Get ready to swoon for this dreamy, forget-me-not romance that’s filled with the delightful tartness of Jane Austen and the sweeping, unputdownable drama of Bridgerton.
Intrigued? Well read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from Emma Theriault’s A Lady Would Know Better, which is out January 28th 2025.
There are many things an English lord might encounter on the grounds of his wintry estate. Trees. Birds. Perhaps a wandering gamekeeper. Instead, the Earl of Belhaven finds a woman in the snow, unconscious and nearly frozen to death. Then her luminous gray eyes open just long enough for her to plead, “Don’t let them get me.”
Now Jasper Maycott has his hands full with a woman who has absolutely no memory of who she is or where she came from—to say nothing of her name! Just a gold ring, some fine clothes, and a penchant for pert conversation. But while “Jane” dresses and speaks quite like a lady, Jasper can’t make any assumptions. After all, she could be a crafty fortune hunter…albeit a charming and unutterably beautiful one.
Only there’s no room for romantic love in the Earl of Belhaven’s world. There is just grim duty, a lingering sense of loss, and the knowledge that love—in any form—can only bring heartbreak in its wake.
But while a lady should know better, the heart heeds no rules…even if its every beat portends the danger she was running from.
Chapter One
Jasper
Surrey, December 1877
“Jasper, are you ready?”
His eyes lifted from the tired correspondence without much reluctance. “I rarely am,” he replied to his sister, who stood framed in the doorway to his father’s study.
Jasper’s study this past year, to be more accurate, now that he was the Earl of Belhaven.
Hell of a position for a second son to end up in.
“You promised,” Helena said, her tone doing much to remind him of all his inadequacies. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. His brother Anthony was the heir, Jasper the spare, and they had taken to their roles with vigor.
But that was before.
Their younger sister Isobel stepped around Helena and into view, frowning at him. The expression crinkled her features, so like their mother’s that it made Jasper’s heart ache. “What did I tell you?” she asked Helena. “It wasn’t a promise he ever intended to keep.”
Jasper leaned back in his father’s imposing chair, his bones creaking with the effort of it. Surely a man of six and twenty should not feel so withered. He could recall lying on the deck of a sun-drenched yacht in the Mediterranean less than two years ago, wondering when he might have to face reality and cede to his parents’ wishes and carve a place for himself in the world. He hadn’t imagined that reality would be thrust upon him so violently.
He pinched the bridge of his nose. “What exactly did I promise?”
Helena sighed. “It’s the seventh of December.” Their mother’s birthday. When she was alive, the Countess of Belhaven had been a famous hostess of the Ton, and each year, Society had descended on their snowy corner of Surrey in order to celebrate her. It had been a festive few days of sleigh rides and tree trimming and mulled wine. Jasper was quite sure that after last year’s tragedy he’d never enjoy frivolity like that again.
Helena continued. “I can’t bear the thought of letting the day pass unremarked upon. It was her favorite.”
It took Jasper a moment to remember his hasty promise, uttered in the bitter reaches of the night some weeks ago, when he and his sisters had let their shared grief tether them together, rather than drive them to separate corners of their dark manor. They would visit their mother’s grave on her birthday, after their youngest sister had gone to bed, so as not to upset her. At the time, Jasper had been making an effort, spurred by the pain he’d witnessed in his sisters’ faces. They needed him to be strong, like Anthony had been. But Jasper had lived his life almost fitfully, as second sons were wont to do, until he’d met Annabelle, the daughter of the vicar of Wrayford. After so much time spent shunning virtue and chasing vice, at last he had stilled, and his world had irrevocably changed.
But that was before.
Jasper glanced out the window, where snow fell down like a heavy rain. Decidedly not the best time to visit the graves of their parents and brother. Perhaps he could convince them to postpone a day. But then he looked to the stack of letters he had been making his way through, all written by his impatient man of business, and thought a tromp through the frigid sludge would be preferable.
“Let me get my coat.”
