Free Just One Taste by Maggie Robinson Page A

Audi had finally died an inglorious death on their driveway. The year ahead would be filled with promise, a new car loan, and a brand-new baby girl to keep Emma company.
    Jeez. Two girls. They would keep Will on his steel-toed toes. And who knew? Maybe a little brother would be in their future. Will was ready for anything as long as Alex was by his side.

Diamonds are Forever
    T his short story is set in the same time period as my Edwardian Ladies Unlaced series. The hero Jack Marbury, like Charles Cooper from In the Arms of the Heiress , is a Second Boer war veteran and has been absent from his young wife too long. His escape from prison is actually based on a true story—Winston Churchill’s!
    Lady Delia Marbury has become accustomed to her widowhood, so much so that she's contemplating another marriage. But when her "dead" husband Jack escapes from a Boer prisoner of war camp and turns up on her doorstep, the happy reunion he's been dreaming of is missing, just like the priceless diamond earring he gave Delia on their wedding night. Virtual strangers when they married, they must decide if their future is worth the cost of betrayal and forgiveness.

Chapter 1
    L ondon , June 1901
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    D elia clasped the velvet-lined jewel case to her heart and closed her eyes, as if wishing it would make it so.
    She opened the box. Still the wrong number within. She had two ears, as most everybody did, but nestled in the box’s fiery red bed was a single diamond earring. The space for its twin was empty.
    Wear the earrings I gave you, my love .
    She didn’t have to ask which ones—her husband Jack—Major Lord John Marbury to the rest of the world—had given the family heirlooms to her on their wedding night. He’d left the next morning for South Africa and in the ensuing two years had been unable to provide her with any more jewels. Thoughtless of his superiors, and then his captors, to prevent him from showing his undying affection.
    Thoughtless of Delia to presume him dead. Somehow, she should have known .
    Oh, she hadn’t been a merry widow. No one could have faulted her for her deportment and propriety once her husband appeared on the list of the war dead. Delia had been discreet. Dutiful to his memory and her new responsibilities. She’d worn black—hell, she still wore black, even though Jack had been home for five days. She had nothing else in her closet, and was still technically in mourning for his aunt.
    His return as a hero had been both a miracle and a menace, and she didn’t know how she would get through the evening ahead. Tomorrow the newspapermen would come to learn of his daring escape from the prison camp in Pretoria, and everyone would soon know what she had done.
    It hadn’t been so daring, he shrugged before he took to his bed, Delia fluttering in confusion around him. He’d hidden under the floorboards as the Boers transferred the prisoners to some other hellhole. When the silence had simply been overwhelming, he’d crawled out and walked out of the unlocked building, bartered his way to a train to Portuguese territory, then found himself in prison all over again.
    True, an English prison this time. He’d been investigated over his capture and finally exonerated. The fact that he was half-starved and feverish was in his favor. It was not his fault that another body had been misidentified as his. At that point, he had been almost sorry to be alive.
    But not completely. I wanted to come home to you, Delia . The thought of you was the only thing that kept me sane.
    And she had betrayed him.
    Delia set the box back on her dressing table. There had been no letter informing her he was alive. No cable from the government. A rather suspicious set of oversights. They’d certainly let her know soon enough when they declared him dead. Who was buried in the family plot? No time to worry about that now.
    There had been no warning until her brown scarecrow of a husband collapsed in the front hallway, the very day