A Lady’s Forbidden Diary (Preview)

Prologue

“May I join you?”

Janine Cook looked up to see the viscount’s son standing over her. His name was Douglas, she recalled from when she had been introduced to him, and he was nearly four years her senior. She hadn’t expected that he would want anything to do with her during the time their families were spending together. She’d anticipated he would spend his time with his parents, and with hers, and that she would be left to her own devices this summer.

He had been here at Sussex Manor for a week, staying with Janine and her family at their home, and she hadn’t seen that much of him in that time. And when she had escaped the house today and come out to the lake for some time to herself, she had assumed that was going to continue. Apparently, though, she had been wrong.

“Do you need assistance with something?” she asked him, wondering whether perhaps he was looking for someone to help him and didn’t know exactly who to ask. She could certainly direct him to the right member of the household staff if something was troubling him. Or maybe he simply didn’t know where to find the library, or some other part of the house—he was new here, after all, and she knew that it was her responsibility to help make him feel at home.

He leaned against a tree. “I don’t need anything, Lady Janine. I only wanted to see whether you and I might enjoy some time in each other’s company.”

“You can call me Janine,” she said.

“Your father is the Duke of Sussex.” 

She knew what he was saying—that he owed too much respect to her father’s title to risk calling her by her first name. “Still, I’d prefer it,” she told him. After all, she was already thinking of him as Douglas in her mind, and it would create uncomfortable disharmony if he didn’t feel he could use her first name when she was using his internally.

He nodded slowly. “Very well,” he said. “But only when it’s just the two of us—when no one else is around. Is that all right?”

“That’s fine,” she said. Truth be told, she enjoyed having a secret. She suddenly felt glad that he’d found her.

He perched on a rock—not the rock she’d chosen to sit upon, but one quite nearby—and looked out over the lake. He was attractive, she noticed. She hadn’t given that fact much attention prior to now, because it was awkward and uncomfortable to have an unfamiliar young man in her home. But now she did look at him. He was unusually tall—even seated, he towered over her, and she could see that if they were to stand up, she wouldn’t reach his shoulder. The difference in their heights might have struck some people as uncomfortable, but Janine found it a bit alluring. She found herself wondering what the world looked like—and what she herself looked like—from all the way up there. What must it be like to tower over everyone you met? How different must the world be when seen from that point of view?

His height was the first thing she noticed about him, but it wasn’t the only thing. His hair was dark and curly, and she imagined it would be soft to the touch. His eyes were dark too, and there was something in his expression that made him seem as though his thoughts were very far away. She wondered if that were true. She knew what had driven her to come out to the lake—a desire to be alone, away from the noise and bustle of the house, and to avoid the possibility of being forced to spend time in the company of others. What had caused him to come out? Did he feel as lonely as she did in a house full of people?

“How are you enjoying your stay?” she asked him. “Is it all you hoped it would be?”

“I didn’t have high hopes,” he said. “We’re here because my father and yours are friends, but I didn’t have any particular expectations. So yes, I would say that my time here has measured up well enough thus far. I’ve found your library very nice.”

“Oh.” She was surprised. “I didn’t realize you had used the library.”

His cheeks colored. “No one told me I couldn’t.”

It seemed to her that he had guessed what she was thinking, which was that her father would not have invited him to make use of the library if he’d known. Although he was polite and hospitable enough to guests, Janine’s father also had a fondness for rules and for being obeyed, and he would certainly have been intent on controlling who did and didn’t have access to his books. It was hard for Janine to imagine any scenario in which Douglas would have been invited to go in and peruse as he liked and take whatever he wanted to read while he was here. Certainly she had never been invited to do any such thing.

In fact, upon looking closer, she saw that he had a book clutched in his hands. Was it from her father’s library? It was reasonable for him to have guessed that it was all right to borrow this and to bring it outside—and yet, at the same time, she knew her father wouldn’t like it if he were to discover what had happened. 

