An Inconceivable Deception
The Defiant Hearts Series
Book Four
by
Sydney Jane Baily
More Books by Sydney Jane Baily
THE DEFIANT HEARTS SERIES
An Intriguing Proposition (Prequel)
An Improper Situation (Book 1)
An Irresistible Temptation (Book 2)
An Inescapable Attraction (Book 3)
An Inconceivable Deception (Book 4)
An Impassioned Redemption (Novella)
Presenting Lady Gus (A Georgian-Era Novella)
The Black Knight’s Reward
with Marliss Melton
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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Copyright © 2018 Sydney J. Baily
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All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.
Cover: Philip Ré, REX Video Productions
Table of Contents
Dedication
Acknowledgments
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 Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Epilogue
More Books by Sydney Jane Baily
About the Author
Dedication
For Philip
Who is more like me than not.
The beginning of our story interrupted the middle of this one.
Looking forward to our next chapter
While enjoying each page that we turn.
Acknowledgments
Absolute gratitude from the dead center of my heart to the readers who continued to ask me when Rose’s story was going to be released. Honestly, your emails spurred me on when I nearly gave up on An Inconceivable Deception myself. It was an obscenely long amount of time to wait, and I apologize. I truly hope I’ve done justice to the last Malloy sibling.
Thanks to my beta readers who pointed out a few anachronisms (gasp) and plot points that weren’t quite right. This story is better for your input: Toni Young, Renee Sevelitte, and Lisa Mackin. Lastly, to fellow writer E. Ayers, who did so much more than read this story. Your copious notes spurred me to recheck, rethink, and rewrite. Thank you for the gift of your time away from your own writing. I know how precious that is.
Chapter One
Boston, Massachusetts, 1887
Ever so quietly, Rose eased the high wooden gate closed behind her. Not sparing a glance for the row houses directly opposite, with their shutters closed against the night air, she hurried along the brick alley behind her house on Mount Vernon Street. Passing their coachman’s front door, she pulled the hood of her traveling cloak more tightly around her dark hair. Having tiptoed down the rear staircase before slipping out the back door of her family’s gray-shuttered home to the lane behind, she was determined not to alert her mother — or her mother’s servants — to her latest escapade.
As she turned left on Willow Street, Rose let out the breath she’d been holding and started to run, continuing to do so until she reached the long oval patch of grass surrounded by the Greek Revival homes of many of her friends. Louisburg Square.
With the expansive grassy Common behind her — all but deserted at such a late hour — Rose traversed Beacon Hill. She knew it was foolish to be out so late and unaccompanied anywhere in Boston.
More than foolish, it was downright dangerous. Her heart pounded with exhilaration and excitement.
Her brother would wring her neck if he ever found out. Her mother would faint on the spot. Her sisters would shake their lovely heads in dismay.
Rose continued moving quickly until she reached her best friend’s house on Myrtle Street and the promised carriage that awaited her discreetly a few yards past.
Giving a whispered thanks and a penny to the lad who’d agreed to wait with the runabout in the moonlight until she arrived, Rose climbed aboard the lightweight vehicle. A wave of relief accompanied the gentle swaying as the mare started forward.
Bless Claire for helping! She was always there when Rose was in a prickly situation. And this one was pricklier than most and ever so important. Rose simply had to see Finn before he left once more. He would be out at sea for nearly a month.
One wretchedly long month. She couldn’t stand it. Unfortunately, she would have to — unless she stowed away on his vessel, and even she was never so bold. Her family would disagree, no doubt, especially if they knew the extent of her involvement with Finn. She smiled, feeling a shiver of anticipation as she approached the rooming house on Bowdoin Square.
Knowing Claire’s docile horse would stand for hours without fussing, Rose left the carriage pulled up close to the sidewalk, the reins tied tightly around a hitch. As she approached the three-story brick building, she couldn’t help looking up at the second floor, the first window on the left. Was he watching for her?
Darting up the short flight of stone steps to the main door, she let herself into the foyer.
A lamp was lit, and a shiny black candlestick telephone sat on the hall table alongside a pile of mail for all the residents of the three-story building. She hurried up the stairs and rapped softly on Finn’s door. Instantly, it was wrenched open, and Rose nearly found herself sprawled across the threshold. Instead, she fell into Finn’s arms.
