by Tamara Leigh
She tsked, said, “As I would marvel over you,” and unfastened his brooch and let it and the single rosebud drop to the floor ahead of his mantle.
“My wife is eager,” he rumbled as she pulled at the laces closing the neck of his tunic.
She peeked at him from beneath her lashes. “I am as you made me.”
He laughed, lifted a hand to her hair, and touched a flower. “Then ’tis time our bed was covered in roses.”
Off came the gown. Off came the tunic. Off came all. And finally…finally…Liam put his wife to bed.
Dear Lady Reader (and the occasional Lord Reader),
I hope you enjoyed Joslyn and Liam’s love story. If you would consider posting a review of Lady Undaunted at Amazon, I would appreciate it. Thank you for joining me in the age of castles, knights, ladies, destriers, deep, dark woods and—dare I mention it?—outdoor plumbing. Wishing you many hours of inspiring, happily-ever-after reading.
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EXCERPT
LADY EVER AFTER
A clean-read rewrite of Unforgotten,
published by HarperCollins, 1997
From Tamara Leigh, the USA Today best-selling author of the acclaimed Dreamspell, comes another medieval time travel romance set during the 15th century conflict of the Wars of the Roses.
Lady Catherine Algernon, dreaming of her death at the hands of traitors, is stunned when a handsome stranger from the twenty-first century saves her life just as her nightmare is about to come true. Look for Lady Ever After in Fall 2016.
PROLOGUE
Northern England, May 1464
She had seen her death. Though the dream had come to her every eve for a sennight, that from which she now awakened had been this-worldly—so real she momentarily considered this was the dream.
Chemise damp with the sweat of fear, Catherine turned onto her stomach, reached beneath the bed, and patted a hand over the floorboards until her fingers found the hilt.
“There you are,” she whispered. “There.” She started to draw her hand back but could not.
Every night before attempting a few hours of sleep, and each time she came up out of the dream to find the dark still upon her, she felt for the dagger to reassure herself it could be brought to hand. This night was different, the living, breathing memory of her death demanding more than reassurance.
She curled her fingers around the hilt and dropped onto her back. Clasping the sheathed blade to her breast, she stared at the ceiling. But try though she did to resist the dream, fatigue once more thrust her into that world.
Her enemies were upon her. Before, behind, and beside her. Every one of them faceless, though she need not see their coarse jaws, gleaming eyes, and grinning mouths to know them for traitors.
The stench of their bodies making her swallow hard, crude taunts stirring the fine hairs across her body, she held. Though her defense of the gatehouse would be for naught, never would she surrender. Thus, she must be felled, and the warrior who broke from the others believed he was the one to do it.
Straining beneath the weight of a sword whose point sought to be more intimate with the floor than the air, Catherine added her left hand to the hilt and hefted the weapon as the man drew near enough that he appeared faceless no more—whiskered jaw, leering eyes, moldering teeth.
Moved by fear of a strength that allowed her to sweep the blade high, she sliced through his sword arm.
The long silence of disbelief. The roar of pain and anger. The sword clattering to the floor. The savage warrior coming for her.
Catherine stumbled back against the portcullis winch and tried to raise her sword again, but too late. Ever too late.
The devil wrenched the weapon from her, and without a pittance of hesitation, turned it on her.
She could never remember his face upon awakening. But now she saw clearly his contorted features as he drove the blade through her, barked triumphantly, and lurched back, brandishing steel whose silver was terrifyingly more beautiful varnished in crimson.
Catherine dropped her chin. Blood spread across the bodice of her cream-colored gown, but where was the pain?
She almost laughed when it answered like a child eager to assure its mother it was here.
Oh, how it was here! As torturous as the sear of a hot iron one should not trip fingers across and yet foolishly and fiercely gripped.
She opened her mouth to drag in air needed to lend voice to her agony, but there was no breath to be had.
’Tis good, she told herself, embracing what was to be her last pleasure—denying these traitors the satisfaction of hearing her scream like a lamb put to slaughter by one incapable of delivering a mercifully swift death.
