by Sandra Dubay
Sandra Dubay
Tempest
STORM OF DESIRE
"I should have known that night," Justin said softly. "I should have recognized you. God, how I wanted youfrom the first moment I saw you. I've never wanted anything the way I wanted you that nightthe way I want you now . . ."
Dyanna trembled, seeing the fire of desire in his golden gaze. "No," she whispered, but she knew at that moment it was inevitable.
"Yes," he replied, and then she was in his arms, held, cradled, caressed.
Dyanna gazed up at him, her beautiful aqua eyes filled with the wonder of his face above hers. She was fascinated by him, caught in his spell, drawn to himthe moth drawn too near the flame of his passion.
"Wonderful escapist fiction. Sandra DuBay fulfills all her readers' fantasies!"Romantic Times
Other Leisure books by Sandra DuBay: WILDER SHORES OF LOVE
FIDELITY'S FLIGHT
SCARLET SURRENDER
BURN ON, SWEET FIRE
FLAME OF FIDELITY
BY LOVE BEGUILED
WHERE PASSION DWELLS
IN PASSION'S SHADOW
CRIMSON CONQUEST
WHISPERS OF PASSION
Contents
Prologue:
Chater One:
Chater Two
Chater Three
Chater Four
Chater Five
Chater Six
Chater Seven
Chater Eight
Chater Nine
Chater Ten
Chater Eleven
Chater Twelve
Chater Thirteen
Chater Fourteen
Chater Fifteen
Chater Sixteen
Chater Seventeen
Chater Eighteen
Chater Nineteen
Chater Twenty
Chater Twenty-One
Chater Twenty-Two
Chater Twenty-Three
Chater Twenty-Four
Chater Twenty-Five
Chater Twenty-Six
Chater Twenty-Seven
Chater Twenty-Eight
Chater Twenty-Nine
Chater Thirty
Chater Thirty-One
Chater Thirty Two
Chater Thirty-Three
Chater Thirty-Four
Chater Thirty-Five
Chater Thirty-Six
Chater Thirty-Seven
Chater Thirty-Eight
Chater Thirty-Nine
Chater Forty
A LEISURE BOOK
January 1989
Published by
Dorchester Publishing Co., Inc.
276 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10001
Copyright © 1989 by Sandra DuBay
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law.
Printed in the United States of America
Prologue
Portsmouth, England 1780
Justin, Sixth Earl Deville, awoke slowly, gingerly, his aching head screaming in protest, his amber-colored eyes slitted against the mid-morning sunshine that glowed behind the green velvet draperies at the mullioned windows. The hand that lay against his stubbled cheek was hot and moist. He shifted his arm to relieve the uncomfortable pressure, but it remained even when his own calloused, sun-bronzed hands were in plain sight before his out-of-focus gaze.
Turning his head on the pillow, he saw the tumble of golden curls that covered the pillow beside his own. Groaning, he pushed away the stranger's hand and rose from the velvet-hung fourposter.
He swayed slightly as he drew himself to his full six feet three inches. It seemed as if he could still feel the motion of his ship even though he was on dry land and had been since his vessel, the Golden Falcon, made port the day before.
"Bertran!" he shouted, then winced as the word seemed to echo and re-echo along the wine-soaked corridors of his brain.
"Milord?" Justin's Swiss valet appeared in the doorway. As always, he was cool and unruffled. He appeared not to notice the litter of wine bottles surrounding the rumpled bed, nor the buxom blonde still draped across it.
"What time is it?"
"A quarter past twelve, milord," Bertran replied as he brought his master's velvet robe and held it for him to slip on.
Scowling, Justin knotted the sash. "A quarter past twelve! I should have been back on the ship hours ago! Get rid of" He pointed toward the bed but, as he did, he noticed the delicate foot dangling over the bed's edge.
Almost dreading what he might find, Justin lifted the sheet. The foot, he found, was attached to the shapely leg of some unknown brunette who was otherwise buried beneath the tangled bedding. He glanced at Bertran, who regarded him with the same look of unperturbed serenity as before.
"Get rid of them both," he told the valet.
"Give them some money and send them away."
"As you wish, milord."
"But first . . ." Justin drew a deep breath and raised a hand to his throbbing head. "First get me a hot bath."
Laterbathed, shaved, and fortified by Bertran's vile-tasting but effective secret hangover cureJustin sat in a chair near the window of the sitting room of the inn's finest suite. Outside, in the harbor, his ship rode at anchor. He smiled as he gazed at her. Her hull scarred, her sails badly in need of mending, she was marked by the long months at the mercy of the Atlantic. But he loved her as he loved the sea itself.
He was a privateer, some saida pirate, others whispered. Whichever it was, he was phenomenally successful. He had made himself rich and restored the family fortune lost in the service of the Crown during the Civil War more than a century before. He was master of his own ship. He had a fine house in London, and he had Wildwood, the great manor house he was building near the fire-blackened ruins that had once been Castle DeVille, his family's ancestral seat.
