Annette Blair

by Holy Scoundrel

  Chastity held Bekah closer. “If you could direct us.”

  The matron shook her head. “If you insist.” She pointed. “There it is, top ‘o the hill.”

  A honey-gold manse stood guarding the valley, its chimneystacks straight as parade soldiers at full attention. Mullioned windows—as tall as the first floor, and wide as they were tall—reflected the sun, bright as that off the stone itself.

  “It’s a bloomin’ castle,” Matt said.

  “Magic,” whispered Luke.

  Mark snorted. “Where our dreams will come true.”

  “It is splendid,” Chastity said. “As if it’s made of gold.”

  “That’s the sun on the stone—Painswick stone. The old Earl’s dead. That’s his house. You kin?”

  “If you could tell me how to get there.”

  “Go left at the yew row and take the hill straight up. Been abandoned for years. Except for a daft caretaker, now and again, most won’t go near the place.”

  Chastity gave her thanks and they went on their way, the villager following. “It’s farther than you think. You got a key? Can’t get in, if you don’t have a key.”

  Chastity kept walking.

  “You’re braver than I,” the tenacious woman called from a distance.

  Luke blew the shepherd’s horn Chastity had saved for him. WARRONNK!

  Mr. Sennett was right. Boys were noisy. She would never be able to thank the solicitor for giving her the use of Sunnyledge—though if he ever learned that she rescued the children after he set down his rules— Well, just imagining the consequences of her actions made Chastity shudder, even as Rebekah began to wail.

  “How old is Bekah?” she asked the boys.

  “Three ‘cept we dunno’ when we’re gonna’ be the next number,” Luke said.

  “Don’t mind that noise she makes,” Matt said. “She does that lots. Wish she would talk, though.”

  “She’s dumb.”

  “That will be enough, Mark,” Chastity said, coming to a faltering stop with a shiver.

  Sunnyledge may have looked warm and inviting from the vale, but up close, after dark, it looked decidedly bleak, forsaken, and forbidding.

  The key was useless. A mere nudge opened the door, the wind taking it the rest of the way. With the children attached to her skirts, Chastity stepped inside, stifling a nervous urge to giggle. “Hello? Is anyone here?”

  WARRONNNK!

  The sound made Chastity shriek and fall against the door, a hand to her fast-pumping heart. “That will be enough, Luke. Anyone here has expired from fright by now.”

  Chastity tried to lock the door, but the keyhole turned with the key, so she pushed a chair against it, cutting off the last sliver of moonlight. “Bother, I am such an idiot. I do not even have a candle.”

  “I can see in the dark,” Matt said. “We hid in Aunt Anna’s cellar so long after she died, we never saw the sun.”

  “Do you think you can find the kitchen?”

  “I’m good at finding things. Be right back.”

  Chastity sat on the floor, Bekah, Mark, and Luke, cozy and warm, nesting in her black wool skirts. For once, she was glad William had not seen fit to replace her religious habits during their short marriage. She had, however, removed all symbols of her religious life, so that her gowns looked more like widow’s weeds.

  “Found the kitchen, Kitty. And candles,” Matt called.

  A short while later, the children ate some of the bread and cheese she’d bought, as exhaustion overtook them, and a sense of destiny, profound and peaceful, enveloped her.

  Settled for the night with Zeke, their lame rabbit, on a mattress plumped with Chastity’s aprons and nightshifts, one old habit and one Sunday best, Luke said they hadn’t been so comfy since Mum left.

  “I worried,” Matt said with a yawn. “That you wouldn’t come for us at the workhouse, like you promised.”

  Mark scoffed and rolled to his side, presenting his rigid back. “We would never have gone to that horrid old place, if you hadn’t turned us in.”

  If she failed to breach that barrier Mark kept erected around his heart, Chastity feared it would become as hard as the stone in these Cotswold Hills.

  How could he be so angry, yet cuddle his baby sister so lovingly? Perhaps this child, who professed to need no one, needed her even more than his brothers and sister did. One thing was certain; Mark would never forgive her for trying to gain their custody through the proper channels first.

