PURSUIT OF PASSION
In grave danger of losing her estate to a manipulating aunt - and her freedom to a despised fiancé - Lady Rachel Wingate turns to Jerome Parnell, the sinfully handsome Duke of Westleigh, to save her. But his cold resistance to Rachel's sensuous charms spurs the desperate lady to abduct the aloof and arrogant lord in a misguided attempt to force his hand.
ACTS OF LOVE
Bitter experience has taught Westleigh to mistrust beautiful women - and his brazen capture by the ravishing Lady Rachel only confirms his low opinion. But the discovery that Rachel's life is in serious danger convinces the stubborn Duke to re-examine his warring feeling - and to finally only his guarded heart to desire... and a glorious, perilous love.
MIDNIGHT BRIDE
Midnight – Book 1
By
Marlene Suson
Chapter 1
England, 1740
“Warn yer master that Gentleman Jack’s operating in the neighbourhood,” the garrulous owner of the posting house said, mistaking the tall, muscular man on a chestnut horse for a groom.
“Where?” Jerome asked eagerly. He wanted nothing more than to be accosted by that notorious highwayman.
It was the only reason he had made this god-awful journey to Yorkshire.
“Held up Lord Creevy in broad daylight yesterday on the Wingate Hall road, no more ‘an half a league from here. Done it in the birch wood afore you get to the River Wyn.”
Jerome’s excitement rose at how close he was to the highwayman he had travelled to find. Now if only he could lure his quarry into a meeting.
‘‘Relieved m’lord o’ a fat bag o’ gold coins, he did.”
Jerome smothered a smile. He could think of no more deserving candidate for highway robbery than the greedy, irascible Creevy who hated to part with a groat. The old muckworm must have been apoplectic.
Gentleman Jack would have loved it. Jerome would have, too. Perhaps highway robbery had something to recommend it after all.
Jerome glanced at a freshly painted sign hanging over the posting house entrance. Large black letters proclaimed “The White Swan.” A second line in much smaller letters read “Thomas Acker, Owner.”
The posting house’s ostlers were quickly and efficiently changing the horses on Jerome’s travelling coach for the final leg of his journey. Its ebony finish, usually polished to a high gleam, was hidden beneath a thick coating of mud. This was the first day of the entire miserable trip that it had not rained hard, turning the execrable roads into quagmires.
Leather curtains were pulled across the equipage’s mud-spattered windows, hiding its interior.
Mr. Acker looked enviously at the big chestnut stallion that Jerome was riding. “Never seen a better looking horse. Wouldn’t mind working as a groom meself if me could ride a prime bit o’ blood like that. Me’d say yer master, from the looks o’ his carriage and horses, would be a fat one for Gentleman Jack’s plucking. Who is he?”
“The Duke of Westleigh.”
Clearly awed, Mr. Acker said, “Me’s heard he’s as haughty as they come.” He nodded at the coach’s drawn leather curtains. “That why he don’t show his face? Thinks himself too good for the likes o’ us to see him?”
Taken back, Jerome protested, “Not at all! He’s—er, sleeping.”
“How long you been the duke’s groom?”
Jerome was tempted to answer, “Since I began talking to you,” but instead he said, “For awhile.”
Beside him, a strangled sound escaped from Ferris, who was the duke’s groom. He was riding a younger, smaller copy of Jerome’s chestnut.
The ostlers had finished changing the coach’s horses. Jerome and Ferris galloped out of the posting house yard ahead of the coach and quickly pulled away from it.
A grinning Ferris inquired, “How do you like being a duke’s groom?”
Jerome, looking down at his clothes, chuckled. He had shed aristocratic attire in favour of more utilitarian garments. An old leather vest protected him from the wind. Both his worn buckskin riding breeches and scuffed boots, down at the heels, were now liberally splattered with mud. There had been no point in ruining good clothes in the muck. Only his shirt of finest lawn hidden under the vest betrayed him as anything other than a groom.
