by Dayna Quince
She was ready to begin this journey, wherever it may lead.
She returned to her room to bathe and change. Whatever had been planned for the day, it seemed all activities were now suspended. Jeanie sat before her dresser mirror, brushing out her tangled curls, winced as one especially brutal knot wouldn’t budge.
She set down her brush, and in her reflection, she caught sight of a strange mark on her neck. She touched the splotch of red, just below her collar bone, frowning. She couldn’t remember being bit by anything there but—
She blushed.
It was an abrasion from his beard stubble. She flushed with pleasure, memories of the morning, her internal temperature climbing by several degrees. She’d have to change her dress and put on the one with the higher collar.
She grinned at her reflection, stood, and removed her dress. Out fell a slip of paper and Jeanie gasped. She’d forgotten about the page Lord Selhorst had folded and given her to give to Jeanie. In her haste, she’d not even read it. But she had remembered to pick it up from Luc’s floor while redressing.
He’d said she could read it. So she unfolded it and spread the page on her dresser top.
It was a page from a book of sonnets. Jeanie gasped as she read the words, recognizing the first line as a phrase Josie often repeated.
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
O no! It is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wand'ring bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me prov'd,
I never writ, nor no man ever lov'd.
Jeanie pressed a hand over her beating heart. This was Shakespeare, one of Josie’s favorite playwrights. But Jeanie had never heard this sonnet before, and yet Josie had said that first line so many times.
And somehow he had known.
Was this…a declaration of love?
Jeanie reread it.
This was a proposal. She sucked in a breath, so giddy her head spun.
She refolded the letter.
Love. This castle was filled with it.
Josie and Selhorst would be married and Anne and Roderick and—
But not me.
Her hands went numb, the page slipping from her fingers to the floor.
Jeanie stared at it, trying to shake free of the immobilizing force that had taken over her. As though an invisible, menacing force had captured her and she couldn’t move.
She closed her eyes, squeezing them, and forced herself to bend and pick up the paper.
So much love. She had it. He’d said he loved her and yet suddenly… It wasn’t enough. Jeanie looked at her reflection, her face pale. She loved him so much.
Too much.
Too much to be his mistress.
Jeanie couldn’t sit idly by waiting for him as he went about another life, marrying another woman. She wanted that right, to be that woman. She would not share his love. She pressed a hand to her abdomen.
They’d made love and even now, a child could be taking root.
Their child.
What life would that child have? She knew when she’d stared this journey it wouldn’t be easy. But she hadn’t expected the first storm so soon. Jeanie sat at her dressing table, dropping her head onto her folded arms.
She had to tell him.
There had to be another way. She’d chosen love, just as her mother had said to do. But no measure of love would make the idea of him sharing his bed with another woman, his wife, bearable. Jeanie couldn’t be his mistress.
And now she had to tell him.
Love, please don’t let me down.
The next morning Luc wandered into the tower just for the solitude. It wasn’t as though the house was bursting with activity, but he wanted to ensure no one could find him. He circled the room, staring out the windows, his mind a bog of dangerous traps.
He had to think, to find a way to marry Jeanie but to also find a source of income that would support the life his brother and sister were born into. Difficult, given he had no money to begin with.
He shoved his hands in his pockets, scuffing his boot on the ground and kicking a black pebble across the floor. He frowned at it and the bent to pick it up, praying it wasn’t rodent droppings he was now cupping in his hand.
It wasn’t.
He stared down at the piece of charcoal. A remnant of his former self. The artist who’d thought the drawing of the woman, who was now the source of his beating heart, would ever be enough to sustain him for the years to come.
Luc was about to crush the charcoal in his hand, when abruptly he had the urge to draw something. He inhaled. It was back? He hadn’t felt this need since…he’d tried to end things with Jeanie. There was nothing on which to draw unless…
He squatted down to the floor, grinning like a little boy as he made a rough sketch of a yellow rattle, the same little flowers stitched on Jeanie’s best dress. She’d done them herself, he’d bet. Beautiful little flowers and a tenacious weed, if he remembered correctly from the last report from his land steward who managed Luckfeld manor.
He suddenly had the urge to go back. And he wanted Jeanie to go with him.
The last little piece of the charcoal disintegrated between his fingers. He was one leaf shy of a perfect representation. He stared at the flower, its little bulbous-shaped petals reminding him of little Chinese dragons. How funny. He’d never noticed that before.
