The Girl From Summer Hill Read online

  Jack and Nina went with them, closing the door and leaving Tate and Casey alone.

  “Are you okay?” she asked.

  He was still leaning against the headboard, and he held out his arm to her. She snuggled against him.

  Tate entwined her fingers with his. “It’s all because of you.”

  “What is?”

  “This,” he said. “Everything. Jack and Gizzy. Nina and Josh. Kit and Olivia.”

  “You and Harvey Weinstein?”

  Tate laughed. “The true-love match.”

  “Do you think you’ll be asked to play other parts?”

  He pulled back to look at her. “I think it just might happen. And you brought it all to me.”

  “Sure it wasn’t Colonel Peacock in the well house?”

  He knew what she was doing. She didn’t want to take credit for the good that she’d done. He picked up her hand and looked at the ring. “You like it?”

  “Very much.” Her heart increased its speed. “Where did you get it?”

  “My manager sent me some photos and I chose one. We can trade it for something else if you don’t like this one.”

  “I don’t understand about this ring. I know you proposed, but it was onstage and not real.”

  When he slid down in the bed, he took her with him. “A lot of people saw you nod in agreement. I’d really hate to have to sue you for breach of promise. Since I have so many witnesses, you’ll lose for sure.”

  “Guess I better not try it, then.” He was kissing her neck. “This is where we started this morning.”

  “Uncle Tate!” Emmie yelled through the door.

  “And this is where it went,” Tate said with a moan. “What do you need, Emmie?”

  “Mom said she’s going to make pancakes.”

  Casey and Tate looked at each other.

  “Sorry,” Casey said, “but this is an emergency. Your sister is in my kitchen!” She started to get up, but Tate pulled her back.

  “I am the happiest man in the world,” he said. “There were things missing in my life, but the gaps have been filled. I love you.”

  “I love you,” she whispered.

  “Uncle Tate!” Emmie yelled again, her voice now frantic. “Mom wants to know how much salt to put in the pancakes.”

  Casey stared at Tate with wild eyes.

  “Go!” he said. “Anyway, I need to answer some calls.”

  After half a dozen quick kisses, Casey ran down the stairs.

  Tate pulled on his jeans and went to the window. It was a new day, the beginning of a new life. He heard a crash from downstairs—a bowl broken—and he smiled. Sauntering across the drive was the old peacock, its glorious tail dragging behind it. “Thanks, old man,” he said.

  Disdainful, the bird didn’t even look up.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  This book was difficult to write. Think “screaming pain.” Too often, I was on the floor pounding fists and feet and yelling sacrilegious things about Jane Austen.

  Since I’d read Pride and Prejudice so many times and seen every TV/movie version, I thought it would be a cinch to rewrite it.

  Ha! Looking at a book from a writer’s POV is very different from that of a reader/viewer.

  How could I make my heroine believe a man’s lies when they could be checked on the Internet? How did a man run off with a fifteen-year-old girl and not have criminal charges brought against him? And why, oh why did Wickham get to do so many rotten things but was never punished?

  It took a lot of thinking—and a massive rewrite—to bring the story into the modern world and make it close to being the dreaded “politically correct.” Endlessly asking permission wears a romance author out!

  At the end I was so brain-dead that I decided not to put in the play. Jane ended her book with “I love you,” so I could too. But I put on my must-do hat and wrote the play with three versions of Pride and Prejudice going on: Jane’s, the one in the script, and the one offstage.

  When I finished the book, I sent it to my dear editor, Linda Marrow, without a final read-through. I fully expected the ol’ let’s-have-lunch response: the death knell over chocolate when she told me the book was awful.

  When she said she loved it, I argued with her. I still think Ms. Austen should have taken up a hobby other than “making up characters.”

  I would like to thank Linda for her praise and for listening to me complain so much. My Facebook buddies are always great with their many comments.

  Thanks to Mary Bralove for saying in horror, “But she has to be fifteen!”

  And thanks to all the people at Random House who read the book and said, “I loved the opening scene.” I’m not sure, but I don’t think that was a truly scholarly choice.

  By Jude Deveraux

  THE NANTUCKET BRIDES NOVELS

  True Love

  For All Time

  Ever After

  THE SUMMER HILL NOVELS

  The Girl from Summer Hill

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Jude Deveraux is the author of forty-three New York Times bestsellers to date, including Moonlight in the Morning and A Knight in Shining Armor. There are more than sixty million copies of her work in print worldwide.

  jude-deveraux.com

  Facebook.com/​JudeDeveraux

  @JudeDeveraux1

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