Sweet Deception (Hidden Identity)
Page 35
Ellen felt her cheeks burn, but her laughter echoed in their bedchamber. She had wondered all these months since she'd told Gavin about her past what she was going to do about her hair. It was true. Thomasina had been a brunette, but Ellen was most definitely a redhead. She knew it was vain of her, but she didn't want to let her hair grow dark again. In her mind Thomasina was long gone, along with Waldron and Hunt. With her red locks, Ellen could truly be another woman.
She lowered her gaze, feeling a little foolish. "I was born with the dark hair you see in the portrait, but Richard suggested I bleach it to make me unrecognizable to any of Waldron's cronies in London." She shrugged. "So when I did, my hair turned red. As for the boy's, my grandmother had hair the same hue." She lifted her lashes slowly. "I'll let my dark hair grow out if you wish. . . ."
He lifted up on one elbow to brush the red locks off the crown of her forehead in a lover's caress, his own long, dark hair falling to touch her cheek. "Do what you wish, sweet." A boyish grin crept across his face. "But I have to admit, I've grown fond of the fire, both in your hair and in your spirit. I'm not certain I could be content without both. Besides, if our son is a redhead, I should think we should take this as a sign from the heavens that you were meant to be a redhead as well."
She lifted her head up off the pillow until her mouth met his. "I love you, Gavin," she murmured against his lips.
"And I you," he answered, lowering his naked body over hers. "And let you never forget it, Lady Waxton of mine. . . ."
The End
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IN LOVE WITH THE KING'S SPY
Prologue
The Cliffs of Dover, England
September, 1660
Julia closed her eyes and felt the bitter wind against her face. It tore at her unbound hair and whipped at her new wool and ermine cloak, a costly gift from her betrothed.
She felt numb. Was it because of the teeth-chattering cold or because, as she stood here on the precipice, she felt her hopes, her dreams, dying? All these years through the war, she had imagined that one day she would be rescued from her father's decaying house by a handsome lord. His lordship would marry her, take her away to a foreign land, and love her more than life. She knew it was just a dream, a girlhood fancy, but it was difficult to let go of that dream just the same.
Steadying herself with one hand on the crumbling wall, she hesitantly slid one foot and then the other forward, until the toes of her kidskin slippers hung off the edge of the tower floor. Chunks of deteriorated mortar fell and hit the rocks below. She did not hear them splash as they made their final descent into the ocean far below.
Julia held her breath and imagined that she was one of those ill-fated bits of mortar. She wondered how easy it would be to let go of the disintegrating wall and drop into the cold depths of the waves. Did the mortar feel terror, or dull acceptance? Was there, at the last moment, a certain sense of relief before death?
The ermine lining of her new cloak ruffled in the wind, brushing the sensitive flesh of her throat. Instead of feeling soft as it should have, it felt as abrasive as spun steel. She hated the cloak. She hated he who sent it. She hated her mother for making her wear the cloak. She hated her mother for making her marry him.
"I would miss you if you went away to our Lord Jesus . . ."
The sound of her younger sister's voice startled Julia, and she gripped the wall tightly. Fearing she might lose her balance and plummet off the tower ruin, she took a step back and opened her eyes. "Lizzy! What are you doing up here? You'll catch your death in this cold!"
Lizzy drew her patched brown woolen cloak tightly around her shoulders. "You wouldn't do it, would you, Sister? You wouldn't leave me."
Julia had always wondered how Lizzy had the innate ability to read others' thoughts. Her mind damaged since early childhood, after an exceedingly high fever, she barely had the sense to get in out of a hailstorm, yet Lizzy was exceptionally sensitive to the feelings of others. Sometimes she seemed to understand Julia's thoughts better than Julia understood them herself.
Julia offered her sister her cold hand. "I just came up here to think . . . to say goodbye."
Lizzy narrowed her pretty eyes. "Not to jump into the ocean and go to Lord Jesus?"
Julia thought a long moment before she replied. Had she climbed the crumbling tower steps to contemplate suicide? Had she actually considered the choice of death over marriage to the Earl of St. Martin? Had she thought herself willing to abandon her sister and mother to the perils of poverty, rather than marry a man she did not like?
Julia lifted her lashes and gazed into Lizzy's blue eyes, eyes as blue as the heavens. "Silly chick." She squeezed her sister's petite hand in her own. "I wouldn't leave you."
"Not ever?"
"Not ever. I just came to say goodbye to the ocean. There's no ocean in London, you know."
"London? Is that the house?" Lizzy's yellow blond hair fluttered in the wind, framing her oval face.
How Julia envied her sister's perfect blond hair. Her own hair had too much red in it; her father had called it strawberry. "No. London is the place, the city. Bassett Hall is the house. That's where we'll be living, you and I."
Lizzy thrust out her lower lip. She was strikingly beautiful, even when she pouted. "But you'll no longer sleep with me. St. Martin will sleep in your bed, and I will have to sleep with Drusilla and her cold, bony feet."
Julia laughed and hugged her sister as she turned her around. "Better to sleep with Drusilla and her feet than Mother and her snoring."
The sisters laughed in unison, Lizzy's voice the higher-pitched of the two.
"Race you down the steps," Julia dared.
"And ruin my slippers? I think not!"
But the moment Julia darted down the winding stone steps, Lizzy bolted after her.
"Mother says the coach is ready," Lizzy called. "Race you to London."
Running her hand along the cold stone wall, Julia descended the steps as fast as she could, her heart pounding. It was time to say goodbye to the disintegrating walls of the home of her childhood, the home of her father's childhood, and of his father's before him. She was bound for London and a new life, bound for Bassett Hall and her new husband.
Julia's grandfather, now dead and buried in the churchyard, had always said that in life, each time a door closed, another opened. She prayed feverishly that he was right.
Colleen French is a multiple award-winning and bestselling novelist, daughter of bestselling novelist Judith E. French. Colleen French has written more than 125 novels under several pen names. Colleen's print books have sold more than 1 million copies and been translated into Bulgarian, French, Italian, Mandarin, and Spanish. Colleen's Native American novels are inspired by her English, Scottish, Irish, Welsh, and Lenni-Lenape ancestry and the Del-Mar Peninsula near the Chesapeake Bay, where her family has made its home for more than 300 years. Colleen French was awarded The Diamond Award for Literary Excellence from the State of Delaware. Her books appeal to readers of C. J. Petit, Shirleen Davies, Karen Kay, Madeline Baker, Elle Marlow, Ellen O'Connell, Caroline Fyffe, and Hannah Howell. She can be contacted at colleenfrenchnovels@gmail.com.
BY COLLEEN FRENCH
CAPTIVE
FIRE DANCER'S CAPTIVE
FORBIDDEN CARESS
PASSION'S SAVAGE MOON
SAVAGE SURRENDER