by Sophia James
‘You make a beautiful bride, Lady Tintagel,’ Inigo whispered against her ear. ‘When I saw you walk down the aisle, my heart nearly burst to think this woman was mine.’
‘I hope you always think that.’ She smiled, her own heart too full for words.
‘I will. Always. I promise.’ He took her hand. ‘Are you ready?’
‘For what?’ Audevere queried.
Inigo grinned. Smiling was coming more easily to him these days. ‘To start our happy-ever-after.’
EPILOGUE
Truro Quay—1825
Inigo stood straight-backed on Truro Quay, watching the ship dock, Audevere veiled beside him. He’d waited for this ship to come in for quite some time. Cassian and Pen were coming home today after nearly a year-long honeymoon spent travelling Europe. He’d written ahead to tell Cassian only that he’d married, but he’d not said whom and he’d bade Hayle to say nothing either. He felt this news was best delivered in person. Beside him, he could feel Audevere’s nerves as she fidgeted with her veil. This was one last hurdle for them both, to tell Cassian that he’d married his dead brother’s fiancée.
It was difficult to think of Audevere as Collin’s fiancée, these days. That was part of a past that no longer carried with it guilt and shame. Audevere was his now, as he was hers. He hoped Cassian would see it that way as well. He squeezed Audevere’s gloved hand as the gangplank was set. ‘They will love you. I haven’t been wrong yet.’
He’d not been wrong; his family did love her. And it had immensely helped to grease the wheels of London society, but the Season had been difficult. There were those who’d been more than happy to gossip about her father behind her back. He’d seen to them, of course. Next Season would be better and, in time, everyone would forget about her father. Meanwhile, they were happy together, devoting their days to assisting the poor, to lifting children out of poverty with education. It was a delight to see Audevere working side by side with Eliza to promote not only mining schools, but grammar schools for all children. The last months had been good. Beyond good.
Cassian and Pen stepped on to the quay and Inigo strode forward. ‘It’s good to see you, old friend.’
‘Inigo!’ Cassian swept him into a bear hug of an embrace. ‘I leave for a few months and you get married.’ His voice was as big as his embrace, as big as him in fact. ‘I had it on good authority you were not in the market for marriage when I left,’ he scolded good-naturedly.
‘Hello, Pen, how are you?’ Inigo exchanged a much gentler embrace with Cassian’s wife.
‘Wonderful.’ She beamed, exchanging a knowing look with her husband. It was clear the honeymoon magic hadn’t worn off yet after nearly a year of marriage. ‘We have news, but your news first. Introduce us to your new bride, Inigo.’
‘Cassian, Pen, allow me to present Lady Tintagel, Audevere Vellanoweth.’
Audevere drew back her veil and made a curtsy. The shock of recognition was evident in Cassian’s eyes. ‘You’ve married Audevere—?’
Inigo cut him off with a sharp look before he could say ‘Brenley’. ‘Yes, I’ve married Audevere.’
‘I see we all have stories to tell.’ Cassian gestured towards a nearby inn. ‘I’m starving. Shall we get lunch and swap tales?’ It was a good beginning, Inigo thought as they strolled to the inn.
‘Before we get into tales,’ Cassian said as they took their seats in the private parlour, ‘how’s Vennor?’
‘I think he’s in trouble, Cass. But that’s a story for another time.’ Inigo held out a chair for Audevere. ‘Today is for love stories only. You can start with yours and I’ll finish with mine.’ He took his seat and lifted his mug, his eyes on Audevere. ‘A toast to love, the greatest journey of our lifetimes.’
* * * * *
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ISBN: 9781488065668
The Temptations of Lord Tintagel
Copyright © 2020 by Nikki Poppen
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
For questions and comments about the quality of this book, please contact us at [email protected].
Harlequin Enterprises ULC
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www.Harlequin.com
From one convenient marriage…
To another?
Shunned by society because of his parentage, half-Roma blacksmith Fell Barden lives a simple life alone in the forest until his peace is disturbed by an injured runaway lady. Fleeing a forced marriage, Sophia Somerlock needs his help. Caring for the intriguing miss, Fell feels an intense connection to her. The obvious solution is to save her by marrying her himself…but that would mean returning to the ton that rejected him…
With her legs still shaking Sophia stepped fully inside the forge and closed the door behind her, folding unsteadily onto a tall stool set at the side of Fell’s bench.
He rose from the floor to sit across from her, wearing only a pair of old breeches and a suddenly wary expression with a dart of that something she had seen enhanced the sharp line of his jaw. Her chest felt clenched in a vise and her stomach full of snakes that coiled uncomfortably, but there was no going back now—no other choice but to set her proposal free to face Fell’s judgment, either the making or breaking of a future free from fear.
