Free Simmer All Night by Geralyn Dawson

get a rise out of her mother. Shame washed through her. You are twenty going on two, Chrissy Delaney.
    She'd thought long and hard about her situation and concluded that while she was responsible for her own actions, her mother wasn't entirely blameless. Lana's relationship with her son exemplified that point. Where Lana worried about Michael's behavior because of the potential harm to the boy, Elizabeth Delaney's primary concern was how her daughter's actions reflected upon her and upon the exalted Delaney name.
    Chrissy finally decided that it came down to a question of degrees of love. Lana loved Michael with her whole heart and soul. Elizabeth loved Chrissy because she was a good woman and it was her duty to love her child. The child in Chrissy yearned for a mother's unfettered love like Lana gave to Michael and Sophie. Elizabeth Delaney's dutiful love left a hollowness inside her daughter that Chrissy had spent years trying to fill in sometimes inappropriate ways.
    So what had Chrissy learned from all this pondering? On a bright, golden dawn she'd gazed out over the sapphire sea and swore that when she loved, she would give her heart wholly and unconditionally. If ever there was to be a man in her life, she would demand the same in return. It was, she thought, the only way loving should be done.
    With that decided, she had settled back to enjoy the days at sea. The children made the trip a delight, and even their coach trip from Liverpool proved to be a pleasure. Normal sibling squabbles remained at a minimum, and with her children happy and out of reach of her in-laws, Lana relaxed and laughed often. It gladdened Chrissy's heart, as did the fact that her friend suffered not a single headache since leaving Texas.
    Now, however, as they traveled the last few miles of their journey, Chrissy suddenly wished she had never left San Antonio. Never in her life had she been this nervous.
    Searching desperately for a distraction, Chrissy followed Michael's lead and turned her attention to the passing countryside. The land here in Derbyshire lived up to her mother's claims of beauty. Fluffy white sheep dotted green rolling hills, and the hedges of holly and hawthorn provided fencing much more pleasing to the eye than the strands of barbed wire now spreading across Texas like a plague.
    Momentum shifted her forward in her seat as the coach topped a hill, then she swayed to one side as it made a slow turn. She spied a quaint arched stone bridge and smiled at the ducks perched along one edge. Only after the approaching coach sent the birds flapping toward the water did her gaze lift to the distance and the stately house nestled between lake, hillside, and forest. "Oh my," she breathed, bracing a hand against a cushion to steady herself, as much against the sight before her as the rocking of the coach. Michael whistled softly.
    At the sound of her voice, Lana and Sophie joined Michael and Chrissy at the windows. Sophie gasped. "Miss Chrissy, look at that palace! Is that where the Queen lives?"
    Chrissy gazed down at the imposing Palladian facade of the great stately home and found it difficult to breathe. "No, the Queen doesn't live here, although according to my mother, she has visited a time or two. That's Hartsworth and it's a country house, not a palace. My mother described the fountain. We've arrived."
    "This is it?" The little girl wriggled in her seat. "I get to live there? Just like a princess?"
    Lana smoothed her daughter's hair and gently reminded, "Honey, don't forget that here at Hartsworth we work for Miss Chrissy. We're her servants. We are not here to play princess."
    Chrissy took the girl's hand in one of her own and squeezed. "You and I will play princess while we're here, I promise. And Lana, we may have to play this servant-mistress nonsense in public, but I'll be hanged if I have to listen to it in private."
    The trio fell silent as the coach made its way along the serpentine road toward Hartsworth. Chrissy couldn't