Dearest Millie (The Pennington Family) Read online

  DEAREST MILLIE,

  Catastrophe! I need you! I just spilled my coffee on my trousers. The mess is indescribable!

  DEAREST DERMOT,

  Come at once!

  P.S. Come at once!

  THE NOTE WAS NOT DRY on the paper before the door burst open and slammed shut behind him.

  Millie met him in the middle of her work room, impatiently undoing the buttons of his trousers. Dermot’s hands were all over her, and she laughed as he fumbled with her skirts. She pushed at his coat, and he tugged at her dress even as he was kicking off his shoes.

  “We have a bedroom,” he reminded her.

  “It’s midday. Everyone will know.”

  Losing his balance when she yanked his waistcoat open, he staggered back against her writing desk. He started to fall, and Millie reached out for him. He grabbed for her. The tearing sound of his shoulder seam stopped them only for an instant.

  “Hurry,” she exclaimed. “We don’t have much time.”

  “I’m certain you’re mistaken, my love. It’s nowhere near time for—”

  The two of them froze, hearing the knock on the door. Dermot let out a frustrated breath. Millie hushed him into silence.

  “Just a moment,” she called out.

  A flurry of activity ensued. Buttons were refastened haphazardly. Dermot had only one arm in his waistcoat before Millie was driving his coat onto his other arm. As she tried to smooth her dress, he was crawling on his hands and knees under her table looking for one of his shoes. When she hissed at him to hurry, he reversed direction and banged his head before overturning a chair. On his feet again, they looked at each other and tried to stop laughing. Wonderful disaster.

  A moment later, their clothes had been reasonably straightened. Trouser bulges had been subdued. Hair had been smoothed down as much as possible.

  Tucking in an errant tendril of hair behind her ear, Millie took a breath and tried to look serious. She nodded at Dermot, and he opened the door.

  Two small boys—five and seven years old—stood waiting in the corridor. The older lad was reasonably clean, but the younger was not.

  “Mother, he’s testing my patience today.”

  Though the younger one could dirty his clothes walking from the drawing room to the Great Hall, today he was filthier than usual. And from the smell, she knew exactly were he’d been.

  “I was just making him comfortable,” he argued.

  “Who were you making comfortable, dear?”

  “The pig,” the older lad shouted, tugging at the rope in his hand.

  Joining them a second later was a pig, the size of a small pony, grinning at her.

  “He had Little Dermot in my bed.”

  “He has a cold,” the younger one said, appealing to his father. “He couldn’t sleep in the pens, could he?”

  As the children continued to argue, Millie exchanged a look with Dermot. Their two sons.

  “Whatever am I going to do with you?”

  “Baths, to begin with,” Dermot suggested.

  “Can Little Dermot take a bath with us too?”

  Millie smiled at the snort of disgust from her older son. She was the happiest woman in the Highlands.

  Author’s Note

  WE HOPE YOU ENJOYED reading Dearest Millie, because Millie and Dermot are coming back in two future stories. As many of you know, we can’t let our characters go. They live and breathe for us. These two will return in very prominent roles in our novella How to Ditch a Duke (Spring 2019) and in Highland Jewel, the second book in our Royal Highlander Series, which begins with Highland Crown (March 2019). So, for those of you who’d like to visit and keep up with them in the future, stay tuned.

  Also, for our Pennington Family fans, you remember Dermot from It Happened in the Highlands and Millie from Sleepless in Scotland.

  As with all of our novels, we have tried to combine the real and the imagined in this story. The idea for this novel came to us during the years we went through a life-changing event of our own. During that time, laughter and support from family and loved ones and friends became an integral part of the healing.

  In writing Dearest Millie, we were reminded that when a person is afflicted with a serious medical condition like cancer, sharing that news is a difficult and deeply personal decision. The same goes for melancholia—or as we know it today, depression.

  In 1812, the popular English novelist Frances Burney wrote a number of letters to her sister about her mastectomy. She survived the surgery and lived to the advanced age of eighty-eight.

  The history of depression is that of an innately human experience. As a mood or emotion, the experience of being melancholy or depressed is at the very heart of being human. Robert Burton wrote in 1621, “Melancholy in this sense is the character of mortality.”

  DEAREST MILLIE is part of the series of stories about the Pennington family.

  Borrowed Dreams— Millicent Wentworth (introduced in The Promise) , driven to undo the evil wrought by her dead husband, must find a way to save her estate and free the innocent people he enslaves. Her only hope is a marriage—in name only—to Lyon Pennington, the Earl of Aytoun, a man devastated by a tragic accident that killed his wife and left him gravely wounded. These two are the parents of Millie in Dearest Millie.