When Jerome reached the River Wyn, he would stop and bathe in it, then don the clean clothes that his valet, currently his travelling coach’s sole occupant, had laid out for him. He would arrive at Wingate Hall in apparel befitting a duke.
Although Jerome cared nothing for fashion, his father had been a stickler about dress. He had instilled in his son from an early age that when the Duke of Westleigh appeared publicly, his attire must always reinforce his ducal consequence.
“If I dress like a groom, I should expect to be mistaken for one,” he observed to Ferris. “I doubt that Mr. Acker would have believed the truth.”
“He’d have sooner believed you were Gentleman Jack!” Ferris’s grin widened. “And ‘tis more than your clothes. No ‘haughty as they come’ duke would be hobnobbing with his groom as you are.”
But, to Jerome, Ferris was much more than a groom. They had been unlikely childhood friends who had forged a bond between them that had withstood the strains of time and vastly different social standing. Ferris was one of the very few people with whom the duke could relax and be himself.
And Jerome treasured the rare moments such as this when he could put aside his aristocratic raiment and demeanour and be the man he might have been had he not been born to the Duke of Westleigh’s responsibilities.
He grinned at the thought of how shocked his peers would be to see him now, at ease in casual clothes and without the aloof facade that was his armour against the toadeaters, the encroaching social climbers, the boring fribbles, and the beautiful wantons eager to cultivate his notice.
The road cut through a high rolling moor, covered with heather and bracken. The sun, unseen during days of drenching rain, had finally made an appearance, shining down, hot and drying, on the treeless moor. The heather was not yet in flower, but an occasional gorse contributed a splash of golden colour.
Jerome glanced over his shoulder. His coach was no longer in sight behind him. Even though the sun was out, the road was still little better than a muddy swamp, and it was slow going for the equipage.
A blue hare dashed across the road in front of their horses. Ferris’s startled mount reared.
“Thunder’s as skittish as they come,” the groom muttered as he brought his unruly mount under control.
The sun beat down on the muddy road, unsheltered by a single tree, and Jerome welcomed the sight of a green birch wood ahead not only for the coolness it offered but also because it must be where Gentleman Jack had robbed Lord Creevy the previous day.
When Jerome and Ferris entered the woods, they slowed their mounts to a walk, If Gentleman Jack was about, Jerome wanted to give him plenty of time to see them.
As they rounded a sharp curve deep among the birches, a gruff voice suddenly growled, “Reach for the sky or ye’ll be afeeling the bite o’ me barking irons.”
A large black horse blocked the road. Its rider, a big man dressed all in black and wearing a black mask and a black hat pulled low over his forehead, had a pistol in each hand aimed at Jerome and Ferris.
Gentleman Jack.
Jerome, breathing a deep sigh of relief, made no effort to comply with the highwayman’s order. Instead, he said with a grin, “Your barking irons? Now really, Morgan.”
“Oh hell! Not you!” Although the mask hid the bandit’s expression, the disgruntlement in his voice was unmistakable.
“Don’t sound sq happy to see me, Gentleman Jack,” the duke said placidly. “And do, please, lower your—er, barking iron
s.”
The highwayman obediently shoved the pistols into his belt. He wore no coat, and his black shirt was open at the neck. “I thought you were that bastard Birkhall. He is expected at his estate north of here today, and this is the route he always takes to it.”
Jerome secretly hoped that Gentleman Jack would succeed in giving that evil reprobate Lord Birkhall something to think about besides his depraved amusements.
“Why the hell are you here?” the outlaw asked.
“To talk to you. Why else would I make a tedious, uncomfortable journey to this godforsaken end of the earth? You know how much I dislike the north.”
“This is neither the time nor the place to talk,” Gentleman Jack said, his voice and diction having undergone a remarkable change. “Too many people travel this road. We are very near Wingate Hall, the Earl of Arlington’s country house.”
“Yes, I know. It is where I will be staying.”
The highwayman’s eyes behind his black mask were suddenly alight with curiosity. “Don’t tell me the gorgeous Lady Rachel has caught your eye?”
