Stella Cameron

by Fascination

  “I love you.”

  She took a breath, and so did he. There was no need for more words.

  It was as if the air between them changed shape, shifted and settled, aglitter now and faintly singing.

  “I’ve just remembered something,” he said when he could finally speak again. “Would you please marry me?”

  She blinked. “I already have, you buffoon.”

  “How very good of you. I’m almost certain I forgot to ask.”

  The End

  Keep reading for an excerpt from Only by Your Touch

  Available in eBook in November 2012

  Excerpt from Only by Your Touch

  by Stella Cameron

  Chapter 1

  The chit was a necessary nuisance. An indispensable nuisance. Plain or fair, romp or bluestocking, the comeliness and nature of Miss Lindsay Granville of Tregonitha were entirely incidental to the matter at hand.

  Court her... for as short a time as possible. Compromise if he must, offer for, wed, bed, and set her up comfortably but at an acceptable distance... also using as little time as possible.

  On a wind-torn ridge overlooking the Granvilles’ impressive Cornish estate, Edward Xavier deWorthe, the sixth Viscount Hawkesly, twitched his stallion’s reins and absently rested a hand on the animal’s quivering neck. The ride from Mevagissey had been hard, fueled by hatred and impatience. “Hold, Saber,” Hawkesly murmured. “We’re in the enemy’s territory. Best study the lie of the land... until the land becomes ours.” He smiled, flaring his nostrils, narrowing eyes he’d become grateful to know were considered “dark shutters on his soul.” In the days ahead he would doubtless appreciate his considerable ability to hide emotion. In any case, he would employ all available means in the accomplishment of his deception.

  And the prize for that deception? Vengeance!

  “It’s time.” Straightening in the saddle, Hawkesly applied the gentle pressure needed to spur Saber downhill.

  From barren knoll backed by the wild English Channel, gathering speed across pastures where sheep huddled into hedgerows that offered meager shield against February’s chill, Hawkesly moved as one with his mount.

  Ducking beneath the naked limbs of drooping goat willows, he swept into a lane that would take him to Tregonitha’s curving main drive. His breath rose in white clouds and he bared his teeth. Better his rage be spent on the ripping air than the man who would soon make the acquaintance of the Viscount Hawkesly for the first time. That man must sense no hint of the threat his visitor represented. Roger Latchett, destined to serve the only sentence acceptable for his crime, would unwittingly receive his judge and jury with courtesy, even with avid anticipation ... and he would come to curse the day of their meeting.

  Within minutes Hawkesly confronted the Gothic facade of the Granvilles’ manor house. He made to dismount but hesitated, hearing the crunch of fleet footsteps on gravel behind him.

  Hawkesly swung to the ground as a swirl of deep blue velvet, the impression of a loose mass of blond hair, darted level with Saber. Hawkesly registered the precipitous approach of a young female and took an instant’s refuge behind his horse’s massive flanks. Since the Granville girl was reported to be reserved and rarely seen, this was undoubtedly a servant or some visitor to the household, but he must take no chances.

  “Didn’t Calvin tell you to come through the woods?” A husky, breathless voice wobbled as its owner’s pale face peeked around the horse’s neck. “Do please be quick. If you... If you... Should you...”

  Hawkesly found himself regarding wide and troubled eyes the same color as the indigo pelisse which he now saw was shabby and several sizes too large. The face was perfectly oval beneath a heart-shaped hairline, the nose small and tipped, the mouth full and parted to show small white teeth, the lashes about those remarkable eyes thick and dark. Hawkesly squared his shoulders. The stunningly beautiful face was also ridiculously young.

  “If I or should I what, young lady?”

  “Oh.” Fingers encased in extraordinarily heavy and serviceable leather gloves pressed to her lips and she blushed quite charmingly. “Oh. Well... If you care that Sarah doesn’t get into quite terrible trouble would you please go very quickly around to the stables and hide your horse?” To Hawkesly’s amusement, she dropped a speedy and definitely clumsy curtsy. “That is if you wouldn’t mind.” Those thick lashes lowered to brush now fiery cheeks.

  He slapped his crop against a dusty Hessian. “Well, why not. Lead the way.” The poor little baggage was obviously distressed and some excuse to approach Latchett from an unexpected direction might even prove an advantage.

