“Never say any woman was forced to marry you.”
“Those rumors are true.”
“I don’t believe it. Why, even if I believed you’d take an instant’s interest in her, she’d not give in. Not even to you. She’s not a drop of passion in her. You can see that just looking at her. There is only duty in that one.”
“She had no choice. We had no choice but to marry. I took her without her consent. Do you understand? Without her consent, and I was caught out.” Mrs. Forrest gasped, but he continued. “I got her with child that night. My God, if you could have seen her face when she told me.” He lifted a hand, then let it fall helplessly to his side. “She was shattered. You see,” he said bitterly, “she had hoped I would divorce her, and she knew a child made that impossible.”
Mrs. Forrest gazed into his face, earnestly puzzled. “But, she never seemed unhappy. In fact, I would have said quite the opposite. I thought she loved you. Like all the others have.”
A smile like a ray of sunshine appeared on Cynssyr’s face. Anne and Mrs. Forrest both caught their breath at the sight. “That is her singular beauty. She is good. Inside, deep in her soul, she all that is good and kind and right in the world.”
“You love her.” Mrs. Forrest took a step back.
“Yes.”
The impact of his answer shot through Anne like a thunderbolt. Her legs trembled, and she clutched the door post for support. A part of her did not want it to be true. It meant the potential for loss. Surely, her life would be safer without his love.
“Have you told her?”
“Several times.”
“Oh, Ruan. Darling Ruan. She does not believe you, does she?”
“No.”
“You will convince her.”
“How, when she loves someone else?”
“I do not believe that. Who?”
“Devon.”
“No! Oh, Ruan, no. She does not love him. How could she when she is married to you? Ruan, no.”
Anne could imagine being married to Devon only in the vaguest way, as a poorly sketched drawing, and like Mrs. Forrest, she wondered at Cynssyr believing such a thing.
“When she is well, she will have her freedom from me.” Ruan caught Mrs. Forrest’s hand and drew her toward him. “Will you have me back, then, Katie? A divorced man in love with another woman?”
She brushed his cheek, an intimate, tender caress that made Anne hate her for the intimacy and grateful for her tenderness. “I would have you back under any circumstance. But what nonsense you’re talking. If you love her, there can be no question of giving her up.”
“Christ!” Cynssyr gave an anguished cry. “She does not want me, Katie. Don’t you understand that? I cannot live with that. I can’t. She must be free of me or she will come to hate me.” Abruptly, he turned away from the fireplace and Mrs. Forrest. He took one step, saw Anne and came to a halt. Instantly, his face cleared. “What are you doing out of bed?”
“Looking for you.” She wobbled a little when she let go of the door post, and Cynssyr rushed to support her. She lurched into his arms, and for the first time in days, she felt at home.
“Don’t ever give me such a fright,” he said, holding her close and stroking her hair. “You should have called for a servant when you woke.”
She, too, ran a hand over his head, feeling the hair thick and silky under her fingers. “I wonder I managed to sleep at all. I was sure I never would again.” Her heart swelled in her chest, filling her. Her legs trembled. A lump in her throat the size of all outdoors stopped her from speaking. Her feelings, now too immense to contain, insisted upon freedom. “Ruan,” she whispered, clinging to him.
“Exhaustion.” He tapped her temple with a gentle touch that turned to a caress. “Mental and physical. I’ve seen it happen to soldiers.”
“I love you,” she said, before she lost her nerve.
“Please, Anne, do not say that unless you mean it.”
“I love you. Not Devon. You.” She felt her heart expand in her chest. “Ruan, I love you. Beyond thought and life, I love you.”
Neither of them noticed Katie Forrest slip from the room, a sad and bittersweet smile on her lovely face.
Ruan started to speak but caught himself short then began again. “Are you certain?”
“I have never been more certain of anything.”
“After all I’ve done to you? God, don’t answer that.” He touched her cheek. “You have my heart, Anne,” he said softly. “You know you are my heart.”
“And you are mine.” Her finger traced along his lower lip. “I do love you.” She savored the rightness of that. “Yes, I do.” With a wry smile, she shook her head.
“You shall have to practice telling me so.”
“I will.” She laughed, a sound of pure joy. “I cannot get enough of touching you. I love you. I love you. I love you.” With each word, her fingers caressed, smoothed and moved on, marking him as hers. “Goodness, if I’d known what a relief it would be to finally tell you, I’d have done it a sight sooner.”
He gave her that incandescent smile of his. “I must say, I wish you had.”
She pulled his head down to hers and gave her husband the kiss for which he’d been longing. The kiss of a woman who loves the man she holds in her arms.
· · ·
The End
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About Carolyn Jewel
Carolyn Jewel was born on a moonless night. That darkness was seared into her soul and she became an award-winning author of historical and paranormal romance. She has a very dusty car and a Master’s degree in English that proves useful at the oddest times. An avid fan of fine chocolate, finer heroines, Bollywood films, and heroism in all forms, she has three cats and two dogs. Also a son. One of the cats is his.