…
Jasper regretted his choice as soon as he stepped out the door and the icy chill cut right through him. His sisters, on the other hand, looked quite content in the frigid winds.
“How is it that the two of you seem to be managing so well?” he asked, wrapping his arms around his body in a futile effort to trap whatever heat remained in him.
Helena smiled weakly, her cheeks rosy and her halo of red hair a rare shock of brightness in the gray of winter. “Our cloaks were made with warmth in mind, Brother, not fashion.”
Jasper looked down at his gray broadcloth frock coat and grimaced at how little it did to shield him from the cold. Having spent much of the last five years in the milder climes of the Continent, he had hoped he would never suffer through another unpredictable English winter. But then he’d lost almost everyone, and the thought of staying in Surrey permanently was no longer a nightmare to be avoided but rather an obligation he had to the family that remained. And in the year since the tragedy, Jasper hadn’t gotten around to updating his wardrobe with more appropriate garments. His duties as the Earl of Belhaven had taken precedence, and he had the calloused palms to prove it.
“You’ll freeze to death without Annabelle here to remind…” Isobel began before sputtering to a stop, her hasty, careless words dying in her throat. “I’m—I’m so sorry, Jasper…”
He said nothing, his own words buried beneath a knot in his chest, thoughts of Annabelle’s pale, sickly form filling his mind, thoughts he had steadfastly avoided all year.
Because when scarlet fever swept through Wrayford, noble Annabelle had stayed at her father’s side as he tended to the spirits of those who suffered, and all Jasper could do was uselessly pray she was spared.
Alas, his prayers had not been answered.
In the end, the illness took not only Annabelle, but the safe harbor his parents had always been for him, as well as the steady influence of his brother. It had been in those dark moments after Anthony had taken his last breath that Jasper had realized there were no new beginnings left for him. Nothing but an unrelenting reminder of what he’d lost, and what he could still lose, if he wasn’t careful.
Their path to the chapel took them to the edges of their land, with Mulgrave Hall all but impossible to see behind them, veiled as it was by the falling snow. Before them, similarly shrouded, was the cemetery.
He knew Isobel meant him no harm, but for the past year, Jasper had done his best to stay strong for his siblings by closing off the parts of himself that felt too deeply. He was able to continue moving forward only because he’d never looked back. How would he be able to ignore the depths of his loss when standing at the graves of his parents and Anthony? The thought of it was almost too much to bear.
“What are our plans for the holiday?” Isobel asked, seeking a distraction from her earlier blunder. His throat tightened. He hadn’t planned for anything more than survival.
“Freddie will be home soon,” he offered. Their brother Frederick was away at Eton, while their other brother studied law at Oxford. “I still haven’t received word from August, but I predict he will find his way to us eventually.”
Isobel frowned. “Viola has been planning her outfit for Christmas dinner with the Banfields for weeks now.”
Jasper grimaced, thinking back to the unopened letters that littered his desk, invitations from well-meaning friends who likely thought that since the Maycotts would be emerging from their year of mourning, they would soon be returning to Society. Nothing could have felt more impossible to him. “Surely having all of us back at Mulgrave Hall will be celebration enough.”
“Will all of us be back, though, truly? Or will some remain locked away?” Helena asked, her eyebrows raised meaningfully.
“I would hardly say I’m locked away in father’s study like some recluse,” said Jasper defensively, knowing precisely what his sister meant. It was time for him to step into their eldest brother’s shoes. But he would never be like Anthony, so constant. He knew that. It was why he’d sworn an oath to the darkness the night they’d lost their older brother. As the new Earl of Belhaven, he would care for his siblings. He would find them respectable matches and ensure their happy futures. But the line would pass to his younger brother when he died.
Because Jasper would never again give his heart to another. Whatever love he had left was for his siblings. He could not dilute it further. He would be a shadow of what Anthony could have been, or what his father had been, before the fates had cruelly taken them, but it would have to be enough.
A year had passed since he’d made his solemn vow, and while he could not claim the Maycotts were thriving under his care, they were at least surviving.
