyone was welcome to enjoy the beauty of the park for picnics and walks.
Everything had changed after that night. The guest who had been caught with the earl, a supposed widow and newcomer to the village, had disappeared overnight. Devlin had left abruptly the following morning with his elder half brother, not to be seen again in the neighborhood for more than six years. Clarissa, Countess of Stratton, wh
The Earl of Stratton himself—handsome, openhearted, and genial—was the only one among them who had carried on as though nothing untoward had happened, as though he had not been exposed in the most humiliatingly public manner imaginable as an almost certain adulterer and a probable philanderer on a larger scale. Everyone knew, after all, that for most of his married life he had spent the spring months of each year in London for the parliamentary session, while his wife and children remained in the country. After the incident at the ball, several people admitted to having always felt uneasy about that arrangement. Was it realistic, they asked themselves, to have expected that their earl would remain celibate during those lengthy separations from his wife, when London abounded with members of the ton eager to amuse themselves at the myriad entertainments of the Season?
Life as usual after the catastrophe had not lasted long even for the earl, however. He had collapsed at the village tavern one evening while he drank ale and chatted jovially with his neighbors. According to those neighbors, he had been dead before he hit the floor.
The biggest change the catastrophe of that summer fete had brought to those who lived in the village and countryside around Ravenswood, however, had been the complete cessation of all the social activities for which the earl and countess had opened their home since their marriage more than twenty years before. The countess had organized and hosted those events, and the earl had paid for them. No longer. Open days, two or three times each week, had never officially been canceled, but they had come to an end anyway. At first no one had wanted to intrude upon what was obviously a difficult time for the family. And who wanted the embarrassment of coming accidentally face-to-face with one or more of them and having to say something? After a while, it had seemed just too awkward to go back there.
Then the earl died.
Two years had passed after his death before Devlin, the new Earl of Stratton, returned home, looking very different from the quiet, pleasant, essentially unremarkable young man his neighbors remembered. He had come home, at the age of twenty-eight, looking dour, even morose, and rugged and battle-scarred. He had purchased a commission in a foot regiment after leaving home and had gone to Portugal to fight in the Peninsular Wars. His elder half brother, Ben Ellis—his elder, illegitimate half brother, that is—had gone with him, nominally as his batman. The allied armies had fought their way across Portugal and Spain and over the Pyrenees into France until Napoleon Bonaparte surrendered and abdicated as emperor after the Battle of Toulouse in 1814. Devlin had sold out then, the wars apparently over, and come home. Ben had been married and widowed during the six years they had been gone, and brought an infant child home with him. He had not stayed at Ravenswood. He had purchased the manor of Penallen by the sea thirty miles away, spent a year or so renovating it, and finally settled there with his daughter.
The new Earl of Stratton, meanwhile, so forbidding in looks and manner, had surprised his neighbors. At a tea his mother had dutifully arranged to welcome him home, he announced that Ravenswood would once again be open for public days and social events, and he carried through on his promise almost immediately by offering the ballroom for an upcoming assembly. It had been a great blessing to the villagers, for the assembly rooms above the inn were small and cramped and always so congested on those evenings that it was difficult to find space in which to dance. There was to be a difference, however, from the old assemblies at the hall. At Devlin’s suggestion, the planning was done not by his mother but by the landlord of the inn and his wife, with the help of a committee of villagers. Those who attended paid an admission charge to cover costs incurred. The present earl’s only contribution was the venue.
It was not a sign of meanness on his part. Quite the contrary. Everyone was delighted by the new arrangement, even though it had involved them in a great deal of work and some small expense—or perhaps for those very reasons. Older people remembered the time when it had always been that way, when they had all participated in organizing their own entertainments, and the involvement of the Wares of Ravenswood had been minimal. They had done it again during the years following the great upset at the hall, even if it had been a bit halfhearted, as though they had feared somehow offending the family by ignoring them and carrying on with their lives as if the Wares and Ravenswood itself did not exist.
The social life of the neighborhood had been altogether more robust and cheerful in the two years since Devlin’s return. Everyone had continued to have a hand in their own individual and communal activities, but also Ravenswood had become a warmer, happier, more welcoming place than it had ever been. The Earl of Stratton had married at Christmas a few months after his return, and the wedding in the village church had been a joyful occasion for all. For the bride had been Gwyneth Rhys, daughter of Sir Ifor and Lady Rhys of Cartref, the estate adjoining Ravenswood to the east. Sir Ifor was the church organist and conductor of the various village choirs, and both he and his wife were much beloved by everyone who knew them.
Lady Philippa Ware, at the advanced age of twenty-two, had finally gone to London with her mother the following spring for a come-out Season and had met and married the heir to a dukedom. Before the year was out, Gwyneth, Countess of Stratton, had given birth to a son, Gareth, Viscount Mountford. Lady Philippa, now the Duchess of Wilby, had been delivered of twins, a girl and a boy, early in the spring of this year.
The Ware family had moved forward from the dark, gloomy years that had followed the last summer fete. They seemed happy with one another again and open to their neighbors and friends. A new generation was in the nursery. And now the transition was to be complete with the resumption of the annual summer fete and its busy entertainments for all.
Not all the events would happen at Ravenswood itself. Some would center upon the village green. The day would begin there, in fact, in front of the church instead of on the terrace outside the hall. The maypole dancing would happen on the village green, a more appropriate setting than the lawn before the house. And the green would be surrounded by the various booths and stalls at which the villagers and their children would be enticed into parting with their pennies. Other events—especially those needing more space, like the children’s races, the archery and log-splitting contests, and the baking, needlework, and wood-carving competitions—would take place as before at Ravenswood. The evening ball would of course be held in the west wing of the house itself. The ballroom there was the only room for miles around large enough to hold all who would attend.
But everything depended almost entirely upon the weather.
The family at Ravenswood was as eager as anyone else for the resumption of the annual fete. They were already busy with plans for those parts of it that were to be their responsibility. But it was still a few weeks away, and they had other, more imminent pleasures to occupy their minds and their time.
Owen was already home after his second year at Oxford, but he was expecting a friend and fellow student to join him for a few weeks. Nicholas—Major the Honorable Nicholas Ware, that was—had been granted a few weeks’ leave from his regiment, which was a part of the occupation force stationed near Paris. He was to spend those weeks at Ravenswood with his family, whose members had not seen him since before the Battle of Waterloo last year. Lucas and Philippa, Duke and Duchess of Wilby, were coming with their young twins all the way from Greystone Court, the ducal residence in Worcestershire. And Ben, who had at first sent word that he would stay home at Penallen for the summer, had changed his mind and was coming with his daughter after all.