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Books by Carolyn Jewel
Historical Romance Series
Reforming the Scoundrels Series
Not Wicked Enough: Outside the US and Canada.
Click here for US and Canada, Book 1
Not Proper Enough: Outside the US and Canada.
Click here for US and Canada, Book 2
The Sinclair Sisters Series
Lord Ruin, Book 1
Other Historical Romance
One Starlit Night, a novella from the anthology Midnight Scandals
The Spare
Stolen Love
Passion’s Song
Moonlight - A Short Story
Paranormal Romance
My Immortals Series
My Wicked Enemy, Book 1
My Forbidden Desire, RITA finalist, Paranormal Romance, Book 2
My Immortal Assassin, Book 3
My Dangerous Pleasure, Book 4
Free Fall, Book 4.5, a novella
My Darkest Passion, Book 5
Other Paranormal Romance
A Darker Crimson, Book 4 of Crimson City
DX, A Crimson City Novella
Fantasy Romance
The King’s Dragon - A short story
Excerpts
The Spare - A Regency Historical Romance
CHAPTER 1
Pennhyll Castle, Cumbria, January 3, 1812
Captain Sebastian Alexander, late of His Majesty's Royal Navy, glared at his valet's reflection with eyes reputed to have frozen boiling water on the spot. To no avail. McNaught continued mixing another noxious remedy guaranteed to taste
like poison. Sebastian turned on his chair and found the motion did not pain him as much as he expected. He ignored McNaught and his potion. “I am not mad, James,” he said to the man beside him. A hound the color of a thunderhead raised its muzzle and sniffed the air. He stroked the dog’s head.
“You are an Alexander.” James did not look away from his collection of essays by Montaigne. “You are too practical for madness. Besides, you aren’t old enough to fear your mind in danger of infirmity.”
“I saw a sailor go mad once, and he not yet twenty.” At rest, Sebastian’s face marked him as a young man, barely thirty, a handsome man with blue eyes and hair just shy of black. Certainly, unquestionably, his eyes were blue. As bitterly cold as ice at dawn. From across a room, his eyes pierced with a rapier’s thrust to the heart.
James gave him a look. “I’ll warrant his madness was not from age.”
“The ocean broke his mind. We were becalmed seven weeks on water smooth as glass.”
“Your mind is sound, of that I am convinced.”
“I’m not to be back at sea for weeks yet. What am I to do with myself until then?” He shuddered. The hound at his side rose, and Sebastian rested a hand on its sleek shoulder. “If I don’t get another ship right away, I might be here even longer.”
“Stop complaining. Brave naval captains such as yourself are always at the head of the list for ships.”
“Jesus.” He rubbed his face with both hands, disliking the way his mind whirled all out of order. “I am ancient, James.”
“Hardly.”
“In my soul. Weary to the very core and adrift. Becalmed. I lack purpose.” He drew in a breath, felt pain blossom at the peak of inhalation, and then slowly exhaled. “I want occupation, and I am too exhausted to find one.”
“You are in the very prime of life, Sebastian.” Which James said in a very deliberate and annoyed manner because the idea of Sebastian Alexander succumbing to weakness was ludicrous.
Sebastian eased back against his chair. “Listen to me.” He made a face of self-disgust. “Complaining like an old woman. A man makes of his life what he can. He doesn’t sit about bemoaning his fate. I’ll have my ship if I have to get down on my knees and beg for it.”
James sat straighter. “You are Tiern-Cope. The world comes begging to you, not the other way round.” He gestured, a wave that took in everything. “Forget the sea. Pennhyll is your purpose. Your position in life is now your occupation. You oughtn’t go back at all. Your duty lies here.”
Sebastian sighed. “I never wanted this.”
“I daresay a gentleman doesn’t want half the duties that fall to him, but that does not absolve him of responsibility.”
“Of that, I am painfully aware.”
“Sebastian, you are not old, and you are certainly not mad.”
“Not mad.” He laughed softly. “Last night, I saw—” He pressed his lips together, then continued because he feared silence would break his mind the way a glassy sea broke that young sailor. “I dreamed a man stood at the foot of my bed.”
James closed his book on an index finger. “What an appalling lack of imagination.”
“I thought it was Andrew.”
“Was it?”
Andrew and his countess both gone and their killer not brought to justice. By the time the black-bordered letter caught up with him, his brother was nine months dead, on the very heels, it seemed, of the death of their father. And then he’d been wounded and given leave to recuperate and put his affairs and estate in order. Six weeks of his leave passed in a fog of pain. Nothing had been the same since he came to Pennhyll. Nothing. “Andrew is dead.”
“Well, yes, of course he is. But this is Pennhyll, after all.”
Sebastian almost let the subject drop right there. Except he couldn’t. The mood of his dream clung to him like the scent of smoke on a man who went too near a fire. “Andrew never had eyes like that.” He remembered the impact of staring into those eyes as if it had really happened. Blue eyes. Alexander eyes. Instead of the affable gleam so typical of his brother, eyes of keen appraisal. “Like ice in the morning.”
