She kissed him, a thousand sparks of light landing on his lips.
She did love him.
She had given him laughter and love. Her body. Her soul.
She had given him hope.
Hope that would last him all of his days.
{ Epilogue }
“Did I just see that?”
The words slipped from her mouth, a hesitant, awed whisper. Cass held her eyes wide open, even as they begged to close, begged to wet the aching pain of dryness. She couldn’t move a muscle on the rock she sat upon.
“If you saw it, then I saw it.” Rorrick’s voice reached her ears, reflecting the same awed wonder as his right arm tightened around her back.
“I think I saw it.”
“I think I did too.”
“It was green, Rorrick? I truly think it was. But was it?”
“Yes. Green. The green flash. I thought I’d never see it.” He shook his head, his stare not moving from the sky. “Maybe this was the place. Maybe it was always the place. Maybe all those years spent searching for it on the sea, on cliffs. And maybe it was here all along.”
Several breaths passed, and Cass nodded to herself. “So maybe this is our answer. Maybe this has been our place all along.”
His look whipped down to her, his eyes tearing away from the horizon.
Cass wasn’t about to let her gaze drift from the majestic show of mountaintops jutting into the purple and pink and gold dancing about in the twilight of the waning sky.
“Are you saying what I think you are saying, Cass?”
“Do you remember when you first told me of this place, Rorrick—of the peak of Purgatory Mountain? You said the wonder of it is only eclipsed by the magnitude of it. That the possibility of anything one can imagine surrounds you.” She pulled her eyes from the glowing sky to look up at her husband sitting next to her. “How could I not want our children to grow up surrounded by this?” Her hand swept out in front of them. “This is the magic. The wonder. This is what I want for the twins—for us.”
His right arm solid behind her, Rorrick twisted slightly, reaching his left hand to land flat on her protruding belly. His fingers stretched wide, protective. “And for this one—or two.”
Her nose scrunched. “Please let it be one.”
A swaggering grin of a man far too adept at impregnating his wife crossed his lips. “We do have a number of rooms to fill at the cabin. Having twins was quite efficient.”
“Says the man that didn’t need to carry them for nine months.” She chuckled. “And after birthing those two boys, I am quite happy to keep it to one at a time from here on.”
Smiling, he dipped downward, his chin brushing her dark hair back to nuzzle his lips warm to her neck. “If anyone can handle two, it is you, Foxfire.” His head lifted, his dark blue eyes serious as he searched her face. “But are you certain? To consider moving here was not my intention at the start of this trip from England. It had not occurred to me until Percival asked the question.”
“If we could stay here?”
Rorrick nodded. “Yes.”
She cringed slightly. For all that she had hoped Percival would embrace England—embrace his father’s land—he had not. “He does not want to go back to Eton, does he?”
“No, he does not. He wants us. He wants Lilah. He wants the twins. Percival has lived through more lives in his short years than any of those other schoolboys could even imagine. They don’t have the slightest notion as to how to comprehend what Percival has survived. So I can understand why he would not want to be there.” Rorrick nodded to the vista, to the tips of the mountains bathed in purples and golds. “Why he would want to be here.”
Cass set her hand over Rorrick’s on her belly, leaning into him as she set her gaze to the horizon. “And I don’t need to try and make Percival into his father. I thought that was what he would want, what his mother would want for him. But you are right, what he truly wants is a family—Lilah, us, the twins.”
He rested his chin on the top of her head. “But to move to America—are you certain?”
She shook her head slightly. “No. But it seems to be clear. The twins—the boys love this mountain, especially now that they can walk. The woods, the animals, everything of this place. And with the mine producing and the smelting factory built, the Vandestile estate is well on its way to profitability. But do you need to be there for it?”
“I am positive we can enlist both Alton and the duke to oversee the estate steward while we are not there.” Rorrick shrugged. “And the Revelry’s Tempest? I know how important it is to you.”
Cass took a deep breath, uttering words she never could have imagined three years ago. “I will miss it, but I have spent such little time there since the twins were born. Logan manages it entirely too well.”
Rorrick’s body tensed at the mention of Logan’s name. Still. He probably always would. Yet he kept his mouth closed.
She craned her neck to look up at his face. “England will always be there. We will need to go back once a year or so or we risk the wrath of Adalia and Violet. But this is where you are happiest.” She lifted her hand up to his face, clasping the side of it. “It is where I am happiest.”
He tipped his head to the horizon. “Plus, I think the green flash just told us so.”
A smile spread across her face. “I don’t think there’s ever been a surer sign.”
“You are aware it very well could have been a lost soul returning to this world?”
She pinched the side of his stomach. “No. I’m absolutely positive that green flash was solely for the matters of the heart. Do not take it away from me.”
“Forget I mentioned it.”
The smile on her face went wider as she looked up at him, meeting his dark blue eyes. “Do you know that within weeks of the first time I met you, I realized you were a man that held an unusual capacity for hope?”
His eyebrows lifted. “I would disagree.”