“My Rose,” he murmured against the top of her head, his lips on her hair. She loved the way her name sounded with his Maine accent.
With her face against his chest, she breathed in the brisk ocean scent of him that somehow clung delicio
usly to his skin and his clothes.
“I don’t like you coming out so late, love,” he said. “You should have let me come to your house.”
What a dear man he was for worrying over her.
Unbuttoning her cloak, she removed it, laying it over the chairback while choosing her next words carefully.
“You know you cannot do that,” Rose told him, looking up into his beloved face.
Finn took a deep breath and released her abruptly, walking to the window and keeping his broad back to her.
“How long do you plan to keep ‘us’ a secret?” he asked, looking out into the dusky evening, lit by the flickering gas lamps that dotted the neighborhood.
Rose sighed, watching Phineas Bennet fold his strong arms over his chest and look like an immovable mountain — stubborn, silent — but she didn’t want to have that conversation with him. Not again, and especially not on the eve of his departure.
“Please, Finn, let’s not discuss this now.”
She ventured closer, eventually wrapping her arms around his trim waist, pressing herself against his solid back, and leaning her cheek between his shoulders.
Rose could feel his tenseness in all the lean muscles of his body, though the longer she nestled against him, the more relaxed he became. His breathing steadied. At last, he turned in her embrace.
“We’ll have to settle this sometime. We can’t hide forever. Your family will have to accept me.”
Would they? Rose knew there would be a confrontation, which she hated. She imagined the repercussions and stern discussions. Lastly, there would be disapproval. She couldn’t stand to think of the look on her mother’s and brother’s faces as they learned of her decision, one they would consider rash and ruinous.
Moreover, they would be crushed by her deception.
“I’m your husband,” Finn said, running his hands down her back and pulling her even closer. “There’s not a bloody thing they can do about it.”
Rose shivered at his seductive touch but felt a frisson of fear as well. Her brother was renowned for his legal mind. Oh, she had no doubt there was something Reed could do about their hasty marriage. Especially as they hadn’t yet consummated it.
As if reading her mind, Finn lowered his head and kissed her, sweeping his tongue into her mouth without warning, stealing her breath and her senses as he always had. His hand left her back and slipped inside the opening of her silk dolman, his fingers brushing across her blouse to tease her breast beneath.
As usual, she wanted him desperately. And as usual, she denied them both.
Leaning back, Rose shook her head. “I’m sorry.”
Finn gave a groan of frustration and sat down on the bed with her still in his arms.
Resting upon his muscular thighs, she nestled against his chest and tried to calm her rapidly beating heart.
“When, Rose?”
“When everyone knows about us,” she promised. “Besides, it’s too late to do anything about it tonight. If you go away tomorrow, and I’m with child, there won’t be a shred of me left to come home to after my family finds out.”
“Don’t be silly,” he said, nuzzling her neck and causing fingers of pleasure to run up and down her spine. “I’ve listened to your stories about them. They love you beyond words. As I do. When they find out you’ve fallen in love, they’ll be happy for you.”
Rose wanted to believe that. Except her mother was never going to like the fact that Finn’s father was a joiner working in yards on the rugged coast of Maine or that Finn made his living as a shipbuilder and would sometimes go out to sea on test sails. That was the part Rose dreaded most — the times he would have to leave her.
Moreover, this was the first such sailing since they’d met five months earlier.
She still found it hard to fathom it had been a mere five months. From the first, her heart had cried out for him. Her body had followed suit, tightening and pulsing in all the right places whenever he was near. She’d been walking where she shouldn’t have been, on the East Boston docks with her best friend, Claire, after eating lunch at the Maverick House.
There, across the harbor in Eastie, they had decided to view up close the spectacular cruising vessels at the Cunard dock, dreaming of a time they, too, might take a long sea voyage. Finn worked on merchant vessels on a nearby dock.
As Rose and Claire strolled, some unknown movement momentarily blocked the sun. That was when she’d spied him climbing the rigging of a tall ship, looking like a modern-day pirate. Shielding her eyes from the sun, she’d stood and simply stared at the fine specimen of a man until Claire stopped walking, realizing Rose was no longer beside her.
