Andrew: Lord of Despair (27 page)

First, I would like to acknowledge my dear mama, whose initial experience with childbearing involved the procedure now referred to as a manual version. As if that challenge weren’t enough, her obstetrician had not wanted to upset his patient, so he kept his suspicions about twins to himself. Mom did not learn she was carrying twins until the nurse told her, “Keep pushing, Mrs. Burrowes. You’re still in labor.” My brother Dick showed up three minutes after John’s arrival in the world, though both have ever known how to make a noteworthy entrance.

Second, thanks are due in another direction. When I wrote this book, life was handing me a few lemons. Beloved Offspring’s efforts to leave the nest were not going well, my law practice was reeling from the effects of some nasty, awful cases, and the economy seemed to be doing much of its contracting right in the neighborhood of my checking account. I still had the means to regularly ride my horse, Delray the Wonder Pony, a 17.1 hand Oldenburg gelding who was and ever shall be one of the Good Big Things to happen in my life.

I’d show up for my riding lessons feeling like crap, eighteen child abuse cases in my head, my dear daughter in distress I could not help her with, and no relief in sight. My instructor, Todd Bryan, would not ask me about that stuff. Todd’s a smart guy (and a helluva horseman); he could probably see the alligators riding right behind me on Delray’s croup. Instead, he would ask me “How’s the writing going?” and between playing with flying changes in our warm up, and eventually getting down to business at the trot, all the bad things would go away, and the stories and the ride would take their place.

In every riding lesson, I was reminded of two things. First, in Todd, his wife Becky, and the other folks at the barn, I had friends who knew what I was dealing with—riding buddies who honestly did not care if I ever learned to sit the trot (and I still haven’t, not properly), provided I kept showing up for the ride. Second, the writing was going well.

When I write, I’m happy. I needed my friends, my horse, and my riding to remind me of that, and they did. And when the writing goes well, much else in life takes care of itself.

May you have riding buddies, and may your writing always go well.

Read on for an excerpt from
Douglas, Lord of Heartache

Coming January 2014 from Grace Burrowes
and Sourcebooks Casablanca

The child was small, helpless, and in harm’s way.

As Douglas Allen drew his horse to a halt, he absorbed more, equally disturbing facts:

The grooms clustered in the barn doorway would do nothing but mill about, moving their lips in silent prayer and looking sick with dread.

A woman—the child’s mother?—unnaturally pale at the foot of the huge oak in the stable yard, was also likely paralyzed with fear. The child, standing on a sturdy limb of the old tree, thirty feet above the ground, was as white-faced as her mother.

“Rose,” the woman said in a tight, stern voice, “you will come down this instant, do you hear me?”

“I don’t want to come down!” came a retort from the heights of the oak.

Douglas was no expert on children, but the girl looked to be about five years old. Though she stood on one limb, she also anchored herself to the tree with a fierce hold on the branch above her. When she made her rude reply, she stomped her foot, which caused the branch she grasped to shake as well.

Douglas heard the danger before he saw it. A low, insistent drone, one that would have been undetectable but for the stillness of the stable yard.

At Rose’s display of stubbornness, the woman’s hands closed into white-knuckled fists. “Rose,” she said, her voice an agony of controlled desperation, “if you cannot climb down, then you must hold very, very still until we can get you down.”

“But you
promised
I could stay up here as long as I wanted.”

Another stomp, followed by another ominous, angry droning.

Douglas took in two more facts: The child was unaware of the hornet’s nest hanging several yards out on the higher branch, and she was not at all unwilling to come down. She was
unable
. He recognized a desperate display of bravado when he saw one, having found himself in an adult version of the same futile posturing more than once in recent months.

He stripped off his gloves and stuffed them into the pocket of his riding jacket. Next, he shed his jacket, slung it across the horse’s withers, turned back his cuffs, and rode over to the base of the tree. After taking a moment to assess the possibilities, he used the height of the horse’s back to hoist himself into the lower limbs.

