The Knight's Maiden in Disguise

by Ella Matthews

  He grinned. ‘Part of my training requires me to stand around for long periods of time. It was nothing to wait for you.’

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘First, we’re going to see Eirwen. He has missed you.’

  ‘I have missed him. He is a beautiful horse.’

  ‘And have you missed me, too?’

  ‘With every heartbeat.’

  William stopped abruptly and pulled her into his arms. Before she had a chance to take a breath, his lips came down on hers in a searing kiss. Time stopped.

  ‘Avva,’ he said, finally lifting his head. ‘I have so much to tell you, but I keep getting distracted. I have longed for you for so long and now I have found you.’

  ‘If you longed for me, why did you not come to me? I heard the King tell you he had found you a bride. You didn’t say...’ Her words trailed off. She found she couldn’t put a voice to the hurt she’d experienced when she’d discovered William was going to marry someone else. The sense of betrayal had been absolute.

  ‘I’m sorry you heard that, Avva. I...’ He ran a hand through his hair, making it stand on end. ‘You know how I told you about my family, about how my parents squandered the wealth of the barony?’

  ‘I remember.’

  ‘I thought the solution was to marry an heiress. I was not going to fall in love like my father, so it didn’t matter who I wed. Then I met you and everything changed.’

  Avva’s heart took flight as they began to walk again. ‘But I heard your fellow knights congratulate you and you didn’t say that wasn’t what you wanted.’

  ‘The King may look like an ordinary man, but he is not someone you can defy easily.’

  ‘So you are still going to marry your heiress.’ She tried to tug her fingers from his, but he tightened his grip.

  ‘No, I am not going to marry Lady Ann. Let me finish my story before you condemn me. I know you have been hurt many times and that the noblemen who should have taken care of you, your mother and your half-brother, have treated you abominably but I am not them.’

  They came to the castle gates—a heavily armoured guard let them through. The inside was twice the size of Caerden’s castle and for a moment Avva could only stop and stare.

  ‘It’s this way to the stables.’

  William tried to lead her in one direction, but she held him back. ‘As much as I’ve missed Eirwen, I would like to speak with you in private.’

  William gazed down at her, his expression unreadable. ‘Very well, we will go to my quarters.’

  Neither of them spoke as they crossed the courtyard and entered the keep. A steep, spiral staircase took them up to the third floor and a small but cosy chamber.

  William closed the door behind him.

  The silence stretched between them.

  William made to pull her into his arms, but she moved away. She knew she wouldn’t be able to think if they touched and she needed to hear what he had to say.

  ‘Your story,’ she prompted when he didn’t say anything.

  William brushed his hair away from his face. ‘Where to start.’ He grinned and her heart fluttered. ‘I didn’t want to fall in love with you, but I never stood a chance. I believe I fell from the first moment I saw you. From then on, I was only fooling myself that I would ever be able to live without you.’

  He reached out to take her hand—this time she didn’t pull away. ‘When the King told me he had arranged a marriage for me, I couldn’t say no straight away. You don’t defy the King with ease. But I knew that I could not go through with it. I could not marry anyone but you.’

  William pulled her close to him. She rested her head on his firm chest, breathing in the familiar smell of him. She knew she couldn’t bear to be parted from him again.

  ‘When I found you were gone from our room...it was as if my world had ended. If I couldn’t have you, then I might as well marry Lady Ann, because what did it matter?’

  ‘What changed?’

  His lips ghosted across her forehead. ‘I went to visit my parents. All my life, I have seen their love as a weakness. Now I know it has provided them with solace when they are sad and greater joy in their happiness. Their love is a strength, which they celebrate every day and which enriches those around them. If I had not been sent away on my knight’s training, I might have witnessed it for myself. As it was, I got myself all twisted up over a problem that was never really there.

  ‘Avva.’ She slowly raised her head to meet his gaze once more. ‘I love you. If you will have me, I want you to become my wife. I will do everything to make sure you never doubt how much I love you and want you in my life.’

  Tears pricked her eyes—she had never imagined she could be so happy. ‘I love you, too, and I would be honoured to be your wife.’