Somehow, Finn had caught sight of her as well, staring right back. Later, he told her he felt she’d bewitched him with her dark-haired beauty. He had climbed down while she’d grabbed Claire by the hand to continue walking. Within a few moments, however, he’d chased her down, asked her name, and made sure he could find her later. Under Claire’s watchful eye, Rose had flirted, as was her wont, all the while thinking she’d never again see the brash sandy-haired man, full of dash-fire and spirit.
Rose had not only been wrong about never seeing him again, she’d married him. Why exactly, she couldn’t say, except that nothing in the world could have stopped her. From the first moments they spent alone together, when he’d ambushed her the following Sunday afternoon as she came out of her house to visit friends, she’d felt as if Finn were hers, and she, his. When he was anywhere close, both her body and her brain were always aware of him. Indeed, she swore when he entered a room or even glanced at her, she knew with a prickling sensation.
Their courting involved picnics out of town and far away from anyone who knew her. They took carriage rides in her father’s old enclosed brougham hidden from prying eyes, walked the East Boston docks as Finn pointed out vessels he admired, or shared a bottle of wine in his room.
Between them was a current of understanding, of like-mindedness, and of the deepest desire to enjoy each other and to make the other one happy.
True, Rose was a tad impetuous. Some would say more than a tad. Yet standing before a judge, just the two of them, with only Claire knowing about the marriage beforehand, Rose had felt it to be precisely the right thing to do.
Telling her family, however, had seemed impossible, and Finn had not pushed it, until now.
He rolled backward onto the bed, taking her with him. Splayed across his chest, Rose let out a peal of delighted laughter.
“I suppose you’re right,” Finn said, surprising her. “I wouldn’t do that to you, leave you in such a precarious position. If only you had let me go to your family . . .,” he trailed off when she climbed to a sitting position, straddling his thighs and looked down at his handsome face, gazing into his eyes which seemed to her to be the color of a stormy sea.
“I can’t think straight, love,” he admitted, “with you sitting on me and looking at me like that. All I can think about when I have you in my arms is kissing you. And a few other things.”
Rose smiled demurely, and he grinned back. However, she simply couldn’t give herself to him, even though he was her husband of nearly a month, not without her mother’s approval of their marriage first. She’d had no idea she would want that approval so desperately, yet she did. Like Reed with his beloved Charlotte and like her two older sisters, one with a banker for a husband and one with a doctor — Rose wanted her husband to be not only accepted but also welcomed and loved by her family.
She could not simply spring on them her shipbuilding man, with his tar and resin and solid oak scents that she’d come to love as part of him. All things she feared they would despise.
“Maybe when you return,” Rose began, but he shook his head.
“Don’t think about it now. In a month, we’ll deal with it. I know what you worry about, sweets. I know I’m not exactly a Brahmin. Still, I’ll make a good living for us and our family. You’ll see.”
She knew he would. She would st
art to prepare her family for the shock of her being the wife of a shipbuilder while he was away. After all, at the young age of 24, he was already a quarterman, not an unskilled laborer, not a small cog like a riveter in an iron shipyard. Whereas some men his age were still assigned cordage duty, he was helping to design and build.
When he returned, she would take him by the hand and march up to her mother and confess that her heart was taken by this incredibly kind and intelligent man. That he looked like Michelangelo’s David didn’t hurt either.
A month — not that long to wait really. Yet as she looked down at his relaxed face, with his quirky smile and single dimple, she felt a foreboding wash over her. A whole month — it was an eternity.
“Sweets, what’s the frown for?”
He pulled her down on top of him and gently took her face in his hands, holding her in place while he kissed her.
“It’s too long a time to bear,” she said when he, at last, let her breathe.
“I know.” And he held her close. “When I’m out at sea with a bunch of rude sailors, I’ll think on this moment and try to recall how it feels to have you in my arms.” He kissed the top of her head, his warm breath on her hair. “I know my memories won’t come close to this. You are my heaven, Rose, and I’ll leave my heart with you.”
She didn’t want to cry, didn’t want to leave him with that image of her, red nosed and teary eyed. So she lifted her head and gave him her brightest smile.
“I’ll keep your heart safe for you, Finn. I promise.”
He kissed her again, and she felt him move under her, felt the familiar sensations of her mouth going dry as her body went soft and hot for him.
Suddenly, she couldn’t wait another moment to join with her husband. Sending her own tongue darting into his mouth, she slid her hands down the length of his torso, stopping at his waist. She slipped her fingers into the band of his trousers and tried to touch his skin.
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