by Brenda Hiatt
What was worse, she knew now beyond doubt that she loved him, too. Only love could have caused the great anger she had felt when he had confessed his wrong-doings and the unassuageable longing she had felt after she had dismissed him from her life. Only love could cause the terrible grief she felt now. She knew he was going to offer for her. Because she loved him, she knew that she would have to say no.
She stared into the fire in her cousin’s study, a room only recently vacated by the constable and Sweeney. She was alone now, grateful for the solitude after the turmoil of the day. The earl’s house guests had returned from their outing before the constable arrived. Fortunately they had all retired to change out of their riding clothes almost immediately. The constable and his assistant had presented themselves minutes later and managed to slip Sweeney quietly out of the house without alerting anyone beyond the circle of those who already knew what had happened.
Lady Rawlings had to be told of her brother’s death, of course. The poor woman had fainted at the news, but after she revived she had shouldered the responsibility of sending off the guests quite admirably. The scandal might not break until the inquest, but surely there would be no avoiding it then.
Falcon sighed. If she had not already had reason enough to refuse the baron’s offer, the coming scandal surrounding her cousin’s death would have provided it. As much as she dreaded the painful scene ahead of her, a part of her wished she might just get it over with. The loneliness of her future hung over her now as surely as the shadow of the gallows cast its pall over Sweeney.
Her gloomy thoughts were interrupted when Lord Danebridge knocked on the study door and begged admittance.
“You have been through so much today, I do not think it best for you to sit in here alone,” he said, entering. He went straight to the hearth and stirred up the fire into a lively blaze. “There! That is more the thing. As the day wanes, it is growing dark and chill.”
He turned to look at her and thought that she had never looked so lost and sad and beautiful. “Miss Colburne—”
“Lord Danebridge—”
He chuckled when they both spoke at once. “You see? I warned you once that if we were not careful, this might become a habit.” He stepped closer to the chair where she sat looking up at him with a guarded expression in her exquisite green eyes.
He lowered his voice. “We must not have been careful enough, Miss Colburne, because you have certainly become a habit with me. One that I cannot live without.”
She stood up abruptly and moved away from him. “Please, Lord Danebridge, do not say so.”
“It is true.” He stood perfectly still, willing her to turn and look at him. Now above all times he wanted her to know that he was serious.
She did turn, and for a fleeting moment he saw a look of despair cross her face before her expression hardened into a mask of indifference. He knew then, before he said anything, that she was going to refuse him. But why? He was more convinced than ever that she cared for him.
He ploughed ahead, hardly knowing what words to choose. “Did you believe me earlier today when I said I loved you?”
She nodded.
“Good.” That was a start. “I believe that you care something for me also. Do you deny it?”
Her voice was a whisper. “No. I cannot.”
“Good, again. You see? Already we have more of a foundation on which to build a marriage than many couples have.” He advanced towards her, his hands outstretched. “Please, Miss Colburne. Please say you will consent to be my wife.”
It was a very backward proposal, not at all what he had planned. He was trying to build a case against her refusal, when what he really wanted was to take her in his arms and simply kiss her and keep kissing her until she said yes.
“No. I am sorry,” she said, her lower lip quivering. She bit it and turned away from him again, as if she would stop it. But her next words came out in a rush of anguish. “I would say yes if I could! I do care for you. But there are too many reasons against it.”
“Tell me what they are. I think I have a right to know.”
This was not going to be easy for her, he could see. She raised her chin and straightened her back in the way he had seen her do every time she faced a challenge. He loved that about her. God help him, he loved everything about her.
With fists clenched she turned back to face him. “Yes. I suppose you do have a right.” She took a deep breath. “I do not know what will come out at the inquiry into my cousin’s death. Mr. Fallesby explained to me about the process. But the murder of a peer is bound to shake the very roots of society at his—your—level. My name will be caught up in the scandal. To be associated with me is the last thing you need.”
“What I need is you. I care nothing about the scandal.”
“And what of your London friends? Would you give them up so easily? They are likely to recognize that I am the Spanish lady they entertained so happily. I have no doubt that they will feel they were intentionally duped and will take offense.”
“You do not give my friends enough credit. They are loyal and capable of understanding more than you suppose.”
“That is easy to believe as long as they are not put to the test. When the scandal breaks you might find yourself disappointed.”
“I might, but I would be grateful to learn their true colors. You are worth a hundred of them to me, even if they are true friends.”
Why was this so difficult? She faced him across a space of half a dozen feet, yet there might as well have been a yawning chasm between them. He was determined to bridge that chasm.
“What else?” he said. “If those are the only reasons to keep us apart, I blow them away like fragile cobwebs.”
Her chin went a little higher, he thought, and suddenly she could not look at him. “I may be the granddaughter of an earl,” she said, “but I was raised in my father’s regiment. I was only fourteen when my parents died. Even as an officer’s daughter, I lack the training and social graces that you should require in a baroness. You might not think that matters now, but later, perhaps in a year or two, when you are relying on me to run your home and be your hostess, you will find me wanting.”
