by Gaelen Foley
CONTENTS
Title Page
Dedication
Map
Prologue
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Epilogue
Also By Gaelen Foley
Excerpts for Devil Takes A Bride
Preview of Lady of Desire
Look for these enchanting regency romances by award-winning author GAELEN FOLEY
Pillow Talk
Copyright Page
Dedicated with love and many fond memories to all my wonderful cousins on both sides—
The never-a-dull-moment Kennedy clan, who made Sundays at Mimi and Pap’s house so much fun, and the wild-and-wacky Foley bunch who throw great family reunions complete with ghost stories around the campfire.
Blessings and much joy to you, your spouses, and adorable children.
Special thanks to Dan, the brother I never had, and to Tim, who tells people everywhere he goes to read his little cousin’s books.
Love you, and thanks for bringing so much joy and laughter into my life….
PROLOGUE
England, 1805
Moonlight flashed on three black racing-drags tearing up the Oxford Road, a heedless cavalcade—whips cracking, snorting blood-horses wild eyed and flecked with foam. The drivers were roués of notorious reputation in Town, their hardened young faces flushed with speed, taut with desperation. There was murder in their eyes, for each had everything to lose if they failed to overtake the stagecoach traveling some miles ahead. The autumn wind sent an eddy of dead brown leaves swirling across their path; the leader plunged through it, wheels whirring.
They barreled on.
A few miles up the road, the stagecoach bound for Holyhead rolled to a halt in the courtyard of The Golden Bull Inn and disgorged its weary travelers. “You may rest for two hours before we’re under way again,” the cheerful driver instructed, helping a lady passenger down from the coach.
“Thank you,” she murmured from behind her light lace veil. She stole a swift glance into the darkness behind them. No sign of them yet. “Come, Johnny.” She took the hand of the frightened lad who climbed out of the coach behind her and firmly led him into the quaint, thatched-roof inn with its wooden galleries and neat black shutters.
As she strode into the hotel’s lobby, the coppery ends of her waist-length red hair showed beneath the edges of the veil that concealed her famous face—and the black eye her protector had given her.
“Do you have a room open?” she asked, her hand shaking slightly as she signed the guest register, not under the name by which she was known throughout London—not her stage name—but under her real name: Mary Virginia Harris. The name they still called her at her village back in Ireland, where she was fleeing to now. Johnny clung beside her, all his thirteen-year-old’s bravado gone, his thin, pubescent body shivering more with fear at their brash escape than with the chill of the November night.
“Aye, ma’am.” The aproned landlord tried to get a look at her through the pale barrier of lace, but her frosty stare rebuked him. Soon, he led her and her “son” out of the lobby and away from the nearby public room, where numerous local men were drinking and playing darts, up to the second-floor gallery, where he showed them to their room.
As Johnny and she stood in the corridor, waiting for the landlord to unlock the chamber door for them, a little girl of about four poked her curly head out of the next room and giggled, playing peekaboo with them. Startled and decidedly charmed, Mary gazed at the wee thing for a second, until a woman’s voice chided from inside the other chamber: “Sarah, pet, come back in this room.”
The child grinned and disappeared again. Mary nodded her thanks to the landlord and pressed a coin into his palm as she followed Johnny into their room.
Little Sarah peeked out the door again a moment later, but the pretty veiled lady had closed her own door. She skipped across the chamber past her parents and climbed up carefully onto the chair to peer out the window. She breathed on the glass, then drew a happy face in the steam with her fingertip, just the way her big brother, Devlin, had shown her. She could hardly wait to see him, for they were on their way to fetch him home from school. It wasn’t even Christmas yet, and he was allowed to come home! Yet for some mysterious reason, this wonderful news had set Mummy and Daddy to arguing.
“Now, Katie Rose,” Daddy was saying as he cleaned his spectacles with a handkerchief. “There’s no need to go flying up into the boughs. I’m sure the lad can explain himself.”
“Explain himself? Stephen, your son punched a truancy officer in the nose! We’ve sent him to the best university in England, and this is how he behaves? Skipping classes to go drinking and playing billiards with his friends?”
“He’s seventeen, Katie. All boys get into a bit of roguery at school. It’s a natural part of growing up. Besides, Devlin is still making some of the highest marks in his class.”
“I know it, blast him. He doesn’t even have to try.” She folded her arms across her chest with a huff. “Our son is lucky that he got his brains from you.”
“And his fighting spirit from you,” he said fondly, capturing her chin. “Not to mention his big, blue eyes. Now smile for me, Lady Strathmore, or I will kiss that frown off your lips.”
She smiled at him in spite of herself. “Save your charm for the dean, husband. After your son’s antics, a large donation to the college is probably the only way we can contrive to get him merely suspended instead of expelled. Oh, I do hope Devlin’s all right.”
“No doubt he was just showing off, as boys are wont to do.”
She nodded. “I’m not sure whether I’ll want to strangle him when I see him or give him the biggest hug in all the world.”
“You’re his mother,” he said gently. “Letting you down is, for Devlin, punishment enough. I opt for the hug.”