  Captured Dreams— Pierce Pennington (the younger brother of Lyon, Borrowed Dreams) and Portia Edwards search for family in Boston and in Scotland.

  Dreams of Destiny— David Pennington, the youngest Pennington brother, and Gwyneth Douglas solve the mystery of Emma’s murder.

  The Pennington Family series moves into the Regency Era and follows the romantic adventures of the next generation

  Romancing the Scot— Hugh Pennington, the eldest son of Lyon and Millicent (Borrowed Dreams), a scarred war-hero, opens a crate delivered to his estate and finds a beautiful, half-dead woman with a priceless jewel sown into her dress.

  It Happened in the Highlands— Jo Pennington, the adopted daughter of Lyon and Millicent (Borrowed Dreams, Romancing the Scot), and Captain Wynne Melfort search for her birth-parents at an ancient abbey-turned-asylum in the Highlands. Dermot McKendry is introduced in this novel. And his charm and character wins many hearts.

  Sweet Home Highland Christmas (RITA© Award Finalist)— Gregory Pennington meets his match when he is tasked with conveying Freya Sutherland and her five-year-old niece from the Highlands to Baronsford for the annual Christmas Ball.

  Sleepless in Scotland— Phoebe Pennington, the fourth sibling in the Pennington family, and Captain Ian Bell fall in love even as they are haunted by the murder of his sister. Millie plays an important part in this novel as her sister’s companion and confidante.

  In addition, we mention Dr. Isabella Murray Drummond in this novella. She is the heroine of Highland Crown, the first novel in the new Royal Highlander series, in which three extraordinary women in the Highlands of Scotland find courage to defy the world at a tumultuous moment when a new Scottish identity will be forged or a political assassination will divide a nation forever.

  As authors, we love feedback. We write our stories for you. We’d love to hear what you liked, what you loved, and even what you didn’t like. We are constantly learning, so please help us write stories that you will cherish and recommend to your friends. Please sign up for news and updates and follow us on BookBub.

  Finally, if you like Dearest Millie, please leave a review.

  Peace and Health!

  Nikoo and Jim (writing as May McGoldrick)

  You can visit us on our website.

  Excerpt of Highland Crown

  Abbotsford, the Scottish Borders

  September 1832

  SOME SAY I’M A HERO. Some call me a traitor.

  My time grows short now. I feel nothing in my right side. My hand lies inert on the bedclothes. The apoplexy has robbed me of any useful employment. I tried, but I cannot hold a pen. Not that it matters. Those exertions are behind me now.

  Some will say that I, S
ir Walter Scott—author of Waverley and Rob Roy and Red Gauntlet—invented the new Scotland. That I was the unfailing champion of the noble traditions of the past. That I revealed the Scottish identity all now wear with tartan-emblazoned pride.

  What they say is a lie.

  My family has brought down my bed and propped me up before the open window of my dining room. In the meadow outside, the yellow of the rockrose, the scarlet of the campion flower, the pure white of the ox-eyed daisies nearly blind me with their reckless brilliance. The water scratches over the pebbled shore of the Tweed at the end of the field, but instead, I hear the haunting voices of hungry, homeless Highlanders, dying by the thousands.

  How many have died as the ancient hills continue to be cleared of their tenant farmers in the name of progress? Pushed from their homes, driven to the sea, to the cold, hard streets of our cities, to lands far away . . . if they survive the journey. All to make way for a few more sheep. All in the quest of a few more shillings.

  I did what I believed at the time was right for Scotland. I convinced myself I could not let my country descend into the lawless chaos of bloody revolution, the throat of civility ripped out by the mob. It happened in France. The guillotine’s dread machinery flew out of control, splashing far too much innocent blood into the streets in its ravaging thirst for the guilty. And the cobbled lanes of Paris were not yet dry when a new terror arose in the form of their arrogant tyrant Napoleon. I told myself I could not let that happen here. Not here. Not in my homeland.

  But now I see the truth clearly, and the bitter gall of that knowledge rises into my throat. I spent a lifetime creating an image of Scotland I knew was not real. I closed my eyes to the suffering and the deaths of my own people, and instead told stories depicting the grandeur of an imagined Highland past. And as I worked, I held my tongue about the bloody decimation of the clans and their way of life. Men I dined with daily were profiting from the killing, and I said nothing. Worse, I, too, made money from it with my romantic tales.