“My lord?”
Luc turned and stood, dusting his fingers on his trouser. A footman waited by the door.
“His Grace is awaiting you in the study.”
“I’m coming straight away.”
He spared one more glance at his drawing and a kernel of hope, small, not much more than a seed, planted itself. Perhaps Luc could learn from a weed like yellow rattle. Finding a place to thrive even in the worst of conditions.
Luc entered Weirick’s study and sat before the desk. He saw his letters on the desk and his stomach turned over.
“You read them?”
Weirick nodded, setting the last one on top.
“Quite entertaining, if I may say.”
“How so?”
Weirick chuckled. “I’ll just use one word. Descriptive.”
Luc grimaced.
“They were in love,” Weirick said with a knowing grin.
Any amusement Luc felt evaporated. “Should I take comfort in that for some reason?”
“I think you should. He asked about you in every letter, begged to see you.”
Luc masked a jab of pain behind a careless shrug. What would it have been like to be loved as a child? To not have been used as a tool for revenge, to not have been robbed of his inheritance and denied love—no.
Not anymore.
He’d found love. And he intended to keep it.
“What more would you like to know?” Weirick asked.
“I’m not sure. I can’t even remember why I needed you to read them.”
Weirick folded his hands on the desk. “For perspective, I’d guess.”
Luc shrugged again. The letters had done nothing for him. He supposed it was just an impulse. He took the stack and tucked them into his jacket pocket.
Weirick sighed. “When are you planning to ask me for help? I’m not very patient, you know.”
Luc swallowed. “Help?”
“I could get your brother a scholarship to Harrow with a donation and no one would know.”
Luc wanted to vomit. He forced himself to breathe. “How did you know?”
&nbs
p; “You think I wouldn’t investigate the men invited here to woo nine women I consider under my protection?”
“How much do you know?” Luc ground out.
“I know everything,” Weirick said quietly. “Every pending debt, every parcel of land he lost…”
The room spun. Luc leaned forward, holding his head in his hands.
“Don’t lose your composure in my study.” Weirick stood.
Luc could hear him pouring a drink. A glass thudded on the desk before him.
“Drink. Settle your nerves.”
Luc leaned back and picked up the tumbler, throwing the liquid back in one swallow.
Good. Whisky.
Brandy would have been too sweet. It might have made his stomach revolt.
“I don’t think anyone can help me.”
“Bollocks,” Weirick scoffed. “I spoke with your secretary. I recommend you fire him. Any man complicit in the total dismantling of a lucrative estate should be hung by his baubles. And for what? Because you weren’t his blood son? The man was an ugly bastard. He was lucky to have your mother and you.”
Luc closed his eyes, his head falling back against the chair. “I won’t accept money.”
“Then I’ll make the investments in Jeanie’s name and gift them to her.”
Luc opened his eyes and sat up.
Weirick laughed. “Ah, you blind fool. You think I don’t have eyes all over this castle? I know everything that goes on. This party has been the most fun I’ve had in years. Except for courting and marrying Violet. Best time of my life it was, and still is.”
Luc rubbed his eyes. Was he delirious? Was the whiskey tainted?
Had Weirick poisoned him?
“I don’t understand.”
Weirick laughed. “Was I this thickskulled? I think I was worse. But that is a story for another time. Go propose to your future viscountess and make everything up to scratch. Violet will be disappointed if her house parties are deemed scandalous.”
Luc let out a surprised laugh, still trying to absorb all that Weirick had said. “What about what happened at Kirkland? A man died?”
“Serves him right for kidnapping a Marsden. But that happened at Kirkland. Not here. We are still going forward with the ball. Let me know when things are settled, and we’ll announce the engagement.”
“I…”
“Look ill, and I’m sure you are utterly grateful, but I’ve a need to see what my own wife is up to this moment.” Weirick ushered him out.
Luc shook his head as he staggered out of Weirick’s office. He felt like he’d entered another world, this one brighter, the air clearer, the colors more vivid. He went straight to Jeanie’s door.
To propose he thought, though he didn’t have any idea what to say. Weirick seemed to have tied up his life with a neat little bow, and now he could marry Jeanie.
Jeanie.
He braced himself, frantically thinking what he would say, hoping no one would come upon him, standing before her door like a lunatic.
