Lord Ravenscar's Inconvenient Betrothal

by Lara Temple

  This time they sank into the warm waters of the tropics. He was pulling her along with him, deep underwater, and it was warm and she didn’t even need to breathe, she became the sea, warm, vast. Joyful. She felt the sweet agony of his climax, the violent shudders as his body closed on hers, but for her this time was a warm welling of pleasure that rose and rose and wouldn’t stop, carrying her with it into his arms. Home.

  * * *

  ‘I should have waited. Of all places to do this... I must be mad. It is November and anyone coming down to the lake could see us.’

  He dragged his discarded greatcoat over them and she snuggled against him, her leg sinking between his thighs as he shifted, anchoring her on top of him. Under the weight of his caped coat, his hand sloped down her back, warm and gentle, like sun on the surface of water. She arched into it, absorbing his heat as their bodies cooled.

  ‘We would be truly ruined, then, wouldn’t we?’

  ‘It would certainly finally put an end to all your indecision.’

  ‘I knew what I wanted before you did,’ she protested, tracing the line of his arm from his shoulder to where it rested on her hip, a landscape of powerful muscle, fine silky dark hair, down to the definite bones of his wrist. When she reached it, his hand turned, lacing their fingers together.

  ‘Damn, I love you. Will you marry me, Lily?’

  She stilled for a moment, waiting for the mingling of pain and joy to flow through her and calm again.

  ‘I asked you first.’

  ‘I beg pardon, I asked you first.’

  ‘No, you didn’t. You told me. I asked you. There is a vast difference. And, yes, I will. Your turn now.’

  He laughed, pulling her more fully on top of him.

  ‘When you come off your island, you do it with a vengeance, my lovely vixen. I thought I was good at meeting dares, but you outdo me. You’ve outdone me utterly. Yes, I will marry you. This very instant, but Lady Belle would never forgive us if we don’t appease the ghosts with some show of pomp and circumstance. Hunter also won’t forgive me if I don’t at least invite him to come gloat at my downfall so he can pay me back for gloating at his.’

  She pulled her hand away and planted it on the grass, raising herself to look down at her fallen angel. Flat on his back. It suited him. She would have to do this often.

  ‘You are certain about this, Alan? You must believe me, I don’t want to force you if you don’t wish to be married.’

  ‘I’m not as generous, love. I’ll not allow you a loophole to wiggle out of. You do realise that I didn’t use any precautions just now either? You are now honour bound to make an honest man of me. Now come, up with you before we freeze to the ground and are found here encased in ice like fossil remains. Lady Belle will skin me alive if I allow you to fall ill. She is counting on us to relieve her of the Hall so she can lead a wild life of dissipation in Bath.’

  ‘She... What? Does that mean she has reinstated you?’

  He secured his buckskins and shrugged into his shirt as she slid the chemise over her head, then he picked up her dress from the grass, his eyes glinting at her as he gathered it into folds and slid it over her head, turning her to secure the hooks.

  ‘Disappointed? She told me she had never respected my grandfather’s wish of keeping me from inheriting. Not that I need it, but just so you know, I would marry you without a penny to my name and bear the shame of living up to your fortune-hunting slurs if I had to. There is no possible way I would give you up over a blasted prejudice.’

  She turned back to him, gathering his hands in hers.

  ‘I would also marry you if you hadn’t a penny to your name, Alan, and consider myself lucky.’

  He pulled her against him, grasping her chin, his expression hardening again, a beautiful forbidding statue. He wasn’t smiling, but she could see beyond the harsh tension to the fear and beyond that to the giving love she was so lucky to have reached. She touched his cheek as she had when he was ill, softly, full of love, her eyes burning with tears.

  He pulled away, stroking the hair from her face.

  ‘What’s wrong, love?’

  ‘That day we returned to the Hall, after you were ill, when we sat here, I dreamed of children playing here, but I never believed it might be true. But I need to tell you I don’t need anything else other than you. If you will only let me love you.’

  ‘So will you be disappointed if I tell you I was rather warming to the idea of children? I’m terrified of it, but I don’t think I can go back to being the way I was any longer. I was thinking we would start with a daughter, just to ease me in. With your hair. And then a son. Or two.’

  She laughed, wiping away her tears and wrapping her arms around him again, rising on her toes to press her mouth to his. A son and a daughter. Everything she could give him, she would. She smiled against his mouth, parting her lips to taste him, loving how the hunger was beginning to rise again, how her body was mapping every point of contact between them and laying out demands for more. What a revelation this man was. Hers.

