Emerald Embrace

by Drake, Shannon

  He suspected her…

  He could not!

  She steeled herself to courage as she lay there, listening to the sound of the violent surf far below, listening to the roar and churn and fury of the wind. The fire within her room brought warmth above the tempest. There was that warmth.

  Soon there was a tap on her door. Holly had brought her a tray. Martise thanked her and bolted the door again.

  She was startled to discover that she was ravenous. Her dinner was roasted lamb with mint jelly, and the food was delicious. She ate it with great relish and sipped the wine that accompanied it.

  Then she set the tray beyond her door and very carefully bolted it once again.

  She dressed in a white nightgown and crawled into the four-poster bed with its crisp clean sheets and warm wool blanket, and told herself that she must sleep. But as she listened to the howl of the wind, she wondered at the tales that the very stone walls of the castle screamed in horror.

  At last, exhaustion came to her, and she closed her eyes and slept.

  He came to her.

  He came to her in the night, in the flickering red glow of the firelight, and she was bathed in it.

  He stood close, looking down at her, and his eyes narrowed with suspicion. Then he shrugged. He would discover her secret.

  He did not mean to; he reached out and touched her. He touched her glorious display of blazing hair where it fell in silken beauty against the white of the sheets. He stared at her lashes, rich and dark as they fell in crescents over the softness of her cheeks, and he thought of the color of her eyes, bright, startling, cobalt and teal, eyes to defy the very color of day, sparkling with courage and determination.

  And only hinting in the shadows of the slightest cast of fear.

  “Damn!” he murmured aloud. She should not have come. He had enough on his hands, and the situation was grim indeed. Now he had this girl to cope with, too. This brazen beauty with her wild flame hair and clear blue eyes and silken voice.

  He stiffened, for as he watched her, she shifted and moved, her breasts pressed fully against the white lace of her gown. Her covers were tossed and he was treated to a glimpse of long and shapely limbs.

  With an oath he tossed the covers over her, and then he realized that tension had gripped his throat and his muscles and that he shook with the force of it.

  She was made for desire.

  The heat and tempest and passion of life lay within her eyes, and within the bewitching curves and angles of her form, and in the blaze of her hair.

  He wanted her … as he had forgotten how to want. He wanted to hold her and take her, until he slaked his restless yearning and doused the fire and tumult within.

  He swore aloud again and pulled the covers high around her, and paused just a moment more.

  Who was she?

  He swore he would find out. She had come to seduce and trap him, he was certain.

  But it would not be. She would be the one trapped and seduced.

  It might very well be his only way to save her.

  2

  She dreamed in the half-light that filtered into her room with the coming of morning.

  She did not dream of the stark walls of Creeghan rising out of the mist, but of a gentler, more tender scene. Of a white-columned porch shimmering in the sunlight, of rolling hill upon rolling hill of rich and verdant green, and beyond the manicured lawns, the fields of rich Virginia tobacco. The sun shone down rightly and the sky was blue, dispelling any trace of gloom or fog or mist.

  There was a man upon the porch, his hair golden and his eyes startling deep blue, and he was reaching out to her and she was running, running to cast herself into his arms. He smiled, welcoming her, but suddenly she was running through mist. The mist cleared, and she stopped dead in her tracks. The tall blond man was gone, and there was a dark-haired stranger in his place, oh, a man she had met, but a stranger, still. Tall, striking, his lips curling into a smile that might have been the devil’s own, his eyes piercing her, seeing through her, knowing all.

  And he was waiting for her, waiting.

  She heard the burst of a shell, and the green lawn erupted between them. She was alone.

  Alone with a horrible acrid stench, the smell of black powder from a thousand guns and countless cannons scorching the earth.

  Martise awoke with a start, bolting up in bed.

  She was no longer home, the war was over, and the endless green lawn of her dream existed no more. Her father was gone.

  And Lord Creeghan belonged to this new life. He hadn’t belonged in the dream. That was the past. It was about things lost to her forever.

