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    These Haunted Hearts: A Regency Ghost Romance
    These Haunted Hearts: A Regency Ghost Romance
    These Haunted Hearts: A Regency Ghost Romance
    Ebook94 pages1 hour

    These Haunted Hearts: A Regency Ghost Romance

    By Anna Campbell

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    About this ebook

    On one fateful wedding day at Marston Hall in 1818, four linked destinies hover in the balance.

    Josiah Aston, Earl of Stansfield, wakes to discover he’s seventy years dead and he alone can free his beloved wife Isabella’s tormented soul. But first he must convince her to trust him against all the evidence...

    Lady Isabella Verney, beautiful and tempestuous, married the man of her dreams, only to die violently on her wedding day. Every clue points to Josiah as the murderer...

    Is true love strong enough to defeat ancient malevolence forever?

    Miles Hartley, Viscount Kendall, is society’s ideal catch, but what does that matter if he can’t convince Calista Aston that he loves her? When an age-old curse strikes, only by proving himself worthy of her faith can he save their happiness...

    Lady Calista Aston, noted bluestocking, fears she loves Miles Hartley not wisely, but too well. On her wedding day, her doubts place her at evil’s mercy. When death and disaster loom, is it courage or mad folly to believe that Miles loves her in spite of all her faults?

    On one fateful wedding day at Marston Hall in 1818, will the lovers emerge triumphant or will darkness conquer all?

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAnna Campbell
    Release dateMar 11, 2013
    ISBN9781301094110
    These Haunted Hearts: A Regency Ghost Romance
    Author

    Anna Campbell

    Always a voracious reader, Anna Campbell decided when she was a child that she wanted to be a writer. Her historical romances have been critically acclaimed and have won numerous awards, including the Australian Romance Readers’ Favourite Australian Romance Author from 2009 to 2012, and Favourite Historical Romance for Seven Nights in a Rogue’s Bed , Untouched, Captive of Sin and My Reckless Surrender. Seven Nights in a Rogue’s Bed also won Best First Meeting of a Couple, Best Love Scene and Best Cover for 2012. Anna lives in Queensland.

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      Book preview

      These Haunted Hearts - Anna Campbell

      Published by Anna Campbell

      Copyright 2012, 2013 Anna Campbell

      Smashwords Edition

      Cover design and eBook design by Karrie Mathews

      All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems - except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews - without permission in writing from the author, Anna Campbell. This book is a work of fiction. The characters, events, and places portrayed in this book are products of the author’s imagination and are either fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

      On one fateful wedding day at Marston Hall in 1818, four linked destinies hover in the balance.

      Josiah Aston, Earl of Stansfield, wakes to discover he’s seventy years dead and he alone can free his beloved wife Isabella’s tormented soul. But first he must convince her to trust him against all the evidence…

      Lady Isabella Verney, beautiful and tempestuous, married the man of her dreams, only to die violently on her wedding day. Every clue points to Josiah as the murderer…

      Is true love strong enough to defeat ancient malevolence forever?

      Miles Hartley, Viscount Kendall, is society’s ideal catch, but what does that matter if he can’t convince Calista Aston that he loves her? When an age-old curse strikes, only by proving himself worthy of her faith can he save their happiness…

      Lady Calista Aston, noted bluestocking, fears she loves Miles Hartley not wisely, but too well. On her wedding day, her doubts place her at evil’s mercy. When death and disaster loom, is it courage or mad folly to believe that Miles loves her in spite of all her faults?

      On one fateful wedding day at Marston Hall in 1818, will the lovers emerge triumphant or will darkness conquer all?

      To my dear Readers,

      I’ve always loved romantic stories with a touch of the mystical (a mild case of the woo-woos, shall we say?). Movies like The Ghost and Mrs. Muir or A Portrait of Jennie have always been among my favorites.

      So when the people at Mammoth Books asked me to contribute a story to The Mammoth Book of Ghost Romance, I said yes immediately. So far, my published stories, for all their gothic influences, hadn’t verged on the paranormal and I looked forward to the challenge of incorporating some gentle supernatural influences into my work.

      The result was The Chinese Bed which appeared in the ghost romance anthology in June 2012. Since then, I’ve had a nagging desire to go back and do a ‘director’s cut’. The Chinese Bed wasn’t just my first attempt at writing the magical and the mystical, it was also my first try at a secondary romance. Although in this case, ghostly Josiah Aston and Isabella Verney are at least as important as the Regency (and living) couple Miles Hartley and Calista Aston.

      The Chinese Bed has now been extended to become These Haunted Hearts: A Regency Ghost Romance. I hope you enjoy this story of a cursed Chinese bed that works its evil magic on two wedding days. Only if our heroes and heroines trust in true love will they prevail against ancient evil.

      Thanks to the people at Mammoth who invited me to stretch my wings into fresh territory. Thanks also to Kim Castillo, Annie West, Sharon Archer, Christina Brooke and Vanessa Barneveld for helping me to bring this story to publication. And thanks to Karrie Mathews who designed the beautiful cover.

      Watch out for steep staircases and may Chinese princesses never curse your beds!

      Best wishes.

      Anna Campbell

      March 2013

      Chapter One

      Marston Hall, Norfolk, May 1818

      JOSIAH WOKE TO thick darkness.

      He knew immediately where he was. Sprawled across the great Chinese bed at Marston Hall. His glorious, extravagant marriage bed. The king’s gift to his dear friend, Lord Stansfield, upon the earl’s nuptials. Josiah had expressed suitable gratitude for the royal generosity, but he couldn’t avoid thinking a second-hand bed was a rum sort of present for a man supposedly in the regal favor.

      Thick green hangings enclosed him, hangings cut from robes sewn for a Chinese princess’s wedding. A wedding that had never taken place. The elaborate scroll accompanying His Majesty’s gift had laid out the legend as a quaint piece of history. The princess’s lowborn lover had betrayed her instead of stealing her away. Cursing all marriages, she’d poisoned herself on the day she was to marry a powerful warlord.

      Or so the story went.

      In search of warm, sleepy Isabella, Josiah’s hand slid across the silk counterpane, feeling the raised patterns of embroidery under his palm. But he already knew his beloved wasn’t lying beside him.

      By God, he must have been half-seas over before he tumbled onto the cream cover with its thickly twining peonies and fragile pagodas. He was still wearing his wedding clothes. He hadn’t been sober enough to undress. No wonder Isabella had left him to sleep it off. His darling had a temper. He’d hear about his excesses soon enough. He deserved to.

      He didn’t even remember crawling into bed.

      Which, now he thought about it, struck him as rather odd.

      This couldn’t be right. On his wedding day, he’d been drunk on love, not liquor. And he certainly didn’t recall imbibing so deep that he’d collapsed insensible.

      If only he could remember.

      He frowned into the heavy stillness, struggling to bring events into focus. Most of the day was clear in his mind. But some…was not.

      He’d spent all morning in a lather of wanting Isabella. He’d been so hungry to have his bride to himself, he’d dragged her away from the wedding breakfast with scandalous impetuosity. Lord Fenburgh, her drier-than-dust father, had frowned disapproval, but Isabella’s black eyes had flared with excitement. Josiah had won a lusty wife, thank the angels. After weeks of curtailed encounters, she’d been as eager as he to consummate their chaste wooing.

      He remembered her delicious, husky little moan as he’d kissed her ravenously, passionately behind one of the man-size Japanese

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