The touch of his hands on her shoulders was not gentle this time. “I kept myself alive on the hulks by thinking about you,” he whispered. “Even when I hated you, you were the only reason I went on living. But the real hell—Miranda, it wasn’t the hulks at all. It was living without you.”
She tried to smile through her tears. “Then it’s a good thing we’ll have the rest of our lives for me to make it up to you, then,” she whispered.
He stared down into her eyes. Then he made a low, hoarse sound in his throat, drawing her to him again so her head nestled against his shoulder, and she pressed her face against his throat.
“I love you,” he said. “I have always loved you.” His expression was utterly vulnerable, utterly defenseless as he gazed into her eyes. “Be my wife, Miranda,” he said. “Live with me. Bear my children. Grow old with me.”
“Yes,” she said.
“I love you,” she whispered between kisses. “I have always loved you.”
He wrapped her cloak around them both and gathered her into the warmth of his embrace. She held him to her, and they remained there thus, until the midnight snow began to fall, and blotted out the world.
Chapter Five
“It is absolutely out of the question,” said Miranda, glaring at Jason from across the supper table at Thornwood a week later.
He had just returned to Thornwood that morning after settling some of his affairs in London, and, more importantly, procuring a special license from the sodding Archbishop of Canterbury. This latter task he had only managed by agreeing to forgive several of the Duke of Norfolk’s more pressing debts, if His Grace would persuade the archbishop to produce the necessary documents. His Grace was willing, and the license Jason now carried in his pocket was ready for the small country wedding planned for the following morning.
The week he had spent in London without Miranda was, he felt, quite the longest week in the history of the world, but Miranda had wished to begin the task of restoring Thornwood immediately, and he had managed to suffer through it. But now he was back, and he had no intention of going anywhere again without her.
“Nonsense,” said Jason calmly. “It is the only sensible thing to do.”
He accepted a basket of rolls from William, who grinned at him.
Miranda looked rather as though she was considering throwing something at him.
“But you cannot—you cannot sell Blakewell’s,” she exclaimed. “It is monstrous to even think of it.”
“On the contrary, my dear,” he said. “I am, in point of fact, quite delighted whenever I think of the sum Crockford has agreed to give me for the damned place.”
“But Blakewell’s is your home,” said Miranda, now looking genuinely distressed.
“No, Miranda,” said Jason quietly. “My home is with you.”
Across the table, William shook his head at them, but Jason, wishing the little brat to perdition, kept his gaze fixed on Miranda.
She looked as though she would like to burst into tears.
“Well, I have no objections to your running a club,” she said, blinking rather hard.
“I know,” said Jason. “I, however, find I have other interests, such as tending to the many estates I seem to have acquired in the past few years. Running a club is a devilish business, Miranda. It takes considerable time and energy. I no longer wish to devote myself to the task.”
Miranda bit her lip and looked down at her plate. “But what of your staff? All the people who work at Blakewell’s? What will become of them if you sell?”
Jason shrugged. “I have estates everywhere,” he said, waving a careless hand. “Besides Wycombe, there’s a townhouse in London, a castle in Scotland, and a rather appalling hunting lodge in Somerset. They can take their pick of where to work, if they want to stay with me. Monsieur Leblanc has already declared himself your most abject slave and has agreed to cook in an igloo if it would please you. And if anyone wishes to remain at Blakewell’s, Crockford will take them on. He’ll need experienced staff members anyway.”
“I see,” said Miranda. “And which of your estates would you choose for a permanent home?”
“I was thinking Buckinghamshire,” said Jason. “William could come stay with us when he is on holiday. It is also close enough for you to continue seeing to the management of Thornwood until William comes of age.”
“Wycombe Manor is very nice, Miri,” said William helpfully. “You will like it very much.”
“Naturally,” Jason added, “I can also see my townhouse in London is opened if you wish to be in town for part or all of the season.”
Miranda scrutinized his face for a long moment.
“You are sure of this, Jason?” she asked quietly. “You truly wish to sell the club?”
Jason thought of the long years he had spent searching for what he had now found: peace, and a home, and the woman he loved sitting across from him at his table.
“Yes,” he said, and held out his hand to her. She placed her palm in his own, and he closed his fingers tightly over hers. “I’m sure.”
About the Author
Lily Lang lives in New York City, where she studies history, eats a lot of cookies, and may or may not dance on bars when the moon is full. To her dismay, she possesses no English country estates. Visit her at www.lilylangbooks.com
Look for these titles by Lily Lang
Now Available:
The Impostor
To save her true love, she must sacrifice her own heart.
The Impostor
© 2012 Lily Lang
Tessa Ryder’s Gift, which allows her to take the form of anyone she touches, was invaluable to the British Army’s secret Omega Group. The Peninsula War is over, the Omegas are disbanded, but she’s learned of a plot to exterminate them—and free Napoleon.
Desperate to warn Sebastian Montague, one of the few remaining Omegas, Tessa takes on the guise of his ex-mistress. It’s the only way she can face the man she loved. The man whose memory of her was telepathically wiped—at her request.
