The Heart of the Hermit

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In Edwardian England, three single women make a pact to help one another to find a husband. Tired of being overlooked and ridiculed because of their unmarried state, Constance, Laura and Stella decide that if their families won't help them to meet suitable husbands, they will just have to help themselves. It's 1909. Fed up with being ridiculed or pitied, three single young women make a vow to help each other find a nice man to marry. But as the bard said, the course of true love never did run smooth, and there is trouble ahead! The pact doesn't include her! Constance agrees to help her friends find a suitor, but seeing that she already has her sights set on one very unsuitable man, so obviously she won't be interested in meeting someone else. The pact doesn't include her! Voted an honorary spinster, but really a young widow, Laura doesn't want to repeat the mistakes of the past, so she has absolutely no intention of finding herself husband. Besides which she has enough on her plate with her house falling down around her and no money to buy food, let alone fix the roof! The pact won't include her either: Stella is still nursing her own heartbreak, and so the last thing she is interested in is finding a new man for herself. No doubt one of her sisters will snatch him too. This is Constance's story. Extract from The Heart of the Hermit: The Three Spinsters book 1: an Edwardian England sweet romance novella: Amongst the trees a man stood watching. He didn't mind how long he stood there. He just had to see her. He didn't notice that the spring air was chilly, or that a light drizzle fell. Or that he was only partly protected by the canopy of the trees. His attention was so firmly fixed upon her lovely face, and the soft glances of amusement she cast at her friends, and the gentle sway of her figure as she crossed the room to take a plate to one of her guests, that the rain, the cold, and even the possibility of being seen by others were all blocked from his mind. Now and then the breeze carried to him the sound of her laugh or her voice, rising from time to time to give emphasis to her words or expression to her laughter. She was utterly captivating. A deep longing filled him, all the more painful for being impossible to satisfy. To have someone beside him, someone who listened, talked, laughed. Someone to sit with, walk with, someone to hold in his arms. To love. It was the one thing he could not have, yet it was the only thing he craved. Ever since he had come to this place, she filled his every thought, sleeping or awake. But this was as close as he could ever be to happiness. Inside the house, three ladies were taking tea, as they did every Wednesday, and quite often on other days as well. Miss Constance Ogilvy, the hostess, was the only daughter of the late Brinsley Ogilvy, Baron Tutbury and his delightful wife, the former Miss Millicent Hargreaves, that celebrated beauty who, many will remember, was presented at Court in 1879 and by the end of her first ball had famously received four proposals of marriage and one further proposal of an infamous kind, for which the 'gentleman' had been called out and had lost his two front teeth to the Baron's right hook. But their daughter's fortunes had not fared so well as that of her mother, and now, at twenty-eight years of age it was no secret amongst all their friends that Constance's older brothers considered their sister well and truly on the shelf.