“Is that all he did? Stand at the foot of your bed?”
Sebastian stared at the blanket on his lap. He did not like feeling ridiculous, and he was uncomfortably aware of the absurdity of implying a dream was more than a dream. Jesus, he must be mad. “He spoke.”
“And?”
“As if my life depended upon what he said.” The hound rested its head on his lap. With an absent fondness, his fingers stroked the grey dome of the dog’s head. Even at rest, there was about him the promise of action, as if he might at any moment leap to his feet.
“And?”
“I could not hear him.”
“Actually,” James said, lowering his voice and leaning with one hand at the side of his mouth. “It’s normal to have dreams. Lots of people have them. I had one myself last night. About a lusty widow who—”
“I saw him as clear and solid as I see you right now, and then he disappeared. I don’t want that.” Sebastian pushed away the glass proffered by his valet.
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One Starlit Night - A Novella
CHAPTER 1
March 13, 1813, the rear lawn of Doyle’s Grange, Somerset, near the Exmoor hills, England
Crispin Hope, fourth Viscount Northword, stood to one side of the lawn and prayed for a miracle. None arrived. He remained unable to summon a blessed word. He twitched with the need to do something besides stand mute. Words, any words, would be better than his damnable silence. Action, any action, would be better than inaction. He managed to force a smile. A minor miracle, then. Hallelujah.
Naturally, a woman was involved in his present difficulties. A particular and specific woman. Was any man’s heart ever brought to its metaphorical knees except by a woman? Minor miracle or no, he needed to say or do something to convey how unmoved he was by her.
He tapped the side of his left leg with two fingers. Next, he cleared his throat. Portia sent a questioning look his way. Of course, words failed him. He affected what he hoped appeared to be mild interest in the proceedings; practically nonexistent. He coughed again and dug into his store of conversational inanities. “A fine day.”
“Mm.” She arched her eyebrows. “A touch cold for me.” Her attention returned to the sapling that was the reason he was standing out here in the first place.
He’d known Portia Temple since he was a boy of eight and she a girl of six. Twenty-one years. For the first ten years he’d never thought of her as anything but a friend and companion who by a quirk of fate happened to be female. Pity for her when boys were so superior, and how annoying that she’d disagreed.
For the second ten years he’d managed to set her neatly into a box in which she was devoid of femininity yet continued to exist as his best friend’s sister. A woman he avoided, but with whom he kept a friendly correspondence. Friendly. Nothing more.
He did his best not to think about the time between those bookends of decades. Silence reached out and set fire to his nerves. “It’s spring,” he said. Oh, Jesus. Had he really said that? “One ought not be cold in spring.”
That got him another careless glance, and he was convinced that she, unlike him, had found a way to forget. But then, in all their years of friendship, he’d always been the one who felt more deeply.
She stared at the sapling, head tilted. “You’ve been away too long. You’ve forgotten our weather.”
Resentment boiled in him, and he required a monumental amount of sang-froid to let that pass. Forgotten? He bit back a retort but could not quash the sentiment that came with the impulse. He’d not forgotten a damned thing. It was no accident that this was his first visit to Doyle’s Grange in ten years. Nor that this was his first time socializing since his wife’s passing nearly two years ago. Outside the circle of his most intimate friends and women of a certain reputation, that is. He straightened the lay of his coat and said with sha
rp intent, “I’ve not forgotten anything.”
“We’ll disagree on that.” If he’d not been watching her so closely, he might have missed the distress that briefly replaced her pleasant smile. But he had been watching, and he did, and it ripped him to shreds.
Jesus. They’d made their peace in letters and it was all a lie, all those words they’d written to each other were now stripped of that fantasy pax now that he was here. Instead of the two of them moving on in person as they had in letters, they were mired in the past.
She put a hand on one of the slender branches of the sapling. One would think that in ten years she’d have changed more than she had. He had. Her brother Magnus had. She was remarkably unaltered. Smiling, too-tall-for-a-woman, auburn-haired, full of life. It was—almost—as if those second ten years had never been.
While he watched her, she lifted the hem of her muslin skirt and tamped down the last shovelful of dirt around the tree she’d just planted. She was wholly unconscious of his stare. No. He’d not forgotten anything.
Mud coated the bottom and sides of her plain leather half-boots. Spatters of dirt clung to her hem. She’d not been careful when she pinned her hair this morning, for there were curls, and not the fashionable sort. Hers came loose every which way. In daylight, there was no disguising that her hair was more red than brown, and of all things, that was what doomed him. That dark red hair.
To no avail, he reminded himself she was Magnus’s younger sister. He had years of correspondence from her. He’d not realized how her spirit had stolen into the pages and words she’d written. Every time he’d read one of her letters, she’d filled a space in his heart he ought to have closed off. He’d not even known it was happening until now. Far too late.
Lord Ruin Page 30