“You kissed me and I have been burning ever since. Your kiss burned away everything.” Kate held his gaze. “Everything but you.”
MacNeill looked stricken, trapped. “I’m sorry. I took that kiss. I shouldn’t have.”
“I do not accept your apology.”
“What else can I do?”
“Make love to me,” she whispered breathlessly. “Make me forget. Make something for me to remember.”
“You don’t mean this,” he said. “You’re scared and you want comfort. Not a lover. You should have a gentleman lover to kiss your fingertips and write love letters and whisper poetry. I’m not that man, Kate. All I have, all I am, is ferocity. It is all I know.”
“I don’t believe that.” Her fingers curled around the neck of his shirt, the weight of her hand dragging it open over his chest.
“Is this some diabolical test?” His throat corded with veins. “If it is, how can I possibly succeed?” he demanded. “Listen to me, Kate. Nothing else but harm can come of my taking you here. Now. And I swore I would cause you no harm.”
“You also swore you would do anything I ask,” she reminded him.
PRAISE FOR CONNIE BROCKWAY
“Romance with strength, wit, and intelligence. Connie Brockway delivers!”
— New York Times bestselling author Tami Hoag
“Connie Brockway is truly an innovative, wonderful writer whose work belongs on every reader’s shelf.”
— Romantic Times
“If it’s smart, sexy and impossible to put down, it’s a book by Connie Brockway.”
—New York Times bestselling author Christina Dodd
“Connie Brockway’s work brims with warmth, wit, sensuality, and intelligence.”
—New York Times bestselling author Amanda Quick
“If you’re looking for passion, tenderness, wit, and warmth, you need look no further. Connie Brockway is simply the best!”
—New York Times bestselling author Teresa Medeiros
THE BRIDAL SEASON
RITA Award Winner for Best Historical Romance and one of the Romance Writers of America’s Top Ten Favorite Books of 2001
“This frothy literary confection sparkles with insouciant charm. Characters, setting, and plot are all handled with perfect aplomb by Brockway, who displays a true gift for humor. Witty and wonderful!”
—Booklist
MY DEAREST ENEMY
RITA Award Winner for Best Historical Romance
“Brockway’s respect for her audience is apparent in her latest Victorian. The rare story introduces social issues without preaching, characters who are well developed, and enough passion, humor, and pathos to satisfy most readers.”
—Publishers Weekly
AS YOU DESIRE
“Smart, sassy, sexy, and funny….Wonderfully entertaining romance. Connie Brockway has a way with humor that not only makes you laugh, but touches your heart.”
—Romantic Times
BRIDAL FAVORS
“A scrumptious literary treat… wonderfully engaging characters, superbly crafted plot, and prose rich in wit and humor.”
— Booklist
M C CLAIREN’S ISLE: THE PASSIONATE ONE
“An undercurrent of danger ripples through this exquisite romance, set in the 1700s, and Brockway’s lush, lyrical writing style is a perfect match for her vivid characters, beautifully atmospheric settings, and sensuous love scenes.”
— Library Journal
ALL THROUGH THE NIGHT
“Intricately plotted, with highly inventive lead characters, Brockway’s latest is an intense and complicated romance. …There is excitement, chemistry, obsession, and best of all, a tortured romance.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
BOOKS BY CONNIE BROCKWAY
Once upon a Pillow
(with Christina Dodd)
Published by Pocket Books
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
POCKET BOOKS, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
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Copyright © 2004 by Connie Brockway
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Pocket Books, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.
ISBN: 0-7434-8885-7
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PROLOGUE
York, 1801
CHARLOTTE ELIZABETH NASH, reading in the window alcove, shrank back against the wall when she heard people entering the cavernous, sparsely furnished drawing room. She did not want company. She was sick of people, the whisperers and sympathizers who couldn’t ever quite keep their eyes from straying to the empty places on the walls where pictures had once hung.
She dropped her book into her lap and pulled the curtain partially covering the niche farther closed. But male voices, rare in what had become an all female household since Kate had “let go” the butler, piqued her interest.
At sixteen and not yet having made her bow, she knew that making her presence known would only invite dismissal. Charlotte did not want to be dismissed. She was as saddened as anyone by their father’s death and equally affected by the ramifications, but she had the resilience of youth—and its attendant callousness—and over the long months of mourning had grown a little… well, bored. Besides, visitors might distract Kate from her constant litany about economy and Helena from donning her mask of forced optimism. And a little male attention might even bring a pink of pleasure to their mother’s wan cheeks.
Charlotte inserted a finger between curtain and wall and peeked out. Her mother had taken possession of the lone settee left in the room and was reading a sheet of paper. Charlotte’s two older sisters sat flanking her: Helena, pale as winter sunlight, and Katherine, heated and dark as a moonless summer night. They sat with their hands clasped lightly in their laps, their postures straight, their polite gazes numbed to the presence of the trio of young men standing before them.
Charlotte could not see them clearly, but she didn’t dare risk pulling the curtain farther open. Instead, she dropped noiselessly to the immaculate floorboards and lifted the curtain hem. Ah. Better.
