Tempting the Heiress

by Barbara Pierce

  Shaking, she squeezed him tighter. She choked on a bubble of laughter at his groan. “Brock,” she cried for her friend and her lover. “Cornley is alive.”

  The news was met with grim silence. The sounds of breaking glass and rage-filled shrieks still echoed from below.

  “Prola saved him from the fire. I—I hit him in the face with a bottle. They are brothers, you know,” she chattered, not certain she was making any sense.

  Mallory bent over and kissed the top of her head. Then he met Brock’s livid pale green gaze, and the two men conversed without speaking. With a nod, her brother straightened and headed down the stairs. Tipton and Milroy followed. Cornley would not escape justice this time.

  Overwhelmed by the ordeal, she leaned into Brock. “Once again, you rescued me from Cornley.”

  Trying to shield her with his body, he rocked her. She felt his denial long before he quietly said, “No, Amara, this time you were strong enough to rescue yourself.”

  The nightmare had ended. Amara barely felt anything as she watched Prola and a mewling Cornley with blood and gore on his ruined face being turned over to the police. Perhaps the brandy Brock forced down her was to blame, but she thought she would feel something, anything.

  Mallory appeared before her and with sweet gentleness took up her hand. “You have hurt yourself, puss. Let the surgeon tend it.”

  She glanced helplessly at the three-inch cut across her right palm. Until her brother had brought it to her attention, she had not even noticed she had been hurt. Still bleeding, the laceration pulsed and burned. She must have cut her hand when she hit Cornley with the bottle.

  “I’ve got her,” Brock said, using the linen strips bandaging his own leg to wrap around her hand. His gaze heated with something darker than anger when he said to Mallory, “Follow after them, and make certain Cornley and Prola remain under guard. I do not trust myself if justice fails us.”

  “You are not alone in this,” her brother said, the softness he had shown her vanishing at the mention of her captors. “Take care of her, Bedegrayne.”

  Amara wanted to call her brother back for fear he might try something foolish. Milroy, perceiving her distress, gave her a reassuring nod and trailed after her departing brother.

  “You both need tending and this place is unsuitable. I have already sent word home to expect our arrival,” Tipton said with his usual peremptory aplomb.

  Amara was too tired to argue. Besides, she was not certain her father would accept her into his household again. She allowed Brock to assist her to stand. “Tipton, once you came to me in my bedchamber and eased my grief by telling me that Doran was alive.” Brock tensed; his grip on her arm bordered on painful. Ignoring him, she begged, “I need the truth, my lord. Does my brother Doran still live?”

  “Tipton.” Brock managed to infuse both a command and a warning in the one word.

  Regret washed over the surgeon’s austere features. “No.”

  The edges of her vision started to gray and close in on her. Amara did not realize she was falling until Brock caught her in his arms and lowered her to the floor.

  “Damn you, Tipton!” Brock seethed. “Has she not suffered enough for one evening? Why did you have to tell her the truth now?”

  She never heard Tipton’s calm reply. Her last thought before she succumbed to the darkness was that Brock had always known of Doran’s true fate and had let her believe the lie.

  Brock carried Amara into the bedchamber his sister had prepared earlier and placed her on the bed. She had not said one word since she had revived from her faint. That had not deterred him from holding her while they traveled to Tipton’s town house. She had not resisted his embrace, nor had she clung to him. Tipton, in his dispassionate manner, explained the circumstances that had led to her brother’s murder. Expressionless, she had stared out the carriage window. Brock was not even certain she had heard Tipton.

  His teeth snapped together in frustration. They had gone through so much for him to lose her now. At first, he had wanted to break Tipton’s neck for his revelation. Tipton had quickly cooled his ire by pointing out that Amara had fallen for Prola’s ruse because of their deception. She whimpered now as Tipton unwound the linen around her hand to examine her wound. The ropes that had bound her wrists had cut into her tender flesh as she had struggled to escape. Holding her close, he closed his eyes in pain; the knowledge boiled in his gut that he was once again responsible for Cornley’s harming her.

  “I regret so much, Amara,” he said wearily. “My actions in the past have not always been respectable or redeemable.” He laughed softly at himself. “Loving you tempered the wickedness that threatened to consume me in my reckless youth. I need you to believe in me again.”

  Amara sealed his lips with just the light touch of her fingertips. He kissed her fingers, accepting her silent forgiveness. Ignoring the tears that were threatening to unman him, Brock held her while Tipton stitched the deep three-inch gash in her palm. He distracted her with a slightly embellished tale about his ambush and his clumsy manservant’s heroics. There was no point in confessing how perilous the situation had become. He could not help the omission. Whether she accepted him in her life or not, he intended to spend the rest of his life protecting her. She and Tipton laughed with him. Then the horror of the night sank beneath her icy veil. She turned her face into his chest and began to sob. Tipton finished stitching her wound, then silently departed, leaving Brock to the healing of her heart.