  No. Not Eagle’s Walk.

  Eagle’s Walk still stood. She had sold off some of the land, but she was desperately hanging on to the house itself. It wasn’t as old as Creeghan, but it meant every bit as much to her as Creeghan might mean to its lord. Her father had been an Englishman, but he had loved the property her mother brought to him through marriage as if he had been born and bred there himself. And as long as Martise lived, she would never forget the day not long before the awful war began when he stood with her on the bottom step of that beautiful porch.

  “Life is always fleeting, Martise, and we pass through it quickly. This war will sweep it away even more quickly for thousands of young men, for the idealists, for the zealots. They will all fall before the fire. Hold on to this home of ours, Martise. Hold on tight, because the present will be whisked away by the winds of time, and such places are all that we will have to remember. It will be your heritage. Your children’s heritage.”

  She had made a vow to him then, not even understanding his words. She understood soon enough, however. Within a year and a half, he was killed, falling at Manassas in the opening stages of the war.

  Martise St. James. That much was true, she reflected. It was her name. But she wasn’t Lady St. James—that was Margaret. Margaret had married Martise’s cousin Aaron, the son of Martise’s uncle, her father’s older brother, Lord St. James. Then Aaron was Lord St. James and now …

  Now they were all gone. Aaron had fallen at Sharpsburg, and Margaret had died outside of Richmond of the typhus not a year later.

  She’d had to come here as Mary’s sister, for it was unlikely that Lord Creeghan would have allowed her if he knew that she was merely his deceased wife’s sister’s cousin-in-law.

  Margaret had been her friend, as close as Aaron, even though her cousin had led a very military life, being in the British service, fighting in Africa and then choosing to take on the fight of the Confederacy, joining up with the Rebs to fight with Lee. And in the midst of the decay and destruction of her country all around her, Martise had learned that Mary had died, too. After all of her startling letters, after the things that she had said and written. Mary, Margaret’s beautiful younger sister, carefree, a heartbreaker herself, being swept away by a man reported to be the catch of the season, the lord of Castle Creeghan. Mary, who was exactly the same age as Martise, who was her dear friend.

  Tears were stinging her eyes, Martise realized. She had woken up feeling maudlin, and she was grieving again, missing people she should have learned not to miss so dearly.

  Well, she was here. She was here now, and if she couldn’t change any of the horror that had ravaged her past, perhaps she could discover the truth about Mary. She owed it to her, and to Margaret, and even to Aaron. She had loved them.

  And she also needed the emerald. Desperately.

  Martise rubbed her eyes and rose and walked to the balcony doors, throwing them open. The wind swept in upon her. Beyond the parapets the sheer rocks and cliffs rose high, yet looking out, toward the east, she could see the sea, wild, gray, beautiful, thundering against the rocks with a power of its own. It was a stunning sight, she thought, as lovely as the green fields of home, in its way. The sky was clear and endlessly blue, yet offered up the harsh whisper of the wind, deceitful.

  She came back into the room and scrubbed her face, smiling. It was da
ylight. She was going to have no more fancies about Castle Creeghan. She was going to discover … things.

  But when she finished washing, she realized that her hands were trembling. She sat down at the foot of the bed, hugging her shoulders for warmth.

  She wanted very much to understand what had happened to Mary, and she also needed Mary’s property, because the emerald had to be among Mary’s things. It wasn’t as if she were stealing a Creeghan family jewel—the emerald belonged to the St. James family. Mary had seen Martise briefly before her marriage, and they had decided that Mary should take the jewel, which might be important in time, to Scotland, where it could not be seized by an angry enemy.

  Martise didn’t know the emerald’s exact value, but she knew that it was worth thousands of dollars. Enough to pay off the back taxes on Eagle’s Walk, and that was all that Martise cared about. Her father was gone, her mother had died years before the threat of war ever loomed over the South, and now Aaron was gone, and Margaret and Mary, too.

  The house, the home, the remaining land, they were all she had.

