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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The sneak peek of the sixth Revelry’s Tempest novel (and Logan’s story—finally!), The Devil in the Duke, Revelry’s Tempest…
{ Prologue }
Arapiles, Spain
August 1812
Ignoring the blood dripping from his hand and the uncontrollable tremble that held his fingers hostage, Logan sank to his knees and reached down.
Down into the embers.
Down into the ashes.
Bone.
Shreds of dress. Scorched hair, the smell burning his nostrils.
The ring.
Clutched in the bent crook of the bones of her fingers.
Clutched until the very end.
His ring.
His wife’s ring.
The ribbon she had always wrapped around the band to make it fit snug on her delicate finger had burned away, leaving nothing but a gaping, empty hole within the charred gold. He’d offered to have a goldsmith resize it a hundred times, but she’d always refused. She wanted it exactly as he had given it to her.
His hand shaking, he plucked the ring from her charred grasp, ashes clinging to his skin.
It was what he deserved.
Choosing his soulmate over his men.
He knew this would happen. Knew she would die. Leave him alone on this earth. He had known it from the start. Known it since she was four and he was six.
One did not grow old in the world they existed in.
For death followed him.
It always had.
That he had gotten away with loving her for as long as he did—a mere trick he had played on fate.
For fate had finally caught up to him.
Fate knew he wasn’t worthy of her love.
Just the same as he did.
His head jerked up at rifle shots thundering into the air outside the cottage. Steel clanging against steel. Yelling. Shrieks.
Boney’s forces were coming.
He pushed himself to his feet and grabbed his sword from the smoking embers.
Let them. He was ready.
{ Chapter 1 }
Yorkshire, England
June 1823
He gasped a breath, his lungs freezing the air in place, his body seizing upon itself, stilling his motion. Stopping his feet.
Logan had followed the woman from the village. Followed her as she walked past the rows of houses lining the dirt path that ran at a cross direction to the main road though the village.
That he had even seen her, even been in this part of Yorkshire had been happenstance. Torrential rains had turned the roads along his usual eastern route into a hoof sucking, muddy mess.
He had just stepped outside of the coaching inn where he’d spent the night, eager to get to his horse and be on his way. For as much he’d needed a break from London and the Revelry’s Tempest—a break from the three proprietresses of the gaming house flitting about in wedded bliss and the semi-weekly drama that ensued about the gaming nights—visiting his estate in northern Northumberland hadn’t given him the respite he had hoped for.
Once a year, obligation forced him to make the journey north to meet with Hunter, his steward of the land and his Northumberland interests. Whereas he usually enjoyed his time in the north, in the clean air that didn’t fill his lungs with muck day after day, this particular trip had found him itching to escape the area.
Itching to escape the happiness that his friend was flush with.
Hunter’s three young children—two boys and one girl—were all healthy, curious, and enamored with their “Uncle” Logan. Logan hadn’t sat without a child on his lap for a week. Hunter’s wife, a surgeon and bone setter by luck of her father passing down his skills, had served Logan’s lands as their healer, midwife, and general scourge upon any traveling apothecary that dared to set foot in her domain. Beyond her many assets, the woman still looked at Hunter as though he was the only man in the world.
Bliss, all around. Too much of it.
Envy was not an emotion Logan was familiar with.
But staying with Hunter, staying with his family—watching the smiles on their faces and the simple pleasure they took just in being together, laughing with one another—jealousy had crept out of nowhere and settled upon his shoulders.
He’d suffered through it for days—and then he’d had to cut his trip short, the itching need to escape the realm of their happiness forcing him to leave without even manifesting a half-witted excuse to leave early.
He didn’t begrudge Hunter any of the happiness he’d found in life. It was an odd thing, to be proud of his friend for finding happiness, yet deeply envious of him at the same time.
So much so, that his abrupt absence at the estate was sure to worry his friend and he had almost turned back to explain his hastily written note that had merely said he was needed back in London.
But he couldn’t. Explaining was weakness. Envy was weakness.
And he was not weak.
Logan’s frozen stance next to a low dry-stone border fence allowed him to stare—truly stare—at the back of the woman he had followed. A fair distance in front of him, she carried a basket with two loaves of bread sticking tall from the top, bumping into the back of her light blue muslin dress with every step.
He’d seen her from in front of the inn as she stepped out from the baker’s cottage. She had been a distance away, but close enough to see her delicate profile and the swing of her long reddish blond hair under her blue bonnet as she spun away from him. The bonnet had obscured the top half of her face, her eyes, but the nose, the chin, the lips were hers.
His wife’s.
He had done this before.
Seen a woman that looked like Sienna and followed her. Drawn to memories he could not escape. The pull of her still so strong after all these years, that he would stalk a stranger just for a moment of imagining, a moment of hope.
The heels of his boots ground into the dirt of the path and he shook his head to himself. This was where he needed to turn around. Get back to his horse. Be on his way.
He had just walked a good mile from the village in an inane pursuit of this woman.
His gaze centered on the line of her proud shoulders, mesmerized by her graceful gait. A forest to her right, open field to her left, she moved up a small incline and then disappeared over the crest of a low hill.
The sudden absence of her made him jerk, his feet flying forward even as his mind reminded him it was beyond madness to follow a strange woman into the countryside. It was, in fact, bordering on menacing.
Just a few more moments.
He moved to the crest of the hill, fully intending one last glance at her before turning back to the village. Instead, what he saw stopped him in his tracks.