Jerome stared at him blankly. “Who is she?”
“Arlington’s sister.”
“I did not know he had a sister.”
“Then I do not understand why you are going to Wingate Hall. I recollect you disliked Arlington.”
That was true. Jerome had no use for irresponsible young rakes like Arlington who cared only for their own pleasure. “Surely you must know that Arlington is not there. He vanished without a trace a year ago while returning to England from a trip to the Continent.”
“I know that, but if you did not like him, you will like what is at the hall now a hell of a lot less,” Gentleman Jack said bluntly. “It astonishes me that Arlington was such a fool as to place his Uncle Alfred in charge of his estate. Say what you will about the young earl, I never thought him stupid until he did that.”
“So his uncle’s making a mull of the estate, is he?”
“Not him. That awful wife of his is running it.”
Jerome’s mouth tightened in distaste at the mention of Alfred Wingate’s wife, the beautiful, faithless Sophia. She was all that he disliked in a woman. It had been dear to everyone but that old dolt Alfred, thirty years her senior, that she had married him only for the connection to the prestigious Wingate family.
The highwayman said mockingly, “I am surprised you would stay under the same roof with Sophia, knowing how you feel about women like her. She is certain to pursue you.”
Sophia already was. That was why she had invited him to Wingate Hall. Jerome said dryly, “I made the sacrifice only because it masks my real reason for coming here. Which is to talk to you, Morgan.”
“I do not need to ask about what,” the highwayman said with an unhappy sigh, “but why did you pick this moment to come?”
“The Crown is about to offer a thousand pound reward for your capture.”
The highwayman uttered a pungent expletive.
“I see you comprehend what that means. Every greedy thieftaker in the kingdom will be after you now.”
Excited voices sounded in the distance beyond the wood.
The highwayman started. “I cannot tarry here. That could be men looking for me. You have delivered your warning, and I thank you. You can go back home now.”
“No, I will not leave Wingate Hall until we talk further, Morgan. So if you want to be rid of me...”
“As stubborn and implacable as ever,” the bandit grumbled. “Very well. I promise I will meet you tomorrow at eleven a.m. at the Wingate ruins. The stable hands can give you directions.”
The duke eyed him sceptically. “You guarantee you will be there?”
“I already promised you that I would. Damn it, Jerome, have I ever broken my word to you?”
Chapter 2
“What?” Lady Rachel Wingate asked incredulously, certain that she could not have heard Sophia, her aunt by marriage, correctly.
The two women faced each other over a French tulipwood writing table in the book-lined library of Wingate Hall.
Is your hearing defective?” demanded Sophia, a flamehaired beauty only eight years older than Rachel, who was twenty. Or was it seven years older now? Sophia seemed to grow younger with each birthday. “I said that Lord Felix has asked and received our permission to marry you. We are delighted by his suit—”
“Well, I am not delighted!” Rachel cried, appalled and furious at the thought of being wed to that enormously rich, enormously foolish fop. “I am horrified.”
Sophia’s brown eyes gleamed with malicious delight at Rachel’s anger and dismay. For some inexplicable reason, Sophia had taken an immediate dislike to Rachel. She no longer took any pains to hide it except when guests were present.
Rachel had been about to go riding when she had been ordered to appear before her aunt and uncle in the library, and she carried her kid riding gloves in her right hand. Now she slapped them against her other hand to emphasize her words. “I will not marry Lord Felix!”
“You will do as you are told,” Sophia snapped.
“Not by you!” And not when it would consign her to marriage to a man who revolted her. Rachel whirled on her white-haired uncle who was huddled in the corner of a green brocade settee.
“Uncle Alfred, you cannot want me to marry Lord Felix, whom I despise and cannot respect.”
Sophia gave her husband no chance to reply. “It is precisely what he wants. It is your duty to your family and to yourself to make this brilliant marriage.”
“I asked Uncle Alfred,” Rachel said coolly, staring at her uncle. “He is my guardian.”
