Lord of Fates: A Complete Historical Regency Romance Series (3-Book Box Set)

by K. J. Jackson

  Wynne looked around. She was in an area she wasn’t familiar with. A variety of shops surrounded her—a bakery, tailor, milliner, furniture store, seamstress—all very elegant. Peeking into windows as she walked, Wynne knew she was still in an expensive area of the city. At least as far as the goods in the stores told her.

  She walked several more blocks, searching the streets for something she recognized. The duchess always offered Wynne the carriage, but Wynne preferred walking to and from client’s homes and had crossed many of the areas around this part of the city. So she knew it was only a matter of time before she recognized a familiar location.

  It was then she saw it.

  Wynne’s feet jerked to a stop. Her heart, her breath, stolen.

  Staring out of the window right in front of her, those eyes.

  Her grandfather’s eyes.

  His portrait.

  The first one she had done when she and her mother had settled into the house in Tanloon. She had missed him so much, and it was the best thing she could do to ease the sadness in her soul—paint him.

  His face, larger than life, swallowing the canvas. His mountain behind him. The thin stick he was always chewing on. His beard, grey and bushy and out of control. The deep lines on his face. The smirk of mischief on his lips when he looked at her with a new challenge in mind.

  The very portrait that had hung in their little Tanloon house. One of the portraits that had just disappeared. Disappeared just like her life. Just like her mother.

  Her grandfather’s portrait, now hanging in a window shop in London.

  How in the triple-blasted hell had that happened?

  Heart thundering, she took a step backward, desperate eyes taking in the shop. It looked to be a small art gallery.

  Wynne rushed through the door.

  The only one in the store, a clerk, quickly approached Wynne, the pretty lady’s bosom half-hanging out of a tight corset with only a touch of lace keeping her modest. “Hello. I saw you admiring the art from outside. It is to your liking?”

  Wynne barely heard the woman’s words, as Wynne’s attention had gone to the wall of paintings on her right. The weary lady doing laundry with four children hanging off her skirts. The burly blacksmith slamming a hammer, sparks flying and burning his skin. The weathered old man, drunk and half asleep at the tavern bar, ready to slip from the stool under him. The bar keep watching him with resigned pity.

  Up and down the wall they went.

  All paintings she had done, purely for her own pleasure, purely to capture the nuance of life in Tanloon.

  All the paintings that had vanished.

  Wynne turned to the clerk. “Who buys these?”

  The lady smiled. “All sorts, miss. They have—”

  Wynne shook her head, cutting the woman off. “I am sorry, I meant where do they come from?” She swept her hand along the wall in front of her paintings.

  “Oh, as most of our paintings are, these particular ones are on discreet consignment.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means they are being sold for a gentleman that I cannot name.”

  “A gentleman? Are you sure it is not a woman?”

  The clerk tilted her head at Wynne, apologetic. “I am not at liberty to say.”

  “Why not?”

  The clerk’s smile had turned awkward, but stayed glued on her face. “Paintings that come through our shop are usually being sold for financial reasons—the owners need the money more than they need the art. I am sure you can understand why that would be devastating for reputations. Why do you ask, miss?”

  Wynne nodded, more in control of herself after the initial shock had a moment to subside. “I apologize. That was rude of me to ask about others’ affairs. It is just that I appreciate the form and collect.”

  “You must also partake?” The clerk pointed at Wynne’s skirts.

  Wynne looked down at her paint-splattered dress and apron. She hadn’t even had the sense to remove her apron upon leaving Lady Southfork’s home. “Yes. But I am just an amateur. It makes me appreciate the works of others even more.”

  Wynne turned from the woman and stepped closer to the wall that showcased much of her own art. Walking along the wall, her eyes flickered from one memory to another.

  She stopped, her nose almost touching a painting. She knew this one well. It was from memory, also of her grandfather. Now it sat in a fine, fancy, gold-gilded frame.

  Her grandfather sat next to the stream that ran a stone’s throw from their house on the mountain. Whittling. Eyes downward, concentrating on the task.