Well, she wasn’t going to tell him, that was for certain. It wasn’t her responsibility to report to her father on these things. He would find out for himself, or he wouldn’t, and either way, it wasn’t Janine’s concern.

Douglas did look uncomfortable, though, and she wondered whether he was worried about the possibility of upsetting her father. After all, Douglas was correct about one thing—he was a duke, and no doubt his opinion was important to Douglas and to his whole family.

She wanted to make him feel better, so she pointed to the book. “Did you find something good?”

“Yes,” he said. “It’s quite good. But I worry now that I shouldn’t have taken it—do you think your father will be angry?”

“No, he won’t be,” Janine said. “And if he is, we’ll simply tell him I was the one to take the book out.”

“Oh, no,” Douglas said firmly. “I could never permit a lady to take the blame for my actions. That would be beneath me. If your father discovers what happened before I’m able to return the book and is angry about it, I’ll simply have to make an apology—that won’t be so difficult.”

He did look a bit more relaxed, so Janine nodded. She wished she could tell him that her father was a reasonable man, but the truth was that his anger could be fearsome to behold, and anyone would be quite right to worry about it. Still, there was no reason to think that it would present a problem when he could simply return the book before Father ever knew it had been taken.

A large Labrador came bounding toward them from across the lawn. Janine laughed. “This is your dog, isn’t it?”

“This is Leonardo,” Douglas confirmed. “He’s big, but he’s harmless.”

“I’m not frightened of him,” she assured him. 

“Have you spent much time around dogs, then?”

“No, almost none. But I’ve always thought that I’d like to,” she said. “He seems very friendly—may I pet him? Will he like that?”

“He’d love a scratch behind the ears, if you’d be willing.”

“Of course.” Janine reached out and gave Leonardo a scratch. “You’re lucky to have a dog,” she said. “I’d have liked a pet of my own, but Mother and Father would never have considered it.”

“No? Why not?” 

“Well, I don’t suppose Mother would have minded—not really. They’re not often in full agreement about what’s appropriate for young ladies, though, and when they disagree, Father always wins.”

“Fathers always do,” Douglas said sagely.

Janine smiled at him. She quite liked him, she realized, and was glad he would be staying with the family for the summer. Perhaps the two of them could find a way to be friends. It seemed unlikely—a friendship with a young gentleman—but it would be so nice to have a new friend that she thought it worth the attempt.

He was smiling at her, and she at him, and for a moment Janine felt utterly distracted from everything she had come out here to avoid thinking about. It was such a relief—such a moment of simple pleasure.

Then Leonardo lowered his head and picked up the book Douglas had brought outside with him.

“No!” Janine gasped, jumping up to take it back from him, but Leonardo clearly saw the whole thing as a game. He darted merrily away from her, shaking his big head back and forth to subdue his quarry. A few pages loosened from the book’s binding and flew away on the wind.

“Drop it, Leo!” Douglas ordered, but Leonardo would not obey. He ran away from them, obviously wanting to continue the game, and went plunging right into the lake.

And it was only there, finally separated from them and shocked by the water, that his mouth fell open. The book slipped free and dropped to the bottom of the lake. Janine started to pursue it but realized it was pointless. The book was destroyed.

“Shall we go after it?” Douglas had walked down to the water’s edge and was looking anxiously into the lake. Janine could see that he would go after the book if she asked him to, and she found herself touched by his thoughtfulness.

“There’s no need,” she said. “I really will tell my father it was my fault.”

“Nonsense,” he said firmly. “I’ll confess to what happened.” He took hold of the scruff of Leonardo’s neck. “This is all your fault, Leo. You know better than to try to eat books.”

Janine couldn’t help it—she laughed. “I suppose he’s never done that before?”

“No, he’s usually quite well-mannered, but I supposed he’s excited by being in a new place and around so many new people. As you may have realized, he’s very friendly.”

She reached out and scratched him again. “I’m glad to have the chance to get to know him,” she said. “And I’m glad to have met you as well, Douglas.”

