Someone to Care: Viola's Story (The Westcott Series)

Someone to Care: Viola's Story (The Westcott Series)

**Instant New York Times Bestseller ** Once the Countess of Riverdale, Viola Kingsley throws all caution to the wind when adventure calls in the form of a handsome aristocrat. . . . Two years after the death of the Earl of Riverdale, his family has overcome the shame of being stripped of their titles and fortune--except for his onetime countess, Viola. With her children grown and herself no longer part of the social whirl of the ton, she is uncertain where to look for happiness--until quite by accident her path crosses once again with that of the Marquess of Dorchester, Marcel Lamarr. Marcel Lamarr has been a notorious womanizer since the death of his wife nearly twenty years earlier. Viola caught his eye when she herself was a young mother, but she evaded his seduction at the time. A prize that eluded him before, she is all the more irresistible to him now although he is surprised to discover that she is as eager now for the excitement he offers as he is himself. When the two defy convention and run away together, they discover that the ties of respectability are not so easily severed, and pleasure can ensnare you when you least expect it. . . . Praise for the novels of Mary Balogh “One of the best!”—Julia Quinn "Balogh is today’s superstar heir to the marvelous legacy of Georgette Heyer, (except a lot steamier!)”—Susan Elizabeth Phillips "With her brilliant, beautiful and emotionally intense writing Mary Balogh sets the gold standard in historical romance."—Jayne Ann Krentz "When it comes to historical romance, Mary Balogh is one of my favorites!"—Eloisa James “A superb author whose narrative voice comments on the characters and events of her novel in an ironic tone reminiscent of Jane Austen.”— Milwaukee Journal Sentinel “Mary Balogh just keeps getting better and better…interesting characters and great stories to tell...well worth your time.”— The Atlanta Journal-Constitution  “I loved this book. I read it in one sitting and it made me smile a lot and cry a little.”—Smart Bitches, Trashy Books Mary Balogh grew up in Wales and now lives with her husband, Robert, in Saskatchewan, Canada. She has written more than one hundred historical novels and novellas, more than thirty of which have been New York Times bestsellers. They include the Bedwyn saga, the Simply quartet, the Huxtable quintet, the seven-part Survivors' Club series, and, most recently, the Westcott series, including Someone to Wed , Someone to Hold , and Someone to Love . The hired carriage in which Viola Kingsley had been traveling just a short while before the Marquess of Dorchester spoke to her at the country inn not only had been uncomfortable with its hard seats and surely nonexistent springs and its drafty windows and door and its innumerable squeaks and groans and pervading smell of oldness and staleness. It had also developed a severe limp and was proceeding at less than half its former speed and was listing somewhat to one side. Try as she would to sit upright, she had kept finding her left shoulder pressed up against the hard wood panel beside the seat. At any moment she had expected that the carriage would stop altogether and she would be stranded in the middle of nowhere. And it was all her fault. She would have no one to blame but herself. Two years before, something truly catastrophic had happened to Viola. She had been Viola Westcott, Countess of Riverdale, at the time and had recently suffered the loss of the earl, her husband of twenty-three years. Her son, Harry, had succeeded to the title. He had been only twenty years old at the time and had therefore been placed under the guardianship of Avery Archer, Duke of Netherby, and of Viola herself. Her elder daughter, Camille, had already made her debut into society and was respectably betrothed to Viscount Uxbury. Her younger daughter, Abigail, was looking forward to her own come-out Season the following spring. Viola had been satisfied with her life despite the necessity of wearing deep mourning. She had not been fond of her husband and felt no great grief at his passing. There had been just one loose end to be tied up, and she had made an attempt to tie it. There was a girl, a young woman by then, whom her husband had kept and secretly supported—he had thought it was a secret, anyway—at an orphanage in Bath for as long as Viola had known him. She had made the understandable assumption that the female was his natural daughter by a mistress, and had done what she had considered the right thing after his death by sending her solicitor to Bath to find the woman, inform her of her father’s death, and make a final settlement upon her. That was when the catastrophe had hit. For it had been discovered that the young woman concerned, Anna Snow, then twenty-five years old and a teacher at the orphanage, was in fact the late earl’s legitimate daughter by a previous wife. By his only wife as it happened. He had married Viola a few months before Anna Snow’s moth