  Wynne reached out, tracing the air above the deep lines she had set along his face. She had to force herself to keep her fingers off the canvas.

  “This one. When did this one come in?”

  The clerk sidled Wynne, looking at the painting. “Yes, the Americas. The style is very much from there. This collection has been popular. I have sold five of them in the last month.”

  Wynne’s head whipped to the lady, and then just as quickly back to the painting, trying to cover her reaction. She cleared her throat. “It is very interesting. I would like to tell my husband of it.”

  “Do you think your husband would be interested in purchasing it?”

  Stepping away from the wall, Wynne nodded at the clerk. “I do. I will be sure to bring my husband in here soon.”

  “Splendid. I do look forward to working with you and your husband.”

  Offering up a weak smile, Wynne nodded and exited the shop, squashing her instinct that wanted to rip all of her paintings from the wall and run off with them.

  Doing that would not get her any closer to the person who brought them here.

  The person who would know what happened to her mother.

  Blinded with rage, with shock, with disbelief, Wynne made her way down the street, stopping at the first stairs she could find.

  She sank onto a step, trying to control the welling panic in her chest.

  Her mother’s blood flashed through her mind.

  The swinging fire poker.

  The terror.

  Her cowardice.

  Wynne’s eyes squeezed tight against the fear that was about to overwhelm her.

  Hell.

  She needed to find Rowen.

  { Chapter 20 • Worth of a Duke }

  Past an iron fence she had to awkwardly pull herself over, Wynne slipped through the shrubbery at the back side of the deep gardens. Through the dark, she could see a ballroom glowing above the hedges, and now she just needed to work her way inconspicuously toward the bright building.

  It hadn’t been hard to find where the masquerade ball was to be held. The event was on everyone’s lips—two of the duchess’s friends had talked of nothing else during an earlier short visit—as masked balls apparently happened rarely in the mini-season.

  Wynne brushed the twigs from the midnight blue silk of the gown she had borrowed from the dowager’s wardrobe. Luckily, the duchess had an opera to attend that night, so that had left Wynne free for the evening.

  Free to find Rowen.

  But as Wynne looked at the many couples strolling about the gardens, and the many bobbing heads inside the ballroom, she was beginning to realize how impossible a task it was going to be to find Rowen in this mess.

  She took a breath for fortitude. She still had to try.

  Eyes demure on the brick path, gloved hands clasped in front of her, Wynne walked leisurely toward the ballroom, hoping this was the most direct path through the maze of evergreens.

  She passed numerous couples coming and going, and she quickly realized her assumption that only half of the women would be wearing masks—and that she could blend right in—was terribly wrong. Everyone she encountered had masks firmly in place. Some were attached with ribbons behind the head, some were held up on little sticks.

  So when she passed a stone bench with a rogue black mask attached to a stick just sitting there, forgotten, Wynne quickly glanced ar
ound, looking for an obvious owner. None around her were mask-less, and none seemed to take note of her.

  Wynne decided stealing would have to be forgivable in this instance, and she did a slight dip by the bench. She slipped the stick into her fingers and buried it along her skirts until she was well removed from the bench.

  Approaching the building, she saw identical marble staircases capping both ends of a long veranda and curving downward to the gardens. Wynne reached the shadows of the building and stopped by the right set of marble stairs leading upward, her stolen mask now firmly in place and covering the top half of her face.

  A deep breath for courage, and Wynne started up.

  Three steps up, and a dark figure on the other end of the gardens stormed out of the evergreen maze and caught Wynne’s eye. She stopped, fingers gripping the gold gilded railing.

  Hands balled into fists, the man was heaving, and had no mask on. It wasn’t until he stopped at the bottom of the left stairs, turning around and crossing his arms over his chest that Wynne could clearly see his face.

  Rowen.

  Out of nowhere. Amongst hundreds of people. Rowen.

  Her knees went weak and her grip tightened on the railing.