  The girl, for she was more girl than woman, being extremely small and evidently almost immaturely slender beneath the ill-fitting pelisse, surprised Hawkesly by grabbing his hand and rushing along the path from which she’d approached. Despite the thick glove, her hand was tiny in his.

  “I should have known Sarah hadn’t impressed upon you the importance of discretion. And I expect you forgot to stop at Calvin’s cottage on your way.” Her booted feet raced and she continued to tug as if Hawkesly weren’t able to keep up nicely at a leisurely stride. His black ambled beside, still blowing from the ride.

  “What exactly—” He glanced sideways at her. “What do you think Sarah failed to tell me?”

  “This is really too much.” She hauled him around a corner of the house into a cobbled stable yard. “I didn’t believe her, you know. Sarah makes up such stories. I agreed to her plan because I thought it was all one of her games. But I really didn’t think you truly existed.”

  “Oh, I exist,” Hawkesly almost whispered.

  The girl faltered. “Forgive me, please. I must sound rude, but I get quite ridiculously flustered. Everyone says I do. That and... well... Sarah should have made perfectly certain you understood how important it is that no one see you. Not just at the vicarage, but here, too. Please hurry.”

  No groom presented himself and Hawkesly allowed the girl to lead him into a stable, where she took Saber’s reins. With the ease of one very accustomed to dealing with horses, she walked the black into a stall, tossed a blanket over his back and made sure he had feed and water.

  “Now.” She turned to him, brushing back shining curls. “You must be cold and hungry.”

  Hawkesly smothered a smile. An oddly fetching little piece, she seemed to have dampened his anger. Probably fortunate since he needed a cool head for what lay before him. “Am I to get a blanket and some hay, too?”

  She frowned, stumbled as she slid the latch on the stall, then promptly blushed again. “You think I’m clumsy. Everyone does. If we don’t waste time, we can go to the kitchen where it’s warm. I expect I can find you something to eat and then we’ll decide what to do. You’ve missed Sarah, you see. She’s in Saint Austell with her papa. They won’t be back at the vicarage for hours.”

  “Perhaps you should summon the butler?” He’d taken the charade far enough. Clearly the child had mistaken him for someone else.

  The huge, deep blue eyes didn’t waver. “Sarah really has made a terrible fuddle of all this. How fortunate I happened to see you arrive. This isn’t where she lives, you know. This is Tregonitha. The vicarage is near the village. Several miles away.” Slowly, the tip of a pink tongue appeared to be caught between those small, perfect white teeth. “Thank goodness Sarah described you so well.”

  Hawkesly grew restless, as restless as the horses he heard shifting in their stalls. “And how did this... how did Sarah describe me?” He hadn’t given Latchett a definite time, or even a definite day of arrival, but now Hawkesly chafed to confront the man.

  The girl frowned in concentration. “She usually talks about her brave officer serving with the Duke of Wellington and suffering from the pain of separation from her... I mean, she talks about you after she’s been reading her romantical poetry. That’s why I didn’t truly believe her until today.”

  Curiosity detained Hawkesly. “And she says?”

&nb
sp; “She says”—the girl regarded him intently—“tall, his dark curls windswept, fire in his black eyes, and his mouth—his mouth beautifully carved and firm. Fine broad shoulders to make of his coat a smooth perfection. And his legs—” Her mouth snapped shut an instant. “Oh, dear. Please don’t tell Sarah I said such things.”

  Deeply amused, Hawkesly ran his fingers through “windswept dark curls.” “I won’t breathe a word to Sarah. Are you always so—” If he said “impetuous” he might embarrass her. Spontaneity was a rare and delightful commodity in young women of his acquaintance. “Are you always so outspoken?”

  “Oh yes. Everyone says so.” She showed no sign of chagrin that he could discern. “We must get into the kitchen before you’re seen.”

  He followed her across the stable yard and through an arched stone doorway into a walled kitchen garden beyond. Signs of careless maintenance were unmistakable in the scraggly remains of winter-dead plants. Hawkesly raised a brow. For a man who’d gone to deadly lengths to gain control of an estate, Latchett showed remarkably poor concern for its upkeep.

  “In here,” his guide said.