  ‘Alan. My raven with his broken wing. I do love you. I am so glad you shoved me off my island.’

  She could feel the rigid tension recede, revealing his warm, generous core again. His fingers combed through her hair, untangling it and unravelling her all over again.

  ‘Not shoved, coaxed. Now I shall have to coax you back. You owe me a fantasy. You and I are going swimming.’

  She laughed, glancing at the lake.

  ‘You’re mad. It is November!’

  ‘Hell, no, I refuse to spend my honeymoon in the English winter. You have been swimming around in my feverish brain since we met and it’s time I introduced myself into that fantasy and ousted your fairy-tale prince Rupert. It is very demeaning to realise I was jealous of a manatee.’

  She leaned her cheek against him, listening to the beat of his heart.

  ‘You needn’t have worried. Vixens and sea mammals don’t mix.’

  He smiled and he tightened his hands in her hair, raising her face towards his as he brushed his lips over hers.

  ‘Ravens also tend to have a penchant for their own kind—feral field animals. Vixens, ferrets, hedgehogs...’

  ‘Hedgehogs?’

  He held her firmly as she tried to pull away, speaking the words against her mouth, his breath tangling with hers. She knew what he was doing—he was baiting her, teasing her out of her lair like the wild hunter he was.

  ‘Small, prickly and with a soft underbelly,’ he added for good measure, and she sank against him, opening for him, her outrage giving away to laughter.

  ‘You’ll pay for that, Raven.’

  ‘With pleasure...’

  Epilogue

  Summer 1825

  The puppy streaked down the bank and cleared the shallows with a leap.

  ‘Good Gwimlet!’ Alexander cheered as the black head strained above the surface towards the bobbing wooden boat. The dark green water shattered into ripples around him, spreading all the way to the grassy island in the middle of the lake connected to the bank by a wrought-iron-and-wood bridge.

  Their first summer together Alan had brought workers to construct the island for her as well as the classical temple-like structure at its centre, where they went when they wanted to be utterly alone. Everyone knew no one was allowed on the island when the gate on the bridge was closed.

  She looked across and sighed, remembering the perfect summer morning they had spent there a week ago before he had left for Birmingham.

  ‘Very good Grimlet,’ Lily agreed, detaching her daughter’s chubby hands from her hair and shifting her to her other hip to allow her daughter to rearrange her hair on the other side.

  ‘Greene is despairing of me, Emma. She thinks you are colluding with your father to keep me in a state of permanent disarrangement. And to think I was once considere
d fashionable.’

  Emma detached her hands and raised them in the air.

  ‘Papa.’

  ‘Yes, Papa. I miss him, too, pumpkin, but he should be back tomorrow.’

  ‘I will show him Gwimlet’s new trick,’ Alexander announced as he took the wooden ship from the puppy’s grinning jaw and stood back to avoid most of the shower as Grimlet succumbed to the need to shake off the lake on his new masters before padding over to stretch himself out in the patch of sun between Rickie’s and Grim’s graves, his pink tongue with its black spot licking absently at the grey stone.

  ‘Papa!’ Emma insisted, squirming, and the back of Lily’s neck tingled and she turned in time to see Alan push aside the curtain of willow branches.

  ‘Papa!’ Alexander got there first, but Emma made good time on her shorter and chubbier legs.

  Alan hauled his children into his arms and Lily met the love in his eyes with a rush of emotion and gratitude that never seemed to dim. When Alexander’s stream of news and Emma’s tugging at his hair and buttons finally subsided, he noticed the mobile ball of dark fluff frolicking at his feet.

  ‘What on earth is that?’

  ‘That is Grimlet. Mr Prosper’s housekeeper mentioned her son’s dog had bred and invited us to see the puppies. The rest, as they say, is history.’

  ‘Grimlet.’

  ‘Alexander wanted to call him Little Grim, but then he thought Grimlet was better.’

  ‘Do you like him, Papa? May we keep him?’ Alexander asked with the sudden seriousness that characterised their son.

  ‘If you can keep him from chewing my boots, he can stay.’

  Alexander considered the puppy, now rolling on his back at their feet, snapping at a fly that was hovering above him.

  ‘But he likes chewing things. Besides, you have more boots. There is only one Grimlet.’

  ‘Impeccable reason. Yes, you imp. You can keep him.’

  ‘Gimmit,’ Emma added.