“I love you Stephen,” she sighed, resting her head on his chest. “What would I do without you? You’re so patient and kind and good—”
“Horsies!” Sarah exclaimed, cupping her hands around her eyes and squinting out the window at the three noisy black carriages that came clattering into the courtyard below.
As the lead racing-drag shuddered to a halt behind the stagecoach, the first of the young men jumped out. Quentin, Lord Randall, was a great, towering brute in his mid-twenties, fearfully known as Damage Randall in the fashionable boxing studios of London. He was hazel eyed and thick featured, with a shock of brown hair and a square, rugged face ending in a cleft chin.
Quint stalked into The Golden Bull without waiting for Carstairs and Staines to catch up. Seeing the stagecoach parked in the courtyard had told him all he needed to know: Ginny was somewhere inside. He knew she had fled on the Holyhead stage, intent on taking the packet boat to Ireland, but Quint had no intention of letting her go.
She was his.
He plowed through the lobby, glancing into the nearby taproom for her, then marching over to grab the guest book out of the landlord’s hands.
“May I ’elp you, sir?”
Quint merely growled, scanning the name
s until he saw the one that looked familiar. Mary Harris. Ginny had told him her real name once. He was surprised he had remembered it, for he usually chose not to dwell on her common origins. He preferred her stage name instead—Ginny Highgate. The glamorous actress, wanted by all, but he had got her through sheer bloody-minded persistence.
His mistress, his beauty, his prize.
Without explaining himself to the landlord or to anyone else, the big Yorkshire baron began a search of the premises, bellowing for her now and then.
“Ginny!”
“That damned fool. Has he never heard of discretion?” Carstairs mumbled under his breath, exchanging a taut glance with Staines as they strode into The Golden Bull two minutes behind their larger, more hotheaded companion.
The elegant and impeccably dressed Julian, Earl Carstairs, was flaxen haired and fine featured, with ice-blue eyes; by contrast, the dead-shot duelist, Sir Torquil “Blood” Staines, had piercing black eyes and a dark satanic beard that came to a point.
“Let’s try and do this quietly, shall we?” Carstairs murmured.
Staines nodded; then they split up to help Quint find the Irish bitch, who had dared to take it upon herself to rescue Johnny from him. Ah, well, Carstairs thought with an inward sneer, he’d get the boy back before anyone learned a thing.
In the upstairs hallway, Quint was throwing open doors of guest chambers and looking inside, not caring whom he disturbed in his search for his fled mistress. There were indignant exclamations, occasional shrieks at his brief intrusions, but the other guests, seeing the size of him and the ruthlessness in his eyes, did not protest.
He continued down the corridor in this fashion until he suddenly came to a door that was locked. He gripped the doorknob and put his ear to the planks. “Ginny?”
No answer. He closed his eyes, trying to feel her, sense her through the door, for he believed they were that closely bonded. God, he smelled her perfume on the air.
“Ginny!” He rattled the door until he heard a low sob of fright from within. “Come out, Ginny! Now! We’re going home! Damn it, you know I love you!” He kicked the door in with three massive blows, his black Hessian boot nearly shooting through the wood as the door splintered off its hinges. Ripping it aside, he prowled into the guest chamber, his barrel chest heaving.
“Ginny.” He struggled for patience.
She was cowering in the corner with Carstairs’s little servant boy clinging to her.
Quint saw how her eye had blackened, but he refused to feel guilty. By God, she had brought it on herself.
“Come on,” he repeated, holding out his hand to her. “You’re coming with me.”
“No,” she uttered.
“Leave her alone!” Little Johnny stepped in front of her, facing down the giant.
Quint muttered a curse and backhanded the boy, who fell with a yelp.
“What on earth is going on over there?” Lady Strathmore exclaimed in the next room, turning to her husband with her hands planted on her waist.
Stephen’s narrowed stare was fixed on the partitioning wall as he listened. “I think I’d better go and see if I can help. Stay with Mama, sweetie.” Patting his daughter’s curly head, the tall, athletic viscount left the room and walked down the corridor, just missing young Johnny, who had fled the neighboring chamber a moment ago to run for help.
Bolting down the stairs in terror, Johnny flung around the corner so fast that he crashed into someone coming up. Gloved hands grasped his shoulders—a touch he knew all too well. His heart sank, but deep down, he had known their attempt to escape would never succeed. Not when Carstairs was the one chasing them.
“Johnny! So, there you are.” The earl gripped him harder and bent to peer into his face, his ice-blue eyes sharp with angry reproach. “How dare you run off on me, you ungrateful little shit?” he whispered harshly, giving him a shake. “How could you turn on me after all I’ve done for you?”
“I’m sorry,” Johnny choked out at once for the sake of self-preservation.
“Didn’t I take you in, care for you—and you would help that wicked woman send me to the gallows?”
“The gallows?” he echoed, his heart pounding.
“Yes, Johnny. That’s what they do to fellows like you and me. That’s why we must keep it our secret.” Carstairs held him in a warning stare. “Who’s going to look after you if they hang me, Johnny? Who will send money to your poor mama?”