  His mouth covered hers and this time there was no angry alewife to put an end to their embrace. All the longing she’d felt for months poured into the kiss. She felt his groan as their tongues met. Their uneven breathing filled the room.

  ‘Avva, before we go any further, there is still more I need to tell you.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘After long talks with the King he decided to change my reward for my role in saving his life. Avva, he’s made me the new Baron Caerden.’

  Avva could only blink up at him.

  ‘Marriage to me will make you the Baroness.’

  Avva couldn’t help it—she burst out laughing. ‘Won’t people find it strange that the new Baron has married the stable master?’

  ‘Does it matter what other people think?’

  Avva looked into his deep brown eyes. ‘No,’ she said quietly. ‘I don’t suppose it does.’

  ‘Being parted from you was the worst pain I have ever experienced. I finally understand what love is all about. We will make our own future. Our people will be happy, they will not live in fear, they will not experience hunger. We shall take care of them. With you standing by my side, we can do anything.’

  Avva’s heart expanded. ‘I love you, William. I want to be part of a new, hopeful Caerden, but I would want to be with you, even if you were a nobody.’

  And those were the last words either of them said for a very long time.

  * * *

  Look out for the next book in

  Ella Matthews’ The King’s Knights duet,

  coming soon!

  And whilst you’re waiting for the next book, why not check out her other miniseries The House of Leofric?

  The Warrior Knight and the Widow

  Under the Warrior’s Protection

  The Warrior’s Innocent Captive

  Keep reading for an excerpt from A Father for Christmas by Carla Kelly.

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  A Father for Christmas

  by Carla Kelly

  Chapter One

  December 1861

  How shallow can a man be? Ezra Eldredge asked himself as he plonked his valise down on the bunk aboard the USS Sullivan, packet steamer bound for Portsmouth, Great Britain. I know I can live for a few weeks without my valet. Can’t I?

  Mackie usually travelled with him. He was a free Black, paid a fair wage—always had been—whose Yankee accent was more pronounced than Ezra’s.

  Mackie had objected to being left behind until Ezra had explained. ‘I prefer having you with me, but I dare not,’ he’d said that last night before taking the train to Boston from New Bedford. ‘Here we are in December of 1861, Mackie, at war. Rebel commerce raiders are prowling the oceans. They would have no qualms about selling you into slavery, if they captured you.’

  ‘I see, Mr Eldredge,�
� was Mackie’s quiet reply as he packed that valise. ‘Will you be taking along Mrs Eldredge?’

  Ezra always took Priscilla with him. ‘Not this time.’

  Consequently, his valise did not contain the charming miniature of his late wife, dead these ten years. Priscilla had graced him with her presence on all business trips, but not this time, and by design.

  She probably would have come along, if he hadn’t just endured his thirty-fifth birthday, complete with cake from his employees at the ropewalk, that wonderful one-thousand-two-hundred-foot-long brick building he had taken a chance on after his father’s death. ‘A shed is good enough for your workers,’ he had heard from other merchants. But it wasn’t, not in coastal New England’s frigid winter damp. He’d taken a chance and prospered as the best rope twiners and twisters competed to work for him. Soon Eldredge cables, miles of them, graced the most beautiful clipper ships ever to sail. A man could be proud of that and he was.

  So many candles on his cake—lit, of course, outside, for safety. They had still been on his mind that evening as he’d readied for bed, then looked down at Priscilla’s miniature on his night table. For some reason this time the sight of her twenty-five-year-old loveliness reminded him that she was always young and now he was not. Thirty-five. Good Lord.

  This time, he gazed at her image and thought he detected a little reproach, a mild scolding, from as generous a lady who ever lived. This time, she seemed to silently remind him that lonely years had passed, and what was he doing about it?

  The obvious answer was nothing; he had no second wife, no hopeful heirs. His heart had broken with those two deaths, hers and their son’s born too soon. In grief, he’d thrown himself into turning New Bedford Ropewalk and Marine Supply from a small firm into New Bedford’s largest such emporium. If he wanted to puff up the matter, he doubted there was a better marine business in all of New England.

  He enjoyed success, but who cared? Could it be that Priscilla’s sweet silence in the miniature was starting to nudge him into action beyond business?