“It is never too late to learn those skills. My mother would gladly teach you. But those do not matter to me now or later. My first wife had those skills. What I want from you is your company, your precious laughter, your courage and character. I want your love. These are gifts that need no training to bestow.”
At his words her eyes filled with tears. Had he somehow hurt her? But no. Whatever it was, her deepest reason was still buried in her heart. They had only scratched away the superficial layers of her reluctance.
“If you truly knew me, you would not want those,” she whispered. “I am unfit.” Closing her eyes, she bowed her head and shook it.
He went to her then, wanting to comfort her, uncertain of her meaning, but when he tried to put his arms around her, she pushed him away. “Do you not understand?” she said angrily. “I am no virgin. I am impure—unclean. I have been with another man. More than one!”
He was shaken, although he tried not to show it. For a moment he thought of all his original suspicions about her. “When was this? In Spain I thought you had stayed in a convent!”
She laughed a brittle, bitter laugh. “Yes, that is true, once I reached the south. But it is three hundred and fifty miles from Astorga to Seville. Sometimes we had to pay our way.”
“We?”
“Carmen and I. She was only a year older than I, staying in a convent school in the mountains near Astorga. Her family had sent a trusted friend to bring her to them in Andalusia, where many of the landed class took refuge. She insisted that I go along with her, to find safety. But we ran into many troubles, and eventually the man abandoned us. We made our way the best we could, two young girls. It took us months. We became experts at hiding. At times I had to steal food, money, valuables. One time nothing we had was enough to pay the men who helped us.”
“They said one of us had to go with them. I had so much less to lose than Carmen, it only made sense that I should be the one. She is a Spanish nobleman’s daughter. She would have been unmarriageable. For her to be defiled that way would have been the same as death.”
“So you offered yourself to save her.”
“I was a foreigner, an orphan without prospects. They did not hurt me.”
“I can see that they did, even if you cannot.”
“I closed my eyes and let them do what they wanted. We had no choice! I knew I had sacrificed my chance to ever marry. But marriage did not fit into my plans to seek revenge on Sweeney and the other two men. I could not imagine then that it would ever matter.”
Her face was averted, her eyes closed. He moved as close to her as he could without actually touching her.
“And if I said it did not matter, would you marry me?” he said very softly.
She opened her eyes. “I would think about it, if I believed you.”
“Then allow me to convince you that it does not matter.” He put one hand behind her head and the other behind her waist and drew her gently to him. Just before he kissed her he said, “I love you. If there was any way I could take away all the pain you have suffered, I would do it gladly. But if you let me, I will give you a future more full of happiness than you ever knew was possible.”
Falcon’s heart was still full of anguish when the baron’s lips touched hers. His kiss was tentative at first, a question posed in physical terms. But the intensity grew as he sought her answer in the exchange of their warm breath and the beating of their hearts.
Her heart and soul knew what her mind had not yet accepted—that indeed, love was the destiny God had intended for her. She could not help responding honestly to the message he was sending to her, a message of love so great that all of her past mistakes and suffering could be swept away by it.
As he enfolded her deeper in his embrace and allowed his passion for her to show the way, her own passion began to shake loose from the restraints she had built around it. The hard, bitter stone of vengeance in her heart cracked apart into dust. Joy and wonder rushed in to fill its place. She did love this man, and it felt right—so right. In his arms now she felt a sense of belonging, of having come home, of having found what it was she was supposed to have been seeking all along.
Tears of gratitude and happiness began to spill down her face. A little sigh escaped her when he nuzzled her neck and planted a warm kiss on the collarbone exposed by the neckline of her dress. “Say you’ll marry me,” he murmured. He stopped suddenly and fixed his gaze upon her, his gray eyes dark as a storm and more intense than she had ever seen them.
“Say you’ll marry me,” he repeated. This time it was a command.
A log shifted in the fire, sending up a shower of sparks and momentarily brightening the room.
“Yes,” Falcon whispered, echoing the sound of the fire. Then louder, more certainly, “Yes! Yes, I will marry you!”
Lord Danebridge whooped in joy and spun her around, laughing. She laughed, too, until he slowed down and kissed her again, this time a long, lingering kiss full of promise.
“I think, in this case, it is high time that you begin calling me Jeremy,” he said when he was finished.
Falcon paused, facing one more decision. But this time there seemed to be no question. “In the regiment my name was shortened to Falcon. I had sharp eyes when we were foraging, and they teased me about my stubbornness—they said I never let go of an idea once I seized it.” She smiled into his eyes. “I cannot promise that that has changed. Fair warning! But I was named for the village in Ireland where my mother was born. My name is Falcarrah.”
“It is beautiful,” he said, repeating it. And it did sound beautiful, on his lips. Falcon did not feel the rush of pain that had accompanied it ever since her parents’ deaths.
“I hope you like the sound of it combined with mine,” he added. “Falcarrah Coleburne Hazelton, Lady Danebridge. I do not intend to give you long at all to get used to it. I hope and pray that you will live with it for a very long time.”
