Harriet Smart: The Romances
HARRIET SMART: THE ROMANCES
Reckless Griselda
A Tempting Proposal
The True Value of Pearls
The Wild Garden
by
Harriet Smart
Published by Anthemion
© Harriet Smart 2019
www.harrietsmart.com
First Edition
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.
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Table of Contents
Harriet Smart: The Romances
Reckless Griselda
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
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
A Tempting Proposal
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
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Chapter Thirty-three
Chapter Thirty-four
Chapter Thirty-five
Chapter Thirty-six
Chapter Thirty-seven
Chapter Thirty-eight
Chapter Thirty-nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-one
Chapter Forty-two
Chapter Forty-three
The True Value of Pearls
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
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty one
Chapter Thirty-two
Chapter Thirty-three
Chapter Thirty-four
Chapter Thirty-five
Chapter Thirty-six
Chapter Thirty-seven
Chapter Thirty-eight
Chapter Thirty-nine
Chapter Forty
The Wild Garden
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
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
From Anthemion
About the Author
Harriet Smart: The Romances
These four novels range from early 19th century to late 20th century. The Wild Garden was originally published by Headline, while the others were all published digitally.
I hope you enjoy reading these tales of love and adventure set in very different times!
Harriet Smart
Reckless Griselda
On an impetuous journey to stop her father making an unsuitable marriage, Griselda Farquarson meets dashing Tom Thorpe. They fall instantly in love and into trouble. After she indulges in a sensual clandestine encounter with him, Griselda is forced to face the consequences of her reckless disregard for the rules of society. For this is England in 1816 and Tom is a wealthy baronet, caught up in a net of emotional entanglements and family conflicts. Determined to do the right thing and preserve Griselda’s reputation, he must face the ruin of his own. As a whirlwind of scandal engulfs them, will Griselda and Tom be able to transform their passionate attraction into a true and lasting happiness or will their love be destroyed by it?
Moving from the Norfolk countryside to the fashionable drawing rooms of London, Reckless Griselda is a hot-blooded regency romantic comedy that asks the question: should you let your heart rule your head?
Start reading Reckless Griselda
A Tempting Proposal
Adela Ross is reduced to singing in Macreadies’ sordid supper club in Edinburgh to keep bread on the table and a roof over her head. Sir William Urquhart must marry within a month or forfeit the estates and fortune left to him by his uncle.
When Adela falters on stage in front of a rough crowd, Will intervenes and rescues her. Impressed by her determination and spirit in the face of adversity, Will decides that she may be the solution to his awkward problem. He asks her to marry him: purely for convenience. It is to be a business arrangement so that they can both save their families from misery and poverty.
Adela says yes, although her sisters chide her for it, fearing for her happiness. But how can she refuse such a tempting proposal? She will be an independent woman of
means, while Will goes away to Rome, a husband in name only.
But after their hasty marriage they go to Balnagowan, Will’s enchanting Highland estate, and the trouble begins. Obliged by circumstances to pretend it is a love match, Adela finds her resolve to stay aloof from Will crumbling fast. The game of playing happy husband and wife is seductive enough and Will is dangerously attractive. But there are a hundred question marks about his past and no satisfactory answers. Can Adela resist a man who looks likely to break her heart? Is it such a tempting proposal after all?
Start reading A Tempting Proposal
The True Value of Pearls
After the war, a dangerous legacy...
It’s 1947; London is in the grip of post-war austerity, and Saskia Harper is desperately unhappy. Still mourning her first husband, killed in the war, she is searching for the love that her scholarly husband cannot give. A foolish, misjudged affair has left her full of regret.
When she learns that she has inherited the house in which she grew up, she sets out to claim it. For her, the Seigneurie is a place of enchanted memories set in a remote corner of Brittany, the Cornwall of France. But when she arrives at the ancient manor house, she finds that her inheritance is fiercely disputed. Someone else claims to be the true owner, and all seems lost.
