With This Kiss: A First-In Series Romance Collection

by Kerrigan Byrne

  “Charlotte.” The baby was wide awake now and tugging at the lace of his sleeve.

  “Charlotte. Such a pretty name and where is your papa, little Charlie-girl? Should he not be here to protect you and your mama?”

  Juliet stiffened. His innocent words had slammed a fresh bolt of pain through her. Tight-lipped, she pried the lace from Charlotte’s fist and cradled her close. Deprived of her amusement, the baby screwed up her face and began to wail at the top of her lungs while Juliet stared out the window, her mouth set and her hand clenched in a desperate bid to control her emotions.

  Gareth managed to make himself heard over Charlotte’s angry screams. “I am sorry. I think I have offended you, somehow.”

  “No.”

  “Then what is it?”

  “Her papa’s dead.”

  “Oh. I, ah I see.” He looked distressed, and remorse stole the brightness that Charlotte had brought to his eyes. “I am sorry, madam. I am forever saying the wrong thing, I fear.”

  Charlotte was now crying harder, beating her fists and kicking her feet in protest. The blanket fell away. Juliet attempted to put it back. Charlotte screamed louder, her angry squalls filling the coach until Juliet felt like crying herself. She made a noise of helpless despair.

  “Here set her on your lap, beside my head,” Lord Gareth said at last. “She can play with my cravat.”

  “No, you’re hurt.”

  He smiled. “And your daughter is crying. Oblige me, and she will stop.” He stretched a hand toward the baby, offering his fingers, but she batted him away and continued to wail. “I’m told I have a way with children.”

  With a sigh, Juliet did as he asked. Immediately, Charlotte quieted and fell to playing with his cravat. Silence returned to the bouncing coach, with only the rattle and squeak of the springs, Perry’s occasional shout, and the sound of the horses galloping over the darkened roads intruding upon the quiet within.

  His hand on her back, Gareth steadied the baby so that she would not fall. He looked up at Juliet. “You have done much for me,” he said at last. “Will you honor me by confessing your name?”

  “Juliet.”

  He smiled. “As in Romeo and Juliet?”

  “I suppose.” Though my dear Romeo lies cold in his grave, an ocean away. She looked out the window once more—anything to avoid gazing into those romantic, long-lashed eyes that reminded her so much of Charles’s, anything to avoid watching his hand, so large and strong against Charlotte’s tiny back and possessing the same graceful elegance that the baby’s father’s had had. Coming here to England, she now knew, had been a mistake. A dreadful mistake. How on earth could she bear this pain, this constant reminder of all she had lost?

  “You have an accent I do not recognize,” he was saying. “’Tis certainly not local….”

  “Really, Lord Gareth—you should rest, not try to talk. Save your strength.”

  “My dear angel, I can assure you I’d much rather talk to you, than lie here in silence and wonder if I shall live to see the next sunrise. I do not wish to be alone with my thoughts at the moment. Pray, amuse me, would you?”

  She sighed. “Very well, then. I’m from Boston.”

  “County of Lincolnshire?”

  “Colony of Massachusetts.”

  His smile faded. “Ah, yes Boston.” The town’s name fell wearily from his lips and he let his eyes drift shut, as though that single word had drained him of his remaining strength. “You’re a long way from home, aren’t you?”

  “Farther, perhaps, than I should be,” she said, cryptically.

  He seemed not to hear her. “I had a brother who died over there last year, fighting the rebels. He was a captain in the Fourth. I miss him dreadfully.”

  Juliet leaned the side of her face against the squab and took a deep, bracing breath. If this man died, he would never know just who the little girl playing so contentedly with his cravat was. He would never know that the stranger who was caring for him during his final moments was the woman his brother had loved, would never know just why she—a long way from home, indeed—had come to England.

  It was now or never. “Yes,” she whispered, tracing a thin crack in the squab near her face. “So do I.”

  “Sorry?”

  “I said, yes. I miss him too.”

  “Forgive me, but I don’t quite understand.” And then he blanched and stiffened as the truth hit him with debilitating force. His eyes widened, their lazy dreaminess fading. His head rose halfway out of her lap. He stared at her and blinked, and in the sudden, charged silence that filled the coach, Juliet heard the pounding tattoo of her own heart, felt his gaze boring into the underside of her chin as his mind, dulled by pain and shock, quickly put the pieces together.