Douglas nodded. “I’m pleased that there’s someone here I can spend my time with,” he said. “Someone close in age to myself.”

“I would’ve thought you might think me too young to be worth bothering with,” Janine admitted. 

“How old are you?”

“Sixteen.”

“Still young. But I’m only nineteen myself,” he said. “And though there may be a difference in our ages, it seems to me there are plenty of things we have in common.”

Janine nodded. She found him inexplicably easy to talk to. The next time she snuck away from her family to spend time down by the lake, she knew, she would be glad of the discovery that he had slipped away, too. She would want him to join her.

“I’m glad you’re going to be here all summer,” she told him.

He smiled. “I wasn’t glad of it until today,” he confessed. “But now I am. I think it’s going to be a good time—that is, if your father doesn’t throw me out of the house for having destroyed his book.”

“Oh, he won’t do that,” Janine said. She offered him a reassuring smile. “But I think you ought to expect him to be at least a little angry.”

“I can handle anger,” Douglas said. “I’ll replace the book if I can. Should we go back up to the house?”

“Soon,” Janine said, not ready for their meeting to be over. “But let’s linger here a little longer. I’m having such a nice time.” 

Chapter One

Four Years Later

“You’ve been in your study all day, my lord,” Gregory told Douglas.

As a valet, Gregory had never been anything short of exemplary. He was good not only at recognizing when Douglas required assistance with practical matters and supplying things like pens and ink or fresh paper, help in dressing or dealing with guests, and a glass of scotch at the end of a long day, he was also skilled at recognizing when Douglas was lost in thought and needed to be talked out of it. He had been quite right to notice that Douglas had sequestered himself in this room, and he was right to suspect that there was something behind it.

“Today is Marcus’ birthday,” Douglas explained. “Or rather, it would have been.”

“Ah,” Gregory said softly. “I see.”

“I know I’m being silly. He died six months ago, after all.”

“I don’t think you’re being silly at all,” Gregory countered. “He was your brother, my lord, and the two of you were close. Of course you grieve his death.”

“And yet I know it’s time for me to move on from those thoughts.”

“I imagine painful thoughts of your brother will linger for the rest of your life, especially as his death was so unexpected.”

“Well, that’s the part I can’t understand!” Douglas threw down his pen. He had done his best to keep his emotions under control, but it took so little to release them since the incident six months ago. “Both Marcus and Father were perfectly well, and then, all at once, they both took sick and died—and no one can explain to me what happened? Only that it was a mysterious ailment?”

“It isn’t uncommon for illness to move from one person to another,” Gregory pointed out. “Whatever ailment they had, one of them surely passed it to the other.”

“Perhaps. But no one else became ill. I know I was in Bruges at the time, working at the hospital there, but my mother was here. My sisters were here. None of them became ill.”

“That’s a blessing, isn’t it?” Gregory asked. “We ought to be thankful that nothing happened to them.” 

“Of course. And I am thankful for that. More than I can say. But as someone who has studied medicine, I do find it odd,” he said. “If there had been a dangerous illness going around, surely everyone would have contracted it—especially as it was so severe that it killed Marcus and my father so swiftly. How could it be deadly to them but harmless to everyone else?”

“I don’t know, my lord, but what I do know is that you ought not to worry too much about this,” Gregory said. “I know you’ve made a study of medicine, and that’s all well and good, but you aren’t your father’s physician. You can apply your knowledge to what happened here, and it may answer some of your questions, but it might only leave you with more questions than you began with. I don’t think there’s anything to be gained by trying to figure out what happened.”

Douglas sighed. “Perhaps you’re right,” he admitted. “I want to be able to figure out what happened to my family, but maybe that simply isn’t something I’m capable of.”

“Remember that you have family left to you,” Gregory urged him. “Your mother and your two sisters are still here, and they need you now. Not only are you Viscount Banks in your father’s absence since his death, you’re also all they have left in the world, and they rely greatly on you. You must care for them. I know days like today make it difficult. I know how you miss your brother, given that today is his birthday. But don’t you feel sure that what he would want most of all would be to see you caring for the members of his family that he so loved?”