Her uncle seemed to recede farther into the couch, looking miserable and refusing to meet her eye. He mumbled unhappily, “Sophia knows best.”
Rachel knew that it would be useless to plead further with him. He would never dare go against the wishes of his termagant of a wife.
But Sophia would not get her way this time. Rachel would never bow to her will when it meant a lifetime of unhappiness for herself. She would find a way to outwit her aunt by marriage.
With steel in her voice, Rachel promised, “Upon my oath, I will never, never, never, marry Lord Felix. You cannot force the vows from my lips. I would sooner marry a stable hand.”
With that, she turned on her heel with a swish of her full violet riding skirt and several petticoats and left the library.
As Rachel went out the side door where her mount was waiting, she glanced toward the terrace just as Sophia stepped out on it,
A short, thin gentleman in an intricately embroidered red silk coat minced across the slate stones on red, high-heeled shoes to greet Rachel’s aunt. It was Lord Felix, resplendent in a heavily powdered tie wig with diamonds winking at his neck and lace cascading from his wrists and neck.
Rachel’s lips tightened in disgust. She did not care what they did to her, she thought wildly. They could lock her in a dungeon, grind her on the rack (not that Wingate Hall had either), but she would not marry him.
Still seething, she claimed her mount and rode toward the river. Rachel had heard that it was near to bursting its banks from all the rain the past se’enight, and she wanted to see it.
Staccato yelps rang out behind her. She turned to see her low-slung terrier, Maxi, running as fast as his stubby legs would carry him. She slowed her mare to a walk until the dog caught up with them.
When she topped a hill and saw the river ahead, a gasp escaped her. A week of hard, relentless rain had swollen the usually placid ribbon to a raging torrent that gnawed at its steep banks and threatened to overflow them. Rachel was awed by this violent display of nature’s power.
She was not the only one who had come to watch the river. Toby Paxton, an awkward youth with a mane of straw-coloured hair, was standing with Fanny Stoddard by the old wooden bridge.
Fanny, a blond, almond-eyed beauty, was betrothed to the elder of Rachel’s brothers, Stephen, the missing Earl of Arlington. Her other brother, George, w
as with the British Army in the English colony of New York.
Rachel dismounted and joined the pair. Maxi trotted along at her heels, his button eyes searching eagerly for a hairy rodent to attack.
Fanny, seeing Rachel’s expression, observed, “You look furious. What is wrong?”
“Lord Felix has offered for me, and Uncle Alfred and Aunt Sophia say I must accept.”
“But, of course, you must. He is a marquess’s son,” Fanny said, betraying what was most important to her in a husband.
Although Rachel had tried hard, she had not been able to truly like her brother’s choice of a bride. She wondered again why Fanny had suddenly descended, unannounced and uninvited, upon Wingate Hall for a visit. Fanny made no secret of her distaste for country life. In that, she and Stephen were well matched. He, too, much preferred London to Yorkshire.
Fanny said, “Even you would not dare turn down a marquess’s son, Rachel.”
“I do not care if he is the king’s son and the crown prince in the bargain. I cannot tolerate him.”
“You are a fool,” Fanny cried. “Only think, you will have everything you want if you marry Lord Felix. Indeed, the best of everything. It is well known that he settles for nothing less than the best.”
Or at least the most ostentatious, Rachel thought in disgust, from the huge diamonds he wore on his fingers to the six caparisoned white horses that drew his gilt carriage. Nor did she flatter herself that Lord Felix cared for her. She knew better than that. She would merely be another pretty ornament to adorn his consequence. Rachel dreamed of marrying a man who would love and cherish her as her father had her mother, a man whom she could love in return.
Fanny’s eyes narrowed. “You are so used to having every eligible male in the shire fall at your feet that you think you are too good for any man.”
“That is not true!” Rachel cried, much distressed that Fanny could think such a thing of her. It was true that she had attracted many smitten swains, but she had done nothing to try to do so. In fact, she was more embarrassed than pleased by her numerous suitors.
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