  His darkness blended into the night—his dark hair, dark coat and trousers—the white cravat the only thing drawing attention. So fully the picture of an aristocrat. So completely not how she was used to seeing him in his simple white shirt, buckskin breeches, and well-worn tall black boots.

  But he still held the rough handsomeness that had made her breath catch, time and again.

  A man not to be approached. Everything about him screamed that.

  Had he always been like that, and she had just never seen it?

  Rowen’s head went up, his eyes to the moon for a long moment. Then his chin dropped, his glare going to the evergreen hedge in front of him, his head shaking. But he did not move from his spot.

  Whatever he was waiting for clearly had him vexed.

  She couldn’t possibly approach him now. He was already beyond annoyed, and the little painter from a half-a-year ago was not something he would want to deal with at the moment.

  This was a mistake. She shouldn’t have come.

  The mask over her eyes bumped hard onto her nose, and Wynne realized her hand holding the stick was shaking uncontrollably.

  Instantly irritated with herself, she sucked in a deep breath. Rowen was exactly why she had come here. And by the crazy grace of fate, he had appeared.

  And now she was cowering? Questioning herself?

  She was here for his help. He had said that would always be the case. Rowen would help her if she needed it. She had never thought she would need it, but she was wrong.

  Time to swallow her pride and ask for that very thing.

  Not trusting her legs, her hand tightened on the railing, and she took three backward steps down the staircase, her slippers landing on the cobblestone walk.

  Just when she was about to release her death grip on the railing, a couple stepped out onto the veranda above Rowen and quickly descended the stairs. They stopped in front of Rowen, chatting with him. Wynne recognized the woman, the Duchess of Dunway, from earlier in the day, but could not hear what they talked about.

  What started out as a pleasant chat soon turned animated, arms gesturing into the hedges and fingers pointing around the building.

  Wynne stepped sideways into the deep shadows below the veranda, hopefully putting herself out of sight. She couldn’t approach him with others around. She realized that now.

  So what to do? Hide? Try to follow him? Knocking on the door of a bachelor was strictly off-limits according to the dowager—there was no surer way to ruin Wynne’s reputation. Not that Wynne even knew where Rowen lived.

  At that moment, a woman appeared from the same area of the hedges that Rowen had been in and approached the small group. Wynne couldn’t see half of her face for the mask covering her eyes, but the half Wynne could see was beautiful.

  Red-blond hair in an artful upsweep, she was lean with ample, creamy bosom floating above a deep scarlet gown. The woman chatted with the group, elegantly poised.

  The way the woman smiled at Rowen, she could only be the Miss Dewitt that Lady Southfork had talked about.

  A rush of wicked jealousy ran through Wynne. Rowen was hers to be smiling at. To be laughing with. And Wynne was having a hard time not running at the woman and knocking her down to the ground.

  Wynne dropped her chin to her bare chest. She had to get a hold of herself. Rowen had moved on from her. Forgotten about her. She needed his help and knew she could ask for no more. Not after what she did to him. Not after calling him worthless.

  She could have called him anything—called him the devil himself, swore at him up and down—and it wouldn’t have mattered. But she had called him worthless. The one thing—the only thing—that was guaranteed to destroy any affection he did have for her.

  Within a minute, Miss Dewitt, the Duchess of Dunway, and the man beside her left Rowen, walking off and skirting around the building. Rowen watched them leave, still standing at the base of the far-left stairs.

  Alone again.

  Wynne knew fate would not be granting her another chance at Rowen alone.

  She stepped from the shadows, moving toward him in the glow of the light casting downward from the ballroom.

  The movement caught Rowen’s eye, and his head swiveled to her.

  Scowl still on his face, Wynne braced herself and took several more steps toward him.

  He just looked straight at her, scowl not budging. No reaction.

  Wynne’s heart sank. She had not dared hope for a smile, but she had hoped for at least the slightest eye crinkle of recognition.

  The mask. The blasted mask still covered her face.

  Her hand holding the mask dropped. The stick slipped from her fingers, falling to the ground.

