Ravishing Regencies- The Complete Series

by Emily Murdoch

  Thank you to my glorious cover designer, Samantha Holt, a true artist whose patience with me is much appreciated.

  Thank you to my ingenious formatter, Falcon Storm, whose willingness to format whenever I drop an unexpected email is fantastic!

  And to my family. Thank you.

  1

  It was not until it was far too late that Adena Garland realised her mistake.

  The afternoon had started well, at least. The sun had been gloriously warm and tempted her from Rowena Kerr’s home to stroll along the beach, just one day since she had arrived from London. Adena’s green gown wafted in the wind, and after checking around her to see that she was truly alone, she slipped off the shoes and stockings that were preventing her from delving her toes into the sand and stones.

  She lost all track of time. The warm afternoon had brought her outside, and the beach seemed to tempt her onwards, ever onwards, until Rowena’s house was out of sight, and she had meandered around another bend, and another bend. There was always another view to see, something else to discover.

  And it was only as the sun resolutely turned around and started to dive slowly into the ocean, throwing up the most enchanting colours, that Adena turned to look back at her path home, and realised that the Kerrs’ home had disappeared.

  “Where is…” She murmured under her breath. Speaking aloud to herself had always been a rather strange habit her mother had tried to force out of her, but it was difficult, especially when she was completely alone as she was now on this strange beach, to resist the audible commentary. “Where did it go?”

  ‘It’ was the beach. While she had, but twenty minutes ago, walked along the stony sand quite happily, now that she turned back to return to the house, it was gone.

  “The tide,” Adena whispered, clutching her light shawl around her in nervous panic. “The tide must have come in and cut me off!”

  She glanced around hurriedly now, looking for a route back to the mainland; but the tide had moved quickly, quicker than she could have imagined, and it had swallowed up her pathway entirely.

  Adena made an irritated sound. “Well, that is just typical of you, is it not, Adena?”

  Who would forget to keep an eye on the tide? Her muslin gown was warm enough in the heat of the day, but the sun was setting fast, and taking with it that balmy and pleasant glow. A chilling breeze swept around her face, tugging at the fiery red curls she had pinned up that morning.

  It was most infuriating, of course, that she had only come to visit Rowena for a rest! The bustle and busyness of town had become so irritating, so tiring, that eventually she had decided that the country was the place for her, and Rowena’s parents’ home really could only be described as ‘isolated’.

  Built in the middle of nowhere, with the tiny village of Marshurst the only inhabitants for miles around – and that little place only consisting of ten to twelve families, at most – Rowena’s invitation to visit could not have come at a better time.

  It had taken just five minutes for Adena to send off her reply in a hastily written note, and two days for her to arrive. But as all was not well at the Kerrs, she found herself wandering further and further from the house in an attempt to lose herself: both from her familial duties in London, and the cares of the Kerrs. Rowena’s frequent absences, her strange vague answers when her parents enquired where she had been – having a stranger in the house may keep the arguments to a quiet volume, but there were still bubbling under the surface, nonetheless.

  And she had done just that. Now she was truly lost, far more lost than she had ever hoped to be, and there was no way back.

  “This is just like you.” She spoke quietly to herself as her head moved frantically this way and that, attempting to take in all that she was seeing. “Here you are, hoping to get away from civilisation for just ten days, and now you are trapped on an island that twenty minutes ago, did not even exist.”

  Of course, such natural phenomena existed. Just look at the Portland Bill, further along the coast: that became an island every day, and then reattached itself to the mainland as the tide turned. Look at St Michael’s Mount. Sometimes you can cross to the island on foot, and sometimes on a boat.

  “Yes, but those were proper islands,” Adena reminded herself aloud. “With houses, and roads, and people. This is just a sandbank. A medley of sand, rocks, and a little vegetation.”

  Adena bit her lip. This was not the time to panic. This must happen to people all the time: it must do. It simply was not possible that she was the first to find herself completely stranded, and alone.

  The panic that she had so far managed to keep at bay started to rise in her throat.

  “What am I supposed to do, stay here all night?” She said to herself, trying to keep her voice calm and level, and failing. “To be sure, it is not an inhospitable place.”

  Her unusual green eyes glanced around her. A little scrubland, two or three trees…and sand. Lots of sand and rocks. This island, for now it could truly be described as such, was not much to look at, and would barely give her enough shelter for the night.

  “Shelter for the night?” Adena repeated her thought aloud, and laughed bitterly. “‘Tis not as though you have much choice, Miss Garland!”

  Walking a few more yards, Adena saw with her own eyes that it was impossible; the rushing tide had made her a captive of this island, and there was nothing else for it.

  She would be staying the night. Unless the Kerrs thought to look for her here, but she had mentioned to no one her desire for a solitary ramble.

  Hunger that she had not noticed and thirst that she had not regarded now overwhelmed her. Was she to go without?

  “Options,” she muttered to herself, glancing up and down the disappearing beach. “I need options.”

  Adena swallowed. This was not the type of holiday she had expected.