He sighed as he leaned back in his chair. It had been hard to leave America. The raw newness and magnificent promise of a country still in its infancy touched that place in his heart that yearned for challenge and adventure. But his fortune came from the sea and the letter of marquethat invaluable piece of paper that gave him the right to plunder the riches of England's enemiesobliged him to reaffirm his allegiance from time to time to the government that had issued it.
Still, he thought as he stretched his long legs, flexing the muscles beneath the taut russet cloth of his breeches and wiggling his toes inside his knee-high jackboots, as much as he loved the sea and loved America, it was good to be in England in the spring. Nowhere else on earth seemed so green and alive at that time of year.
"Milord?" Bertran stood in the doorway. "A messenger from London. From your solicitor."
Justin took the packet the valet offered. "It didn't take him long to get down to business. I wrote to tell him when I expected to arrive, but"
His brow furrowed as his long-lashed, orange-brown eyes skimmed the letter attached to a thick sheaf of papers. "Damnation!"
"Bad news, milord?"
"A death," Justin replied, reading on. "A friend from my youth." He let out his breath in a long sigh. "Rayburn McBride."
"My sympathies, milord."
A wistful smile quirked Justin's lips. ''We went to Oxford together. And we were sent down from Oxford together."
"A true friendship," the valet remarked drily.
Justin smiled reminiscently. Being thrown out of school was nothing unusual for Rayburn. He was a wild one, some years older than Justin. All the McBrides were reckless, impetuous. Rayburn had had two brothersboth older, both of whom had died of their own foolishness, so Rayburn was
their father's heir. It seemed he'd be the last of the McBrides. No one believed he could settle down and make an acceptable husband. But he fell in love and married Elizabeth Conway, the only child of the Earl of Lincoln. She was a great heiress, and she loved him, wildness and all. They eloped and the change in him was miraculous. Elizabeth bore him a child.
Then, a few years later, Elizabeth died in a carriage accident. McBride had been driving and, rightly or wrongly, blamed himself for his wife's death. After that he went back to his old ways with a vengeance. He was like a man possessed. It seemed he was committing suicide by inches.
Justin glanced at the papers in his hand. It appeared that he had succeeded.
His mind swept back through the years, remembering times long past. They had made a splendid couple. Rayburn was a handsome man for all his dissipation, and his wife was held to be the greatest beauty of her generation. Her hair was the color of moonlight, her eyes like aquamarines. The old Earl, her father, never forgave her for throwing herself away on Rayburn McBrideor 'Rakehell McBride' as he was usually called. He and Elizabeth were still estranged when she died. He lost his own wife, Elizabeth's mother, not long after, and became a recluse. No doubt he was dead as well. It was a sorry tale.
"Rakehell's daughterDyannais heiress to both the McBride estates and those of her grandfather, old Lincoln," Justin told his valet. "Good God! What a fortune." He turned to the next page. "She is to inherit upon her twenty-first birthday or her marriage. Until then, her estate is to be held in trust and she is to be given an allowance overseen by her guardian"
Heedless of the papers lying in his lap, Justin thrust himself to his feet. "God's teeth!"
Bertran stepped back, momentarily shocked from his habitual composure. "Sir!"
"I am the girl's guardian! Rakehell willed his brat to me, God damn his black soul!"
"Congratulations, milord."
Justin shot him a withering glare, but his valet's expression was blandly respectful. "I can't play nursemaid to some schoolgirl! I don't know how old she is, but it will surely be years before she's of age. I'm not a governess or a maiden aunt!" He consulted the letter. "It says she's at school. She'll just have to stay there until they find someone else to be her guard-dog. That's all there is to it!" He ran a hand through his thick, dark gold hair. "Pack for me, Bertran. I'm going to settle this McBride business at once so I can get on with my own affairs. And then"
He was interrupted by the opening of the bedchamber door. His two bedmates appeared, smiling, and came to him, twining their clinging arms about his neck and stretching up to kiss him.
"If you need anything, milord," the blonde cooed, "just ask the innkeeper."
"Anything at all, milord," the brunette added.
Justin smiled wanly as they flounced out the door. He had wanted a woman badly by the time his ship had docked in Portsmouthbut even he hadn't realized just how badly.
"Must have been quite a night," he murmured as Bertran left to go about his master's packing. "I wish to hell I could remember it."
Chater One
The Misses Pettigrew Academy for Select Young Ladies 1780
The Honorable Dyanna McBride lay across her narrow bed in the small, austere room she shared with another inmate of the Pettigrew Academy. Neither the beauty of the late afternoon sunshine nor the sweet fragrance of the spring blossoms wafting from the overgrown gardens touched her. For she was losthappily, contentedly lost in the pages of one of the books that were her comfort, her friends, the birthplaces of her every dream and fantasy.
As she turned the pages to begin reading it yet again, her fingers caressed the lettering worked into the scuffed leather of the cover:
Snuggling deep into the worn coverlet of her bed, Dyanna turned past the title page to the beginning of the story and read the words that were engraved in her memory and had been since she'd first discovered the book in her grandfather's library years before:
Book I
Like most women whose names are spoken in hushed murmurs behind the spread fans of their more fortunate sisters, my downfall was brought about through the offices of a man. His name was and is (though I can scarce relate it without feeling a shudder of the utmost repugnance) Ebenezer Greatrakes.