  ‘Why now, my dearest?’ he asked the miniature. ‘You know I’m busy. I haven’t time for another wife. There’s a war on.’

  Why had he never noticed that thoughtful look the miniaturist had somehow captured even in so small a frame? He knew that look. The matter was something to consider when he returned from England, not now. Ezra knew this was no time to travel, but he was an ambitious man. The ropewalk and marine supplies were already increasing his fortune during a war where President Lincoln had declared a naval blockade of the southern coastline.

  Everyone had said the war would be over by Christmas, which, at this point, was less than a month away. No one had told the Rebels that, though.

  The letter from Courtney and Howe, solicitors, located in Salisbury, had changed matters.

  In efficient legalese, they had explained that his English mother’s late father had left her several thousand pounds. All he needed to do was show up at Melton Manor, near Salisbury, Wiltshire, to collect. Andrew Melton, Mama’s uncle, would do the honours. Courtney and Howe had confirmed that with the passing of his mother, Maude Melton, six months previously, the legacy was now his.

  The amount made him smile. Now he could safely invest in railways. He knew that ropewalks would eventually become a relic as sails vanished. His business sense assured him that once this miserable war ended, Americans would be moving West, travelling by rail.

  So to Wiltshire he would go. Travel by steamship meant a shorter voyage than under sail, where the winds ruled. Curious about being aboard a steamer for the first time, he wasted no time returning to the deck once his gear was safely stowed.

  He moved to the railing on the port side and watched Boston recede. For the next two weeks he had nothing to do but eat and read. He had left both his business and his home in capable hands.

  That reminded him of what his housekeeper had said to him before he’d left. ‘Mr Eldredge, come home with a wife,’ she had begged. ‘Your father did, years ago.’

  He had, but was Ezra’s business his housekeeper’s business, too? He had told her so, in no uncertain terms, surprising himself.

  She had been undeterred, and had dropped unhappy news on him next. ‘Cook wants to retire from service. You will need to replace her when you return.’

  ‘What?’

  She’d given Ezra a kindly smile. ‘Don’t fret, Mr Eldredge,’ she’d replied. ‘I’ll stay here, but do be thinking about a replacement for Cook.’

  ‘If I must,’ he had grumbled.

  That had earned him a finger-wag. ‘Seriously, sir. You’re so set in your ways you’ll be turning into an old man too soon.’

  As he leaned on the rail, he reflected on the conversation. Am I turning into a geriatric before my time? he asked himself. Surely not.

  ‘Ezra Eldredge?’

  Oh, God, I know that voice. Ezra blanched in horror and turned to face the barrage of sound that was Rectitude Blake. ‘I had no idea you were travelling to England, Mr Blake. How, um, delightful.’

  Rectitude Blake was a prosy, fat fellow who rejoiced in the friendship of the illustrious Adams family, from John through Quincy and now to Charles, serving as United States envoy to England’s Court of St. James. The fact came up at every opportunity, appropriate or not.

  As if on cue, the man said self-importantly, ‘I am bearing a note from President Lincoln himself to Minister Adams. It’s in regard to the Trent Affair.’

  ‘Good for you, sir,’ was the best Ezra could manage. With other Yankees, he had fumed over the recent news of the capture of two Confederate envoys heading to England and France on a packet boat much like this one but British. Overtaken by Captain Wilkes in the USS Trent, those Rebs now cooled their heels in a Washington, DC jail. What had happened was a flagrant violation of all the rules of diplomacy, but there was a war on. Her Britannic Majesty was aghast, Prime Minister Palmerston appalled, and the French none too pleased either.

  ‘P’raps you should keep the matter quiet,’ Ezra said, even as he doubted the other man could. Seldom had a fellow been more ill named.

  ‘Even the decks have ears?’ Mr Blake bellowed out, laughing.

  Ezra smiled weakly. ‘Just think, laddie,’ Mr Blake said. ‘We have two weeks to renew our acquaintance!’

  This voyage can’t end soon enough, Ezra thought despairingly.

  Copyright © 2021 by Carla Kelly

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  ISBN-13: 9780369711267

  The Knight’s Maiden in Disguise

  Copyright © 2021 by Ella Matthews

  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.

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