  “Option one,” she said decidedly, as she walked back towards where the beach had been, but the waves were now lapping at her toes. “I try to walk back to the shore. The tide may have come in, that is true, but it cannot be that deep in such a short amount of time, and I am likely to make it.”

  Likely, she thought quietly. Not the resounding confidence she had hoped for.

  “Option two,” Adena turned on the spot, and looked at the scrub, heathland, and few trees on the hastily forming island. “I attempt to find some shelter here, just for a few hours, and wait for the tide to turn.”

  But how long could that take? Six hours? Perhaps longer, and she did not fancy attempting to find the Kerrs’ home in the dark, on her own.

  Adena looked at the sun. It had touched the horizon now, and the air was definitely starting to cool. The flimsy shawl that she had taken with her as a matter of habit was not keeping her warm in the slightest.

  “Option three,” she said finally. “I try and stay the night here.”

  She swallowed again. It was not a particularly attractive concept, when you considered the lack of shelter, water, or food.

  Three options: each as least as unlikely to be enjoyable – or successful – as the others. Adena clenched her fists and let the irritation with herself come to a boiling heat. She would need that anger.

  “Well,” she said decidedly, grabbing her forest green skirts and striding towards the waves. “There is just one thing for it.”

  Luke, Marquis of Dewsbury watched the trickle of a wave break over his leather boots; watched the salty water give it a gleaming sheen, and then disappear back into the ocean, retreating from him as quickly as it came.

  The ocean had always fascinated him, even as a child. His childhood home was nowhere near the sea, and so it was as a small child on an excursion that he first came across it, and it had bewitched his mind ever since.

  And this was his favourite beach. He stood here, coloured golden in the setting sun, as the tide encroached upon the shore. He knew this tide: knew it better than most of the locals, he had visited so often. It often startled visitors to Marshurst,
of course, as the quickening waters seemed to completely cut a person off from the mainland.

  Luke laughed, remembering the first time that he had been ‘stranded’ on what the locals called Squire’s Isle. He could still taste the bile at the back of his throat when he thought that he would have to remain there overnight, but as any local would tell you, if you wandered around the southern corner, you would easily find the path to the mainland.

  His attention drifted from the waves, and Luke started to walk listlessly, too consumed by his thoughts to consider much else. The letter clenched in his hand was enough to draw his thoughts continuously.

  So, Alexander, Duke of Caershire, was to be married. It should not have come as a surprise to him, he knew that. He had seen it coming from a mile away – before old Caershire himself. But to have it in writing, to see the invitation in black ink, the day, the time, the church…

  Well, was there anything more final?

  Luke grimaced at the thought of it. That made three: three of his bachelor friends this year had decided to shackle themselves to a woman – though thankfully, not the same woman, he thought with a grin.

  The sea breeze ruffled his chestnut hair, getting too long now, he thought ruefully. He would have to visit his barber before he attended the wedding.

  Wedding. Was there anything more constricting, more confining? Luke stared out across the sea, open and free, and shook his head sadly. There was no talking George or Alexander out of these marriages, he knew that, but he had expected – what? Better?

  His mind cast back over the debutantes he had met, danced with, flirted with. They were countless, and they flickered across his memory as the dying sun flashed across the water.

  None of them had ever brought him to temptation. Luke grinned wolfishly. Well, not a marital temptation, anyway. Plenty of nice dark corners in Almacks, after all. It would have been a shame to waste them.

  And yet no marriage, and not for the lack of elderly mothers and well-meaning companions’ attempts. Whether it was hints by letter, meaningful looks, or in the case of Lady Vaughan, a direct order to propose to her granddaughter, Luke had managed to escape them all.

  Luke kicked at a stone that dropped heavily into the shallows. And where had all of that restraint brought him? Here, on Squire’s Isle, completely alone, and with no one.

  Or so he had thought. As he came around the next corner, his eyes became transfixed by the sight of an astonishing woman.

  Red fiery hair was tumbling down her back, and she was standing in the ocean with her green gown flowing about her as though she was a mermaid. But this was no heavenly creature from the depths: this was a real woman.

  “Damnit!”

  He heard the cry uttered from the lady, and grinned despite himself. She may have the appearance of a mermaid, but she was evidently unaware of the route back to the mainland: trapped here, or so she thought, she must be trying to…walk back?

  Luke’s smile widened. Her silhouette against the setting sun really was most spectacular: a slender waist, and by the looks of it, a splendid posterior, better than any he had seen at St James’. My, to think that she was here, all alone – and he could rescue her.

  Thrusting off his boots, Luke strode into the chilling water and called out, “Do not fear, I am coming to rescue you!”

  The woman turned around, and Luke gasped aloud to see her. What perfection: skin smooth and pale, eyes that were as deep green as her soaking gown, with cheeks pink with the effort of forcing herself through the water, and a look of such ire that he almost stumbled.

  “I – I am almost with you,” he managed to say, though why he hardly knew. To think that he should find such a woman here, at the back of beyond! He would have to keep himself under control, for there was never such a woman who had got his blood as hot as this.

  It was only when he reached out to grab her hand, and the strange woman screamed and tried to shake him off, that Luke realised that his calling out probably did not reach her. The wind was blowing towards the shore, and so she probably had no prior warning that he was behind her.