When Johnny hung his head, suitably chastened, Carstairs was somewhat mollified, though still a bit shaken by his horrifying brush with exposure for his proclivities. He straightened up. “Come now. I’ll take you back out to my carriage.”
With his hand on Johnny’s back, he walked the boy outside and made sure he climbed up onto the drag.
“Stay here,” he ordered him. “I’m going to make sure Quint has sorted things out with Miss Highgate. By tomorrow, we’ll forget this ever happened.”
“Yes, sir,” the boy mumbled.
Carstairs’s relief was short lived, however, for as he walked back toward the inn, a gunshot ripped through the night.
He paused midstride. Ah, bloody hell. So, Quint had finally done it, had finally killed the bitch.
Rushing onto the scene, however, Carstairs discovered the situation was far worse than that.
The whole thing had spiraled out of control.
A little curly-headed tot was crying in the hallway at an unbelievable volume while Ginny and another woman, quite hysterical, were on their knees beside a fallen man. Quint stood stock-still nearby, his pistol sagging in his grip; the hardened insolence on his face was slowly turning to shocked dread at what he had just done.
“Stephen! Stephen! For God’s sake, get a surgeon!” the raven-haired beauty screamed at them as she tried to plug the bullet hole in the man’s chest with both her hands, to no avail.
In a state of dazed unreality, Carstairs walked forward and looked down at the ill-fated stranger. It took him a second; then he recognized the man from the House of Lords.
“Jesus Christ, Quint,” he breathed. “You’ve shot Strathmore.”
“Stephen!” the viscountess shrieked, trying to wake her husband, who was unresponsive.
Something came over Carstairs, an extraordinary will to survive. It made his mind crystal clear, needle sharp.
Quint suddenly grabbed him. “I didn’t mean to do it. You’ve got to help me! I can’t think, Carstairs—”
“Calm down, damn you! I’m going to get us out of this, Quint. Just—listen carefully.”
Quint’s chest heaved with panic, but he bobbed his head, awaiting instructions.
Fighting panic himself, Carstairs steeled himself and took control. “Go stand out in the hallway and keep guard at the top of the steps. No one leaves this corridor. We must keep this problem contained. You can do that, yes?”
“Yes,” Quint rasped.
“Go.” As the baron ran out to fulfill his duty, Carstairs strode over to Lady Strathmore and crouched down beside her, gripping her arm. “Try to calm down, my lady. We’ve already sent for a surgeon,” he lied. “He’s on his way. Stanch the wound till he gets here, just like you’re doing. That’s good. Concentrate.”
This shut her up, gave her something to do and a straw of hope to grasp on to. Too dazed to realize he was lying, the lady nodded, shaking all over, then suddenly seemed to recall her screaming child. “My little girl! Will you—?”
“I’ll get her,” Ginny murmured, and ran out to collect the crying tot.
Carstairs eyed the actress with hatred as she rushed past him, then turned to Staines. “If anyone gives you the slightest trouble, finish them.”
Staines gave him a mercenary nod.
Carstairs went to try to handle the rest of the hotel. He schooled his face into a charming, easy smile a moment before he went striding out into the lobby, where several people were looking toward the stairs in alarm, only now just beginning to wonder if something was wrong on the second-floor
gallery.
“I apologize, sir, if I disturbed anyone with the report of my pistol,” he said to the landlord, loud enough for everyone to hear. “I was cleaning my gun in my room when it went off. I’m afraid I gave the lady in the neighboring room a bit of a fright, so I wish to pay for her room to make it up for her.”
“Why, that’s very kind of you,” the landlord said cheerfully, looking relieved at his explanation.
He spilled a handful of coins on the desk. “Again, sorry for the disturbance. A round for the gents in the taproom, eh, landlord?”
“Why, that’s a capital fellow,” several people murmured as he strode outside.
Well aware that he had come through that by the skin of his teeth, Carstairs sucked in a deep breath of cool night air, retching slightly. He knew his explanation had been too flimsy to do more than buy them some time, an hour if they were lucky. He wished to God they could simply flee, but too many people had seen them, and the death of a courtesan-actress was worlds away from the murder of a fellow peer. Strathmore was a quiet man, but universally esteemed.
Dry mouthed, the blood pounding in his veins, Carstairs glanced around for some means to make this whole debacle go away. He knew that if he did not cover up Quint’s blunder immediately, Strathmore’s death would be investigated; Carstairs, being part of it, would also be placed under the microscope, but God knew he could not afford anyone probing into his personal life. There were still ancient laws on the books that decreed hanging for so-called sodomites, and he was not about to be publicly disgraced and executed on account of his taste for pretty young boys.
He saw Johnny still waiting obediently in his carriage, but as his frantic gaze swept the courtyard, Carstairs spied a delivery wagon parked on the side of the inn, near the entrance to the taproom. It was loaded with barrels, and the painted block letters on the side of the cart read BRANDY AND FINE SPIRITS.
An idea stirred in his mind. He looked at the inn’s wooden galleries, dry as tinder; the thatched roof; the black shutters, mostly closed for the night. He glanced again rather evilly at the barrels of highly flammable liquor.
And he knew what he had to do.