From this unseen vantage she studied the young men as they introduced themselves: they were decidedly not of the Nashes’ class. Of what class they were remained to be seen.
She couldn’t say exactly why she had come to this conclusion. True, their clothing, though scrupulously clean, was shabby—cuffs frayed at the edges and fabric pulling across shoulders and backs—but since the war with France had begun, many people had been forced to eschew fashion as money grew tighter. Nor was it their bearing that revealed them as something other than gentlemen in reduced circumstances. Indeed, they comported themselves in the most correct and circumspect fashion.
No, it was something subtler. More elemental. It seemed as if something untamed had come in through the front door, disturbing the air in the quiet York town house, something dangerous.
She scooted closer as the man in front introduced himself as Andrew Ross, in a deep voice touched with a Highland burr. Medium height, brown-haired and tanned, with a loose-knit physique, he smiled easily and looked genial. Except… when one studied him closer, one noted the wicked scar that traversed his lean cheek and the flint that belied the warm color of his brown eyes.
Beside him stood easily the most handsome man Charlotte had ever seen. Ramsey Munro, he’d said. Tall, slender, and pale, with black glossy curls falling over his white b
row and deep blue eyes glittering between a thick bank of lashes, his features were both sardonic and aristocratic. Charlotte could imagine him in the ton, his grace masking a subtle but undeniable predatory aspect. Like the panther she had seen at the menagerie last summer.
The last young man—Christian MacNeill—hung back, his broad-shouldered figure tense. Raggedly chopped, overlong red-gold hair framed a lean, hungry face made remarkable by pale green, watchful eyes. He looked the roughest of the trio, with deep set eyes, a wide, sensual mouth, and a hard, angular jaw.
Charlotte cocked her head. He reminded her of someone…Ah, yes. She remembered now.
Late one night several years ago, when she had been in the kitchen soothing a troubled stomach with a glass of brandied milk, she had heard a whistle outside. The upstairs maid, Annie, had come running in to fling open the back door. A man emerged from the darkness, everything about him troubling and exciting, and scooped Annie up in his arms, wheeling her about until he noticed Charlotte. He stopped wheeling, but he didn’t put Annie down. Annie had left with him that night, her eyes wide with fear and pleasure. She had never returned.
This Christian MacNeill reminded Charlotte of that other man, that “born-to-be-hung blackguard” who’d stolen Annie away.
Not that Annie would be here now, even if she hadn’t run off, Charlotte reminded herself. Except for Cook and a pair of overworked maids, all of the other servants had been let go.
“I don’t know what they want,” her mother suddenly murmured in the bewildered voice that had become hers the day she had learned she was a widow. She looked askance at Helena, who touched her shoulder consolingly. Wordlessly, Kate took possession of the paper and began to read.
“We don’t want anything, Mrs. Nash,” Mr. Ross said. “We have come to present your family an oath. Whether you see fit to avail yourselves of it is your decision. But whether or no you do, the oath stands for as long as any of us lives.”
Charlotte’s eyes widened in fascination. An oath? She knew the young men had, in some way, been associated with her father, and assumed they’d been members of his staff come to pay their respects.
“What sort of oath?” Helena asked.
“A pledge of service,” Kate said, still reading the letter.
Charlotte regarded her middle sister with grudging admiration. Throughout the past year Kate, not Helena, had emerged as the family’s bastion of strength, despite having more reason than any of them to be devastated.
Married at nineteen to a dashing lieutenant, Michael Blackburn, Kate had no sooner settled into her Plymouth home than her husband had died while en route to India. She’d returned to York a widow less than a year after she’d become a bride. Six months later, word came that their father had been killed in France, where he’d been secretly meeting with the deposed heads of Louis XVI’s government—at least those few with heads still attached.
The family had still been reeling from the shock when the solicitors arrived and informed them that the annuity they had lived upon had died with Lord Nash. Almost at once, tradesmen began scratching at the back doors, the servants began looking for more secure positions, and the new owners of the entailed town house commenced sending letters that her mother never opened. No one did.
Except Kate. She took upon herself the unimaginable task of selling their personal belongings, writing references for the servants, and settling unpaid bills. Kate. Kate who liked dancing more than reading, hated sums and loved gossip, who the matrons had tattled upon as being “flighty” and “capricious.” Even now, Charlotte was amazed. She barely recognized her carefree, party-loving sister in the composed young woman calmly refolding the letter their mother had handed her.
“Thank you for your offer, gentlemen,” Kate said now. “But we do not stand in need of your aid. Nor do we expect to.”
Charlotte felt her mouth sag. They most certainly were in need. Dire need! But then, their needs began and ended with money, and clearly these three young men were no better off than they were. Mayhap less. Though that would have been hard to imagine.
She wasn’t supposed to know about the family’s financial straits. Her sisters maintained a facade of confident calm, but soft-footed as she was, Charlotte had heard enough through closed doors and in the late hours of the night to understand perfectly well how very desperate their situation had become.