  Boston.

  Juliet.

  I miss him, too.

  He gave an incredulous little laugh. “No,” he said, slowly shaking his head, as though he suspected he was the butt of some horrible joke or worse, knew she was telling the truth and could not find a way to accept it. He scrutinized her features, his gaze moving over every aspect of her face. “We all thought I mean, Lucien said he tried to locate you No, I am hallucinating, I must be! You cannot be the same Juliet. Not his Juliet—”

  “I am,” she said quietly. “His Juliet. And now I’ve come to England to throw myself on the mercy of his family, as he bade me to do should anything happen to him.”

  “But this is just too extraordinary, I cannot believe—”

  Juliet was gazing out the window into the darkness again. “He told you about me, then?”

  “Told us? His letters home were filled with nothing but declarations of love for his ‘colonial maiden,’ his ‘fair Juliet’—he said he was going to marry you. I you dear God, you have shocked my poor brain into speechlessness, Miss Paige. I do not believe you are here, in the flesh!”

  “Believe it,” she said, miserably. “If Charles had lived, you and I would have been brother and sister. Don’t die, Lord Gareth. I have no wish to see yet another de Montforte brother into an early grave.”

  He settled back against her arm and flung one bloodstained wrist across his eyes, his body shaking. For a moment she thought the shock of her revelation had killed him. But no. Beneath the lace of his sleeve she could see his gleaming grin, and Juliet realized that he was not dying but convulsing with giddy, helpless mirth.

  For the life of her, she did not see what was so funny.

  “Then this baby—” he managed, sliding his wrist up his brow to peer up at her with gleaming eyes—“this baby—”

  “Is your niece.”

  Chapter Four

  My niece!

  But at that very moment Perry whipped up the team, sending them charging through Blackheath’s great gates and down the long drive of crushed stone at breakneck speed. Further conversation was impossible. Just outside the broken window Chilcot now galloped alongside, his coattails flying. “Hold on, Gareth!” he shouted. “Almost there now!”

  Gareth closed his eyes and held the baby, letting his head rock and sway on Juliet Paige’s lap. He was still grinning; he couldn’t help it. The girl probably thought him insane. But armed with what she’d just told him, he had no intention of succumbing to the blissful lure of unconsciousness—or whatever lay beyond it. There was no way in hell he was going to die. Oh, no. He wouldn’t miss the impending events for the world.

  Or the look on Lucien’s face when he learned that the virtuous, never-do-anything-wrong Charles had sired a bastard babe.

  Looking up, Gareth could just see the outline of Juliet’s jaw, her firm, determined chin and the sweet curve of one cheek. He knew the moment she caught her first glimpse of the castle for her eyes grew huge, and she leaned close to the window for a better look, giving him a better chance to furtively study her. Ah, yes. She was a lovely creature, just as Charles had described. Her skin was as white as snowdrops and set off by dark, upswept hair. Her face was enchanting, with a delicate nose and fine, dark eyes s
et beneath daintily arched brows. Physically, she was diminutive and graceful—yet despite her small size, there was something about her that conveyed courage, resilience, and fortitude. It was easy to see why his brother had fallen for her. But where was the joie de vivre, the innocent naiveté that Charles had so praised? This woman seemed older than her years, as though her spirit had been crushed beneath the weight of sorrow and hardship.

  By God, if he lived, he’d remedy that. She was far too young—and pretty—to embrace age before its time!

  He closed his eyes, content to let his head sway in her lap, content to feel her tightening up the curve of her arm so that he wasn’t jostled so. To think that she, Charles’s betrothed, was here in England. And to think that this infant whose tiny body was so near to his, whose heart beat so close to his own, was his brother’s little girl.

  “Whoa!” Perry was pulling the team up. “Whoa there!”

  Juliet put her arms around Lord Gareth so that they all wouldn’t spill from the seat with the sudden, jolting halt. The coach hadn’t even come to a stop before his friends were wrenching the door open. Gusts of rain and wind swept in and Juliet, hastily picking up Charlotte, felt him tense as they leaped inside, sliding their hands beneath his body and trying not to jostle him too much as they lifted him from her blood-soaked skirts.

