Spotlight & Giveaway: Always Remember by Mary Balogh

Today, HJ is pleased to share with you Mary Balogh’s new release: Always Remember

Lady Jennifer Arden and Ben Ellis know that a match between them is out of the question. Yet their hearts yearn for the impossible. Discover a new heartwarming story from New York Times bestselling author and beloved “queen of Regency romance” Mary Balogh.

Left unable to walk by a childhood illness, Lady Jennifer, sister of the Duke of Wilby, has grown up to make a happy place for herself in society. Outgoing and cheerful, she has many friends and enjoys the pleasures of high society—even if she cannot dance at balls or stroll in Hyde Park. She is blessed with a large, loving, and protective family. But she secretly dreams of marriage and children, and of walking—and dancing.

When Ben Ellis comes across Lady Jennifer as she struggles to walk with the aid of primitive crutches, he instantly understands her yearning. He is a fixer. It is often said of him that he never saw a practical problem he did not have to solve. He wants to help her discover independence and motion—driving a carriage, swimming, even walking a different way. But he must be careful. He is the bastard son of the late Earl of Stratton. Though he was raised with the earl’s family, he knows he does not really belong in the world of the ton.

Jennifer is shocked—and intrigued—by Ben’s ideas, and both families are alarmed by the growing friendship and perhaps more that they sense developing between the two. A duke’s sister certainly cannot marry the bastard son of an earl. Except sometimes, love can find a way.

Enjoy an exclusive excerpt from Always Remember 

“Has life been depressing for you in the last few months, then?” he asked. Lucas and Pippa had lived at Amberwell with her for a few months after their marriage and had intended going back there after the christening of their twins. But the death of the duke had made it necessary that they remain at Greystone to assume their new duties as Duke and Duchess of Wilby.
“A little confining and monotonous,” she admitted after thinking about it for a moment. “A mourning period ought not to be like that. Not, at least, for elderly people who lived long, full lives. It ought to be full of happy reminiscences and laughter instead. Many people would look upon me with horrified disapproval if I said that aloud to them, of course. It would suggest that I did not care. I did. My aunt feels the same way, even though my grandparents were her parents.”
Silence—not of the comfortable sort—threatened to descend upon them again.
“Will you ever be able to walk without your crutches?” he asked. “Alas, no,” she said. “For many months when I was a child I was confined to my bed. My legs were paralyzed. So was the rest of me for a shorter while. I recovered my general health over time and the paralysis went, but it left my right leg bent out of shape and my foot and ankle twisted. The leg did not grow to match the other.” She smiled. “I suppose I am blessed to be a woman. A long skirt hides a multitude of sins. I was given the crutches to help me move very short distances with the bad leg raised out of the way. It is a convenience for which I am thankful. But it does not enable me to walk. My right leg soon aches too much when I have to hold it off the ground. But my physician is strongly of the belief that I will do further damage by trying to walk on both legs. He has warned me not even to try. I do it anyway. Sometimes the longing to stand upright, on both feet, to see the world as others see it, is quite irresistible. And sometimes I just need to defy the wisdom of those who love me. Love can occasionally be a bit smothering.”
Her cheeks were flushed, Ben saw. Undoubtedly she was as un- accustomed to talking about her disability as he was to speaking about his years in the Peninsula. But yes, he decided, her habitual cheerfulness was definitely something that concealed a deeper anguish. It was actually admirable that she made the effort to walk, hopeless though it seemed and against the explicit orders of her physician. He guessed she did not wish to impose her disappointments and frustrations upon the family that loved her. So she bore them alone and exercised her little rebellions in private. Yet she had confided some of them to him. Just as he had confided some of himself to her. It was easier sometimes to talk to near strangers, of course, and he and Lady Jennifer Arden were essentially just that.
He should have left it there. He should perhaps have suggested that they go back inside, especially as the sun was shining down directly upon them and she was not wearing a bonnet. But he continued speaking. “There must be other ways to experience movement and to feel alive and free,” he said.
“Must there?” She smiled again.
“Have you ever ridden a horse?” he asked. “No!” She laughed. “Of course not.”
“Driven a gig or any other one-horse vehicle?” he asked. “No.” She laughed again.
“Learned to swim?” he asked. “Good heavens, no.”
“Worn any sort of brace on your leg or any specially designed shoe or boot on your foot to bring the length of your affected leg more in line with the other?” he asked.
“Enough!” She was still laughing. “I am coddled, Mr. Ellis. Loved. Held very dear. Protected. Encouraged to rest, to avoid any great exertion. Only when I go to London for parts of a spring Season do I get to go places and do things, though my aunt is forever fearful that I will overexert myself and suffer a relapse. Last year I actually attended a ball and a garden party and visited a number of galleries. I was even at Almack’s the night my grandfather suffered his heart seizure—the day before Luc married Pippa. But . . . no. The answer to all your questions is no. Here I sit, and here I will probably sit for the rest of my life, though not as a permanent fixture in the Ravens- wood rose arbor, I hasten to add. It is not so very bad, you know. One adjusts to the realities of one’s life.”
He did not believe her. Not entirely, anyway. There was a certain wistfulness in her efforts to walk.
“Perhaps in the next few weeks while we are both still here,” he said, “I can look into ways of bringing something new and challenging into your life to help lift your spirits.”

What the devil was he suggesting? From being uncomfortable with her crippled state, he was now to wage a one-man crusade to save her? He was embarrassing himself. It would serve him right if she gave him a sharp setdown.
Her eyes sparkled at him instead—and fine eyes they were too. They were light brown, chocolate with cream stirred into it. “So, by the time I return to Amberwell, I will be able to ride my own horse and drive my own carriage and swim like a fish and walk elegantly without my crutches?” she said. “Perhaps even waltz at the ball on the evening of the Ravenswood fete? But no, alas. That at least will not be possible. I am in mourning.”
It was not a sharp setdown, but she was laughing at him nevertheless.
“I beg your pardon,” he said, straightening up on the seat. “I did not mean to mock you.”
“I did not take your suggestions as mockery,” she told him. “You are a dreamer, Mr. Ellis. So am I, though I believe my dreams are more of the airy variety while yours are more practical—even if they are impossible to bring to reality. I would find life insupportable, I believe, without dreams.”

Excerpted from Always Remember by Mary Balogh Copyright © 2024 by Mary Balogh. Excerpted by permission of Berkley. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

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Meet the Author:

Mary Balogh has written more than one hundred historical novels and novellas, more than forty of which have been New York Times bestsellers. They include the Bedwyn saga, the Simply quartet, the Huxtable quintet, the seven-part Survivors’ Club series, and the Westcott series.
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/725326/always-remember-by-mary-balogh/