  Unable to bear her wild grief, he pulled her into his lap. “I will not tell you not to cry,” he said, rubbing her back as if she were a child. “You have experienced enough pain in your young life not to shed a tear about the past.” She clung to him and cried. He preferred the tears, believing they were more healing than the icy walls she had tried to build to protect herself. Brock did not speak again until her gulping sobs had quieted to an occasional shiver. “I was never the kind of man who looked farther than a few days ahead. Loving you gave me a future to dream about. Do you know what I see?”

  Amara sniffed into a handkerchief and cuddled closer. He tolerated the physical pain her movements caused him because he preferred having her close when he spoke of his dreams.

  “Do I not have a say in this grand future you have planned for us?”

  Since he heard the amusement in her tone, he relaxed and smiled. “I see us married, Amara, and soon, since I need you snuggled by my side at night.” His hand slipped down to her stomach and rested there, wondering if their child already slept in her womb. “I see us with a house filled with children because a love like ours was meant to be shared.”

  “And because you look forward to such an endeavor,” she added, blushing prettily at her boldness.

  “I confess that I intend to concentrate all my energies toward the task as soon as possible,” he teased, and then sobered. “Your mother and father will most likely disown you if you marry me, dove. You will have Mallory, of course. Their disapproval has not bothered him in the past. And I can offer you my family. They have loved you almost as long as I have. Who knows, maybe someday, if Lord and Lady Keyworth can forgive me for stealing you away, I can figure out a way in which to give your family back to you.”

  “You offer me so much, Brock. What can I offer you?”

  His lips quirked into a sinful grin as he eased her onto the pillows and caged her with his body. “You can fill my days with joy and my nights with wicked carnal delights. Allow me to demonstrate,” he coaxed, dipping closer for a kiss.

  “Finished?” Tipton asked, interrupting Brock’s seduction. “You both need sleep. Acting as your physician, I recommend postponing those carnal delights for a few nights. Amara might hurt you.” He winked, and set off to find his wife.

  Brock sat up in bed and removed his coat and cravat. In deference to his countless bruises, he did not remove his breeches and shirt. Amara was going to be rather upset with him when she saw his injuries and he preferred having her in his arms. He settled ba
ck down on the bed beside her.

  Covering her eyes with her undamaged hand, Amara suddenly moaned.

  “Should I summon Tipton?”

  “No, no,” she said, looking miserable. “I forgot. Brock, they took my jewelry.”

  The tension eased from his shoulders. “Let us worry about the Claeg family jewels tomorrow.”

  “I do not care about my mother’s jewelry!” she said fiercely. They both ignored her tiny lie. “Brock! Your mother’s intaglio is gone.”

  “Not quite.” Digging several fingers under his shirt, he revealed the gold chain. Claeg had found all the jewelry stolen from Amara in Cornley’s coat pocket. Wincing, he pulled the chain over his head.

  “You have it,” she sighed, clutching her treasure to her heart. She slipped the intaglio over her head and sank back into the pillows.

  Brock smiled down at the intaglio, the maiden and beast forever bound together in stone. “Rest, your talisman will protect you.”

  Surprised, Amara looked up, her stormy blue eyes filling with tears. Lovingly, she laid her hand against his cheek. “He always has.”

  Phebe:

  Good shepherd, tell this youth what ’tis to love.

  Silvius:

  It is to be all made of sighs and tears …

  It is to be all made of fantasy,

  All made of passion and all made of wishes,

  All adoration, duty and observance,

  All humbleness, all patience and impatience,

  All purity, all trial, all observance …

  —William Shakespeare, from

  As You Like It, act 5, sc. 2, 1. 83–97.

  “You are a liar, Amara, and a bad one at that …

  “Amara, I care little of what path we choose. The result will be the same. I can kiss you senseless or prod your cursed temper until neither of us sees reason. Either way, it will be my body covering yours, my name you cry out when the passion crests, making you wonder if a person could die from the shattering joy.”

  They stared at each other, both remembering the kisses they had shared and she forgot to be angry or afraid of him. He could make her feel that way again. She must have sensed his purpose because she asked, “This is your notion of courtship?”

  “No, just a pleasurable means to end the madness. From my way of thinking, the last ten years or so have been a courtship of sorts. It is not my fault if you have not been paying attention.”

  TEMPTING THE HEIRESS

  Copyright © 2004 by Barbara Pierce.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.

  St. Martin’s Paperbacks are published by St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.

  eISBN 9781429997959

  First eBook Edition : March 2011

  St. Martin’s Paperbacks edition / May 2004