  “Here, I’ve got his shoulders.”

  “I’ve got his legs.”

  “Easy with him, now! Gareth? Gareth, we’re going to have to move you. Bear up there, man!”

  They carried him out. Immediately, Charlotte started crying again. Her heart pounding, her hand patting the little baby’s back, Juliet watched as Gareth’s friends rushed him toward the great, medieval doors of Blackheath Castle. As they spirited him away, he lifted his hand to her. Whether the gesture was meant to convey a last goodbye, undying gratitude, or amusement at the sort of treatment everyone was falling over themselves to give him, she did not know.

  Feeling a bit lost, she raised herself off the seat, shaking the wrinkles out of her blood-drenched skirts and wondering if she should follow the others inside or wait in the coach for someone to come for her and Charlotte.

  But the decision was made for her. A man was there at the door, extending a hand inside to her. “Madam?”

  Perry. He had remained behind, still the cool-headed gentleman in a storm of confusion.

  Juliet smiled her thanks and, hastily bundling Charlotte up, allowed him to help them down from the coach. She stood for a moment on the drive, the rain on her face, the wind tugging at her hair and tangling her skirts around her legs. Then Perry offered his arm and escorted her toward the castle, not saying a word.

  Blackheath was much grander than Charles had described it. Juliet stared at it, awestruck, as it rose up out of the darkness before her. High above her head, twin, crenelated towers held up the night, older, it seemed, than time itself. She could just see the dim outline of a flagpole above one of them, its pennant snapping against the black and moody sky with each gust of wind. It was a magnificent palace of a place. A place that made Juliet feel daunted, lost, and very much like a creature out of its element.

  Her courage nearly faltered at the thought of facing its duke. This grand castle with its own flag so far above, the village through which they’d just come, the countryside for miles upon miles around—it all belonged to one single man, who might or might not feel like being charitable. Back in Boston, the thought of going to Blackheath to seek his help had not fazed her. But now, in the face of such imposing, intimidating magnificence, it seemed presumptuous to throw herself and Charlotte on his mercy—even though he would have been family in happier circumstances, and Charles had bade her to do just that.

  Stop being so foolish. She was here in England, with Charles’s family, and she would not turn back now. But as the towering stone walls of the castle loomed closer and closer, Juliet almost wished she had never come here, never bought passage on the Loyalist-owned ship that had been part of the mass evacuation when the British had abandoned the town last month.

  Not that you were spoiled for choice, she reminded herself. Her stepfather, Zachariah, had died in January, and she’d had nowhere else to go. As a suspected Loyalist, her life had been in danger in Boston. As an unwed mother whose baby’s father was rumored to be a hated British officer, she’d been scorned, snubbed, ostracized, threatened. Like it or not, she’d done what she had to do. If not for Charles, then for his daughter.

  Be strong. He would have wanted you to be.

  They were at the foot of the stone steps now. At their head, the ancient oak door through which Lord Gareth had been carried stood open, spilling light out onto the lawn. The door appeared to be some two feet thick and was banded by heavy strips of iron, each one studded with heavy bolts. Perry, obviously a frequent and welcomed visitor here, hustled her up the steps, past two liveried footmen who stood to attention on either side of the door, and into a huge medieval hall, where Juliet stood gaping up at the carved, vaulted stone ceiling that rose some two stories above her head. The room was so big that the fine house in which she and Zachariah had lived back in Boston could easily have fit within it.

  “Wait here,” Perry ordered and hurried off, following the drops of blood that meandered across the polished marble floor. He tore open a set of doors at which the trail stopped and was gone.

  And Juliet was alone.

  “Gareth! ’Sdeath, man, don’t die! Hugh rode for the doctor, he’ll be here any moment. Hang on, just hang on!”

  Gareth cursed the saints, the devil, and his well-meaning friends as they rushed him through Blackheath’s stone passageways and corridors. Every jarring jolt, every skidding turn, brought him agony. He set his teeth and pressed a hand to his side. Through half-closed eyes he caught glimpses of sconces flickering orange against walls, of a chambermaid’s startled face, of the row of portraits in the West Corridor, all of which blurred into a graying haze as he fought gamely to hold on to consciousness.