“Miss Rose,” he called out in the steady, no-nonsense voice his governess had used on him long ago, “you will do as your mother says and be still as a garden statue until I am able to reach you, do you understand? We will have no more rudeness”—Douglas continued to climb, branch by branch, toward the child—“you will not shout”—another several feet and he would be on the same level as she—“and you most
assuredly
will not be stamping your foot in an unladylike display of pique.”

The child raised her foot as if to stomp again. Douglas watched that little foot and knew a fleeting regret that his life would end now—regret and resentment.

But no relief. That was something.

The girl lowered her foot slowly and wrinkled her nose as she peered down at Douglas. “What’s peek?”

“Pique”—he secured his weight by wrapping one leg around a thick branch—“is the same thing as a taking, a pout, a ladylike version of a tantrum. Now come here, and we will get you out of this tree before your mama can devise a truly appalling punishment for your stubbornness.”

The child obeyed, crouching so he could catch her about the waist with both hands—which did occasion relief, immense relief. The droning momentarily increased as the girl left her perch.

“You are going to climb around me now,” Douglas instructed, “and affix yourself like a monkey to my back. You will hang on so tightly that I barely continue to breathe.”

Rose clambered around, assisted by Douglas’s secure grip on her person, and latched on to his back, her legs scissored around his torso.

“I wanted to come down,” she confided when she was comfortably settled, “but I’d never climbed this high before, and I could not look down enough to figure my way to the ground. My stomach got butterflies, you see. Thank you for helping me get down. Mama is very, very vexed with me.” She laid her cheek against Douglas’s nape and huffed out a sigh as he began to descend. “I was scared.”

Douglas was focused on his climbing—it had been ages since he’d been up a literal tree—but he was nearly in conversation with a small child, perhaps for the first time since he’d been a child.

Another unappealing aspect to an unappealing day.

“You might explain to your mama you were stuck,” he said as they approached the base of the tree. He slipped back onto the horse, nudged it over to where the woman stood watching him, and then swung out of the saddle, Rose still clinging to his back. He reached around and repositioned her on his hip.

“Madam, I believe I have something belonging to you.”

“Mama, I’m sorry. I was st-stuck.” The child’s courage failed her, and weeping ensued.

“Oh, Rose,” her mother cried quietly, and the woman was, plague take this day, also
crying
. She held out her arms to the child, but because Rose was still wrapped around Douglas, he stepped forward, thinking to hand Rose off to her mother. Rose instead hugged her mother from her perch on Douglas’s hip, bringing Douglas and the girl’s mother into a startling proximity.

The woman wrapped an arm around her child, the child kept two legs and an arm around Douglas, and Douglas, to keep himself, mother, and child from toppling into an undignified heap, put an arm around the mother’s shoulders.
She
, much to his shock, tucked in to his body, so he ended up holding both females as they became audibly lachrymose.

Douglas endured this strange embrace, assuring himself nobody cried forever.

New
York
Times
and
USA
Today
bestselling author Grace Burrowes hit the bestseller lists with her debut,
The
Heir
, followed by
The
Soldier
,
Lady
Maggie’s Secret Scandal
,
Lady
Eve’s Indiscretion
, and
Lady
Sophie’s Christmas Wish.
The
Heir
was a
Publishers
Weekly
Best Book of 2010,
The
Soldier
a
Publishers
Weekly
Best Spring Romance of 2011,
Lady
Sophie’s Christmas Wish
won Best Historical Romance of the Year in 2011 from RT Reviewers’ Choice Awards,
Lady
Louisa’s Christmas Knight
was a
Library
Journal
Best Book of 2012, and
The
Bridegroom
Wore
Plaid
, the first in her trilogy of Scotland-set Victorian romances, was a
Publishers
Weekly
Best Book of 2012. All of her historical romances have received extensive praise, including starred reviews from
Publishers
Weekly
and
Booklist
.

Grace is a practicing family law attorney and lives in rural Maryland. She loves to hear from her readers and can be reached through her website at
graceburrowes.com
.