  Instant recognition, then disbelief flooded Rowen’s features.

  “Wynne…”

  Wynne stood, unable to move another step forward. Unable to do anything except open her mouth, a whisper escaping.

  “I need you.”

  The three words reaching him, Rowen’s eyes went from shock to burning heat. In the next instant he was to her, not stopping his stride as his arm wrapped around her body and he half picked her up, pushing her to the shadow of the veranda.

  Before she could take a breath, Rowen’s lips were on hers, harsh, crushing, demanding every nerve in her body submit to him.

  Wynne’s back hit the cold stone wall. Rowen did not stop, his hands running along her body, taking in every curve, his mouth taking possession of every sense she had.

  It wasn’t until she was drugged hazy by his touch, her body limp in his arms, that he pulled slightly back from her face. Supporting her lower back with his left arm, his right hand came up, capturing her face, his thumb under her chin, palm and fingers along her cheek.

  “Do not leave me again, Wynne. Ever. I will do anything. Anything. Give you anything. Go anywhere. Do anything you need. Just do not leave me again.”

  Stunned, Wynne could only stare into his dark eyes. Eyes that were begging her. Eyes that needed her.

  “Wynne.”

  Her mouth moved. “I need your help.” The rehearsed words spilled out, for she had nothing else to draw upon.

  It took a moment, and then realization set onto Rowen’s features. His hand dropped from her face and he extracted his arm from behind her. Wynne fell backward, only the stone supporting her.

  “You are…you are not here for…you did not find me for…” His voice came rough, forced.

  The words, the pain in them, snapped Wynne’s mind into working again.

  “No.” She shoved herself off the stone before he could turn away from her, grabbing his face in both of her hands, clasping him so he could look nowhere but at her. “Rowe, I have not caught up. I never imagined—I did not know that seeing you—”

  Tears start
ed to slide down her cheeks, the emotion so thick in her chest it overwhelmed. “After what I did to you. How I hurt you. My blade. My words. I was…I just needed to get away and I…I never meant…”

  His arms went around her, grabbing her again, hard steel against all her regret.

  Mouth on her ear, his breath sent shivers down her spine. “I know. I know you did not mean it, Wynne. I know. I ruined it—us—I only wanted to take care of you, and I did not think on what I was doing. What it would mean to you.”

  She turned her head, finding his mouth again. She needed him, needed him kissing her again, feeling her again—possessing her again—for this to be real.

  Rowen needed no encouragement, and he opened his mouth to her, tongue diving, tasting her. Wynne instantly lost herself in him.

  And the brutal truth hit her with a force she could not deny.

  She had thought she was strong. Thought she was steadfast in her pride, even if it was waning. Steadfast in what she would not do for this man.

  She was wrong. Wrong on all accounts.

  It was painfully—gloriously—clear to her in that second. She would not deny him anything. Anything he asked, she would do.

  She didn’t hear the footsteps until Rowen drew up slightly from her, stopping the kiss. His breath still mingled with hers as he sheltered her from sight. The footsteps came closer, went past them, and receded.

  He shook his head, his voice a ragged whisper. “Not here. This is impossible. There is too much to say.”

  He drew back further and Wynne opened her eyes to him. He stared at her, intensity still burning in his eyes.

  “My home is only three blocks from here. We do not need my carriage. Come with me, Wynne. Please.”

  “Yes.” She nodded before he finished, and his eyes closed in relief.

  He grabbed her hand, moving them quickly along the pathway to the side street.

  Within minutes, Rowen was ushering her up the back stairs to an enormous brick townhouse. Several lanterns were lit in the hallways, just enough to make it up the main staircase without stubbing a toe.

  Hand still tightly gripping hers, Rowen glanced over his shoulder at her. “I do not keep the staff up late. I actually have little use of them, but they still need to be employed. So everything I can dream up they take care of in the daytime—which means this place is mostly empty at the moment, but I do not want to chance any gossip. I want you in my chambers—none would dare enter without my permission.”