With This Kiss: A First-In Series Romance Collection

by Kerrigan Byrne

  The viscount was the first to speak. “It’s of no importance, Miss MacQuarrie. The whole thing was completely out of your control. Destiny, you know. Can’t fight fate.” He crossed his arms, then added, “The fates control everything, including the fact that you’re Scottish, that I’m a viscount, and that Downe, here—apparently even the fates can make a mistake—is an earl. Mortal man has no control over what happens to him.”

  “The only mistake I am aware of is the unfortunate fact that you and I met, Seymour,” the earl shot back.”And as far as mortal man having no control, I do believe Belmore is the exception. You are mortal, aren’t you, Alec?”

  Joy could feel the duke stiffen. The movement was so subtle, so minute, that she wouldn’t have noticed except that she sat next to him and could feel the squabs on the seat shift ever so slightly.

  “The Duke of Belmore,” Downe went on, “would not allow anything as mundane as fate to command his life. Oh, no, quite the contrary, Alec is controlled by tradition, by what should be done for a man of his . . . consequence, and by his own plans and schemes.” The earl spoke to Joy, but his eyes were on the duke. “Rest assured he will do what his father did, and his father’s father, and his father, etcetera, etcetera.”With that, he turned and looked out the window.

  Joy glanced at the duke. His eyes were so cold that she felt a chill just watching him. He’s vulnerable, she thought, and he’s covering it up. She wondered what it was he didn’t want the world to see.

  He looked at her then. She could feel him assessing her, mentally weighing something. She wondered if he believed her tale and what he would do if he didn’t. For some reason, this man’s opinion of her mattered very much.

  He was such a serious fellow, and for all his hard handsomeness there was something lonely about him, or perhaps it wasn’t loneliness but instead isolation. Something told her he was trying hard to act as if he didn’t care. No one could be that cold. He had to have a heart inside him because it called out to her. As surely as she knew the sun would rise in the east, she knew this man was more than what he allowed the world to see. Her eyes dropped to the grim line of his lips, and she gave him a small tentative smile.

  The Duke of Belmore looked as if he needed a smile.

  His face changed, took on a look of curious interest, but he did not return her smile. She wondered if he knew how. She watched him for a moment, trying to picture what his face would look like if he did deign to smile. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t picture it. Finally, she gave up and stared out the window at the fog. It had dropped lower, and now the road was barely visible.

  As if summoned to do so, she turned back toward him. His look had become even more intense, but she didn’t believe that anger was the cause. There was something else, something intimate. She could feel her face flush under his perusal, and she averted her eyes. Her hands were clammy beneath the soft leather of her gloves, her mouth was dry as a week-old oatcake, and she had the feeling she was melting.

  Looking for something to do besides blush, she reached for the wick on the carriage lamp. If she dimmed the light, maybe he wouldn’t be able to see inside her soul, for that was how she felt when he turned that penetrating stare her way.

  In her nervousness, she turned the wick key the wrong way and it came off in her hand. She stared at it, embarrassed, and made a fumbled attempt to put it back. A hard male hand gripped her wrist.

  “I’ll do it.” He reached toward the lamp, and his shadow fell over her. It was dark and cold, like the duke himself, and yet she could feel his warmth, smell the raw scent that seemed to emanate from him and him alone. Like the salty breath of the sea, it pulled her in an ebbing wave. It was like a physical presence surrounding her. He put the wick key back, turned up the lamp, and started to move back, but stopped, looking down at her, his intense face barely inches above hers.

  She raised her eyes to his and could almost taste his breath. If she moved just a wee bit, their lips would touch. His gaze held her frozen, locked in an instant of time where hearts cried out. She could not move, but she didn’t wish to and had no regret about her poverty of will. This was like being caught in a moonbeam—the only light in a vast void of darkness. The darkness was there; his face warned her away with its tightness. But the glint in his eyes said don’t go.

