Blaze Historicals Bundle II

by Jacquie D'Alessandro

  Dear God, his head injury had rattled his brain. “Simon, men in your position do not marry their mistresses.” God knows she knew that well enough.

  “The scandal could ruin you, ruin your family.”

  “Perhaps. But I can live with that. It’s you I cannot live without. And you aren’t my mistress.”

  “We slept together.”

  “Yes. And it is an event I want to repeat. Every night. For the rest of our lives.” He cupped her face in his hands. “Genevieve. I haven’t been the same since the first moment I saw you, when I hid behind the statue in your bedchamber. It was as if lightning stuck me. God knows I haven’t been able to think of anything other than you. I knew I cared about you when I left Little Longstone, but I convinced myself I’d get over you. Forget my feelings.” He gave a short laugh. “What a bloody nincompoop I was. I quickly learned the folly of that idiotic notion. I don’t merely care for you. I am madly, insanely, arse-over-heels in love with you. I would have come sooner, but I wanted to settle my affairs so I wouldn’t have to rush back to London.”

  Genevieve’s heart was beating so wildly, he surely had to hear it. “You love me?”

  “So much it hurts.” He leaned forward and touched his forehead to hers. “So much I couldn’t stand another day away from you. Not another hour. Not another minute.”

  “But your life is in London.”

  “That doesn’t seem to matter—my heart is in Little Longstone.”

  Dear God, he sounded perfectly serious. “But what of your work for the Crown?”

  He lifted his head and looked at her through green eyes that reflected the seriousness of his tone. “I am officially retired. As for my life in London, I’ll keep my townhouse, but I’ve decided I’d rather spend the bulk of my time here. There is a fifty-acre tract of land for sale just west of the village. Beautiful trees, a lake, a pond and, best of all, four hot springs. It would be the perfect place to build a home.”

  She swallowed, trying to find her voice. “You’re serious.”

  “Never more so. Before I came to Little Longstone, I’d been discontented. Something was missing from my life, but I didn’t know what. Then I met you. One touch from you and I knew. You are what was missing. So now, the only questions are— Do you feel the same way I do? Do you want the same things I do? And do you want to share your life with me?”

  She actually felt the blood drain from her face. He meant it. Really, truly meant it. He loved her. Wanted to marry her. It was unbelievable. “My God,” she whispered.

  Alarm flickered in his eyes. “Bloody hell, you’ve gone pale. I don’t think that’s good.”

  A laugh escaped her, one that turned into a sob. His alarm grew. “Oh, God, you’re crying. I know that’s not good.”

  Another laugh and sob. “I’m not crying. I’m…stunned. And deliriously happy.” She set down her flowers and paper then framed his face between her hands. “I feel exactly the same way you do—I love you so much I can barely breathe. And I want the same things you do—to build a beautiful home together in Little Longstone. And I want, more than anything, to share my life with you.”

  Anything else she might have said was lost when he snatched her against him and covered her mouth in a deep kiss filled with love and hope and passion. When he finally raised his head, he said, “I thought you were going to be stubborn and say no.”

  “And what would you have done if I had?”

  “There are six dozen more roses in my carriage. Along with the finest art supplies I could find—in the hopes that they’d encourage you to paint something for me.”

  Emotion clogged her throat at the extravagant, romantic gesture. “That’s…lovely. And so thoughtful. I’d like to do that. Very much.”

  “Excellent. But in case you still proved stubborn, there is also something else in the carriage—the Kilburn sapphire.”

  “The Kilburn sapphire?” she repeated weakly.

  He nodded. “Ridiculously large at five carats, but in spite of its gaudiness, impressive just the same. The Kilburn diamond is a more manageable three carats, but as I recall you saying you found diamonds cold and lifeless, I thought the sapphire a better choice for an engagement ring.”

  A breathless laugh escaped her. “Really, all you needed to do was kiss me and tell me you loved me.”

  “Now you tell me,” he teased. “I can see you’re going to be easy to please.”

