by Dare, Tessa
Good, Violet thought, smiling to herself. Very good. She didn’t know that the girls would find husbands there, but they just might find themselves.
Before she knew it, it was April. When word reached England of Napoleon’s surrender at Versailles, all London rejoiced. And from that day forward, Violet’s nerves were strung tight as bowstrings. She spent far too much time sitting in the front parlor, gazing out at the square. By night, she watched for any light in his darkened chambers.
At the Beaufetheringstone ball, Violet even found herself scanning the crowd for his dark, wavy hair and roguish smile.
She told herself not to look for him. It might be weeks or even months before he could return, and when he did, he’d turn up at home. But Christian would come for her. Eventually.
“Miss Winterbottom?” Mr. Gerald Jemison stood at her elbow, holding a brimming cup of ratafia in either hand. “Care for refreshment?”
Violet wanted to make some polite, solicitous reply, but she couldn’t.
Because suddenly, he was there.
He was there.
Christian.
It was as though her heart sensed him, even before she spied him all the way at the other end of the ballroom. Yes, it was he. His hair was still overlong, and that roguish nose of his would never be straight again. But he wore a crisp white cravat, a silk brocade waistcoat, and a black topcoat that clung and gleamed like sealskin. The attire of a duke’s son, not a farmhand. He looked magnificent.
And he was headed straight for her.
It took everything Violet had not to pick up her skirts and race to meet him. But until he told her otherwise, she would continue to play the part he’d assigned her. She must act as if that night never happened.
As though that weren’t her love, her lover, the lord of her heart striding purposely across the waxed parquet.
If she could pretend indifference to this, Violet knew she could feign anything.
“Is that you, Pierce?” Mr. Jemison greeted him, inclining his head in lieu of a bow. “What a surprise. I had no idea you’d returned from the West Indies.”
“Yes, as of this afternoon. But I’m only in London temporarily.”
“Temporarily?” Violet’s stomach knotted.
A little smile played about the corners of his lips. “You see, my father wishes me to inspect some land prospects in Guiana.”
“Guiana.” Mr. Jemison still balanced two cups of ratafia. “My word. Is that in Africa?”
“South America,” Violet murmured. She stared at the floor, quietly reeling. Christian must have been reassigned. Perhaps not to Guiana, but somewhere else, hopelessly far away.
He’d be leaving her again.
“I wonder that you took the trouble to come all this way back to England,” Jemison said. “Wouldn’t it have been simpler to catch a ship from Antigua to Guiana instead?”
“Undoubtedly,” Christian agreed. “But I had an important errand to see to here in London.”
“An errand?” Jemison chuckled. “Important enough for you to cross an ocean?”
Christian’s warm, spice-brown eyes caught Violet’s gaze. “Important enough for me to cross a world. On hands and knees. And then double-back to cross it again.”
Violet’s heart melted. Her knees tended toward a liquid state too.
“You see,” he went on, “I came back all this way for one reason only. To ask Miss Winterbottom to dance.” His gloved hand reached for hers, and he whispered tenderly, “Will you, Violet?”
“Yes. Oh, yes.”
They moved to the dance floor, leaving Mr. Jemison with two cups of ratafia and an expression of abject confusion. Violet felt a twinge of remorse, but she forgot it soon enough when they reached the dance floor.
As Christian’s hand slid between her shoulder blades, his sharp intake of breath was audible. Tears pressed to her eyes.
To be so near to him, after so many months… She could barely abide having a foot of space between their bodies. She wanted to throw herself against his strong chest, feel the tight embrace of his arms, inhale deeply of his unique scent. Her body warmed, and her sense of rhythm deserted her. They weren’t moving in time with the music at all, but neither of them cared.
“From the shock in everyone’s eyes,” he murmured, “it would seem you kept your end of the bargain.”
“It wasn’t easy. I’ve amassed quite a cadre of suitors, you know.”
“I can’t claim to be surprised.” His eyes narrowed. “But I will admit to being jealous.”
“You needn’t be. In all these months, I’ve scarcely thought of anything but you. I’m so glad you’re safe.” As she squeezed his arm tight, emotion swelled in her breast. “How long before you must leave again? Please tell me we have more than just one night.”
“We have a few weeks.”
Oh God. Only a few weeks?
“We’ll make the most of them,” she said, trying to be strong. This was Christian’s career, his tribute to Frederick, his solemn duty in the service of the Crown. If he could bear the separation, so could she. “I assume you aren’t really going to Guiana?”
He drew her close and whispered in her ear. “No, my love. We are going to the south of France.”
“We?” Her heart leapt. Oh, the stab of pure hope—it was sharp and sweet. “Did you say we?”
“Assuming you agree, of course.”
“You know I’d follow you anywhere. But France? The war is over. Napoleon is to be exiled.”
“Many of his supporters remain. Vigilance is necessary, particularly to the south. So I have a new appointment. I’m to be an itinerant professor, of all things. God knows I’ll need your help to manage that. The living won’t be much, but I’ve been promised a cottage near some vineyards. The countryside is beautiful, I hear.”