  She had hoped that Mary had entrusted her husband with the jewel, but that hadn’t seemed to be the case when Martise first corresponded with him. Writing to Bruce Creeghan had brought her a reply, a solicitous, polite note, telling her she was welcome to Mary’s personal effects. An almost casual note.

  Mary’s effects: Simple things, combs and brushes, clothing, small gold chains, her letter box, her portmanteaus …

  Not a single mention of the emerald. Either he didn’t know about it or he intended to keep it from her.

  There came a tap on her door, and she leapt up to undo the bolt and admit Holly.

  “I let you sleep as late as possible, milady,” the maid told her cheerfully. “Traveling being so rough upon the bones and all. But the master intends to show you to your dear sister’s grave, and he’s been up and about for hours, so I’m assuming he’ll be ready for you the moment the midday meal is over. I’ve brought you tea and biscuits, but just a bite, for Cook will have something fine in store in the main hall in an hour or so.”

  “Tea is lovely, thank you,” Martise assured her, accepting the tray. Holly was so fresh-faced and pretty, so honest and down-to-earth that Martise felt some of the mystery and gloom of the night dissipating in her presence. She needn’t have been so unnerved. It was only the storm over the castle that caused her unease last night. “Holly, I would dearly love a delicious hot bath. Would that be possible?”

  It was possible. Holly left her with her tea and biscuits and went off for the wooden hip bath and kettles to heat above her own fire. She returned with a huge man carrying the tub and several kitchen lads toting water.

  The giant bearing the tub was introduced to her as Robert McCloud, the groom drawn in from the stables for assistance. He was well over six feet tall, burly and so muscle-hewn he seemed to have no neck. He nodded curtly to her as he set the tub down, but then seemed to study her with a boldness she found insulting—or frightening. A scar ran the length of his left cheek, his eyes were a startling light blue, and his smile indicated he appreciated all that he saw in her.

  Martise ignored him, turning her attention to the lads Holly introduced. “This here, milady, our blond boy, is Trey McNamara, and the darker lad is our Jemie, Jemie MacPeters.” Holly’s glance to her, over Jemie’s head, indicated that something wasn’t quite right with Jemie MacPeters. But the blond boy smiled shyly and endearingly, and Martise found herself smiling gently in return, liking him the best of the three males she had just met.

  Holly shooed them out of the bedroom, and Martise assured her that she was fine on her own. “Well, if I can be of assistance, milady—I served your dear sister, I did. And I know of course that you were living in the south of the States, and that you were quite accustomed to the service of slaves—”

  “Holly, I am quite accustomed to bathing and dressing myself,” Martise said softly, gritting her teeth. She hadn’t been accustomed to much help with anything over the last four years, although there had, indeed, been slaves at Eagle’s Walk. Dana had been with her for years and years, but her great kind heart failed when the war had gone on and on. Old Buff stayed there now, keeping up with all he could. And there was Henry from the fields, and his wife …

  And the hundreds and hundreds who had fled to the North, and out of them, the many who had come back disillusioned, needing just to feed their hungry families when the North offered them no jobs, when the very people who had “freed” them refused to touch them, thinking that their color could come off on them like a disease.

  Not that she defended slavery. She had known fine Southern gentlemen who were not averse to beating their people cruelly. She was simply weary of the war, and weary of the concepts of others about the rebellious Southerners.

  “If you’re sure, then—” Holly began.

  “Indeed, I’m sure!” Martise snapped, far more curtly than she had intended. She saw the surprise touch Holly’s face, and the hurt, and she was sorry, but she would make it up at some later time. When Holly left her and she crawled into the steaming water, Martise thought ruefully that she must indeed seem a change from her “sister” Mary, for Mary was never brusque. She had always been gentle, always kind, and never raised her voice.

  Her pulse quickened suddenly. Holly had served Mary. She must know something of Mary’s life here, perhaps even something about her secrets.

  Just as the morning’s light dispelled the gloom of the night, the hot bath and rich-scented soap seemed to wash away the last of the long trip to Creeghan.