But is survival enough? Was it not his responsibility to do more?
He buried the thought, along with the rest of his unhappy memories, as Isobel gave him a cutting look.
“I think perhaps she meant it metaphorically.”
He began to offer his sister a cutting look of his own when he stepped into Helena, knocking her slightly.
“Jasper, I think there’s something in the road,” she said, her eyes never leaving a distant point ahead.
He gazed in the same direction but saw nothing save for the swirling snow. “Your eagle eyes will never cease to amaze me, Helena. I can’t see a thing.”
“It looks like…” She paused, her already-pale skin blanching. Jasper looked in the same direction but still saw nothing.
“What, Helena?”
Her next words were bleak. “It looks like a body.”
By then they had traveled enough for Jasper to make out a dark form in the middle of the road. It did look like a body. His skin went even colder, and the feeling of dread pooled in his gut.
Not another one.
And then he was running. His sisters shouted behind him, but he didn’t register what they said over the hammering of his heart. He stopped short of the figure, gasping from the sudden exertion, and bent to his knees, gingerly turning the body over.
The first thing he noticed was dark crimson blood coating half the woman’s face, and how it pooled in the snow where she had been lying.
He pulled her closer to him, desperate to ascertain if she was still breathing.
“Please,” he whispered, his voice catching in his throat.
Then, to his immense relief, there was a tickle of breath on his cheek, like a whisper of spring against his frozen skin.
“My God,” he heard Helena gasp behind him. “Is she all right?”
Isobel bent next to him and placed her ungloved fingers on the woman’s exposed neck. “Her pulse is weak, but I can feel it.”
Jasper took a second to study their surroundings, noting the erratic markings in the snow. “She must have been thrown from a horse. She’s still warm, but that won’t last.”
Helena’s expression was grave. “She should be dead.”
“She isn’t,” he said, willing it to stay true. “She isn’t.”
He stood, lifting the woman with him as though she weighed nothing at all. “Isobel, run ahead and rouse whoever you can to send for a doctor.” She nodded and ran from them without hesitation. He turned to Helena. “You must go and prepare a room. We want it warm. She’s half frozen.”
His sister paused. “I don’t want to leave you.” But he knew there was more to it than that. Helena had watched her husband die tragically in an accident not so very different from the one they had just stumbled upon. Surely the sight of the bloody woman was dredging up bad memories. But they didn’t have time to sift through the heavy emotions.
“Go, Helena. I cannot risk moving much faster than this. You’ll be more useful at home, preparing for our arrival.”
She swallowed, her throat bobbing, and nodded, her decision made. She took off in the direction of Mulgrave Hall.
The woman in his arms was deathly still. They stood in a sliver of moonlight peeking out from behind the clouds. He knew he had to get moving. She needed medical attention, but more than that, she needed to get warm. His embrace wasn’t going to be enough to stop her from freezing to death, to say nothing of her obvious injuries. He waited as patiently as he could to feel her breath once more.
And then she opened her eyes, and the world around him stopped, confined as he was to those pools of gray, so luminous they appeared almost silver in the pale light. Snowflakes clung to her eyelashes. It took a moment for her gaze to focus on him, but when it did, her pupils dilated fully.
“Don’t let them get me,” she begged, fear weighing heavy in her soft voice.
The words were a shock. Jasper looked up in the direction she had come from but saw nothing. He looked back at her. “Who, my lady?”
She took a shuddering breath, wincing. “Please,” she whispered, before slumping into unconsciousness once more.
Jasper didn’t know what foe she spoke of, but as he held her in his arms, his path was clear. She was a woman in distress who had been injured on his land. He was duty bound as a gentleman to aid her. But it was more than that. When Annabelle had fallen ill, there wasn’t anything Jasper could have done to protect her or spare her the pain of it. She’d suffered as he sat by, unable to help her. Her fate had rested unmercifully outside his control.
But the woman in his arms? The one who still breathed? Whose blood was hot on his skin?
She could still be saved, and he would do everything in his power to ensure she was.