  ‘On condition you take him with Nanny up to the house now. Mama and I have matters to discuss.’

  ‘Must we?’

  Alan beckoned to Nanny Brisbane, who proceeded to pluck Emma from his arms.

  ‘Yes, Master Alexander. It is time for the puppy to have his nuncheon if he is to grow to be as big and strong as Grim.’

  ‘And I shall grow to be as big and strong as you, Papa,’ Alexander announced, picking up Grimlet and marching off in the lead.

  Lily walked into Alan’s open arms and watched the reluctant cavalcade wend its way up to the Hall.

  ‘Are Catherine and Philip well?’

  ‘Very well. They send their regards and said they will visit as soon as Timothy is old enough to be left with his nurse. I told them they might as well bring him as the Hall is one big nursery anyway.’

  Lily laughed, leaning against him. It was ridiculous to be so grateful for his return after a mere week’s separation, but there it was.

  ‘Lady Belle wrote from Paris full of complaints about French food and manners, but reading between the lines she and your great-aunt Ray are having as marvellous a time there terrorising the French as they had the inhabitants of Bath. I’m glad you returned early. I thought you were only due back tomorrow.’

  ‘That was the plan, but I was having trouble sleeping, so I told Marston he can deal with the rest.’

  She frowned, cupping his face in her hands, warming herself against him.

  ‘Was anything wrong?’

  ‘Yes. The bed was too big. I kept waking up wondering where you were and thinking of you in our bed, all warm and waiting. Not conducive to a restful night.’

  ‘I wasn’t in our bed, though.’

  His arms tightened around her and he raised her face, his eyes taking possession of her again, bringing her to life.

  ‘No? Did you run away again behind my back? I warned you what I would do next time.’

  ‘Yes, I know, locked towers and the like. I was in the nursery. I couldn’t sleep either, so I went to listen to Alex and Emma breathing. We are doing very ill at being apart. We shall have to practise.’

  ‘Right now there are much more pressing concerns that require practice.’

  ‘Now? Here?’

  ‘Jem is under strict orders to allow no one to approach the lake path. This is what we constructed our island for, isn’t it? Not that we made it there last time. I’ve been fantasising about how you looked there last time, dappled in sunlight and your hair like fire on the grass. How clever of you to have your hair down and ready for me. Are you sure you didn’t know I was coming?’

  ‘Emma helped.’

  ‘She is shaping up to be as intelligent as her mother. I only wish she had your hair. Maybe our next daughter will.’

  ‘Yes, well...about that...’

  The heat in his eyes dimmed a little in shock.

  ‘Are you serious?’

  ‘I’m afraid I am—is that terrible?’

  He pulled her against him, laughing.

  ‘I leave you alone for a week and I come back and find you with child and a new puppy.’

  ‘I beg pardon, you were very instrumental in at least one of those developments!’

  ‘So I was, how clever of me. This time it will be a daughter with your amazing hair and tortuous mind. Come, all the more reason to gather our rosebuds while we may before I have to share these delectable beauties again.’ His hands curved under her breasts, raising them to brush his mouth over the sensitive swells, and her legs sagged against him as her need gathered, fed by the joy and love he woke in her so easily.

  She took his hand and led him to their sanctuary.

  ‘I’m so glad you came home, Alan, my love.’

  * * * * *

  If you missed the first story in Lara Temple’s

  WILD LORDS AND INNOCENT LADIES trilogy, check out

  LORD HUNTER’S CINDERELLA HEIRESS

  And why not try these other stories

  by Lara Temple too?

  THE DUKE’S UNEXPECTED BRIDE

  THE RELUCTANT VISCOUNT

  LORD CRAYLE’S SECRET WORLD

  Keep reading for an excerpt from MISS MURRAY ON THE CATTLE TRAIL by Lynna Banning.

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  New York Times bestselling author Julia London brings you the latest novel in an unforgettable series with The Highland Grooms.

  Devil in Tartan

  Peril and passion on enemy seas...

  Lottie Livingstone bears the weight of an island on her shoulders. Under threat of losing their home, she and her clan take to the seas to sell a shipload of illegal whiskey. When an attack leaves them vulnerable, she transforms from a maiden daughter to a clever warrior. For survival, she orchestrates the siege of a rival’s ship and now holds the devilish Scottish captain Aulay Mackenzie under her command.

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  Sinful Scottish Laird

  Hard-Hearted Highlander

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  Miss Murray on the Cattle Trail

  by Lynna Banning