  “On the contrary, I’m going to be very demanding. Especially in the bedchamber, as all Today’s Modern Women are.”

  “I don’t know when I’ve heard better news.” He peeled off her gloves and pressed a dozen kisses to her bare hands. “Please tell me you don’t want a long engagement.”

  Heat and love and desire and pure, utter happiness whirled through her. “There are still two weeks left in November. How do you feel about a November wedding?”

  His smile dazzled her. “My darling Genevieve, it just so happens that as with everything pertaining to you, I harbor a profound weakness for them.”

  Hope Tarr

  TWELVE NIGHTS

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Epilogue

  Prologue

  Castle Fraser, Beauly

  The Scottish Highlands, May 1460

  CALLUM, LAIRD OF CLAN FRASER, walked toward the walled rose garden. In his mother’s day it had been a lovely place, but years of neglect had rendered it a ruin. Picking his way through the weeds, he sat down on the stone bench. A single rosebush survived to grow wild in one corner. The partially opened buds put him in mind of a certain maid’s petal-pink mouth. Callum had never been a slave to sentiment, but he found himself reaching out to stroke one fragile blossom.

  As if his fantasy had conjured her from the air, the lady known as Alys approached. Pulling his hand back from the rose, he wondered if she’d seen him enter and followed him inside. The madness of that possibility made his pulse race.

  She greeted him with a curtsy and a slight smile. “My lord.”

  She straightened to stand before him, the purity of her face and form stealing his breath. Dressed in a simple blue gown, a light muslin veil draping her golden tresses, she looked as though she’d stepped out of one of the stained glass windows in his chapel.

  “I do not mean to disturb you—”

  He rose to stand on shaking legs. “You do not.” He took a step toward her.

  “I am in search of my lady. I have not seen her since yesterday. Can you tell me which chamber she occupies?” Alys nibbled her bottom lip and cast her gaze away.

  Her modesty disarmed him as other women’s wiles never had. He wondered if she was always this shy or if perhaps, after the other day, his presence discomfited her. The latter thought snared his hopes, daring him to dream.

  “I expect she is with my brother. In his bedchamber,” he added out of deference to the devil driving him to see if he could make her blush.

  She did not disappoint him. Pale roses nearly the same shade as her mouth climbed the trellis of her delicately boned cheeks.

  “Shall I take you to her?”

  She snapped up her head. Her eyes registered what looked to be alarm. “Nay, she and Lord Ewan have their own affairs to settle.”

  He chided himself for teasing her. Stepping back from the situation, it amazed him that he, who had boasted that his body did not possess so much as a single sentimental bone, could feel so completely tender toward this one wee woman. His heart swelled every time he looked upon her. Other parts of his anatomy swelled too but that sensation wasn’t nearly as novel. None of his past dealings with women had left him feeling this way before. He yearned to lay her down upon the bench, pull down her gown and suckle her small perfect breasts, and then pu
sh her legs apart and tongue and taste and tease her woman’s flesh before he finally entered her, in a climactic conquering possession. At the same time, he longed to take her in his arms and settle her on his lap and simply hold her, to tuck her head beneath his chin and shelter her against his chest like the rare treasure she was.

  “Nay worries, lady. Unlike me, my brother is the kindest and gentlest of men.” He felt a sudden, self-defeating need to warn her away from him.

  She sent him a puzzled look. “You do not think of yourself as kind?”

  He hesitated and then admitted, “Not always. Not usually.” True hunters always gave their quarry a sporting chance.

  She firmed her chin. “You do yourself a disservice, sir. I think you’re one of the kindest men I’ve ever met. And one of the noblest.”

  Callum couldn’t recall the last time someone had defended him. Never, he supposed, but then he wasn’t the sort who deserved defending. “You dinna ken me well.”

  She stepped closer, bridging the little distance remaining between them. “It’s not every man who would put his own affairs aside so selflessly to search for a brother gone missing. Nor would any man be so quick to forgive the woman who had abducted and held Lord Ewan and yet you treat milady and…and me as though we are your honored guests. A brute would have made us his prisoners.”

