by Eva Chase
Despite their best intentions, Nick and Carina find themselves falling for each other, hard and fast. As Carina's sadistic handlers close in, they must each make a gamble for their hearts and freedom. But with battle lines drawn between them, how can they both win?
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Consort of Secrets excerpt
While you’re waiting for the next book in the Alpha Project Psychic Romance series, why not check out my new witchy reverse harem romance, Consort of Secrets?
Every witch knows the rules… but to claim her magic and her happiness with the guys she loves, Rose will break them all.
CONSORT OF SECRETS
1
Rose
To a stranger, Hallowell Manor would have looked like the kind of place where dark deeds happened. You know: skeletons bricked up behind the tall foreboding walls. A madman prowling in the attic beneath the steeply sloped roof. Cheating lovers pushed from the turrets’ arched windows to their death. Although as far as I knew none of those things had actually happened there.
Let’s just say the house had a lot of character.
My father pushed the control on the Bentley’s dash, and the automated gate whirred shut behind us. The car turned along the drive through the falling twilight. As the house loomed over us, my heart lifted with anticipation.
I wasn’t a stranger, and to me this place was home. It didn’t matter that I hadn’t set foot on our country estate in more than eleven years. The manor and the massive property around it had set the stage for my fondest childhood memories. Through all that time in Portland, through my studies and the dinner parties and the strolls through fenced back gardens, part of me had always been waiting for the moment when I’d return here.
“That is an eyeful and a half, now isn’t it?” Philomena said in her lilting British accent. She craned her neck as she peered out the window. “Just ripe for adventure.”
“I’m supposed to be settling back in, not stirring up trouble,” I said.
“Oh, I’m sure we can find time enough for both, Rose.” She shot me the classic Phil expression: lips curved, brows lightly arched, brown eyes sparkling with mischief.
Dad parked by the garage. A couple of the staff were already hustling over to retrieve the few pieces of luggage we’d brought with us instead of sending it ahead. My stepmother let out a slow breath, her pale blue gaze fixed on the house.
“Well, here we are,” she said. Her tone was so dry I couldn’t tell whether she was expressing relief or trepidation.
I found it safest to care about Celestine’s feelings about as little as she cared about mine—which was essentially not at all. Ignoring her comment, I pushed open the door and stepped out onto the pavement. The cool breeze of the early spring evening teased through my hair. I pushed the black tumble of those locks back over my shoulders and drank in the lush green scents of home.
The tang of fresh paint reached my nose. The staff must have been touching up the outer buildings to prepare for our arrival. The once-green slats of the garage walls now glowered a deep maroon.
Something deep in my chest twisted. The change jarred with my memories. But it couldn’t stop the image from rising up in my head of the last time I’d seen the boys, standing just a few paces from where I stood now, watching a car very much like this one carry me away.
I jerked my gaze away before Dad or Celestine could notice me looking. It was the company I’d been keeping all those years ago that had prompted our move to the city. Better if neither my father nor my stepmother suspected how much those memories still meant to me.
Dad typed a quick message into his phone and tucked it into his slacks pocket. Probably letting one of the many people he did business with know he’d be available for conversation and negotiations within the hour. Celestine smoothed her hand over her sleek silver-blond bob and wrapped her slender fingers around his. He directed a quick but warm smile over his shoulder at me, and we started toward the house.
“Good Lord, it looks even bigger from out here,” Philomena said, clutching her expansive skirts with one gloved hand while she braced the back of the other against her forehead. She stared up at the manor. “Are you absolutely sure you didn’t forget to tell me you’re a duchess or a marchioness or some such?”
I swallowed a laugh. “I promise, I’m nothing by regular standards. In witching society, I guess we’re about on the level of a viscount?”
“Hmm.” She glanced at Dad. “I hope you’ll forgive me for saying I have always thought your father would look rather tempting in a proper tailcoat and cravat.”
“Ugh. I’ll forgive you if you promise to never mention finding him ‘tempting’ ever again.”
Philomena just smirked at me. It really was a good thing she was only a figment of my imagination and not someone Dad could actually overhear.