“I see.” Mr. Ross kept his gaze courteously fixed on the three women seated before him, and Ramsey Munro remained impassive, but Christian MacNeill’s frosted gaze prowled about the room, pausing at the faded rectangles on the striped silk wall-covering, the dents in the Persian rug that revealed the absence of heavy furniture, and the lack of ornamentation on the single, lonely sideboard.
He knows, Charlotte thought. Yet what can he do in the face of Kate’s refusal?
“We have no desire to burden you further, Mrs. Blackburn. But before we leave”—Mr. Ross gestured vaguely at his companions—“would you do us the great kindness of accepting something from us?”
He held up a canvas bag Charlotte had not previously noted. A small knob of wood protruded from the twine-wrapped top.
“What is it?” Helena asked.
“A rose, Miss Nash,” Mr. Ross answered. “Should you ever find you stand in any need for which we might prove of service, you have only to send one of the flowers to the abbot at St. Bride’s in Scotland. He will know how to contact us, and as soon as humanly possible we will come to you.”
A small, confused smile touched Helena’s lips. “Why a—”
“A rose?” a female voice asked incredulously from the doorway. Their cousin Grace swept into the chill drawing room, all golden ringlets and dewy skin, untying a velvet pelisse from about her shoulders.
“Hello, my dears!” She bent down to place a perfunctory kiss on her aunt’s cheek before straightening and regarding the young men with a faint touch of surprised superiority.
“Grace, these are the young men whom your uncle… who…” Charlotte’s mother floundered, uncertain how to proceed. Helena saved her.
“These are the young men whom Father was able to aid in rescuing before his demise: Mr. Ross, Mr. Munro, and Mr. MacNeill. Gentlemen, our cousin, Grace Deals-Cotton.”
Rescued? These were the young men her father died saving? Charlotte lifted the curtain higher, fascinated.
The young men bowed and murmured appropriate greetings and Grace smiled her catlike, three-pointed smile, her large eyes narrowed assessingly.
“I see,” she said. “And you’ve brought a… rose? How very sentimental.” Grace turned to her aunt. “Did Uncle Roderick like roses? I never realized. But then, I’ve only been with you a year.” She smiled again. “This time.”
“I am sure Lord Nash would have appreciated the roses very much,” Charlotte’s mother said with rote politeness. “As we shall when the plant blooms… later this year.”
Her hesitation betrayed the thought unspoken but held by them all that they would not be here long enough to see the rose bloom. No one, of course, revealed this to their guests. They were proud, the Nashes were.
“But surely you can’t mean to try and stay… Oh. You mean you will take a cutting when you relocate,” Grace said. She took a seat on the far end of the sofa, picking up the embroidery hoop she’d abandoned last evening.
“You are moving household?” Ramsey Munro asked sharply.
“Yes,” Helena said, darting an uneasy glance at Kate. “Eventually. The memories…” She trailed off vaguely, her hand rising and falling to her side.
Kate shot a daggered look at Grace, who returned her look with one of confused hurt. Charlotte let the hem drop a little, a touch irritated with Kate. Of course Grace hadn’t purposely revealed their need to move from the fashionable town house but Kate would never believe that. The animosity between the two was long-standing—perhaps because they were, or at one time had been, so much alike. Once Kate had been just as fey and artless as Grace. She ought to remember that rathe
r than always finding fault with their vivacious cousin.
“As are you, Grace,” Helena said, diverting everyone’s attention. “Relocating, that is.”
“Ah, yes!” Grace said, lowering her eyes prettily as she commenced embroidering. “But I, poor creature, am to be relegated to the wilderness, while you all shall at least be able to avail yourself of society.” She smiled at Mr. Ross. “Five months hence, I am marrying Charles Murdoch. His brother is the marquis of Parnell. I daresay you won’t be known—”
She caught the faux pas before she had completed it. “You probably would not know him. His castle”— there was no disguising the satisfaction with which she said the word, and why shouldn’t she feel satisfaction? A castle was, after all, a castle—“his castle is on the north coast of Scotland. We shall live there when we are not in London.”
“London, not Edinburgh?” Ramsay Munro asked smoothly. “I own, I am surprised. The Scots are inordinately proud of Edinburgh.”
Something about the manner in which he spoke to Grace told Charlotte that Ramsay Munro was not overwhelmed by her cousin’s charms, making him, in Charlotte’s admittedly limited experience, unique among young men.
“Edinburgh?” Grace repeated. The silk-strung needle flashed seemingly without volition as she pondered his words. Grace was a marvelous embroiderer, another similarity between her and Kate. “I suppose. In truth, I haven’t given it much thought. The wedding has, I own, rather consumed my attention.”
“My felicitations on your upcoming nuptials,” Mr. Ross said. He turned to the other women. “Now, perhaps I might impose upon you for one last kindness?”
“Of course,” Helena answered before Kate could demur.
“If we might see the rose planted?”
“Oh.” Helena blinked in surprise. “Oh, of course. Kate, where do you think we might plant—”
“No, darling, you must say. You and mother. You are the gardeners, not I.”
Their mother looked up from whatever reverie she’d been lost in, and for a moment the smile that animated her face made her look almost herself again.
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