  Brianna, Laird of the MacLeods, had held his twin, Ewan, captive these past weeks, not in her dungeon but in her bed. Ostensibly the abduction was in retribution for her late husband’s murder, a deed her treacherous and now dead advisor, Duncan, had laid at Callum’s door. Woman or not, had she harmed so much as a hair on Ewan’s head, Callum wouldn’t have hesitated to shoot an arrow straight to her heart. But Callum knew his twin almost as well as he knew himself. Ewan had loved Brianna since they’d first met as children. When news of her marriage to a kinsman had reached them, his normally mellow-minded sibling had brooded for months. Once Ewan had accustomed himself to the notion, being Brianna’s love slave must have seemed a dark fantasy come true. Callum ventured to guess the reunited couple was even now enjoying similar sport in Ewan’s turret chamber, this time with his future sister-in-law most happily bound to Ewan’s bed.

  Not so very long ago, Callum would have traded places with his brother gladly. The MacLeod was a handsome woman, tall, flame-haired and generously curved. But since the other evening when he’d first set eyes upon her handmaid, Alys, a pocket-sized Venus garbed as a groomsman and fleeing with her mistress, his passions ran to pale golden hair, delicate features and a fairy’s form.

  He took a step toward her, shaking his head. “I ken you are one of those rare women who see only the good in people. And you are so very young.” She looked all of sixteen though her bearing told him she must be older.

  She focused her gaze on the ground. Long lashes tipped in gold cast shadows over the tops of her fine-boned cheeks. “Young and ignorant though I am, I have seen aplenty of that which is bad.”

  She looked up, eyes brimming. A tear slid down her cheek. Watching the progress of that single, crystalline droplet all but tore at him. He lifted his hand to her cheek.

  “How now, lady, why the tears?” Her flushed flesh felt satin smooth against his palm.

  She shook her head. “You treat me as a lady because you are so good and kind, but I am not as I seem. I have a son. His name is Alasdair. Even though his late father and I were duly wed, no good household would take us in. I plied the harlot’s trade to keep us.”

  The misery in her eyes and the trembling of her lower lip cut through the last cordon of his self-control. He stroked his knuckles down her jaw to her chin. Tilting her heart-shaped face up to his, he looked into her eyes. “It seems to me you are a mother who so loves her child that she would sacrifice her own good for his.”

  Her mouth curved into a small smile. She shook her head, the movement splashing a tear onto his wrist. “Now which of us is determined to see only the good? And yet you say you are not kind, my lord.”

  He leaned in, his mouth hovering but a hairsbreadth from hers. “I have not always been kind. In the past I have been prideful and boastful and selfish to a fault. I have bullied and blustered and seized what I wanted without thought or care for the consequences. But with you at my side, sweet Alys, I believe I could learn to be a better man.”

  “My lord?” Startled blue eyes flew to his.

  Rather than reply in words, Callum bent his head and laid siege to her rosebud mouth with a gentle, yet demanding kiss.

  1

  Seven months later

  December 24, Christmas Eve

  I BELIEVE I could learn to be a better man.

  Pacing the corridor outside his lady’s solar on their wedding eve, his bride gift bundled beneath one arm, Callum Fraser realized that seven months of self-imposed celibacy had put his newfound goodness to a mighty test.

  It seemed an eternity since that May Day when he’d dropped down on bended knee and proposed. “Marry me, sweet Alys, for I love thee true.”

  Tears shone in her beautiful blue eyes. She nodded fiercely. “I love you, too, my lord, with all my heart. And I will consent to be your wife on two conditions.”

  Conditions! Accustomed to seizing what he wanted, he hadn’t expected any caveats nor did he care for the prospect of bargaining with his bride.

  Still, desperate as he was to have her, he hadn’t hesitated. “Anything, my dearling, anything you wish. You’ve only to name it.”