Phil’s insatiable exuberance had practically made her leap out of the book she starred in during the gazillion times I’d read it in the last seven years. I hugely admired her habit of speaking her mind unfiltered. But it wouldn’t have gone over any better in my society than it should have in hers, if her regency romance had been particularly true-to-reality.
Trust me, if you’d met the company I’d had in Portland, you wouldn’t blame me for plucking my best friend out of the pages of my favorite novel instead. The girls from the witching families around the city had all been as alternately judgmental and fawning as my older stepsisters. As far as they’d been concerned, I was either a country rube to look down on or a Hallowell they should suck up to. Sometimes both at the same time, which had thrown more than one of them for a loop.
But they didn’t matter now. I was home.
The staff had opened up the manor’s broad front door. Golden light spilled down over the front steps. My gaze caught on the tiny crack that ran through the second from the bottom.
How many times, long ago, had I sat there and traced my finger along that spidery line? A voice that wasn’t Philomena’s swam up in my head from the past. Are those stairs a lot more fascinating than they look, or do you figure you’d like to come have some real fun?
My fingers curled toward the sleeve of my sweater. I had one of my ribbons wrapped around my left wrist, like always. “Rose’s little fashion trend,” my stepsisters had liked to comment with a giggle.
We stepped into the grand front hall. The porters hefted our luggage up the wide, velvet-carpeted staircase to the second floor. The cherry wood of the banisters and the wall paneling gleamed.
“I hope the journey was smooth, Master and Lady Hallowell,” our estate manager, Meredith, said, welcoming us in. She’d come ahead with the rest of the key staff that moved with the family when we relocated from one property to another. They’d have spent all day setting the house in order for our arrival.
“And for Rosalind as well,” she added with a quick wink. Now with only a few streaks of gray left in her white, braided hair, Meredith had been with the Hallowells for generations. You could say she’d raised me alongside my father.
My stepmother considered the grand front hall and sniffed. “I don’t like to see a painting askew the moment I step inside,” she said in the icy voice she usually used when speaking to Meredith.
She glanced around to confirm none of the unsparked staff were nearby and motioned the gold-framed artwork that had provoked her displeasure. The gesture turned into a quick flick of magic. The painting shifted straight without so much as a touch.
Celestine looked at Meredith with a slight arch of her eyebrows, as if to remind the manager that a lesser witch like her couldn’t afford to use her own magic that flippantly. “I hope the rest of the house is in better shape. Double-check the main floor rooms, will you?”
The corners of Meredith’s mouth tightened only a smidge. “Yes, Lady Hallowell.” Her gaze slid past my stepmother to my father, the man she considered her real employer. He nodded, but he gave her a wry smile at the same time as if to apologize.
As Meredith bustl
ed away, a sallow, gangly figure appeared at the top of the staircase. “I’ve seen to it that all your office materials are as they should be, Lady Hallowell,” Douglas, my stepmother’s primary assistant, called down.
“Excellent,” Celestine said with a wave to dismiss him.
From the depths of the house, the chime of our ancient grandfather clock rang out. Seven o’clock. A lump lodged in my throat. The familiar smell of the manor, wood polish and aged plaster, had drifted all around me, but it only made the ache in my chest deepen.
This place was home, but it felt abruptly empty.
“From what I understand, your Derek plans to arrive tomorrow morning,” my stepmother said to me. “You did pack some of your nicer clothes, didn’t you, Rosalind?”
“I did,” I said without looking at her. Although I wasn’t sure why it mattered. Derek was my Derek because he’d already agreed to the betrothal. In two months he’d become both my husband and my consort in magic. Spending this time on the Hallowell estate together was only meant to give us a grounding for that bond, the final step before the official ceremony we were already committed to. I couldn’t imagine how horrible an outfit he’d have to see me in to back out now.
A persnickety part of me kind of wanted to experiment to find out. And to see the look on my stepmother’s face.
“Well, make sure to get out something appropriate for his arrival,” Celestine said.
“I’m sure Rose knows how to dress herself by now, dear one.” My father patted both of us on the shoulders as if we’d been having an affectionate conversation. “I believe dinner is nearly ready. Shall we freshen up and assemble in the dining room?”
The thought of walking deeper into the house made my chest clench tighter. An excuse tumbled out of me. “I think I forgot something in the car. I’ll be there in a minute.”