But then her door opened, and it was Jeanie’s beautiful face that greeted him. But Josie’s scowl. She shoved him back and closed the door, standing before it like a sentinel.
He blinked in surprise and then he grinned.
“I love her.”
“She is indisposed at the moment.”
Luc blanked. “Did you hear me?”
“I heard you,” she hissed.
“What is wrong?”
“I told you she doesn’t—”
The door opened. There Jeanie stood, her eyes red, her face pale.
His heart twisted.
“Go, Josie. You may come in.”
He changed spots with Josie, and Josie glared at him as she crossed the hall to her own door.
“What is the matter?”
“We shouldn’t talk here.” She pulled on a cloak.
Baffled, he stood silently and then followed her out. Curiously and rather fortuitously, she led him to the bottom tier of the terrace, overlooking the ocean.
She turned to him, her eyes misty. He changed his mind about the location being fortuitous. Something was terribly wrong.
“I’d rather talk here because I…don’t want to be tempted.”
He looked toward the castle. He knew this location well. He’d visited this house many times. He also knew if standing against that wall, one could not be seen unless on the terrace itself.
He met her gaze again and raised a brow. “Not even a little?”
Color flagged her cheeks. Good. She was far too pale. She should be smiling, laughing, moaning his name. Whatever was causing her grief he could fix it. He could fix anything now.
What was in that bloody whisky?
At the moment, he didn’t care. He leaned toward her and she stiffened, her pupils dilating.
That’s right, feel what you feel for me. Let it into your blood stream. I see you, Jeanie. I know you’re caught in this web with me, unable to resist what burns inside both of us.
She fisted her hands together and held them in front of her.
“I can’t be your mistress. I… I can’t share you with another woman.”
Her words filtered into his blood like good wine, adding to the dizzying joy he felt. He stepped closer to her.
“Good.”
She let out a huff of breath, shivering.
Luc slipped off his jacket and brought it around her shoulders. Just like…that night. In the darkness, in the misty rain. He touched her hands and pulled her close to him, wrapping his larger hands around her cold little fists.
“I see you, Jeanie. I see you and it’s like no one else exists. There is something so different about you and it calls to me, the way a lighthouse calls a ship home. I’ve come home and I’m not going anywhere.”
He turned her, backing her up against the high wall that supported the tier above them. They were utterly alone, the only sound their breath and the roar of the waves, the only witness the seagull that rode the wind.
He wanted her just as acutely as he did that first night. But there was no more darkness. They were bathed in light, in warm sun, and a peaceful breeze.
He dropped to one knee. “Marry me. We don’t have to hide our love.”
She sucked in her lip, her tears spilling over. “But…but your sister, she has to debut, your brother… He must go to Harrow.”
He grinned. “And they will. I can explain it all later, but right now, it’s about us, Jeanie. I won’t sacrifice my love for you anymore. Say you’ll be my wife.”
Her bottom lip trembled. “Yes,” she said.
He came to his feet, their arms coming around each other, their mouths clashing in a plundering kiss. H lifted her up against the wall, bringing her knee to his hip, gathering her skirts.
She gasped as he broke the kiss. “Luc! We can’t. Not here.”
“Aren’t you the least bit tempted?”
She took a deep breath, her breasts pressing against him, her body melting into his, and she nodded.
They both grinned, their smiles dissolving as they lips merged once again.
The crash of the waves on the rocks below hid her cries of ecstasy, and only the lone seagull, flying high on the wind, witnessed their surrender to temptation.
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Contact Dayna at daynaquince.com
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Also by Dayna Quince
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About the Author
Dayna was only fourteen when she developed a serious addiction to romance novels. What began as an innocent desire to read became an all-out obsession with the romance genre. She gave book reports on romance novels, got in trouble for reading during lectures, and would rather spend her time reading than attending high school parties. After all, high school boys could not compete with the likes of Stephanie Laurens Devil Cynster. After getting her first job, her addiction only got worse. She now had her own money to spend and a car to get to Barnes and Noble as frequently as she wanted. She managed to maintain a somewhat normal life, marrying her high school boyfriend who was aware he was competing with fictional men for her attention. Dayna soon began writing her own romance novels, inspired by her love for all things romance. Dayna and her family live in Southern California with their two children and three fur babies. Dayna is happiest at home where she can be with her family and write to her hearts content.
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