  A heavy door admitted them to a corridor at the back of the house. Cold struck from stone walls and floors as they passed the dairy, the meat and fish larders. Then the girl ushered him into a surprisingly large and well-appointed kitchen where the remnants of a fire burned beneath still spits.

  “Sit down.” A bleached wooden chair was scraped toward the fire. “Here. Warm yourself.”

  The thought was not without appeal and Hawkesly automatically sat, extending his hands toward the failing embers. This could indeed be a most fortuitous development. Latchett, a known hanger-on at the heels of Society, could not help but be disquieted at a viscount’s being shown into the house via the kitchens! Hawkesly jerked the corners of his mouth down.

  “Where are the other servants?”

  “I’m not... Oh. Yes. Cook has the afternoon off. Deeds—the butler—is probably working on accounts. The others—” she waved a hand airily. “When no guests are expected the staff all have tasks elsewhere in the house.”

  “And you?” He regarded her over his shoulder. “Who are you and where are you supposed to be?”

  Her gloves discarded on the vast scrubbed table in the center of the room, she paused in the act of untying frayed ribbons that closed the pelisse. “I’m, er—” A smile formed charming dimples in her cheeks but didn’t dispel shadows in her luminous eyes. “You must know who I am, sir. I’m, er, Ber-the. Sarah’s maid.”

  She was a poor liar. Hawkesly frowned, oblivious of her reason, but convinced the chit was in the way of inventing a story. “Quite. You’re Berthe. And what are you doing at this house if you’re Sarah’s maid at the vicarage?”

  The painful rush of pink suffused her face once more. “Sarah shall hear of this. As she should have made clear, the reason for asking you to come to Tregonitha and wait in the stables was so that her papa—” She tiptoed conspiratorially closer. “Reverend Winslow is kind but quite old-fashioned about affairs of the heart, you know. Anyway, Sarah felt that if you were to come here and wait in the stables, she could come to you without her papa guessing the nature of her visit.”

  “I see. And did we—I mean, did Sarah warn you that this was to be the day of our meeting?”

  “Oh, no. No.” She appeared to glance into every cranny of the kitchen before dropping to her knees and working the broken corner of a flagstone free. This she set aside while she reached below and hauled out a bundle tied inside an old shawl. Puffing, the girl stood and dropped her bounty into his lap. “We must make haste. Sarah merely told me that it was likely you would come one day and we must be on the lookout. It was chance—a most happy chance—that I happened to see you arrive today. Here. There’s game pie and cheese and apples. They should help fortify you for your wait in the stables. I’ll bring you some ale when I can.”

  “You’re too generous,” he told her gravely, wondering if Latchett had any idea that his servants filched supplies from his larders to stock their own. Roger Latchett wouldn’t hear it from Lord Hawkesly.

  Shrugging, Berthe removed the heavy pelisse, rolled it carelessly and thrust it on a chair. Then she knelt to replace the broken flagstone.

  Hawkesly drew in a sharp breath. This maid was dressed like none employed at his estate or the several other properties he maintained. Without the pelisse, his impression that she was small was verified. Small, yes. Childishly built, no. A muslin gown of palest lavender color offset her creamy skin. The unbound blond curls brushed about flawless shoulders and touched the tops of high, lush breasts in a manner that caused Hawkesly to shift in his chair. The dress had been well worn, as faded satin ribbon attested, but that ribbon circled her slender body in a caress that hugged thin fabric tightly over tantalizing curves.

  “Why aren’t you in uniform?” she asked. Brushing her hands together, she leaned over to check the stone, and soft smooth flesh threatened to entirely escape the confines of a too-small bodice. When she sat on her heels, the filmy straight skirt settled on gently rounded hips.

  Hawkesly stirred himself with effort. He was not in the way of lusting after ladies’ maids and serving girls.

  “I expect you thought you’d be less conspicuous,” she continued.

  He realized he hadn’t answered her question. “I expect so.” He got up. “And I expect you’d like to return to the, ah, vicarage.” He decided not to ask if she made a habit of journeying to Tregonitha every day on the off chance that Sarah, whoever Sarah was, had received a visit from her brave officer.

  Another thought dawned. What was a maid from someone else’s household doing hiding food in the kitchens here?

