This is an excerpt from “A Bend in the Road”, my story in Love’s Perilous Road, which will be published October 31st. My newsletter story this month will be a little vignette of their meeting and their time in Brussels. In the scene, Justin has been wounded, and Felicity is reading out loud to him.

Justin was seduced anew by the magic of her melodic voice, with the laughing glances Felicity cast at him, inviting him to share her amusement at the florid text. Seduced by dreams he should not have. She had always enchanted him, from the moment he had first seen her on the deck of the yacht Sea Mist off the coast of some remote English village. The sling that had lifted her aboard had been caught by a rogue wave before it lifted beyond the sea’s reach. He was there to welcome aboard some earl’s sister, undoubtedly indignant at the wave’s lèse-majesté and ready to blame the nearest officer—him.

Then Felicity emerged from the sling, a laughing if somewhat drenched fairy, her golden hair sparkling in the sun, but not as much as her blue eyes, and he was her slave from that moment.

Each day in Felicity’s company had enraptured him more. On the sea voyage, he had tried hard to convince himself that she was a social butterfly, all glitter and glamour. But watching her smoothly take charge on the canal boat and the midpoint accommodation house dispelled that impression, and a few days in Brussels taught him she was a consummate hostess, a skilled politician, a stateswoman and—as he worked beside her in the make-shift hospital that received Waterloo casualties, a strong and compassionate woman.

He loved her, and living without her was living with a gaping hole where his heart should be.