  His grip on her wrist tightened, hard, imprisoning her. Her pulse pounded against the pad of his thumb. Her heart felt as if it were somewhere around her ears, thundering inside her head. She could feel her hand going numb and the resulting tingle—her blood turning into a thousand star-points. His eyes pierced her with their heat. She had thought his eyes cold—an icy dark blue—yet how odd that she perspired from his look. Dampness beaded and trickled between her breasts, on her arms, and on the backs of her thighs.

  Still holding her wrist, he moved back, breaking the bewitching magic that felt stronger than a warlock’s spell. She remembered to breathe. He stared at her wrist with an odd expression, as if he had just noticed he held it. Her fingers brushed his as if to say it was all right. His grip slackened, and she felt the blood rushing back to her fingers. It matched the feeling in her chest.

  For a brief second, she thought she felt his thumb gently rub her wrist, but it all happened so quickly that she was not sure that it had actually happened. An instant later, he sat beside her, staring sightlessly out the window into the white fog.

  Again, she breathed the cooling air, and with that breath came an awareness of something other than this man. The quiet. The only sound in the carriage was the muted pounding of the horses’ hooves, the jangle of harness and braces, and the occasional creak of springs as the vehicle moved along the road. It was as if her senses had come back to her. Male smells dominated the interior—damp leather, tobacco, and brandy. The air tasted stale, hard, and male in her dry mouth. Instinctively, she reached for Beezle and absently scratched his fur, aware that it would be soft and plush. After that exchange, she needed to touch something soft and familiar.

  The loud clearing of a masculine throat cut through the air. She flinched, startled. It was the cynical earl, and she looked at him, expecting a sneer. That wasn’t what she saw. As sure as heather bloomed on the moors, he watched her, but his look was speculative, and it made her uneasy—a different kind of restlessness than she felt from the duke. The earl was an odd man, and she didn’t like him much. There was anger inside him, raw and festering, a wound untended. He was rude, enjoyed his brashness, seemed to wallow in it, and his smile was too practiced.

  One could tell volumes about a person from a smile. The nervous viscount stared out the window and muttered under his breath. But he had smiled at her, and it was sincere. Cocking her head, she looked at the duke and tried to picture his face with a smile, but she had no luck. Even her mind’s eye could not see him as anything but focused and intense.

  She gave up and settled back, looking out the window as did the others, until the coach finally pulled into a timbered coaching inn. A warm yellow glow from its diamond-paned windows lit their approach with a strange eerie glow. A sign proclaiming the establishment to be the Shovel and the Boot hung at a drunken angle from a rusty cast-iron mount over the heavy oak door.

  Mist hovered around an ancient mossy gray stone fence that circled the carriage courtyard, where the duke’s outrider dismounted and stood speaking to a post lad. The door to the inn creaked open, and light bled gold onto a flagstone walkway, only to be blocked by the shadow of an aproned innkeeper.

  At the same instant, the carriage door opened and the footman pulled down the steps. The duke was the first to step down. He waved the servant away and turned back, holding his hand out to Joy. She scooped up Beezle, settling him around her neck, and started to rise, but glanced down at her foot, unsure if she could stand on it without assistance. She needn’t have worried, for the next thing she knew, the duke lifted her out of the carriage and strode toward the inn door, cradling her against him and giving orders that sent those within a twent
y-foot range scurrying like rats in the tower room to do his bidding.

  For Joy the damp English air held no chill; the cold didn’t bother her. In fact, when she was in his arms, she could imagine the man inside that cold shell, and her fantasies warmed her, along with his brawny chest. He had such a wonderful shoulder, on which she rested her head after a brief sigh. Just perfect.

  Even through the layers of cashmere and wool, she could feel the strength of his arm behind her knees.

  A burgeoning tingle picked that very instant to flutter its way from her head to her toes and then to her heart. She wondered if it was the same thrill that some witches experienced when they flew. She’d heard that flying was one of the most profound and joyous rewards of being a witch.

  Yet Joy didn’t know that feeling. Try as she might, she could not remember the one time she’d flown. Of course she had been forbidden to fly after she did so that once and had the misfortunate experience of blasting herself right through the two-hundred-year-old stained-glass window in the Catholic chapel atCraignure. Her aunt had rescued her and had offered a graceful apology to the bishop, as soon as he came around. It was truly unfortunate that the poor man of God had been praying beneath that window at the time.

