Forever Winter by Amber Daulton Page A

Viscount and Viscountess Beckinworth.”
    As the crowd cheered, the newly-wed couple rushed from the hall. Ribbons and flower petals spiraled around them. Susanna and Camden stalled in the vestibule, directly under mistletoe. With a mischievous smile, he jerked her back into his embrace and kissed his wife. She returned his kiss with equal need and fervor. Ready for night to fall, ready to pleasure each other as only a husband and wife should, the moon couldn’t rise quickly enough.

EPILOGUE

    Northern Derbyshire, England
    Five Years Later

    Viscountess Susanna Beckinworth adored her husband’s estate. The Beckinworth family moved to the area two centuries before and built a grand manor along a trout-filled stream. The estate was a massive amalgam of towering trees and heather moors. Nestled near the summit of a rolling mountain, the manor was in desperate need of a woman’s touch, if not an upgrade, when she’d first moved in. After a few decorating adjustments, the manor felt like home.
    The cotton spinning mill was larger than she expected. After spending several weeks reviewing various accounts, logs and books with every intention of helping her husband run the business, she realized he truly didn’t need assistance. He turned a failing business into a prosperous one in only a few years. The upgrades, safety precautions and pay raises he established for the workers were extraordinary and nearly unheard of in the country. Still, he wanted her by his side during routine inspections and meetings with the mill’s managers. He also wanted her to monitor the books.
    That was until she became pregnant with their first child soon after the wedding. At first, he rarely restricted her activities, but once she started wobbling when descending staircases and eating enough for two grown men, he regulated her activities to simple sitting, light reading and relaxing. Her overprotective husband claimed toiling over mathematical books was too stressful and visiting the cramped millhouse too unhealthy for her delicate condition. She scoffed in his face but his adamant demands never wavered. Since she knew his demands stemmed from worry, she eventually agreed. Besides, once the baby was born, she wouldn’t have much time for the millhouse, anyway.
    Her sister, Beatrix, gave birth to a healthy son a few weeks before Susanna found out she was expecting. Bea and her husband were ecstatic. Assisting the midwife, what Susanna had witnessed as a child staring through a crack in a doorway did not compare to this new experience. The entire family was there for the birth, including her brothers and their wives—except Deandra.
    Poor Beatrix admitted she slept with Lord Gaynor before she met her husband. She felt pressured into it, but did so willingly. She was infatuated with him. But once she married her own earl, she refused Gaynor’s advances, to his angry dismay. He had harassed her just as he did Susanna for years. Unfortunately, both women were too embarrassed and worried to confess it. Now that Susanna knew, as did her parents and Camden, the sisters had grown much closer.
    Beatrix’s husband, however, remained oblivious. According to Bea, he cast aside his mistresses just a month before she gave birth for a monogamous relationship. Susanna prayed everything worked out.
    Five years passed without a word from Lord Gaynor. Camden and her father spoke to him before the wedding and settled on a truce. Still, Gaynor wasn’t the sort of man to keep his word. They still worried about a lawsuit—Camden had taken too many liberties in striking a man of higher social standing—though nothing ever came of it. Deandra, who occasionally visited Lorican Manor with her children, explained to her parents that she convinced her husband not to press charges because she believed Susanna and Beatrix would undoubtedly press charges against him in return. And while that would most assuredly tarnish her sisters’ reputations, Lord Gaynor feared his