Violet had no doubt of it. A picture appeared in her mind’s eye. Rolling hills scored with rows of grapevines. An ancient cottage with green shutters, nestled on a south-facing slope. White, freshly laundered linens hanging from a line and billowing like sails in the lavender-scented breeze. Dogs. Chickens.
Christian.
Excitement buoyed her next twirl in the dance. “It’s going to be perfect.”
He grinned. “I know I promised you a lavish affair. But can you make do with a simple wedding? They’d want us settled by late summer, and you’ll have training to complete. I’d like a proper honeymoon before we depart.”
“I’d like that too. Where shall we honeymoon?”
“Anywhere.” He pulled her indecently close, and his hand slid down her spine until his fingertips grazed her backside. Heat flared between their bodies. “So long as I have you and a warm, soft bed, we don’t need exotic scenery. We don’t even need clothing.”
She laughed to herself. Oh, what a wonderful, thrilling, passionate, love-filled life they were going to share.
“From tonight on, we should speak French whenever we’re alone. They will give us new names, but I shall make a habit of calling you mon ange, to make it easier. Have you come up with a new pet name for me?” He lifted a brow. “I hope I’m no longer The Disappointment.”
“Certainly not.” Tilting her head to give him an assessing look, she ran through possible endearments in her mind… mon coeur, mon amour, mon cher.
“Ma moitié,” she decided. “My half. Because when you left, my heart was ripped right down the middle. And when you came back, you made my joy complete.” Her voice broke a little, and her gaze fell to the snowy drifts of his cravat. “Christian, I… I wouldn’t know how to live without you.”
He stopped dancing and slid both hands to her face, tilting her gaze to his. His eyes were solemn and ardent. “You will never need to learn.”
All onlookers were forgotten. The ballroom ceased to exist. They closed the distance between them, each leaning forward by slow degrees…until their lips met in the middle.
Two halves of one perfect, passionate kiss.
About the Author
Tessa Dare is the award-winning author of seven historical romance novels and two novellas. A librarian by training and a booklover at heart, she takes great pride and pleasure in continuing to work part-part-time at her local public library. She makes her home in Southern California, where she shares a cozy, cluttered bungalow with her husband, their two children and a big brown dog.
To learn more about Tessa and her other books, please visit www.tessadare.com.
Look for these titles by Tessa Dare
Now Available:
The Legend of the Werestag
To capture love, sometimes you have to grab it by the horns…
The Legend of the Werestag
© 2009 Tessa Dare
If a woman could die of humiliation, Cecily Hale would have perished three hours ago. Luke Trenton had finally returned to Swinford Manor, only to cruelly spurn her long-held love. But she couldn’t conveniently die of shame on the spot—oh, no. Instead she joined her friends on this ridiculous search for a legendary man-beast. Now she’ll die here—alone in the woods, at the tusks of a snarling boar.
Luke left for war a dashing youth and returned a man—just not the same man Cecily fell in love with. His passion for her is stronger than ever, but the ravages of battle changed him in ways she wouldn’t understand. Pushing her away was supposed to save her, not throw her into the path of another inhuman creature…or into the arms of another man.
For it is a man who rescues Cecily, just as the boar attacks. A mysterious, silent man who disappears into the woods, leaving her with just a glimpse—of a fleeing white deer. Could her rescuer be the man-beast of local lore?
A dangerous myth has captured Cecily’s imagination, putting Luke on the horns of a dilemma. Unless he summons the passion and tenderness to win her back, he could lose her forever…to the Werestag.
Warning: This is a humorous, passionate historical romance, not a paranormal shifter story. However, it does feature a harrowing encounter with a wild beast, a tortured hero who feels half-human, and the unleashing of animal urges. In other words: explicit sex, mild language.
Enjoy the following excerpt for The Legend of the Werestag:
At last, Cecily had him cornered.
The party had dispersed to prepare for their impromptu hunting excursion. Brooke and Denny had gone to see about footmen and torches. Cecily was supposed to be fetching a cloak and sturdier boots from her chambers, as Portia had done, but she’d tarried purposely until the three of them had left. Until she was alone with Luke. It was time to end this…this foolish dream she’d been living for years.
She cleared her throat. “Will you come with us, out to the woods?”
“Are you going to marry Denny?” He spoke in an easy, conversational tone. As though his answer depended on hers.
She briefly considered chastising his impudence, refusing to answer. But why not give an honest reply? He’d already made her humiliation complete, by virtue of his perfect indifference. She could sink no lower by revealing it. “There is no formal understanding between us. But everyone assumes I will marry him, yes.”
“Because you are so madly in love?”
Cecily gave a despairing sniff. “Please. Because we are cousins of some vague sort, and we can reunite the ancestral fortune.” She stared up at the gilt ceiling trim. “What else would people assume? For what other earthly reason would I have remained unmarried through four seasons? Certainly not because I’ve been clinging to a ridiculous infatuation all this time. Certainly not because I’ve wasted the best years of my youth and spurned innumerable suitors, pining after a man who had long forgotten me. No, no one would ever credit that reasoning. They could never think me such a ninny as that.”
That cold, empty silence again. A sob caught in her throat.