  Joy still had a three-inch-long white scar on her left hand and a longer ragged one on the back of her neck. Her aunt told her that both scars would serve to remind her that flying was not for her. But those puny scars were nothing compared to the one she carried deep inside her—the one that reminded her she was only half a witch, and the half she had wasn’t very good at making magic.

  But her unflagging hope carried her through the tough times, the times when everything she did seemed to go awry. Hope was her ballast. Hope was her salvation. It made her dream her dreams and pray her prayers. Someday perhaps things would be different.

  She looked up and caught the duke watching her again with that open curiosity, as if she was something foreign. I am, she thought, figuring she was probably the first witch the man had ever encountered. She smiled again, hoping to receive one in return. She didn’t get it. A wall of ice frosted his look again. His guard was up.

  Don’t touch me, it said. Stay clear.

  He was so strange. There was no smile in him. How very sad. He needed someone who would dig deep enough to find that treasure he’d buried. He needed someone with hope, because he had none. Joyous Fiona MacQuarrie had plenty of hope. She’d needed it to get this far. And she needed a purpose. Was that it? Was that what bound them in some strange way? She sensed it was, because this man desperately needed a little magic in his life.

  Alec sat on a hard bench at a long tavern table and studied the piece of paper on the table in front of him.

  Granted herein, by the archbishop of Canterbury, is special license to Alec Gerald David John James Mark Castlemaine, Duke of Belmore, Marquess of Deerhurst, Earl of Fife, the right to marry without the posting of banns and at a time and place of his convenience.

  A raucous cheer broke his concentration, and he looked up at his friends, who were involved in a high-stakes game of darts. In this small inn, there was no private parlor, just the common room, with its stark white plaster walls speckled with hay and crossed by dark beams, a room filled with a thick fog of smoke, the sharp stench of ale, and the heavy aroma of greasy mutton and fresh baked bread that drifted from the back kitchen.

  The innkeeper was a rotund man whose smudged and faded pink vest showed red where the seams had been let out at least three times. He stood in a crowd of locals, jolly farmers who wore the black dirt of their labors and who whooped and stomped and hawed when one of them scored over the London swells.

  Downe’s blond head stuck out above the crowd, and Alec watched as he threw back his fifth portion of frothy and potent ale from an old sheep-horn stein. There was no doubt in Alec’s mind that his friend would soon begin another drunken attempt to prove to the world that he was an obnoxious rake who held everything and everyone in contempt. When sober, the Earl of Downe was one of the best men Alec had ever known, but when drunk, a state that of late seemed more the rule than the exception, he was intent upon making everyone around him as miserable as he was.

  Alec glanced at the oak plank door of the retiring room into which the local leech, who had been summoned to attend the girl, had followed the innkeeper’s wife. The duke glanced at his ale, but a drink was not what he needed. He doubted it would relieve the throb in his head, nor would it do anything for the burning in his eyes resulting from exhaustion and the rancid air. The truth was he was tired. He leaned back against the wall and closed his eyes, fighting back a yawn.

  A commotion sounded from his left. After a moment of trying to ignore the noise, he gave up and willed his tired eyes open—just in time to see Lady Agnes Voorhees—the biggest baffle-headed busybody in London—swell into the inn with her entourage. His fatigue disappeared, replaced by the urgent need to get the devil out of there before the bird-witted woman saw him. He rose abruptly, not out of courtesy but to avoid detection, and stepped back against the wall, intending to creep toward the kitchen.

  “Your Grace.”

  Alec groaned.

  “Imagine that, Eugenia. It’s His Grace, the Duke of Belmore. What a small world!” The woman moved toward him faster than a dart to the board, her companions toddling along behind her.

  He was stuck as surely as if the inn floor were mired yard-deep in mud.