True to his word, Lord Danebridge obtained a special license and he and Falcon were wed within a fortnight. The Dowager Lady Danebridge and young Tobey were as thrilled as anyone, except possibly Maggie and Triss. Those two, if anyone had asked, would have insisted they were even happier.
Falcon’s only regret was the exclusion of her Spanish friends from the new direction in her life. She continued to send letters regularly, never knowing if they were received. That is why, three months later she was both excited and fearful to receive a letter sent from Cadiz.
She was playing her mother’s harp softly in the comfortable and well-stocked library at Hazelworth when the footman brought her the letter. Jeremy was reading in his favorite chair nearby.
“It is from Don Andrés,” she told the baron, opening it with shaking fingers.
Jeremy had long since come to know a great deal more about the Spanish family that had taken Falcon in after she had reached the south of Spain. He left his book to come to his wife’s side.
“Don Andrés writes that they have evaded Fernando’s pogroms and that they are emigrating to the La Plata provinces in South America,” Falcon said, her eyes skimming over the page eagerly. Then she lifted them to look at Jeremy. “They will be farther away than ever, but at least they will be safe. Don Andrés hopes to purchase a large tract of land for a ranch. Oh, how I hope they will be happy.”
“At least as happy as we are?”
“Oh, at least,” she agreed, rising from her chair to embrace him. As she felt his warm, strong arms around her, she sighed contentedly. “If that is possible. Or at least as happy as Maggie and Triss.”
The prickly Irishwoman and the crusty Cornishman were as unlikely a pair as honey and vinegar, but they had decided they had grown so used to each other’s company that they would make their testy partnership a permanent one. Wedding plans were already afoot to celebrate their union in a month’s time.
“I will have to ask Carlos and Benita if they would like to go to Carmen’s family. Those two have done well enough here, but when winter comes the difference between the English climate and what they are accustomed to will be worse than anything they’ve yet encountered.
“There have been so many changes,” Falcon murmured as Jeremy’s embrace began to turn into something more.
“Yes,” he agreed softly, slipping one hand between them to feel her breast through the fabric of her dress. “Although I have to say I am only just beginning to notice some of the changes in you.”
“Can you truly notice a difference already?” She smiled dreamily. “Tobey was so delighted with the idea of our adding to the family. We must tell him soon, although I can hardly imagine how he will survive the suspense of waiting to know if it is a boy or a girl.”
Jeremy kissed her nose. “Perhaps, in time, we can give him one of each, if we conduct ourselves appropriately.”
“Mm-m,” Falcon replied as he drew her up into a deep kiss. “One of each, or even more. There’s your mother to make happy, too, you know.”
“Not to mention you and me,” he said, putting his lips back on hers. “I love you,” he whispered against the softness of her mouth.
“I love you,” she whispered back.
They finished the conversation in a way that needed no further words.
THE END
Books by Gail Eastwood
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Here are more books by Gail Eastwood for you to enjoy.
A Perilous Journey
The Persistent Earl
The Captain’s Dilemma
An Unlikely Hero
Excerpt from
The Captain’s Dilemma
Merissa found the Frenchman still asleep upon her arrival in the loft the following morning. She shook his good shoulder gently.
“Monsieur? Capitaine Valmont.”
She was quite unprepared for his abrupt and violent reaction. “Quel diable! Qu’est-ce que c’est?” he shouted, swinging up wildly and grabbing her by the arm.
“Oh!” Merissa squeaked as she tried to pull back.
The brown eyes opened, seemed not to focus for a moment, and then sharpened. He groaned as he released her and flopped back onto the soft hay. “Mademoiselle, never, never do that to someone who has lived as I have.”
Merissa rubbed her arm. “That is undoubtedly good advice. I would follow it gladly except for one small detail. I know nothing at all about the kind of life you have lived. I meant only to wake you.”
He made no reply but lay back in the hay, moaning. His eyes were closed again.
Anxiety replaced her indignation. “I’m sorry. Have you hurt your arm? Here, let me look.” She moved around him, crouching under the roof rafters that came down to the floor of the loft. “That dressing needs to be changed, anyway,” she added, kneeling down beside him.
The man moved so quickly that she hardly knew what happened. One moment she was beside him, and the next he had pushed her over into the hay and pinned her beneath him. As she gasped in outrage, he brought his mouth over hers.
The crushing kiss she expected with pounding heart never came, however. His kiss was as light and gentle as a butterfly’s tickle. His weight pressed her deeper into the soft hay as his lips teased hers in a leisurely exploration. Good Lord! Her urge to fight evaporated in the heat he generated and a slow, languorous fire ignited inside her instead. Just as it did, he stopped and flopped back into the hay next to her.
“Yes, I did hurt my arm,” he said with a wicked chuckle, “but it feels immeasurably better now.”
“What? How dare you!” she sputtered. She could feel the color flooding into her cheeks, as much from embarrassment as anger.