  After she arrived on Britain’s shore, she had gone on to William’s Aunt Anna’s as planned. There, she found that his aunt had died, leaving his young cousins, abandoned at her passing, hiding in her cellar to keep from getting separated or going to the workhouse.

  Chastity had marched them to the Vicar to say she would take them. The Vicar passed her to the Curate, the Curate to the Beadle.

  Chastity shuddered remembering the Beadle’s lustful suggestion as to how she could purchase them. Since she refused to pay his price, however, the Beadle had relegated her children to the parish workhouse with nary a blink.

  So much for following the rules, Chastity thought, unable to forget Mr. Sennett’s words, “If I find that you have acted in other than a moral, conscientious or lawful manner, you will lose Sunnyledge, and I will see that you never open a refuge for children anywhere, ever.”

  At the workhouse, children younger than hers, died. She thought about the baby girl born the week she worked there, while trying to get hers back. How she’d wanted to take that babe as well. She thought of Matt’s protectiveness, Mark’s anger, Luke’s trust, and Bekah’s cough.

  In taking them, she had acted conscientiously and morally. Except for the Beadle’s lust, her guardianship would be lawful as well.

  Mr. Sennett said he tried to bring the conditions of asylums and workhouses to the notice of people who could improve them, and their lack of interest angered him.

  “Do you never get so incensed,” Chastity had dared to ask, knowing she planned to rescue William’s cousins the next day, “that you wish to take matters into your own hands?”

  “We cannot give in to such,” he said. “To have lasting effect, reform must be undertaken in a lawful, orderly manner. There is never an excuse to breach rules.”

  Chastity sighed. Having been an orphan, the solicitor lauded her wish to open a home where children without parents would be loved. She only hoped that he would come to understand that taking these few had been necessary.

  She bent to them now—warm, safe, unafraid, bellies full—covered a shoulder, stroked a brow, and prayed, for their sakes, that all would be well.

  Then found a chair in which to take down her hair, and examined the kitchen, aglow from a fire in the old stone hearth.

  Sunnyledge—a haven—someday perhaps, a home.

  *

  The hell of it was, Reed Gilbride thought, rubbing the back of his neck, looking up at Sunnyledge, the house was so damned big, he could search for years and never find the truth of his birth. As for secrets, the place fairly reeked of them.

  Even the cryptic note he had received added to Sunnyledge’s aura of mystery—a note that roused an anger, tempered oddly by hope. Such anger, he usually reserved for the people who gave him life and threw him away. And the hope? Well, that just made him madder ... until Sennett killed expectation by saying the note must be a hoax. The solicitor said he’d seen more than one, worded exactly the same way. He also suggested that a Barrington by-blow had no claim, here.

  Still, Reed could not give up. As a child, he would have settled for knowing who his parents might have been. Now he bloody well wanted to know why he had not been good enough for them to keep. Who gave a helpless babe to the Gilbrides, of all people?

  He led his horse around back to find it shelter.

  Why did the woman who raised him—if you could call it that—refuse to talk about Sunnyledge? Why act as if the devil would swallow her whole, if she did? Could this place hold the key to his past? H
im, the Earl of Barrington, as the note suggested?

  Reed mocked himself with a chuckle, raised his collar against a cold drizzle, settled Stealth in a rickety old stable, returned and picked up his satchel.

  He might be a bastard in more ways than one, but with or without Sennett’s approval, he needed to find out.

  Now that Boney had been defeated, and he’d retired from the Guards, Reed looked forward to a life of peace and quiet, and the occasional willing woman. But first he must search for his roots, this being the place to start.

  “Damn, it’s cold.” As if fate heard, a blast of wind and rain smacked him in the face and opened the door with a flourish—the thunderous crack of it hitting the wall loud enough to wake the Sunnyledge ghost herself.