  Many are those who see me clearly. To them, I am Walter Scott—turncoat, bootlicking lackey of the British Crown. They say I sold the independence of Scotland for a shabby box of tawdry and meaningless honors. They say that because of me, the Scottish people will never be free again. That I betrayed them for a wee bit of fleeting fame and the price of a few books.

  Now, after all these years, I find myself forced to agree. And that is all the more difficult to bear because I lie here with Death stalking the shadows of Abbotsford.

  He’s been dogging my faltering steps for some time now.

  This fever struck me as we returned from our travels. Rome and Naples, Florence and Venice. Those places had offered no relief. Death was coming for me. London was covered in yellow fog when we arrived, but the rest is a blur. They tell me I lay close to dying for weeks. I don’t recall. Then the final journey home. The steady rumbling rhythm of a steamboat remains in my mind, but I remember very little of that. I only know that I am home now.

  Two of my hunters have been turned out into the meadow. Fine mounts. The golden sun glistens on their powerful shoulders as they begin to graze. I wish I could be as content, but life has buffeted me about, and the choices I’ve made give me no respite. Nor should they.

  My mind returns again and again to the upheaval of 1820, to the “Rising.”

  We called those men and women radicals, when all they wanted were the rights and freedoms of citizens. In the name of equality and fraternity, they cried out for representation. They demanded the vote. Some called for an end to what they saw as the iron fist of Crown rule. They wanted to sever our northern kingdom from England and restore the ancient parliament of Scotland. In my lifetime, those men and women were the last chance for Scotland’s independence, and I blinded myself to their cause. And when Westminster made it treason to assemble and protest, they willingly gave their lives. The heroic blood of the Bruce and the Wallace ran in their veins. I see that now. Too late.

  That same year, that same month, as the blood flowed, I returned to Scotland from Westminster bearing my new title. Even now, I feel the weight of the king’s sword on my shoulders. But as I reveled proudly in my accomplishments, the cities across the land were tinderboxes, threatening to explode in a wild conflagration of civil war. The weavers and the other tradesmen in Glasgow and Edinburgh had just brought the country’s affairs to a halt with their strikes. Some of the reformers had courageously marched on the ironworks at Carron to seize weapons.

  Scotland teetered on the brink of anarchy. I was afraid. So I took the well-worn path of weak men.

  My single moment of courage came when I saved a woman who would help change the course of history.

  Isabella Murray Drummond. A marvel of this modern age. A doctor, no less, who’d studied at the university in Wurzburg, where her eminent father held a professor’s chair. When he passed away, she married an Edinburgh physician who’d gone to further his studies under the tutelage of her father. He was a widower with a growing daughter. She was a single woman left with a younger sister and a small inheritance. It was a marriage of convenience.

  Isabella, who had the loveliness of Venus and the bearing of a queen, saved me from losing my leg—lame since my childhood—after the carriage accident in Cowgate. I was carried to their infirmary. The husband was away, but I was fortunate that she was there, for Isabella was the very angel of mercy I needed at that moment, and her skill as a physician saved my life.

  No matter my regrets, or what I do to right wrongs, or what I write to change the fate of Scotland, some will always think me a traitor. I know now that I have helped in giving away my country’s chance for independence . . . perhaps forever . . . in return for a peace that was profitable for a few. But one thing in my life that I’ll never regret was my action on that woman’s behalf when the time came.

  The news spread across the city. Isabella Drummond’s husband was dead, and she was in hiding with her sister and her stepdaughter. The government had declared her an enemy of the Crown, placed a bounty upon her head. Her husband’s rebellious allies wanted her, as well, believing she’d inform on them.

  I succeeded in helping the women escape from the city, far to the north where they would board a ship bound for Canada. She was to join all those Highlanders who were journeying to a new life. But she would never board any ship. She would never reach the shores of that far-off place.

  For on the rugged coast of the Highlands, she disappeared . . . and lived a truer adventure than ever flowed from my pen.

  Order your copy now.

  About the Author

  USA TODAY BESTSELLING Authors Nikoo and Jim have crafted over forty fast-paced, conflict-filled historical and contemporary novels and two works of nonfiction under the pseudonyms May McGoldrick and Jan Coffey.

  These popular and prolific authors write historical romance, suspense, mystery, and young adult novels. They are four-time Rita Finalists and the winners of numerous awards for their writing, including the Romantic Times Magazine Reviewers’ Choice Award, the Daphne DeMaurier Award, three NJRW Golden Leaf Awards, two Holt Medallions, and the Connecticut Press Club Award for Best Fiction. Their work is included in the Popular Culture Library collection of the National Museum of Scotland.