Sebastian knows a lie when he sees one, and it doesn’t take long to strip the disguise of the unfamiliar woman he believes is his assassin. But before he can use his formidable Gift for illusion to wring the truth from her, bullets fly and they are both on the run.
Surrounded by traitors and spies, Tessa and Sebastian fight to thwart the scheme to plunge England back into the darkness of war. And, as their powerful attraction brings them closer and closer, Tessa fights to protect the man she still loves more than life—by keeping the secret of their shared history buried deep in her heart.
Warning: This book contains sexy war heroes, submarines, bedrooms on fire, an evil Frenchman, and a shape-shifting heroine who will stop at nothing to protect her true love.
Enjoy the following excerpt for The Impostor:
In the cool blue twilight, Tessa was sitting by his bedside, an unread book in her lap, when Sebastian finally woke.
At first, consumed by worry for her father, she did not notice, but gazed unseeingly out the windows at the great green park below. She had struck her father hard. She had intended to render him unconscious, but the sharp, sickening crack had still made the bottom drop out of her stomach.
She furled and unfurled her hands at the memory.
Sebastian’s utter stillness troubled her as well. The physician that Coleman, Sebastian’s butler, had sent for earlier in the day had tended to the numerous cuts and scrapes and bruises Sebastian had received in the secret chambers beneath Somerset House, but been unable to pronounce judgment on his state of unconsciousness.
Nor had Tessa expected him to produce a diagnosis. Her father’s particular brand of telepathic assault had killed men before. She did not know what he had done to Sebastian. She could only hope that, as he was still breathing, Sebastian would sustain no permanent damage.
It was only as she reached to pour herself a glass of water from the pitcher at his bedside that she looked at him again. He was awake,
his eyes intent as he watched her. His hair and olive skin were dark against the sharp contrast of the crisp white sheets.
She stilled, her hand dropping back into her lap and knocking the book to the floor with a crash.
Her voice, when she spoke, was hoarse and nearly inaudible.
“How do you feel?”
“Like a coach and four ran me over,” he said.
Her lips curved slightly. “I’m sorry,” she said.
“It is hardly your fault that Sevigny is a madman and a murderer.”
She gave another half smile. “I suppose not,” she said. She hesitated, uncertain of how to frame her question. “But my father… What did he… What happened?”
“He gave me back all my worst memories.”
Even in the half darkness, she could sense the intensity of his gaze as he studied her. She pretended not to notice and instead reached again for the pitcher to pour him a glass of water. She held it out to him. He took it and set it aside, reaching out to grasp her wrist instead.
She could not meet his gaze.
“He gave me back something else, Tessa,” he said. “Something that I do not think he intended to give me.”
“I don’t understand.”
“While searching my mind for my worst memories,” said Sebastian, “he unlocked one that had been buried years ago—and not by me. Can you guess which memory, Tessa?”
Her head jerked, an involuntary gesture, and his eyes followed the movement.
“What do you remember?” she whispered.
“Everything,” he said.
She sat very still, her hands linked together in her lap. Her mouth trembled.
“Why, Tessa?” he asked hoarsely. “Why did he take my memories of you? Why did you do nothing to stop him?”
She looked at him. He was pale and drawn in the half light, the skin of his scar tight and puckered. He had not been handsome even before his injury, but it did not matter. She had never stopped loving him, and knew now that she never would. He had branded her for life, and she would carry this mark to her grave.
Her eyes slid shut on a spasm of pain.
“Stop him?” Tessa repeated. “Why would I stop him, when I was the one who asked him to do it?”
In the silence that followed, time seemed to cease entirely. She opened her eyes again, holding his lightless, still gaze.
“You asked it of him?” Sebastian asked finally, after a long, uncounted interval, his tone carefully measured.
She ought to leave it at that. She ought to make him believe once and for all that she did not love him, had never loved him. But the lie seemed a furtive, shameful thing, too ugly to utter, and Tessa knew she owed him, at long last, the truth—the truth of why, six years before, she had destroyed her own life, and now, she was finally beginning to realize, his as well.
“Will you listen to me?” she asked. “Will you permit me to speak, without interruptions? I know I do not deserve it, but it will make it easier for me.”
“If it will make it easier for you,” said Sebastian.
Tessa nodded, rising to her feet to stand by the window and gaze out into the dark night so she would not need to look at him.
“It was Lord Wellington,” she said at last. “He was the one who came to me, and asked me not to meet you in the chapel at the Escorial.” She swallowed. “He was the one who asked me to release you from our engagement, and your promise to marry me.”
A movement sounded faintly behind her, as though Sebastian had sat up abruptly in his bed, but he must have remembered his promise not to interrupt, for he made no other sound.
“Somehow—I do not know how—your grandfather had learned of our attachment. Apparently he was not enamored of the notion of an alliance with a little nobody like me, the daughter of an insignificant soldier. He wrote to the duke and asked him to prevent the marriage.” She sighed. “You know how ambitious Wellington is. He wouldn’t have dreamed of offending a lord as powerful and wealthy as your grandfather. He went to my father. Told him that if he wanted to get anywhere in his career, he’d best persuade me to break off with you.