I managed to walk at a normal pace out the door and down the steps. Then I hurried toward the gate. My fingers dug under my sleeve, unwinding the ribbon as I went.
The tall wrought-iron bars glowered down at me. I clutched the ribbon—white, the one I’d always thought of as mine among its five companions of other colors. My pulse hitched. Then I reached up and tied the ribbon by one of the hinges. Loosely, roughly, as if it might have blown away and simply gotten tangled there.
“What’s that meant to accomplish?” Philomena asked, cocking her head.
I stepped back with a breath that came easier. “I’m not sure,” I said. “I guess we’ll see.”
The leaves on the oak outside my bedroom window rustled with the rising wind. I drew my feet up under me on the armchair where I was curled up with a book. After dinner, I’d told Dad and Celestine I was heading right to bed, but instead I’d started unpacking my library.
The built-in shelves around the room were only half full. I’d gotten sucked into one novel along the way. The rest could wait.
“I’m sure that story can’t be half so exciting as mine,” Philomena said where she’d flopped down on my bed. She was slightly prone to envy. One of her very few faults, she liked to say.
“I don’t know,” I teased. “It’s pretty good. Maybe I’ll have a new favorite.”
She stuck her tongue out at me.
“Oh, very lady-like.” I waggled the book at her. “Haven’t you always said that a girl needs a little variety?”
“In men,” Phil said. “Not novels. And even when it comes to men, I did settle down with one in the end.”
“I’m pretty sure that library you snuck into for your trysts had more than one book in it.”
She huffed, but she was smiling. “Well, perhaps.”
“Anyway, this is the only way I’m getting any variety of men,” I said.
“Which really is a shame. You could be the talk of the ton.”
“There isn’t a ‘ton’ anymore,” I pointed out.
“You know what I mean, Rose.”
I did. There was a reason that for all my diverse literary interests, about half of my collection was romances both historical and modern. I was three months shy of twenty-five, and I’d never even kissed a guy. On the lips, anyway.
That kind of intimacy was supposed to be reserved for my consort, to kindle the spark inside me that would bring me my power. But I was hoping that Derek and I could generate other sorts of sparks once we were finally allowed to get down to it. The witching men were discouraged from much physical intimacy with any witch until the consorting was complete. We women would have a lot less incentive to settle down if we were getting our spark lit wherever we wanted.
Until our time ran out, at least.
“I can have plenty of fun still, when the time comes,” I said to Philomena, and waved the bad boy billionaire romance I was racing through again. “This is research as much as entertainment.”
“Hmm,” Phil said as if she wasn’t totally convinced. To be fair, I wasn’t either. The couples in these books always seemed to be blown away by their attraction just looking at each other. Derek, well… He’d been the most appealing of the options I’d had. So I would make the best of it. This was real life. Passion could take time to kindle.
It wasn’t as if I had a lot of choice in the matter.
Thinking about that, about seeing him tomorrow and starting the preparations for the consort ceremony, made me feel twice as tired as I’d been from the drive. I set down the book on the arm of the chair and turned off the lamp.
“All right, you got your wish. I’m leaving Claudia and her domineering lover behind for the night. Now shove over.”
Phil scooted over to the far end of the bed, where she sat primly propped up against the headboard. I crawled under the feather duvet and buried my head in the pillow.
The tension inside me unraveled with each slow inhale and exhale. I was drifting away when a branch of the oak tree rapped right against the window. The wind must have picked up even more.
Then the rapping came again, more insistently. My heart skipped. That wasn’t a branch.
I sat up and turned to the window. The pale moonlight outside caught on a hovering face—and the line of my white ribbon pressed against the glass.
Want to read more of Rose’s story? It’s free with Kindle Unlimited! Grab Consort of Secrets here.
About the Author
Eva Chase lives in Canada with her family. She loves stories both swoony and supernatural, and strong women and the men who appreciate them. Along with the Alpha Project Psychic Romance series, she is the author of the Witch’s Consorts series, the Dragon Shifter’s Mates series, Demons of Fame Romance series, and the Legends Reborn trilogy.
Connect with Eva online:
www.evachase.com
[email protected]