  Reed saluted and stepped inside, a sense of inevitability filling him, as if he had arrived after a thirty-year sojourn, turned an invisible corner, and could not return the way he had come.

  What was more, he did not want to.

  In the kitchen, Chastity jumped at the thunderous sound, and shot to her feet. After a frozen heart-pounding beat, arms and legs prickling, she located a meat cleaver in a kitchen drawer and closed her trembling fingers around its smooth bone handle.

  THE BEGINNING

  EXCERPT

  THE PRINCE OF PLEASURE

  By

  Sandra Marton

  CHAPTER ONE

  His name was Khan ibn Zain al Hassad.

  That was what he called himself though, in truth, his name was much longer and more elaborate.

  In private, he winced at the sound of it. What man of the 21 century wanted to be known as His Royal Highness, Sheikh Khan ibn Zain al Hassad, Crown Prince of Altara, Defender of its Ancient and Honorable Throne, Protector of His People, Leopard of the Finarian Hills?

  All those antiquated titles…

  Yes, he was proud of them. The blood of kings and warriors ran within his veins. It was just that the titles often preceded him. People bowed and scraped before they knew if he was worth the bowing or scraping.

  Not that any man was worth that.

  His father had always frowned and said his attitude came of having had an American mother. Worse, he'd attended an American college, an American university. Two American universities, to be accurate.

  In a sense, the old man had been right. Being half North American, Khan understood the need to move forward. Being half Altaran, he understood the importance of tradition.

  Both parts of him knew that titles could be intimidating.

  They could also make people fawn over him.

  People who wanted to sell him things he didn't need or desire, who wanted to borrow money and, worst of all, people who wanted to bask in what they saw as his reflected glory.

  Added to that were the all women who thought it was original to gaze at him from under lowered lashes and whisper,And are you a leopard in bed, my lord?

  At eighteen, the question had been a challenge he'd been more than eager to prove, but he was thirty now, his father was dead, and his life was one of responsibility and discipline. He was a king, even if he still preferred to call himself a prince.

  Khan's green eyes narrowed.

  And there were fools out there who called him only a fantastically rich playboy.

  It infuriated him.

  He was the leader of his people.

  Maybe rock stars enjoyed being sought after for their celebrity. All right, maybe he'd enjoyed it, too, years back, but he was older and wiser. Still, the gossip blogs andPage SixandPeople and half a dozen other gushing magazines loved to send photographers after him, to write lies about him, and to call him…

  The damned word set his teeth on edge.

  They called himgorgeous. Such a lurid word, one you might use to describe a sunset or a mountain vista but to ascribe it to a man…

  His looks were meaningless.

  In truth, they had nothing to do with him.

  Take a father of a certain height, a certain body type, a man descended from conquerors. Combine his DNA with that of a stunning supermodel.

  Unless something went very wrong, you'd end up with a man who looked like him.

  Six foot two. Leanly muscled body. Broad shoulders, narrow hips, long legs. Thick-lashed eyes the color of emeralds, square jaw, high cheekbones…

  Add in all those anachronistic titles…

  Khan's jaw tightened.

  The only thing about him that was his, entirely his, was his fortune.

  Forbes called him one of the ten richest men in the world. He suspected it was true but the only reason it mattered was because, unlike his looks and his titles, he had earned that fortune on his own.

  Well, he thought, smiling a little as he stood on the terrace of the Texas mansion calledEl Sueño, well, not exactly.

  The truth was, his old friend Travis Wilde had earned it for him.

  The only credit he could take was for having been smart enough to have handed Travis the relatively modest inheritance his mother had left him a decade ago.

  "Do something with it," he'd said.

  Travis had glanced at the check, then at him.

  "Something safe?" he'd said, with a grin. "Or something risky?"

  Khan had laughed.

  "Have I ever done anything that was safe?"

  Back then, he had not.

  He'd lived for risk. For the adrenaline high that came of skydiving, of kayaking rapids nobody sane would go near, of jumping out of hovering helicopter into virgin snow and schussing down from what was surely the edge of the world.