Reeling, Saskia is thrown into a chance encounter with a mysterious yet charismatic stranger, Jean-Jacques Sebastien, who has come to Brittany on a desperate quest of his own. Jean-Jacques drags her into the dangerous complexities of post-occupation France, where the wounds of the war have barely begun to heal, and it soon emerges that they have business in common, and far more besides. But as she opens her heart to him, she finds herself struggling to save him from his own dark past.
The True Value of Pearls is an emotional, romantic suspense novel in the tradition of Mary Stewart.
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The Wild Garden
Kate Mackenzie is on the brink of success as an artist when she meets Gabriel Erskine, twenty-two years her senior. She’s not looking for a relationship, but Gabriel’s understanding of paintings and his outlook, so different from that of her friends, captivate her. Six months later, she moves into Allansfield, the beautiful house in rambling gardens on Gabriel’s estate in Fife. She doesn’t know him well, but what better way to change that than by living with him?
Touching, involving and honest, The Wild Garden is an utterly contemporary novel about life’s choices, love’s different aspects, and second chances.
Start reading The Wild Garden
RECKLESS GRISELDA
by
Harriet Smart
Published by Anthemion
Copyright © 2010 by Harriet Smart
www.harrietsmart.com
RECKLESS GRISELDA
Chapter One
Norfolk, England, 1816
After five nights, Griselda had got used to sleeping in ditches.
On the first night the prospect was horrifying, but there had been no choice. There was no inn for miles and she had been too tired to do anything but roll herself in the capacious folds of her father’s old shooting coat, make a pillow from her pack and hope for the best. She had fallen asleep before she knew it. The fact that it was a still, warm night had helped and she had woken with the first light; a little stiff, but more refreshed than she had imagined possible. Certainly she felt better rested than she had done in that odious inn at Kings Lynn.
Having survived that, Griselda decided it was a better plan to walk and sleep where she chose instead of taking the mail coach. The late August weather was holding fine and fair, and Griselda could think of nothing worse in such weather than to be shut up in a mail. She was used to vigorous exercise and she was pleased to discover that her body did not fail her. She had always loved to walk alone and her spirit relished the complete liberty she now had at her disposal. Her coat and breeches no longer felt like an indelicate novelty, but were simply her clothes. They were good and suited for their purpose. She had never guessed that men’s clothes could be so comfortable. To be without stays was a revelation and it was wonderful not to be hung about with petticoats. She was sure she was wearing the old breeches, shooting coat and that broad-brimmed, low-crowned hat with real conviction now, for no one had questioned her suspiciously. She began to wish that she could go on wandering in this way indefinitely.
But she must head on for Cromer and present herself to her brother.
She was at last within a day’s walk of the place, according to the milestone in the last village. Now, as she stood at the fork in the road, she wondered if her reluctance to proceed was from fear that she would not meet with a very civil reception from Hugh. After all, it had been ten years since she had last seen him. She had been a child of eleven when he had sailed for the Cape of Good Hope with his Regiment. She knew him only in the warmest remembrance and from his letters. He had written to her so often and at such length that she had felt certain that he would at once understand why she had been forced to leave Glenmorval and embark on this journey. Or rather it was her fervent hope that he would understand.
She lingered still at the edge of the hamlet, watching an old gig lumber down towards her.
“This is the road for Cromer?” she asked, in her best gruff and boyish manner.
“Aye, it is,” said the driver of the gig, “but you’ll save yourself a mile or two if you go over the fields.” He gestured up to the right, towards a gap in the hedge which presumably led to some well-known local path. “You’ll need it, too, for it’s going to rain.”
The path was a good one and Griselda made her way along it, through a well-gleaned stubble field and over a stile into pasture land. She could not share the gig man’s conviction it would rain. It was too warm and clear for that, and she began to look forward to catching a first glimpse of the sea. It was certainly better to think of that than worry about what Hugh would say when he saw her.