“No. It was on the ship to America. It was the searching for the green flash. You said you had done it your whole life. And searching for that flash is nothing but hope. You searched for it because you have hope. Hope you’ve always had in you.”
He leaned down, kissing her brow. “It is amazing what can happen with a little hope.”
She laughed, light and happy, tiny bells floating out into the breeze.
It was.
~ From K.J. Jackson ~
Check out the sneak peek below of the next Revelry’s Tempest story: To Capture a Rogue!
~
I found you and you found me—let’s not lose each other! Finding readers that like your work is hard, but if you’ve gotten this far, hopefully you liked Of Risk & Redemption and want to read more by me. Because of the constant changes in social media, the BEST way to keep up with my latest works is through my newsletter. So be sure to sign up for my VIP List for news of my next releases, sales and freebies. You’ll get my FREE starter library when you sign up—three free books!
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Don’t miss!
The other stories in the Revelry’s Tempest series are available now:
Of Valor & Vice, Revelry’s Tempest
Of Sin & Sanctuary, Revelry’s Tempest
Of Risk & Redemption, Revelry’s Tempest
To Capture a Rogue, A Logan’s Legends Novella, Revelry’s Tempest
To Capture a Warrior, A Logan’s Legends Novella, Revelry’s Tempest
The Devil in the Duke, Revelry’s Tempest (Logan’s story, Fall 2018)
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A sneak peek of the fourth Revelry’s Tempest stories (a novella), To Capture a Rogue, Logan’s Legends…
{ Chapter 1 }
~~~
Men
of uncommon valor.
Each with a past to deny.
Peerless. Formidable. Coveted.
One man to unite them, this band of guards unlike any other.
These are Logan’s men...
~~~
London, England
September 1814
The blade embedded into the wood next to his temple wasn’t his first clue.
But it did verify the fact that Nicolina was ready to kill him. And this time, she might very well do the job.
“You’re alive, you bloody bastard.” Her left fist flew hard into his chest, pinning him to the stable wall as her right hand shifted position on the black leather hilt of the blade next to his head.
His wife always had been fire. Uncontrollable. Demanding. Explosive.
But the blade was new. Or at the very least, she had never come this close to severing his ear.
Nicolina had always been good with the blade. Too good, thanks to that misguided uncle of hers.
“Alive.”
The one word seethed long from her full lips as she yanked the dagger from the wood. Her shoulder shifted back, her arm ready to strike again.
Gareth caught her wrist high in the air, halfway to contact.
She could attack him once in an ambush out of the black of night. But not twice.
Twice he would not let slide.
His fingers around her wrist tightened, choking until she squealed. Her left fist on his chest started to pound into his flesh.
“Blast it, Nic.”
His muttered words sent her into a flurry of fury, a demon wildcat bent on pummeling him into the depths of hell. Her left fist and the tips of her boots flew in a whirlwind, bent on punishing.
He shook her captured arm, squeezing harder until the dagger popped, slipping from her fingers. He twisted her wrist into submission, forcing it behind her back as he spun her, his free hand wrapping around her waist.
Trapped, she screeched, her legs flailing as he lifted her from the ground. Her body clamped to his, he carried her to a stall at the back of the stable, grabbing several lengths of leather reins on the way. Within seconds—against her twisting and kicking—he managed to tie her wrists onto the rails of a wooden chair behind her back.
Her body bucked against the seat of the chair and he rounded on her. His hands clamped onto her shoulders and he set his weight to bear down onto her.
“Cease, Nic.”
Still a wildcat, she jerked to the left under his weight, tilting the chair to the side, almost making it tip over.
He caught her mid fall and righted the chair, then dug his fingertips into the muscles in her shoulders. “Dammit, Nic, cease. You bloody well just almost cut off my ear.”
Her body stilled even as her chest heaved with rapid breaths. She shook her head, trying to clear wild locks of blond hair that had escaped her bonnet from in front of her eyes. She looked up, her green eyes piercing him. “If I had wanted to take your ear, Gareth, I would already be holding the bloody stump of it.”
“What the hell are you doing here, Nic?”
“What the hell am I doing here?” A forced cackle screeched through her teeth. “What in the hell are you doing here, Gareth? What in the hell are you doing alive? What in the hell business do you have at a gaming hall? What in the hell are you doing walking around, alive, healthy, whistling—whistling, damn it, bloody well whistling—I heard you come through the gardens whistling. While I think you are dead—for a year—and not just any death—a cold, painful, vile death—your body lost, rotting on some random dirty field on the continent. And you are whistling?”
“Nic—”
“What, Gareth? What? There is no excuse—none—you are alive and you didn’t come home. You are dead—dead. And then suddenly you are here.”
Gareth’s head dropped forward, his eyes closing. He willed a breath deep into his lungs. Peeling his fingers upward and off of her shoulders, he took a step backward.
Took a step away.
He had to breathe. Breathe air that was not hers. Air that wouldn’t consume him. Space that wouldn’t consume him. Fire that wouldn’t consume him.