  “Why, we were just chatting about you,” she said, standing directly across from him. “Henry dearest”—Lady Agnes turned to her weakling of a husband—“please go and retain a private parlor.” She scowled about the room, waving a lace handkerchief in front of her beak of a nose. “The air’s bad.” She turned back and blabbered on. “I cannot believe the exquisite luck of finding you here. You see, Eugenia—of course you know Lady Eugenia Wentworth and Mrs. Timmons . . . ”

  Alec nodded to the other women—the second and third biggest gossips in London. A flock of bird-wits.

  “As I was saying, Eugenia said she heard from Mrs. Dunning-Whyte, who heard from Sally Jersey, that Lady Juliet Spencer—your Lady Juliet—had eloped. Piffle! I said. That just was not possible. Everyone knows that Your Grace would do the thing proper. A Duke of Belmore would never do anything so devil-may-care! Besides, it was my understanding that you had yet to declare yourself. Of course, we were sure that you would do so any day. It was just a matter of time. But you can imagine my shock when Eugenia said that you were not the groom. Well, I just laughed. Hah-hah-hah!”

  Her companions giggled.

  “I mean after all, no lady in control of her senses would throw over the Duke of Belmore for a mere captain, no matter what his family connections are.”

  Mrs. Timmons and Lady Eugenia nodded in unison.

  “And the whole ton knew that you were smitten from the first moment you laid eyes on her. Why I remember that night as if it were yesterday . . . . ”

  The stance of the Duke of Belmore had not changed, but if one looked very closely, the smallest twitch was discernible in his cheek, caused by the tightening of his jaw. As usual there was no warmth in his eyes, and he stood a little taller, a little straighter, a little stiffer than before. The more the woman prattled on, the deeper and more controlled the duke’s breathing became.

  Then her husband returned. “The inn has no private parlors, m’dear.” He looked up at Alec. “I say, that must be why His Grace is here in the common room. What say you, Belmore?”

  Before Alec could respond, Lady Agnes gasped and looked around the room. “No private parlors? Ohhhhh, I feel faint.” The woman sank to the bench like a deflated balloon—a hot air balloon—then lolled against the table, the back of one gloved hand pressed against her forehead.

  “Now, now, m’dear.” Lord Henry plucked the handkerchief from his wife’s hand and began fanning her face. “There is a ladies’ retiring room.”

  Lady Agnes found her second wind and sat up.

  “Alas, m’dear, the
room is occupied now, and the hostler asked that you wait out here for a few more minutes.”

  She deflated. “But why must we wait?”

  “Seems some poor lady received an injury, and the physician is examining her now.”

  She inflated again, looking perfectly healthy now that there was something to snoop into. She began firing questions at her husband faster than sticks and triggers. “Who is she? Did you ask? What’s her name? Who is she with? Do we know her? Why didn’t you ask?”

  Lord Henry blithered his way through some answers, none of which satisfied his wife.

  A moment later she was in tears. “Oh, Henry, you know how desperately I need to be needed. That poor girl, whoever she is, might need me, and you know how important it is for me to feel helpful, charity being one of my greatest pleasures in this life.” She moaned—a sound similar to that emitted by a clogged fireplace bellows—and closed her eyes, then dropped a dramatic hand down on the table, right atop the special license.

  Alec tensed.

  At the crinkling sound of paper, one curious female eye popped open, then the other. She looked down, and her pained expression disappeared. Her hand closed over the paper as if it were her invitation to heaven. One skimming glance and she had the same feral look of Alec’s hunting hounds when they were on the scent of a hare. She snapped up the paper in a wink, read it, and then eyed him over the edge of the paper. Slowly she fanned herself with the license, giving him her most ingratiating, toadying smile.

  She waved the license under his nose. “Why, Your Grace, what a sly one you are!”

  At that moment the innkeeper’s wife came out of the room and requested Alec’s presence. Wordlessly, he took the license from Lady Agnes and wasted no time crossing over to the room. But just as he opened the retiring room door he heard her whisper—the king, loony and daft and locked in his room at Westminster could have heard Lady Agnes whisper—“It’s Lady Juliet, Eugenia. He and Lady Juliet are to be married. I told you that murky rumor about the soldier couldn’t be true.”