One deep breath didn’t help her find her tongue, so she took another and another until the vise beneath her breastbone loosened just enough to allow her to speak.
“I have an idea to put to you. One I think might suit us both.”
Fell crossed his sculpted arms across his chest and waited, head held slightly to one side, for her to continue. The wariness hadn’t left his look, but even in the moonlight Sophia could see it was tempered with a cautious curiosity that gave her courage to go on.
“You suggested I take a husband to save me from my mother’s scheming and the match she would make for me. I…I would like that husband to be you.”
Author Note
The first inkling of a plot for His Runaway Lady came one day when I was driving from Salisbury to Marlborough in Wiltshire. The journey took me through Savernake Forest, an ancient woodland visited by Henry VIII among countless others over its centuries-long existence, and led me to thinking about what kinds of things the trees—some more than one thousand years old—might have witnessed in that time. The forest is so historic it seemed the ideal place to set a story, and once I’d decided to feature it I couldn’t wait to get
started.
Our hero, Fell Barden, feels completely at home among the trees with only his loyal dog for company. A country boy born and bred, half-Romani Fell makes his living as a blacksmith—the complete opposite of privileged, high-born Sophia Somerlock, who has never had to fend for herself or stray far from her home comforts. Despite their differences I wanted to hint at Sophia’s potential to embrace a simpler life and tie her to the forest setting: her green eyes and coppery hair were inspired by the changing colors of autumn leaves, echoing the end of summer at Savernake. Ultimately Fell, too, finds himself altered as the book progresses, although not in a way either one of them could ever have foreseen…
I really enjoyed telling Fell and Sophia’s story. It was a pleasure to write and I loved imagining what such an atmospheric place might have been like two hundred years ago—I hope you will, too!
His Runaway Lady
Joanna Johnson
Joanna Johnson lives in a pretty Wiltshire village with her husband and as many books as she can sneak into the house. Being part of the Harlequin Historical family is a dream come true. She has always loved writing, starting at five years old with a series about a cat imaginatively named Cat, and she keeps a notebook in every handbag—just in case. In her spare time she likes finding new places to have a cream tea, stroking scruffy dogs and trying to remember where she left her glasses.
Books by Joanna Johnson
Harlequin Historical
The Marriage Rescue
Scandalously Wed to the Captain
His Runaway Lady
Visit the Author Profile page
at Harlequin.com.
Thanks—as always—to the ones who make the tea, listen to the doubts and say nice things. I love you all!
CONTENTS
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
CHAPTER ONE
The moment Sophia Somerlock had been told the name of the man she was to marry was the same moment she knew, without hesitation, that she had no other choice.
She would have to run.
* * *
Huddled into one corner of the swaying coach, Sophia twitched aside the dingy velvet curtain obscuring a window and looked out, attempting to distract herself from the terror that circled in her stomach. There was nothing to see other than ghostly trees, barely lit by the moonlight struggling through the dense canopy above. Savernake Forest stretched out silently on either side of the rough road to Marlborough, only the rattle of the wheels and hollow clip of hooves breaking the heavy stillness of the summer night. Another glance showed the white shape of an owl disappearing into the darkness, leaving the reflection of Sophia’s pale face to peer back at her in the glass.
Mother will be beside herself with rage when she realises I’ve gone. I can scarcely believe I found the nerve.
How many vases would Mother smash in her fury, now deprived of the usual target for her wrath? Sophia wondered with rising fear. Bearing the brunt of that foul temper was Sophia’s only purpose in life, after all, aside from one day being sold into a lucrative marriage from which everybody would profit but herself. That was the sole reason Mother hadn’t abandoned Sophia to a convent after the death of Papa as she deserved. She’d been told this almost daily ever since she was six years old, but now she had fled the future mapped out for her, the ungrateful little beast, and the passion of Mother’s anger made Sophia’s blood run cold at the mere thought. While Papa had lived Mother had hidden the worst of her cruelty from him, never in his hearing abusing the spirited little daughter she had never wanted and resented for claiming a share of his love, but since his passing Sophia hadn’t known a single day without guilt and fear and that spirit had been well and truly crushed beneath the heel of Mother’s boot.