The path snaked and turned into a little covert of welcome shade. She trotted through it, pulling off her hat, enjoying the dappled sunlight and the sweet, fresh smells of the woodland. She even found a few ripe blackberries to supplement her rather meagre breakfast of bread and cheese. She was determined to be careless and enjoy what she felt sure must be the last few hours of her freedom. As soon as she reached Cromer she would be forced to become Miss Griselda Farquarson of Glenmorval again, and to behave accordingly.
At the edge of the covert the path led along a high stone wall made up of great stones, heavy with ivy and as far as Griselda could judge, of some antiquity. She wondered what lay behind it – the park belonging to some gentleman’s seat, she supposed. Hugh had said in his first letter from Cromer that there were plenty of great houses to be visited in the area, but that “I think the sea bathing and some good books will be enough distraction for me at present.” Recalling that, she felt a trifle guilty that she was about to disturb his tranquil convalescence.
The wall suddenly turned into a great archway and Griselda stopped and looked through it. She saw that she had been skirting the edge of a very venerable old ruin. Her heart pounding, she ran in, astonished at her discovery. It was an old abbey, dripping with creeper, wonderfully melancholy and painted by the bright light and deep shadows that the encircling band of trees cast over it. Directly in front of her there was half a crumbling cloister of carved arches, the cracks in the stone pavement thick with long grass. A few steps led up into the roofless chapel, whose old windows were hung with cobwebs of stone tracery. Griselda pictured the monks filing through it – and then fancied that they might not have been monks at all, but nuns.
Eager to see inside the chapel, she crossed the cloister but stopped at the doorway. She was not alone. There was a man standing in the old nave, his face turned towards the east end of the chapel. He held an open sketchbook and was diligently drawing the west window.
Griselda frowned. She did not wish to share this exquisite place with anyone else. It deserved to
be enjoyed in perfect solitude. Any moment now, she was certain that a prosing clergyman would appear, with his wife and daughter leaning on his arms, to break the silence with banal observations.
She sighed, but too loudly, and the man looked around.
He had thick brown-gold hair, with a loose wave to it that made each lock catch and flash in the light. His hair fell back softly from his forehead revealing a high, smooth brow and a dazzling pair of limpid blue eyes that entirely overshadowed the rest of his well-sculpted face. He looked levelly at her for some moments. He did not smile but his features clouded with puzzlement as he continued to look at her. She felt disturbed by his scrutiny, and looked away, aware that her observation of him had been just as open. She crammed her hat back onto her head and walked as boldly as she could into the chapel. She was relieved to observe he had begun to sketch again.
She did not give the chapel her full attention. She could not help watching him as he stood there in his white linen shirt sleeves, his drab olive-green riding coat tossed on the ground by his feet. He was sketching very energetically and with a great deal of serious concentration. She wondered if he were a professional artist but she decided his clothes were too good for that. His riding boots had been polished to a deep nicety – they still shone through the dust they had picked up. He has a man to see to them, Griselda thought, and then observed that his waistcoat and riding breeches, though as sober as his coat, were of excellent cut and fitted his long lean form extremely well. That suggested an expensive tailor. Without doubt, he was a person of considerable means. Griselda was completely sure of it when she spotted his horse tethered under a tree in the next field – an elegant bay mare and exactly the sort of horse she would have chosen herself had she the necessary guineas.
She decided to forgive him for being there. A gentleman antiquary sketching in a ruined abbey added a great deal to the picturesque qualities of the scene. Griselda could imagine it transformed into the black and white of a steel engraving hanging in a print shop window.
And what am I in this picture? she mused, as she sat down on what once must have been the chancel steps. Her boots had no polish left in them. They were merely very dirty, like her breeches. There was dirt under her fingernails too, she observed, and the cuff of her old shirt was fraying badly. That little detail set off the worn fustian of the shooting coat to perfection. She took off her hat and raked her fingers through the hair which she had clumsily cropped only a few days ago. She knew she must look very disgraceful. The gentleman was probably wondering whether she was going to set upon on him and rob him or merely annoy him with village idiot impertinence.