  Pain jarred him back to reality when Chilcot stumbled, nearly breaking Gareth’s spine in two.

  “Damn you, Chilcot, if you’re going to trip over the blasted rug, at least have the decency to let go of me!”

  And then a door crashed open and he saw the plush rugs of his own apartments, the massive bed of dark, carved oak and the leaded windows that looked out over the downs. Servants ran to and fro, scurrying to turn back the sheets, but Gareth knew nothing but pain as Neil Chilcot and Tom Audlett set him down on the bed.

  Confused, excited voices penetrated the haze in which he lay. Someone removed his shoes. His breeches and what remained of his shirt were cut away, and someone sponged his nettle-stung cheek with blessedly cold water. Gareth lay unmoving. And now Perry, good old Perry, was lifting his head, supporting it so that Chilcot could dump more of that wonderful Irish whiskey into him. It burned a path down his throat and into his stomach, spreading numbing tentacles of warmth out through his limbs, into his very fingertips and toes.

  Gareth closed his eyes, his brain comfortably fuzzy. “More,” he whispered.

  “Bloody hell, Gareth, stop grinning like a damned fool,” Chilcot was saying, putting the flask to his lips once more. “This isn’t funny!”

  Gareth only made an obscene gesture with one hand and drank.

  Audlett commented, “Good thing that girl was quick-witted enough to pack his side with this rag. Hang on there, Gareth. Dr. Highworth’s just arriving now.”

  Gareth pushed away the flask before he reached the point of no return. “See to her,” he gasped, gripping Chilcot’s wrist. “Don’t leave her out there to face Lucien alone.”

  “But—”

  “Go!”

  And then they all heard it. The sound of footfalls coming down the hall, echoing off the stone walls and approaching with relentless, unhurried calm. Chilcot froze. Audlett held his breath. And every servant in the room went still as the footsteps stopped just inside the room.

  And continued fo
rward.

  Lucien.

  Gareth didn’t need to open his eyes to know his brother was there, gazing down at him with his black stare that was severe enough to freeze the Devil in his lair of fire. And he didn’t need to see Lucien’s stark face to know what he would read there: blatant disapproval. Fury.

  He felt Lucien’s cool hand on his cheek. “Ah, Gareth,” the duke said blandly, in a tone that didn’t fool anyone in the room. “Another scrape you’ve got yourself into, I see. What is it this time, eh? No, let me guess. You were posing as a target and taking bets that none of your friends could hit you. Or perhaps you got so foxed that you fell from Crusader and impaled yourself on a fence? Do tell, dear boy. I have all night.”

  “Go to hell, Luce.”

  “I’m sure I will, but I’ll have an explanation from you first.”

  Bastard. Gareth refused to respond to the mocking taunts. Instead, he reached up, his fingers closing around Lucien’s immaculate velvet sleeve. “Don’t send her away, Luce. She’s here. She needs us. We owe it to Charles to take care of her and the baby.”

  Footsteps came running down the hall, into the room. “Over here, Dr. Highworth!” Chilcot cried, suddenly.

  Lucien never moved. “Take care of whom, Gareth?” he inquired, with deadly menace.

  Weakly, Gareth turned his head on the pillow and looked up at his brother through a swirling fog of pain and alcohol. “Juliet Paige,” he whispered, meeting Lucien’s cool, veiled gaze. “The woman Charles was to marry she’s here downstairs with his baby. Don’t send her away, Lucien. I swear I’ll kill you if you do.”

  “My dear boy,” Lucien murmured, with a chilling little smile, “I would not dream of it.”

  But he had straightened up and was already moving toward the door.

  Gareth raised himself on one elbow even as the doctor tried to hold him down. “Lucien damn you, don’t!”

  The duke kept walking.

  “Lucien!” With the last of his strength, Gareth lunged from the bed, but the effort—and the Irish whiskey—did him in at last. As his feet hit the rug, his legs gave out beneath him, and he crashed heavily to the floor in a dead faint.