When my mother and father, personages of no little consequence and respectable means, were taken from this life, this man, Greatrakes, was left my guardian. As I was merely an innocent child and he a gentleman respected by his colleagues who little suspected the true wickedness that lay beneath his air of kindness and refinement, my upbringing and well-being was left entirely in his hands.
Thereafter I lived in his household, thesupport of which came, in the main, out of my inheritance. I was less a ward than a dependent; my days were passed in circumstances little better than those of the lowliest scullery maid. It was not until I had attained enough years to be called a young woman rather than a child that Greatrakes deigned to notice me.
Though the details of my seduction are far too sordid and scandalous for me to commit to paper, suffice it to say that Ebenezer Greatrakes relieved me of my innocence and virtue with as cavalier an air as he had determined to relieve me of my inheritance.
Afterward, his coldness toward me, the arrogant callousness with which he regarded me, the victim of his unprincipled lusts, wounded me far more deeply than even the loss of that precious maidenhood that is every young woman's treasure.
To no avail did I remonstrate with him. My tears could not move him; my threats of exposure only angered him and prompted him to immure me in the country, closely guarded by servantsvillainsin his employ. I was left to languish in the depths of Devonshire while he, in London, plundered my birthright at his leisure.
The long, lonely days turned to weeks, the weeks to months. Winter passed, cold and dark like my wounded heart. I lapsed into a melancholia from which it was feared I might not recover. (Which news, I have no doubt, was greeted with glee by the villain, Greatrakes. Were I to die, he would have the spending of my fortune without the trouble of my person.)
But then, with the coming of Spring, my bleak melancholy lifted. My heart, its bruises healed by that universal balm, Time, was filled with a new determination. It was as if the long dark night had at last ended and the coming of the dawn was full of hope. With a certainty that was equal parts optimism and anger, I knew there was only one course of action open to me: I must escape my gaolers and . . .
"Here you are, Dyanna. I should have known where to find you."
Dyanna looked up from her book at the girl who had just opened the door.
"The old ladies want you in the morning room," Miss Kitty Fitzsimmons, Dyanna's roommate, announced.
Groaning, Dyanna slid off her narrow bed and smoothed the skirts of her grey linen gownbthe uniform of the Pettigrew Academy. Her hands captured an errant lock of shimmering silver blonde hair and tucked it back into the neatly coiled knot near the crown. Austerity and simplicity were bywords at the academy despite the fact that all of the girls placed in the Misses Pettigrews' care came from wealthy, if not aristocratic, families.
"What do they want?" Dyanna asked as she slipped her feet into the simple leather slippers which, along with a pair of boots for inclement weather, were the only footwear allowed.
Kitty shrugged her narrow shoulders. "How would I know? I have my own troubles to worry about."
Dyanna left quickly, eager to avoid a recitation of Kitty's much-vaunted 'troubles.' Kitty's real trouble, so far as Dyanna could see, was the fact that no man, however low his station or advanced his age, was allowed within shouting distance of the Pettigrew girls. After having formed an attachment with both her noble father's steward and his head groom, Kitty had been found attempting to embark for the wilds of North America in pursuit of a young lieutenant who had, so she said, promised to marry her. After that unhappy incident, Miss Kitty Fitzsimmons had found herself dispatched to the Pettigrew Academy.
"For Select Young Ladies," Dyanna mused aloud as she made h
er way along the ancient stone cloister that had once, in the time-shrouded past, been part of an abbey. All the fine-sounding title meant was that the girls who were placed there were too incorrigible to be kept at home and too blue-blooded to be tossed into the streets. They were more prisoners than students, for they never went home on holidays nor were they left for long without supervision. If they ventured beyond the confines of the walled grounds it was under the watchful eyes of one of the no-nonsense matrons who kept order among the collection of hoydens and ne'er-do-wellsgirls like Kitty Fitzsimmons who were far too fond of the wrong sort of male company and girls like Dyanna who, left on her own for too long, had grown up without the genteel guidance of a governess or female relation.
Dyanna was not incorrigible, simply untutored. She was not, by nature, bad, although the celebrated McBride wildness had its prominent place in her personality. She was simply untaught in the intricate rules that governed the behavior of a girl of her breeding and prospects.
The heels of her slippers tapped on the worn stones of the cloister, echoing and re-echoing in the beautiful fan vaulting of the ancient passage. She was sorry when she reached the end, reluctant to leave the peaceful solitude of the cloister for the unknown that awaited her in the morning room. No one ever got good news in the morning room. She did not expect to be the first.
She tapped at the door and was admitted to a dimly lit chamber. The brilliant sunshine of the day was barred entry by the heavy damask draperies drawn across the leaded windows. Eyes downcast, Dyanna crossed the faded carpet toward the pair of spreading black silk skirts.
"Good afternoon, Dyanna," a thin, unpleasantly nasal voice said.
She raised her eyes. Miss Adelaide Pettigrew regarded her with that look of grim disapproval she reserved for her students. They were, in her opinion and without exception, wicked, fallen creatures with scant hope of redemption. By opening her ancestral home to them, she believed, with a self-righteous certainty, that she was earning her way into heaven.