He wasn’t ready.
He hadn’t been able to even bear the thought of seeing her. Of setting himself in front of her once more. Not with the shame.
And then this. Her attacking him out of the blind.
His forehead lifted, his eyes pinning her. She hadn’t moved, hadn’t twitched. She just stared at him, each breath she took sending a fresh tremble through her body. Anger. Anger consuming her.
“You are in no state to listen to me right now, Nic.”
“Untie me.”
“You are not calm enough to untie.”
Her body convulsed, her arms trying to break free from the leather binding them to the chair. “Untie me this instant, you treacherous monstrous arse.”
He folded his arms across his chest. “My point.”
“You don’t get to have a point, Gareth.” Her body continued to twist, yanking on the knots holding her down and the small black bonnet on her head slipped to the side and fell down onto her shoulder. “You are bloody well alive. So you don’t get a point. You don’t get a word. You don’t get anything.”
He exhaled a long breath, striving for control, striving to reconcile the fact in his mind that his wife had randomly appeared in London, found him, and was sitting before him.
Plotting his quick and painful death, no doubt. But here. Here with her green eyes shooting daggers at him.
“What do you want of me, Nic?”
Her head snapped back, her body stilling. “What do I want?” A coarse chuckle left her as her look went upward to the stable roof, her head shaking. “Nothing, Gareth. Absolutely nothing.”
“You attacked me, Nic, your blade nearly impaling my forehead, and you want nothing from me?”
Her gaze dropped to skewer him. “I strike that. I do want something from you, Gareth. I want you, my husband, to know that I am well aware of the fact that you are alive.”
“Then you have succeeded on that score, Nic.” He inclined his head to her. "Good eve.”
He spun and strode out of the stables without a backward glance.
To Capture a Rogue, Logan’s Legends — Available now!
~
More of my Books
Historical Romance
If you haven’t already, be sure to check out my other historical romances—each is a stand-alone story and they can be read in any order (here they are in order of publication):
Stone Devil Duke, Hold Your Breath, currently free!
Unmasking the Marquess, Hold Your Breath
My Captain, My Earl, Hold Your Breath
Worth of a Duke, Lords of Fate
Earl of Destiny, Lords of Fate
Marquess of Fortune, Lords of Fate
Vow, Lords of Action
Promise, Lords of Action
Oath, Lords of Action
Of Valor & Vice, Revelry’s Tempest
Of Sin & Sanctuary, Revelry’s Tempest
Of Risk & Redemption, Revelry’s Tempest
To Capture a Rogue, A Logan’s Legends Novella, Revelry’s Tempest
To Capture a Warrior, A Logan’s Legends Novella, Revelry’s Tempest
The Devil in the Duke, Revelry’s Tempest (Logan’s story, Fall 2018)
Paranormal Romance
Flame Moon #1, currently free!
Triple Infinity, Flame Moon #2
Flux Flame, Flame Moon #3
~
Descriptions of all K.J. Jackson books:
~~~
Stone Devil Duke
~~~
The first in the Hold Your Breath series by K.J. Jackson
Historical romance with strong women, undeniable men, and hold your breath adventure.
Marked for death, Lady Augustine Christopherson finds herself scouring the slums of London in a desperate search to find the men who killed her father, and are determined to dispose of her. To
protect her family, to protect herself, she is determined to find the men before they find her. The last thing she wanted was an entanglement with a duke that threatens her very survival…
Hardened long ago, the last thing the Duke of Dunway wanted was an entanglement with a chit of the ton. But in the flash of a pistol, his fate is altered as he finds himself honor-bound to protect Lady Augustine from, of all things, herself.
Download your FREE copy today!
~~~
Unmasking the Marquess
~~~
The second in the Hold Your Breath series by K.J. Jackson
Historical romance with strong women, undeniable men, and hold your breath adventure.
Some people are born with backbone. Others have to fight for it.
List in-hand of suitable bachelors, Lady Reanna Halstead, the epitome of naivety, is thrust into London society with demands to gain a husband. To her utter amazement, she manages to capture the attentions of the Marquess of Southfork. Her love, dreams, and future are soon pinned on her marriage to this one man. One handsome, kind, fantastic man.
One man, who has a very different idea of what this marriage will be.
He will be hated, before he is loved.
Killian Hayward, Marquess of Southfork, is only one step away from completing the revenge he has fought his entire life for. All he has to do is marry Lady Halstead. The one woman that is the key to his revenge. To his peace.
The one woman that will threaten the very foundation of his entire existence.
Order your copy today!
~~~
My Captain, My Earl
~~~
The third in the Hold Your Breath series by K.J. Jackson
Historical romance with strong women, undeniable men, and hold your breath adventure.
One destined to live life on the seas.
As captain of the Windrunner, Katalin Dewitt has one mission in life. Serve the ship. The ship that has been her home her entire life. The ship that is the key to keeping her father safe from certain death.
Of Risk & Redemption: A Revelry’s Tempest Novel Page 20