  Her heart-shaped face had registered both steely resolve and shy sweetness. “I canna bring a maidenhead to our bridal bed, but I would come to you as a true bride, untouched by you.”

  Awash in finer feelings, he’d nodded, thinking to set the wedding date for soon, very soon. “If that is what you wish, then you have my word it shall be so.”

  “I thank you.” She sent him a small, relieved smile. “Secondly, I would have us marry at Christmastide, so that I may be your Christmas gift and you mine.”

  Taken aback, he’d risen quickly, nearly falling over on his side. “But Alys, my sweet, Christmastide is a full seven months away.”

  Her firm little nod sent his soul sinking. “Aye, milord, and in those seven months we both shall know whether or not you’ve given your pledge in haste.” Her face shadowed. “I married in haste once before, taking my vows at an inn instead of a church and finding myself a widow before I had the chance to truly be a wife. I canna regret a union that brought me my son, still, the matter came to a sorry end.” The plaintive look she sent him slashed at his heart.

  He’d had no choice but to give way. “Then let the nuptials take place upon the First Day of Christmas, my lady, for I mean for us to disport ourselves most merrily, most wickedly, on each of the twelve feast days—and nights.”

  There had followed the longest seven months of his life.

  Seven months of chaste kisses. Seven months of lonely nights and spotty sleep. Seven months of awaking from fevered dreams in which Alys lay beside him, beneath him, astride him. Seven months of cursing himself for making a promise that neither of them had really wanted him to keep. Now he was weary of waiting, weary of wanting, and altogether weary of doing without. Mere minutes stood between him and midnight, and their wedding day. Why bother with waiting at all?

  Creaking drew his gaze to the slowly opening door. He fell back into the darkened archway, dodging the sudden splash of light. Milread, his sister-in-law Brianna’s wise woman, poked her head out, her white hair streaming beyond her humped back.

  “Dinna fret, wean, like as not the little lordling sleeps still, but I’ll go to him to be sure.” She turned back inside the chamber, proffering a profile of warty nose and pointed chin. “Bide here and bolt the door ’til I return. I dinna trust that randy bridegroom of yours any farther than I can throw him.”

  Callum bristled. Since her arrival that morning, Milread had kept Alys confined within her chamber, supposedly as a safeguard against ill luck. Near sightless and almost toothless, still the
old dragon made for a formidable foe.

  “Milread, truly, is that entirely necessary?” Frustration strained Alys’s dulcet voice. “My lord has already seen me. We broke our fast together in his great hall this very morn.”

  “My lady Brianna sent me in her stead to see you kept safe, and safe you will be kept. Marriage is a tricky enough matter without courting bad luck to begin it.”

  Callum caught his sweetheart’s sigh just before the door fell closed. The bolt struck home. Cursing silently, he held his breath and waited. The crone passed him by, her small, crooked shadow cutting a goblinlike silhouette on the stone wall, her shambling gait carrying her with infuriating slowness toward the opposite corridor where Alys’s son’s nursery lay. The second she was out of sight, he stepped out into the open.

  A pox on old wives’ warnings! A man fashioned his own fortunes. Callum marched up to the door, feeling his resolve firm along with other oh so sensitive parts. He was laird, was he not? Really, who was there to stay him?

  He set his fist upon the planked wood and laid siege.

  SITTING BEFORE HER DRESSING MIRROR stroking the ivory-backed brush through her freshly washed hair, Alys marveled at what a difference seven months had made. Less than a year ago she’d barged into Brianna’s great hall, a penniless prostitute come to plead for the return of her baby from the burgher’s widow who’d stolen him. Now she was about to marry the man of her dreams, a lord who not only loved and honored her but who also wished to be a father to her son. The sight of Alasdair being carried about the castle grounds on her beloved’s broad shoulders never failed to bring grateful tears to her eyes. Her boy wouldn’t be a bairn forever. At only thirteen months, already he’d begun showing signs of willfulness that needed the guidance of a strong yet loving man. Callum might not be her son’s natural sire, yet Alys felt sure a better father could not be found.