Searching for My Love

SEARCHING FOR MY LOVE SPINSTERS OF THE NORTH BOOK THREE ISABELLA THORNE MIKITA ASSOCIATES Peggy’s Story Book 3 Spinsters of the North Searching for My Love Copyright © 2023 by Isabella Thorne 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, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. CONTENTS Part I Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter3 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Part II Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Part III Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Part IV Chapter 23 Chapter 24 Chapter 25 Chapter 26 Chapter 27 Chapter 28 Chapter 29 Chapter 30 Chapter 31 Epilogue Also By Isabella Thorne Don’t Miss The Countess and the Baron The Countess and the Baron PART I CHAPTER 1 The journey had been long and much more cumbersome than Miss Margaret Williams had anticipated. Mrs. Williams, she repeated to herself. She was Mrs. Peggy Williams now. She must accustom herself to the ruse that she was a widow for her son’s sake. She hated the lying, but it must be done, else, her son would be branded a bastard. She sighed, exhausted in body, mind, and spirit. Having been granted her freedom after four long years of unwilling servitude, Peggy had expected the vigor of her release to bolster her journey to the far north. Rather, having lived within the confines of Blackwell house and seeing nothing but its dreary walls for so many years, she had found her reintroduction to the outside world nothing short of overwhelming. The streets were busier than she remembered; even the long country roads were filled with carriages and passersby waving and shouting at one another. Their cheerful greetings unnerved her. The villages bustled with activity, and there was always some festival or another that brought out the crowds in droves. Sounds and smells that she had thought were long forgotten came rushing back to her. She had chosen to rent a horse and travel amongst the wagons filled with troubadours that went from town to town singing and plying their goods rather than stuff herself into the mail coach, although the journey would have been much faster by coach. The thought of being confined in such close quarters, even for a short while, left her shaking and nervous. She had wanted to feel the open air on her skin and smell the scent of the wide-open meadows that bordered the roadway, even though the weather was quite cool. She might have already reached Northwickshire within a fortnight—and the small village where her son was supposed to be—had she chosen another means of travel, but the stop and go of her merry little band had given her the time to prepare herself, she hoped, for what lay ahead. He had waited four long years. A few more days could not matter. Her son. Adam. At first, when her friend and solicitor, the dear Mr. Crowley, had given her the information that she needed to locate the child from whom she had been separated, she had raced off to plan her travels without hesitation. Now… well, she was not quite delaying, but she was glad that she had taken the long route. She had needed to think. Needed to ponder all of the possibilities. What if Mr. Crowley’s informant had been wrong and Adam had been removed to another location? The money that she had been given by the Duke of Manchester in restitution for her suffering seemed substantial, but she was a woman who, for ages, hadn’t had a guinea to her name. What if it was not enough to buy her son from the family to which he had been sold and also provide the two of them with a suitable living afterwards? She couldn’t very well take her child to beg on the streets. Worse yet, and her greatest fear of all, what if he did not want her? What if he did not even remember the mother from whom he had been parted at the tender young age of less than five years? What if he did not wish to see her? Or leave with her? What if the one thing that had given her strength these past years, the thought of starting a new life with Adam, was nothing more than a dream? She could not quite keep the abhorrent thought from her mind. What if he was happy where he was? What if he had made a home without her? What would she do? What a wicked mother she was to wish years of unhappiness upon her own son. Of course, she tried to keep her thoughts focused upon a more positive outcome. Adam would recognize her in an instant and come running into her arms. They would embrace, and she would explain that she had never meant to leave him, and he would understand. He would accept her back into his life with all the gusto of the small boy who had once greeted her each morning with a smile and a kiss. They would be together again, a family, albeit a small one. These long months on the road had given her time to think, to ponder the plan that had previously been filled with ridiculous fantasies of retrieving her son and then buying passage on a ship to a far-off land where she would never have to look at the cursed English soil again. Despite her fantasies, she had come to see that option as unreasonable. Where would they go? Certainly not to the colonies. That was no place for a lone woman and child, and she had no intention of marrying, even for the comfort of provisions or protection. Peggy was world weary enough to