Almost alone in the carriage, Sophia reached to tuck a stray sweep of bright copper hair back out of sight beneath the bonnet taken from her unsuspecting maid. The elderly gentleman seated opposite looked to be fast asleep, but she wouldn’t risk him waking to catch sight of her distinctive flaming mane. Long, thick and refusing to hold a curl—much to Mother’s annoyance, as though Sophia had grown such determinedly straight hair just to spite her—it was the only feature she had inherited from her real father, the final link between them Mother had never been able to sever. Lord Thruxton might insist she call him Father now, having become Mother’s husband the day before Sophia’s seventeenth birthday five years before, but nobody would ever replace the kind, handsome man she had loved and who had loved her in return until the fateful day her stupidity had cut him down. She would always be a Somerlock in her heart, no matter how many times she was introduced as Miss Sophia Thruxton. Papa’s name would live on inside her for ever and there was no way she would ever become a Thruxton for real, neither by marriage nor by force.
Sophia squeezed her clammy hands together so tightly it hurt, the reflexive action of many years’ standing, although nothing could drag her thoughts away from the great house she had left behind. Fenwick Manor had felt like a prison for all its splendour, caging Sophia within its walls and not a friendly face among those who lived there. Mother detested her, of course, and Lord Thruxton—never ‘Father’—remained coldly indifferent to her presence, only becoming animated when dear Septimus came to call—his beloved nephew and heir, and the most terrifying future husband Sophia ever could have dreamed of.
It was the worst-kept secret in Wiltshire society that Jayne Thruxton had been declared insane after only two years of marriage, Sophia thought with a shudder as the coach ploughed on through the night, each hoofbeat carrying her further and further from the fate she had fled. Everyone pitied Septimus and his bad luck in acquiring a lunatic for a wife—although from the whispered conversations she had overheard between her mother and stepfather Sophia knew otherwise. Jayne had seemed as rational a creature as ever lived before she was tormented half to death by the malice and brutality of her handsome, charming husband, a facet of his personality concealed from her—and society at large—until it was too late. If she had voluntarily entered an asylum it could only have been for one of two reasons: either Septimus’s treatment had addled her wits, or life in an institution had seemed a better prospect than remaining in her marriage. Neither motivation was one Sophia wished to experience for herself and the bleak truth had given her the courage to hide beneath the clothes of a servant and disappear into the night, a rash action that flew in the face of every instinct for her obedience. Quiet compliance was all she knew now, the strong will she’d once possessed hammered flat by years of torment—or so she had thought, before the prospect of a life even more miserable than her current existence forced the decision that even now clamped her chest in a vice of fear.
It’s hardly surprising Mother chose a man like that for me after what I did to poor Papa, a fitting punishment for my actions. She has told me often enough I was the reason she became a widow sentenced to mourn the only man she would ever love for the rest of her miserable life—as if I needed proof she only married again for the title. If she couldn’t be happy, why should I?
That had been the constant refrain of Sophia’s wretched childhood, she now thought grimly. Papa had died when she was just six years old and since that moment Sophia had known herself to be a monster, an unwanted creature starved of the approval and tenderness she craved so badly and yet knew she didn’t deserve. Grief and guilt so strong it almost drowned her was her inheritance, encouraged daily by Mother’s cruel tongue, and she’d certainly never expected to marry for lo
ve when the time came for Mother to see some return on her grudging investment in her only child. There was nothing about Sophia that might rouse fond feelings in a man, after all—how could she ever believe otherwise, told as much repeatedly from the first moment she could begin to understand?
‘I’ll marry one day, won’t I, Mother? To a man like Papa?’
‘You’ll marry, but not to a man like your father. He was kind and strong and handsome—now, tell me, would a man like that, who could have his choice of wife, want somebody as worthless and troublesome as you?’
‘I suppose not.’
‘You suppose correctly. My life with your father was perfect before you came and ruined everything with your wickedness, always getting between us and turning his attention from me. Why would any man look upon you with favour after learning of your sins?’
The elderly passenger twitched in his sleep as the coach rounded a bend and began to slow, the driver’s low command to the horses breaking into Sophia’s unhappy memories. A swift peep out of the window showed a couple of men waiting for the post carriage to draw near, the torch they stood beneath obscuring their faces in shadow, and Sophia felt her chest tighten with apprehension at the sight.
With each new passenger that boarded the coach the chance of her being seen by some acquaintance of the Thruxtons grew. All it would take was one dropped hint, one accidental glance, and her mother and stepfather would know which way she had fled. The midnight carriage had seemed such a safe bet—surely everybody she knew in the county would be abed by now—but evidently she wasn’t the only one with travel in mind, sneaking from Fenwick Manor with breath held for fear of discovery. If she was seen now the risk she’d taken would have been in vain, and she would be left with no choice but to face the consequences. She could do nothing but sit, helpless and afraid, as the coach drew to a standstill and the murmur of voices filtered in from outside, the light from the torch growing brighter as the door opened and the two waiting men climbed inside.