  Berthe scrambled, none too gracefully, to her feet and stepped close. “There’s something I ought to tell you.”

  Hawkesly was confronted by the delightful vision of dewy skin, shining eyes and tremblingly ripe young womanhood... near enough for him to see a pulse in the throat and the rapid rise and fall of tender breasts. A subtle scent of roses reached him. He momentarily lost his ability to speak.

  “I would tell you,” Berthe murmured. “I will. But I must make sure Sarah won’t be angry with me first.”

  He swallowed. “Indeed. You must do nothing to offend your mistress. And now—”

  She rested a hand on his arm. “Just let it be enough that everything isn’t exactly what it seems. However, I’m certain that once you and Sarah are together again, all will be revealed.”

  “Undoubtedly.” He restrained the urge to laugh. Instead he allowed himself the luxury of a light touch to her perfect cheek. His gaze flickered over her but she appeared not to notice. “Leave now. I’ll find my own way.” He wouldn’t tell her where he planned to go or that he had no intention of mentioning to anyone how he came to be wandering from the nether regions of Tregonitha.

  “No.” She shook her head and her hair swished back and forth. “Sarah would never forgive me if I didn’t take care of you.”

  A stimulating notion, Hawkesly thought. Immediately he set her hand gently from him. “I insist—”

  The slamming open of a door stopped Hawkesly in mid-sentence. A paunchy blond man strutted into the room.

  “What is this?” Thinning hair, swept carefully forward, cupped the edges of a round and florid face. Bulbous, moistly red lips held a pout while pale eyes embedded in puffy flesh took account of Hawkesly then Berthe. “Speak up, sir. What do you mean by intruding into my kitchens?”

  His kitchens? So, this ... this cockroach was Hawkesly’s opponent, his unknowing quarry. “Good afternoon,” Hawkesly said very softly. At the same time he rose slowly to his feet and set the bundle of food on the chair.

  The man’s small eyes narrowed to slits. His chins, stained a shiny puce by excess, wobbled against his stiff collar. “Who is this person? How long has he been here?” Latchett addressed Berthe and Hawkesly didn’t fail to note how his attention lingered at the level of her breasts.
>
  “He... I—”

  “Enough!” Latchett raised a hand. “I’ll deal with you later.”

  Hawkesly swallowed against acid hate. “I believe it is I whom you should take to task, sir.” The man was a visible lecher and the manner in which he might prefer to deal with the girl took little imagination. “I fear I took a wrong turn coming here. This young woman was kind enough to set me on the right path.” Whatever happened, he must not lose his head and move a moment sooner than would accomplish his purpose.

  Latchett drew himself up on spindly, yellow-clad legs. His considerable girth strained against a rose brocade waistcoat. Hawkesly knew the other’s age to be three and thirty. Excesses in living had made him appear many years older.

  “Who did you want to see?” Latchett demanded.

  “He rode the wrong way!” Berthe’s clear voice burst from her. She wrung her hands. “You know how easy it is to take the wrong path from Fowey and come here rather than the village. I’ll be glad to show him—”

  “Silence!” Latchett’s chest puffed up even higher.

  An overblown country dandy, Hawkesly thought. Weak, self-indulgent, greedy ... and deadly. How appealing was the thought of squeezing the life from Latchett this very moment. Appealing, but entirely too quick and merciful.

  Hawkesly smiled at Berthe, who shook visibly. “I’ll deal with this, my dear.” To Latchett he said, “There’s been somewhat of an error, sir. I assume you are Mr. Roger Latchett?”

  With a sniff Latchett said, “I am.”

  “As I thought. In that case I believe we have business to conduct.”

  “Hush,” Hawkesly told Berthe quietly. “It will be all right, my dear. Mr. Latchett, I assume you received my letter.”

  “Letter?”

  “In which I expressed an interest in leasing Point Cottage—the property mentioned to me by my friends the Trevays of Mevagissey?” He heard Berthe’s intake of breath but didn’t look at her.

  The stunned transformation of Latchett’s face brought Hawkesly considerable satisfaction. “Point Cottage,” he sputtered, taking a step backward. “Yes, yes, of course. Then you are...” His raised hand circled in a vague parody of a courtly flourish and he attempted a bow made difficult by his belly. “You are...”