At the base of the hill, the woman had moved off the path to an apple tree draping over the dry-stone wall, and was cutting free a late-blooming blossom off the end of a long branch with a small knife. She slipped the bonnet back from her head to let it dangle from the ribbon about her neck, and then pulled her hair back on the side to tuck the stem of the white blossom behind her ear.
A motion he had seen a hundred times before. How she twisted her hair to get it out of the way. How she tilted her head as she tucked the twig to her ear. How she closed her eyes, her chest rising in a deep inhale.
The soft smile on her face as the scent filled her.
A smile he knew.
A smile that had once been the center of his world.
Plucking a single star-shaped petal from the blossom, her fingers lifted to lightly drag it along the bridge of her nose. Her face tilted upward, her eyes closing as she held the petal to the tip of her nose with just her forefinger.
Hell.
He had only seen one person in the world ever do that.
His wife.
His legs were running, blasting him down the hill in a frenzied blur before he could think.
She didn’t see him coming, didn’t open her eyes until the last second, her mouth flying open with a squeak.
He grabbed her arm, twisting her fully to him, and the petal fell from her nose, drifting downward.
Wide blue eyes—shock filling them.
Sienna.
His wife.
His dead wife. Dead for ten years.
There was no doubt.
He grabbed her other arm, staring down at her, searching—searching for some small defect, some small dissimilarity that would prove she wasn’t Sienna.
Her mouth agape, she looked up at him.
No recognition in her blue eyes—not the slightest spark.
She stared at him, her wide eyes blinking at him as she gently tried to tug her arms away from his grasp. “Do I know you, sir?”
His knees weakened, almost sending him to the ground. Her voice was unmistakable.
“Sienna.” Her name came out awkward, rushed, his tongue not able to believe the possibility that it was her. He hadn’t uttered her name once since she died.
Her mouth snapped shut, her lips stretching to a thin line as her eyebrows drew together. “Sir—”
“Sienna.” He shook her.
Her eyes widened, sudden fear taking root in the dark azure streaks in her irises. She attempted to jerk free from his grasp.
He ignored her wrenching and shook her again. “Sienna.” He paused, then shook her again, his fingers digging into the flesh on her upper arms.
“Please, sir, you’re scaring me.” She twisted viciously, trying to escape.
His clamp only tightened on her arms, shaking her. He would damn well shake her until she recognized him. He had to.
Pain.
Searing pain attacking his middle from nowhere.
He looked down. The tip of a blade was in his flesh, digging into his gut before he realized Sienna still held the knife. She lunged forward at him with her feet, putting all her weight and both hands behind the blade sticking into his belly.
His fingers dropped away from her arms, going to her wrists to rip her hands and the blade free from impaling his stomach. He dropped her arms, his hands going to the wound in his belly.
Horror crossed her face and she stumbled backward, the basket still hanging from her arm swinging wildly. The bread fell from basket as the handle slipped from her arm, thudding to the ground.
He lifted his right hand from his stomach, stretching out to her. “Please, Sienna—no—stop, Sienna.” He staggered three steps toward her, his left hand holding against his bleeding gut.
Her face twisted in terror and a small yelp squeaked from her mouth as she spun and ran. Ran so fast, her blue skirts flew out behind her. She veered to the right over the dry-stone wall and raced into the woods that offered obstacles, if not protection.
“Sienna.” His yell trailed, his desperate voice giving out to the pain in his stomach tearing him in two.
She jumped to the left, disappearing behind a clump of oaks.
The world went still, silent, and Logan staggered to his right, falling along the low dry-stone fence for support, his fingers digging into the rough rock.
He stared at the woods, willing her to reappear. To run to him. To throw her arms around him.
His wife didn’t recognize him.
And she had just stuck a dagger into him.
If he wasn’t convinced before it was her, the blade in his gut told him all he needed to know.
He had made sure of it long ago—Sienna knew well how to protect herself.
His wife was alive.
The Devil in the Duke, Revelry’s Tempest — Available on preorder now!
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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
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Descriptions of all K.J. Jackson books:
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Stone Devil Duke
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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!
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Unmasking the Marquess
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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!
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My Captain, My Earl
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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.
She never expected to take pity on an injured deckhand from an enemy ship and allow him onto the Windrunner. And she certainly never expected to allow him into her life.
One determined to make his way home.
Bound, gagged, and held captive on one ship after another for two long years, Jason Christopherson had long since given up hope of ever getting back to land, much less to his beloved England.
He never expected to land on a pirate ship, bound for land. And he certainly never expected to fall in love with his new captain, threatening the one thing he needed most in life–to return home.
Neither expected to fall in love. Neither expected to be torn apart by a brutal betrayal.
Order your copy today!
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Worth of a Duke
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The first in the Lords of Fate series by K.J. Jackson
Historical romance with strong women, undeniable men, and hold your breath adventure.
One on the wrong side of the ocean.
Lost and wandering the woods, Wynne Theaton was surviving quite nicely until Rowen Lockton appeared. He saves her from getting trampled by a thief’s horse, but then becomes insistent on showing her where she truly is…
One refusing to deny fate.
Fate tossed Miss Theaton into his path, and the Duke of Letson is not one to deny fate. But the woman comes with a host of problems, not the least of which is her belief that she is in another country.
An undeniable attraction.
He was not looking for a wife. She was only searching for home. But fate has very different plans for the two of them—if they can survive the secrets of the past, of the forgotten.
Order your copy today!
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Earl of Destiny
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The second in the Lords of Fate series by K.J. Jackson
Historical romance with strong women, undeniable men, and hold your breath adventure.
To Capture a Warrior_Logan's Legends Page 13
