Love Practically (The Penn-Leiths of Thistle Muir, #1)

by Nichole Van

To all those who believe love has passed them by.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single lady in possession of no fortune must long to marry a duke’s son.

With every passing year, Leah felt herself pushed more and more to the fringes of her loved ones’ lives, moving from the caretaker of their happiness to a mere spectator of it.

Hadley was right. Fox did need a wife. Only one question remained: How would he go about acquiring one?

“This parlor is . . .” She braced herself for his opinion. “. . . charming,” he finished.

How fine a housekeeper do ye be wanting?” “A breathing one,”

Gracious. Such a statement had all the hallmarks of a Gothic novel. A world-weary war veteran. An ancient castle miles up a remote Highland glen. A young ward, secreted within it for her safety.

“in marriage, ye become part of someone else. In a way, ye lose yourself in them. With my Aileen, this feels . . . glorious. Our marriage is loving. We support and nourish one another. But if the love goes off . . .” His voice trailed away for a moment. “Well, I imagine ye can become so lost that ye struggle to keep any piece of yourself.”

“Happiness is what we make of our situation, not what the situation intrinsically is,”

After all, contentment was not measured by experiences lived, but by one’s attitude toward those experiences.

The day after her marriage and she was greeting her new husband like he was a customer at the local bakery. “Good morning,” Fox replied, equally formal, as if he were visiting said bakery.

She and Fox were both trapped in their own way. Fox, by the betrayals and shattering pain of his past. Leah, by her own selflessness, by a past that told her she was not valued unless she was useful.

Joy and grief are two sides of the same coin. Ye cannae have one without the other. It’s foolishness in the extreme tae be so consumed by the possibility of loss that ye miss the joy of love entirely. Sorrow means the heart loved true.”

This was the worst part of loss, Leah thought. The endless ambush of emotion. The sense that the worst had passed and then bam! Something unexpected—a sound, a smell, an image—would bring grief crashing down again.

“Happiness and love are akin tae strawberries.” His voice turned hoarse, and he glanced at his dwindling whisky. “Ye have tae glut yourself when the occasion arises—create memories tae see ye through the dark seasons.”

“Death is an amputation.” He fixed her with haunted eyes. “A violent severing of a vital part of ye. It throbs like a phantom limb, pulsing with a pain that nothing can soothe.”

“Life is short, sister. Love hard and true . . . while ye still have time.”

Fox Carnegie loves Leah Penn-Leith.