“Of course that’s what he’d want,” Douglas agreed. “You’re quite right, Gregory. You always do put things into the proper perspective for me—I see the world more clearly after every conversation with you. I miss my father and my brother, but I cannot allow that pain to distract me from my responsibilities.”

“Remember that you aren’t their doctor,” Gregory advised. “You’re their son and brother. They need those things far more than they need a diagnostician.”

“You’re quite right,” Douglas said. “Thank you, Gregory.”

Gregory smiled, nodded, and withdrew from the room. Among his many skills was an innate ability to sense when a conversation had reached its natural conclusion—he never seemed to overstay his welcome, and that pleased Douglas. He’d never found himself wishing that Gregory would go away and leave him alone.

Almost at once, there was another knock on the door of his study. “Come in,” he called, wondering who it could be this time.

The door opened and his sister Alexis showed herself in. Alexis was one year older than Douglas and two years younger than Marcus had been, and the loss of their eldest sibling had wrought a remarkable change in her demeanor. She had become fiercely protective of her remaining siblings, as though she had always been the eldest among them. Even though there was only one year between herself and Douglas, she acted almost like she saw herself as a second parent to him.

Douglas was both indulgent to this new side of her and frustrated by it, for Alexis needed every bit as much looking after as he did these days—and probably more. Though she had once been involved in a courtship that had looked as if it might result in an engagement, that had dissolved after the deaths of Marcus and their father. She had been too distraught by what had happened to continue thinking about the future. Now, whenever Douglas asked her about it, she said she didn’t care for such things as romance, and that she was more than happy to become a spinster. He didn’t think that was a good choice for her and longed to help her find the happiness she’d lost, but because she was older, she refused to listen to him. Age was a matter of great importance to Alexis.

She folded her lean body into the chair that faced his desk. “I’m here about Amy,” she told him.

Ah, Amy. His other sister, younger by six years. She was the family’s beloved baby and had always been doted upon, adored by their parents and by all of her elder siblings. She had enjoyed a special closeness with both their father and Marcus, and Douglas thought her grief was perhaps sharper than anyone’s. 

That didn’t make it any easier to accept what she had turned to in response to the family’s loss. She had been a beauty six months ago, readying herself for her debut season, full of vivacity and life. Now, she rarely left her room. She lay in bed all day, having sweets brought up to her, and spoke to almost no one. Her depression was as extreme as their mother’s, though it was the sort of behavior that was more befitting a grieving widow—but Douglas worried about both ladies, of course. If there was anything he could have done that would have brought them out of their sadness, he would have done it at once.

“Is she still in her room?” he asked Alexis. 

“She is,” Alexis confirmed. “I passed one of the maids bringing up a tray full of biscuits and chocolate. You know, not that it’s the most important thing in all this, but she’s lost her figure.”

Douglas frowned. “She’s grieving.”

“I know that, Douglas. I don’t have a heart of stone.” She sighed and leaned back in the chair. “I’m thinking about her future. When she emerges from this depression and is ready to re-enter society, it will be more difficult for her if she’s lost her looks. I wish I could say it doesn’t matter, that it’s all right for her to lie up there and eat biscuits all day, but I’m afraid she’s losing her future by doing so.”

“What about your future?” Douglas dared to ask.

“We aren’t going to have this conversation again,” Alexis said firmly. “It always ends up in the same place. You know that.”

He did know that. And as much as he wanted to force her to confront the fact that she wasn’t taking her own future seriously, that she was hiding in thoughts of their sister, Alexis had a will of iron. She wouldn’t be turned on this matter until she was ready for that to happen.

He nodded slowly. “All right,” he said. “You’re right about Amy, but what can we do? I can’t go up there and drag her forcibly out of her room. Even if I could, that wouldn’t do anything to drag her out of her moroseness. She would mope around in another part of the house.”