  But that had changed.

  Two years ago, his father had become ill. Very ill. Within six months, he was gone. Running the kingdom of Altara had fallen to Khan.

  His Council of Ministers had told him not to worry. They would take care of things.

  Khan's mouth thinned.

  And they had—with near-disastrous results.

  His father had ruled as if it were still the 19 century. The ministers, not content with that, had ruled as if it were the 15 century.

  Khan was a prince, accustomed to a life of pleasure, but he was not a fool. His country and his people were inexorably part of him.

  He'd waited a year. Then, with determination and commitment his ministers had not expected, he had assumed control.

  His life had changed, of course, but in his heart, he'd always known this was kismet, his destiny.

  Under his guidance, Altara was moving forward, embracing science, technology, and a new infrastructure. Roads. Hospitals. Schools, all funded by the money his father had left, a multibillion-dollar cache the old man had amassed from the kingdom's oil and mineral resources. His father had treated the money as if it were his own, an ancient custom followed by most of the kingdoms in the so-called Black Gold triangle along the Sapphire Sea.

  Not anymore.

  Khan held a view some of his ministers saw as quaint, even radical.

  He believed that Altara's wealth belonged to Altara.

  A New Beginning for an Ancient Kingdom,The New York Times had trumpeted. It was the first time he'd smiled at a headline that involved him.

  But there were still those who preferred to see him as a stereotype, a libertine prince with too much money and too few morals.

  He came across them all the time.

  Tonight, for instance.

  Dammit!

  He was back to that. The woman. The brunette in the house behind him.

  A vein in his temple throbbed.

  Ridiculous, that he should permit such an incident to anger him, especially this evening, when he had important business to conduct in Dallas as well as here at the Wilde ranch.

  A sea of oil lay under the endless sands of Altara but much of the drilling equipment was old and outdated. His engineers had tried to convince Khan's father to invest in new techniques, but the older man had been deaf to their pleas.

  Khan had listened.

  He understood the benefits of looking beyond the Black Go
ld triangle for new environmental and ecological drilling techniques, and he knew that there were men in Texas who understood such things.

  Men like the Wilde brothers.

  They were his oldest friends, and for years, they had been among his most trusted advisors.

  Jacob was the one to consult about the horses Khan bred on ranches in Brazil and in Altara. Caleb handled all his stateside legal affairs. Travis was the reason he had become almost embarrassingly rich even before he'd ascended the throne.

  The four of them had met as undergrads at Columbia University. They'd been acquaintances.

  Then, one memorable night, they'd become friends. The memory eased him, and made him smile.

  Somehow, they'd ended up going out together after they'd all survived tough finals. The night had been a long journey through pleasure.

  They'd ended it in a tough bar off Amsterdam Avenue.

  A bunch of punks had decided the three guys with the funny Southern drawls and the guy with the definitely un-American accent would be easy to take.

  Wrong.

  A couple of bloody noses later, the punks stumbled out into the night. Khan and the Wildes had grinned at each other, and then ordered a round of Buds for the crowd of admirers who'd stood back and watched the brawl.

  As the night wore on, they'd talked about the future. Jake wanted to fly combat helicopters. Travis, already a pilot, wanted to fly jets and do in the bad guys. Caleb was talking with a recruiter for a hush-hush government agency.

  "I'd tell you all about it," he'd said solemnly, "but then I'd have to kill you."

  Everybody laughed. Then Caleb looked at Khan.

  "So," he'd said, "what's it like to be a prince?"

  By then, the heady combination of wine, women and a bar fight had loosened Khan's tongue.

  "Actually," he'd said, "it sucks."

  The Wildes had looked at each other.

  "Such princely talk," Caleb had said.

  "You wanted the truth. Well, that's the truth." The downside of too much of any indulgence was reality, and Khan had plummeted into a lake of it. "Men should not be judged by such arcane nonsense as titles."

  Silence. Then Jake had raised his eyebrows.