  Martise dressed feeling a new strength about her. She studied her features as she combed out her hair, determining to leave it loose to fall about her shoulders and down the length of her back. She had chosen a royal-blue gown with a rich flurry of petticoats, and she wondered even as she studied her own eyes if she had really chosen the day gown because it had traveled so well, or if somewhere, in the back of her mind, she might have chosen it to seduce the master of Creeghan.

  There was a knock on her door. She swung it open. Holly was back, quiet and subdued. “Milady, shall I take you to the hall?”

  Martise offered her a warm smile. “Please, Holly. I do believe I know my way, but I shall be happy for your guidance.”

  Holly brightened visibly. She smiled and turned, starting off down the hallway.

  The sun streamed in through the mullioned windows. There were gorgeous draperies and tapestries along the walls, and the cold stone floor was covered with a red velvet runner held in place by brass rings. Every effort had been made to bring the castle into the nineteenth century, Martise thought. The master, it seemed, liked his comforts.

  “So you were with Mary,” Martise said softly, behind Holly.

  Holly paused and looked over her shoulder. “Aye, that I was. No gentler lady have I known than your sister, milady. It broke my heart when we lost her, I do promise you.”

  “I’m sure.”

  Holly started walking again. “Tell me, Holly,” Martise said. “Did it break the master’s heart?”

  Once again, Holly stopped dead, swirling around to stare at Martise with wide eyes. “Oh, indeed, milady, that it did! Why, he just weren’t the same, he weren’t the same at all for months. He sat up night after night in the darkness, he did, missing her.”

  “I’m glad to hear that,” Martise said, and smiled. “Thank you for telling me.”

  Holly nodded, turned about again, and led the way down the stairs. When they reached the hall, Holly did not linger, or even speak to Bruce Creeghan, who stood once more with his back to her.

  He spun around, and Martise was newly startled by the fire in his eyes. It seemed they had a devil’s touch of fire, that they invaded her heart and her mind, and saw the very things she tried to hide. His raven-dark hair and striking features combined to give him the aura of a true master of the world, and yet when he smiled, slowly, as he did now, the arrogance did not seem to matter. He seemed to be
ckon her as a flame beckons a moth, and she felt the heat of his gaze deep within her. He was a sensual man. She stared at the fullness of his lips and was dismayed to realize that she wondered how the touch of his kiss would feel against her flesh.

  “Good day, Lady St. James. Tell me, did you sleep well your first night in the castle?” he asked.

  “Yes, I did. Thank you very much.”

  He walked across the room to the table that had been set for two. A crystal decanter of blood-red wine sat upon a silver tray between two glasses. He poured two portions and offered her a glass, lifting it so that she was forced to walk across the room and stand before him to accept it.

  “I’m glad you were comfortable,” he told her. “Castles are old, and they creak, and the wind streams through them and creates whispers in the darkness. For strangers, it is often difficult to sleep once the fear of the unknown sets in.”

  “The unknown?”

  “Well, the whispers, of course. And the cries of the wind.”

  She fought the hypnotism of his eyes and brought a smile to her lips. “The castle is beautiful, Lord Creeghan. Truly beautiful by daylight. I missed a great deal in the darkness last night. I do not fear the whispers—or the cries—of the wind.”

  “Aye, that’s right, I had forgotten. You do not fear ghosts, only the living.”

  “And none of the living would threaten me here,” she said sweetly.

  “None,” he assured her. He pulled back her chair, and she felt the whisper of his breath against her neck as he seated her at the huge dragon-clawed table, bending low against her while he adjusted her chair. “None would dare to threaten such a righteous and determined beauty, I am certain!”

  Warmth flooded her. He sat to her side, at the head of the table.

  Hogarth appeared to serve the soup from a large silver tureen. Martise thanked him, thinking that even Hogarth looked better by daylight. He still appeared old, but perhaps his cheeks weren’t quite so cadaverous. To her amazement, he smiled at her and even seemed to wink.