“My father would not agree to it. He said that if I loved you, I was to marry you. He said his career was not worth my happiness. But I was nineteen, and I believed Wellington when he said I was going to destroy your future.” How could she explain, so that he understood? “Father didn’t want me to do it, but I was insistent. Because I believed there would be more for you in this world than me. Because I did not trust that, after the war, you could still love me.”
Behind her, she heard Sebastian raising himself once again to a sitting position on the bed. She did not turn to look at him. She did not think she could continue speaking if she looked at him.
“I loved you,” said Tessa. “I loved you, and I knew you couldn’t marry me. You’re Sebastian Montague. You’re the Earl Grenville.”
He made a sound, but she rushed on, not letting him interrupt.
“But I knew you wouldn’t agree to it,” she said. “You were so absolutely convinced I was worth it, leaving it all behind. As your parents had done. We would go to Italy, you told me. We would be happy.”
Her voice broke.
“But I couldn’t do it, Sebastian,” she said. “I couldn’t take away your future. So I thought—if my father took your memories away, if we had never known each other, if I never existed for you—then you would be free.” She gave a soft, mirthless laugh. “I was young enough to find it romantic to be a martyr to love.”
She looked out into the night. Here and there, she could see kernels of gaslight, blurred in the fog.
“I begged my father to help me. To bury your memories of me so deeply that you could never access them again. When it was—when it was over”—her eyes shut briefly at the memory—”Wellington had you sent to Paris. So there was no chance we should ever meet again. That was all. You left. Father received his promotion.”
She clasped her hands together, drawing a deep, unsteady breath. Unshed tears swelled beneath her lids, but she did not let them fall.
And then he spoke for the first time that night.
“You took away my memories,” he said. “My memories of you. My memories of us. All of them.”
“Yes,” she said. She should turn her head and look at him, she thought. But she could not. How could she have the strength, once she started looking at him, to ever stop again?
“How could you?” he asked, and to her astonishment, she heard his voice tremble for the first time in all the years she had known him.
She turned. “What?”
“How could you?” He was shouting at her now. He had pushed back the covers of the bed and risen to his feet. He wore only buckskin breeches, and Tessa, to her shame, could not seem to tear her eyes away from all that smooth expanse of naked male flesh.
She took a step backwards and hit the ledge of the window. “Sebastian, please—”
He crossed the room to her in two strides, taking her shoulders in her hands, forcing her to look up at him. The anguish and rage in his dark, ruined faced made her heart stop.
“You took away a part of me,” he said. “You took away the best part of me and you left me alone.”
Her breath caught, and all her own pain and helplessness and fear bubbled to the surface, so that suddenly she was on her toes, shoving at his shoulders, shouting into his face, and her voice was as loud and as furious as his.
“I left you because I loved you! I left you because I could not be the wife that you needed and deserved! Look around you, Sebastian. You live in a mansion, employ dozens of servants, attend balls with the Prince Regent himself.” She shoved, hard, and he grabbed her wrists to hold her still. Her breath came in gasps.
Love is madness.
An Indiscreet Debutante
© 2013 Lorelie Brown
When Miss Charlotte Vale isn’t running a school for impoverished factory women, she takes tea with an insane painter—the mother she adores. Determin
ed to avoid her mother’s legacy of madness, Lottie refuses to marry and nurtures the ton’s bemused disregard for her reputation.
Through her door strides a man who threatens all she holds dear. Her cherished school, her careful control and her guarded heart.
Sir Ian Heald has tracked his sister’s blackmailer to her last-known location—Lottie’s school. Although he would burn the place to the ground if it would save his sister’s reputation, Ian is drawn to Lottie’s bold candor and indifference toward polite society.
To find his sister’s blackmailer, Ian follows Lottie into a twisted world of illegal gambling clubs and eccentric parties. Even when their mutual passion ignites, Ian knows their affair cannot last. Lottie was never meant to be tucked away on his quiet pastoral estate, and she staunchly refuses his desire to wed. Yet fiery kisses and scandalous showdowns tempt this proper country gentleman to win the woman he loves and never let her go.
Warning: This book contains gambling in low-class clubs, deliciously deadpan dialogue, an unplanned swim to rescue doused women, and a fast, furious spanking. She wants it though, so that hardly counts.
Enjoy the following excerpt for An Indiscreet Debutante:
The walk back through the alleys was much shorter than the route they’d taken inward. This time they stopped to chat with no one, nor did Lottie talk to Ian, the smug bastard. She would have stomped if it weren’t for the uneven pavement and the conviction that falling over face first would negate her righteous position.
She couldn’t indulge in her temper. Couldn’t let it take her over. She’d seen enough of that from her mama to know how foolish and troubling it could be.
She intentionally calmed her breaths. Made her cheeks pull her mouth into a smile, even if they didn’t want to head that way, because sometimes a smile caused happiness, damn it.
She refused to hand her life over.
By the time she arrived at the carriage, she’d smoothed herself into an approximation of calm. Her blood eased in her veins, and she simply ignored the tight bands around her ribs. She’d not lose control, not in that way. Her happiness was her armor, and she liked it.
Lily Lang Page 10