“Perhaps that would be to her benefit,” Alexis said. “But I agree, it isn’t the answer. I wonder, though, whether having some answers might be of help to her.”

“I’m not sure I know what you mean,” Douglas confessed.

“I know you’ve longed to speak to the coroner. To ask for a proper autopsy that might give us more information about what happened to Father and Marcus.”

“I want that very much, yes. There must be more information than what we’re being given,” Douglas said. He raked his hands through his thick, dark hair and clenched his fingers, finding it impossible to keep still. It was as if the frustration coursed through every nerve in his body. “Even if the coroner simply considers it unimportant, or perhaps hasn’t elected to run every possible test because he feels confident that he has the answer—there must be more to know about this situation than what we know already.”

“We could even go above the coroner’s head,” Alexis suggested.

“I wouldn’t know who to appeal to,” Douglas confessed. 

“Neither would I. But there must be some recourse if we feel that he hasn’t done a thorough job.”

“I think it might benefit us not to dwell on this too much,” Douglas said, recalling the conversation he’d had with Gregory. “Amy is already heartsick over it, and maybe our better move is not to look for more answers, but to help her stop spending every waking hour thinking about what happened.”

“How can we do that?”

“I can’t say for certain. But I do think I might have an idea that could help her. Perhaps it would be good for us to get away for a while, out of the city.”

Alexis nodded slowly. “To tell you the truth, I think such a thing would benefit all of us,” she said. “Even I have found it hard to stop brooding on what happened as I wander the quiet halls of this house. I expect to see their faces around every corner, and when I don’t, I’m reminded of it all over again. Not that I could forget, of course. But I can’t even get away from the tragedy in my mind. I can’t find a space for myself to be happy, because just being in this house reminds me of them so powerfully.”

Douglas nodded. “Then I think I’m right in my idea that we should get away—and I do have an idea of how we might do it,” he said. “I’ll make the arrangements. I’d like you to go to Amy and Mother, please, and prepare them for a journey. Let them know that we’ll be away for a while.”

“I’ll do what I can,” Alexis said, rising to her feet. “I hope you’re right about this being a good idea, Douglas.”

He didn’t answer, because he didn’t want to let his sister see that he had any doubt in himself. But the truth was that he very much hoped he was doing the right thing, too. All he wanted was to be a good provider to his family, now that the role had fallen to him—now that they had nobody else.

---

“A Lady’s Forbidden Diary” is an Amazon Best-Selling novel, check it out here!

Lady Janine Cook, daughter of the Duke of Sussex, is in turmoil. Her father’s insistence on marriage by her next birthday leaves her in distress, especially since the match he’s chosen is the oppressive and controlling Viscount Shardwood. To complicate things even further, although she can hardly admit it to herself, Lady Janine’s true feelings lay with another. Douglas Irvin, the Viscount who stole her thoughts, might be a friend of the family, but she knows her stubborn father will never change his mind. She can at least confess all of her heart’s secrets to her dear diary…

When the diary is mysteriously lost though, her deepest longing is bound to be revealed…

On the other hand, Viscount Banks, formerly known as simply Douglas, grapples with unexpected responsibilities thrust upon him after the tragic deaths of his father and brother. Returning to Sussex, he reunites with Lady Janine, who ignites profound feelings in him. Due to her engagement though, he knows he must keep a proper distance, but he simply cannot help falling for her.

Will this mesmerizing encounter distract him from finding the truth about his family?

As they unite to uncover the mysteries surrounding them, Janine and Douglas find themselves irresistibly drawn to each other. However, with Janine’s wedding looming, they must navigate the delicate balance between duty and love. Will they be able to resist destiny’s calling? Or is it already too late to untangle their hearts?

“A Lady’s Forbidden Diary” is a historical romance novel of approximately 60,000 words. No cheating, no cliffhangers, and a guaranteed happily ever after.

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