“Was there anything in it?” she asked, not bothering to wipe the tear tracing the rim of her nose. “Our summer here, all those long walks and even longer conversations? When you kissed me that night, did it mean anything to you?”
When he did not answer, she took three paces in his direction. “I know how proud you must be of those enigmatic silences, but I believe I deserve an answer.” She stood between his icy silence and the heated aura of the fire. Scorched on one side, bitterly cold on the other—like a slice of toast someone had forgotten to turn.
“What sort of answer would you like to hear?”
“An honest one.”
“Are you certain? It’s my experience that young ladies vastly prefer fictions. Little stories, like Portia’s gothic novel.”
“I am as fond of a good tale as anyone,” she replied, “but in this instance, I wish to know the truth.”
“So you say. Let us try an experiment, shall we?” He rose from his chair and sauntered toward her, his expression one of jaded languor. His every movement a negotiation between aristocratic grace and sheer brute strength.
Power. He radiated power in every form—physical, intellectual, sensual—and he knew it. He knew that she sensed it.
The fire was unbearably warm now. Blistering, really. Sweat beaded at her hairline, but Cecily would not retreat.
“I could tell you,” he said darkly, seductively, “that I kissed you that night because I was desperate with love for you, overcome with passion, and that the color of my ardor has only deepened with time and separation. And that when I lay on a battlefield bleeding my guts out, surrounded by meaningless death and destruction, I remembered that kiss and was able to believe that there was something of innocence and beauty in this world, and it was you.” He took her hand and brought it to his lips. Almost. Warm breath caressed her fingertips. “Do you like that answer?”
She gave a breathless nod. She was a fool; she couldn’t help it.
“You see?” He kissed her fingers. “Young ladies prefer fictions.”
“You are a cad.” Cecily wrenched her hand away and balled it into a fist. “An arrogant, insufferable cad.”
“Yes, yes. Now we come to the truth. Shall I give you an honest answer, then? That I kissed you that night for no other reason than that you looked uncommonly pretty and fresh, and though I doubted my ability to vanquish Napoleon, it was some balm to my pride to conquer you, to feel you tremble under my touch? And that now I return from war, to find everything changed, myself most of all. I scarcely recognize my surroundings, except…” He cupped her chin in his hand and lightly framed her jaw between his thumb and forefinger. “Except Cecily Hale still looks at me with stars in her eyes, the same as she ever did. And when I touch her, she still trembles.”
Oh. She was trembling. He swept his thumb across her cheek, and even her hair shivered.
“And suddenly…” His voice cracked. Some unrehearsed emotion pitched his dispassionate drawl into a warm, expressive whisper. “Suddenly, I find myself determined to keep this one thing constant in my universe. Forever.”
She swallowed hard. “Do you intend to propose to me?”
“I don’t think so, no.” He caressed her cheek again. “I’ve no reason to.”
“No reason?” Had she thought her humiliation complete? No, it seemed to be only beginning.
“I’ll get my wish, Cecy, whether I propose to you or not. You can marry Denny, and I’ll still catch you stealing those starry looks at me across drawing rooms, ten years from now. You can share a bed with him, but I’ll still haunt your dreams. Perhaps once a year on your birthday—or perhaps on mine—I’ll contrive to brush a single fingertip oh-so-lightly between your shoulder blades, just to savor that delicious tremor.” He demonstrated, and she hated her body for responding just as he’d predicted.
An ironic smile crooked his lips. “You see? You can marry anyone or no one. But you’ll always be mine.”
“I will not,” she choked out, pulling away. “I will put you out of my mind forever. You are not so very handsome, you know, for all that.”
“No, I’m not,” he said, chuckling. “And there’s the wonder of it. It’s nothing to do with me, and everythi
ng to do with you. I know you, Cecily. You may try to put me out of your mind. You may even succeed. But you’ve built a home for me in your heart, and you’re too generous a soul to cast me out now.”
She shook her head. “I—”
“Don’t.” With a sudden, powerful movement, he grasped her waist and brought her to him, holding her tight against his chest. “Don’t cast me out.”
Double trouble—with a twist.
The Scarred Heir
© 2012 Denise Patrick
Two months. Just two more months and Sarah Standish will be twenty-one and free to come out of hiding. Not long ago she was on the brink of marrying the man of her dreams—until she discovered his complicity with her uncle’s plan to gain control of her missing father’s substantial fortune.
A wounded man appears at the inn where she lives under an assumed name, and she’s shocked to discover it’s her would-be groom. He seems to have no memory of her, yet her traitorous heart remembers.
Max Dayton awakens from a fevered dream to find a vengeful angel hovering over him. When he realizes she’s mistaken him for his twin brother, his protective instincts kick in. There must be some reason his brother assumed Max’s identity…and some connection to this dazzling beauty and the father she insists is not dead.
In a quest to untangle the twisted trail of lies that threw them together, Sarah and Max journey to London, where the mystery grows darker and deeper. And the fragile beginnings of love are threatened by a secret someone would kill to keep.
Warning: Contains a war hero, runaway bride, jealous twin, greedy uncle, and a good reason to check names before proceeding. At least the dog knows who is who.
Available January 2012 from Samhain Publishing