  “Get off me – help!” She cried out, eyes desperately searching for someone, anyone to rescue her from this madman.

  Just my luck, thought Luke irritably as he held onto her. Of course: that much beauty, why would anyone care to develop a personality?

  “If you would just hold still,” he said aloud in a dry voice, “I can get us both to land.”

  The struggling stopped, and those dazzling unusual green eyes flashed at him suspiciously. “The mainland?”

  For a moment, Luke hesitated. Looking back as he did, years later, he could still not entirely understand what made him say those next words. They just crept out of him, as though he was following a line from a play.

  All he knew was that he would never forgive himself if he did not give himself a chance to get to know this mysterious woman better…and what better way to entice conversation than to be trapped on an island together?

  And after all, Luke reasoned with himself silently as she stared at him, awaiting his answer. It was just for one night.

  “No,” he said decidedly. “‘Tis too far to the mainland – we have to go back to the Squire’s Isle. The island,” he added, at the mystified look on her face. “At any rate, we cannot stand here.”

  The rising cold in his legs was starting to make his teeth chatter, as the rising tide had brought the sea over his knees – and she was shivering, glaring as she was at him as though deciding whether to believe him, or try and swim to shore!

  “I do not …” she began, but Luke had had enough.

  In a quick strong sweeping motion, he threw one arm around her shoulders and the other dived into the water and lifted below her knees.

  The piercing scream that emanated from his captive echoed across the water, but Luke knew that it would never reach the ears of anyone. The two figures that he had seen walking along the beach had long gone, and no matter how much she struggled, his grip on her was firm.

  A little too firm. Luke swallowed, and tried to relax his grip a little while still holding onto her, preventing her from escaping him. By God, but if he had met her in town then things could have been very different. He could feel the softness of her, and her breasts heaved close to his eyes as he struggled to carry the heaviness of her damp gown.

  After taking two steps on dry land, Luke gently lowered the woman to a standing position.

  “Well!” She exploded, glaring at him. “I suppose you think that is very impressive, but now what are we going to do?”

  2

  Adena stared at the strange man, heat rising in her cheeks. This was absolutely ridiculous: who did he think he was, manhandling her like that? It was enough to make her scream.

  “Do?” The man blinked at her. “What do you mean, do?”

  “You may not have noticed,” said Adena furiously, pointing a finger at the sky, “but it is almost night time. I would have preferred to spend the evening in a comfortable bed, but apparently you thought that I would rather sleep on sand?”

  No matter how much she glared at him, the strange man did not seem to be concerned by her look of anger – and the more that she looked at him, and her cheeks flamed even deeper as the thought crossed her mind, the more she noticed just how handsome he was. Tall, with chestnut hair that was a little too long to be fashionable, broad shoulders and a grin that none of her words seemed to have wiped from his face.

  “My dear lady, you really think that you would have been able to stride through the waters to the mainland?” He smirked at her. “Not possible, I am afraid. If anything, you should be thanking me.”

  “Thank – thanking you?” Adena spluttered. It was fortunate that the evening was so warm, or else she would surely be shivering.

  “It is absolutely my pleasure,” said the gentleman – if gentleman he was, which Adena wanted to doubt but could not, taking in the expensive clothes that he was wearing. “Please, it was my pleasure.” />
  “I am not thanking you, I am furious with you!” Adena glared at him, and then strode a few yards down the beach. “To think that I am stuck here on this – what did you call it?”

  The gentleman bowed to her, and said, “Squire’s Isle.”

  “Squire’s Isle indeed,” she muttered, staring around what was going to be her home for the next few hours. “You had no right to take me from the sea, and to…to carry me.”

  It was only as she said those words that the memory of him carrying her flooded back into her mind, and Adena’s cheeks, flushed before due to rage, now flushed from heated embarrassment. There had been so much strength in his arms, she had never felt more securely held, or more safe. How could a man that she had only just met give her such a feeling?

  Trying to put aside the pleasant feeling of security and safety, Adena glanced at the man once more, and was suddenly overtaken when she noticed his wet shirt clinging to his chest. The flush deepened, and he smiled at her.

  “My dear lady, if I had not plucked you from the waters, you would have undoubtedly drowned. There is a deep ravine just a few yards before you that would have prevented you from walking, and,” taking a step towards her and smiling, “I do not think with such an elegant gown you would have been able to swim.”

  “Ravine? Here? Surely not.” Adena took an automatic step backwards as he came towards her.

  The man’s smile deepened. “You could say that I saved your life.”

  “Are you expecting me to thank you?” Adena shot back, more bravely than she felt. Why, she was completely at this man’s mercy.

  The man tilted his head slightly and looked her up and down. “You look like a gentlewoman, and so yes. I would expect some sort of gratitude.”

  It was most infuriating, Adena decided silently, that this odious man was so handsome. It was all too easy to be charmed by him, she was sure, but she would not allow mere good looks to dazzle her.

  Still. If what he was saying was true, she certainly owed her life to him. How provoking.