Accepting her battle was terribly lost, grateful it was finally done, she slid down the winch to the floor.
Lord, Lord, she called ahead of what she prayed was her ascension, if only I had my life to live over…
CHAPTER ONE
England, Present Day
Collier Morrow ended the call, dropped the cell phone on his desk, and dug his fingers into his neck muscles.
“Bloody rotter,” he growled, envisioning his older brother smiling his maddening smile, feet up on the desk, unlit cigar jutting from his mouth.
And James had every reason to wallow. His latest acquisition was no minor conquest. Indeed, there was none beyond it.
Collier dug deeper, pushed and pulled at the muscles.
There had always been rivalry between the brothers, encouraged by their father who had seen it as a means of ensuring it could never be said he had produced weak sons. But the lessons Winton Morrow had taught them had not died with him six years ago. If it wasn’t James scrambling to snatch a property out from under Collier, it was Collier returning the favor the next go-around. Always a higher stake. Always a way to better the other. Until now.
It had been their father’s greatest aspiration to recover Strivling, the castle that had been held by the Morrows from the fifteenth century until the nineteenth when it was sold to raise the family out of debt. Having failed in that endeavor, his sons regarded it as the ultimate prize, the victor never to be outdone.
And Collier’s defeat was all the harder for the company it kept with reminders of the injuries he had sustained a year ago. His neck, arm, and ribs aching—he choked down air and slowly exhaled. But there was no lessening of the pain. No relief.
Knowing where he was heading, he struggled against the need and told himself it would pass, that he had only to wait it out.
But for how long? An hour? A day? Longer?
He released his neck, thrust a hand into his pocket, and clamped his fingers around the vial.
Two, he promised. No more than three. And if it gets bad—
“Your home is beautiful.”
He snapped his head up and stared at the woman who stood in the doorway of his office. Auburn hair framing a lovely face, sky-blue eyes steady, Aryn Viscott gave a half-hearted laugh and stepped into the room. “Not the reception I was hoping for.”
Telling himself he felt neither pain nor anger, Collier drew his hand from his pocket and strode from behind his desk. “I’m glad you’re here.”
“Are you?”
“You know I am, darling.”
She raised her eyebrows. “You were going to meet me at the airport.”
And would have had he not been derailed by one call after another. Although pricked by guilt over sending a driver for her, he’d had no choice, not with Strivling at stake. “I apologize. An important business matter required my attention.”
“Problems?”
Ignoring the invitation to elaborate, he said, “Nothing I can’t handle,” and drew her to him.
She tensed, but when her chest brushed his, she dropped her purse and leaned up and into him.
He closed his mouth over hers, felt his aches ease as his body was wonderfully and uncomfortably stirred by bei
ng so near her.
Thinking that if he could lose himself in her arms, then that part urging him to lose himself in the vial would be quieted, he was tempted to lure her beyond this place he had moved her past only once—much to her whiter-than-white regret. However, he had agreed to her terms, and for it would not have all of her again until the ring in his desk was on her finger. Soon though, and for that he had moved their eighteen-month courtship to England where they would make a life together.
The phone rang.
Grateful for the interruption that made it easier to pull back from the line they were not to cross, he lifted his head. “I’d better take that.”
Face flushed, breath quick and shallow, Aryn said, “Under the circumstances, I suppose you ought to.”
He retrieved his cell phone. “Morrow here.”
“Hello, little brother.”
Relieved his back was turned to Aryn, Collier fixed his gaze on the clouds gathering outside the many-paned window behind his desk. “James.”
“Have you heard?”
“I have.”
“Then I won’t keep you.”
Were he alone, Collier would have slammed the phone down, but he would not have Aryn see what teemed beneath his skin in such abundance his longing for her shifted to the vial in his pocket.
He placed his phone on his desk and turned.
“Why did James call?” she asked.
Her knowledge of the discord between the brothers was limited to the little she had pried out of him. And that was enough. “Nothing you need worry about.” He took her arm. “How about I show you around the manor?”
She pulled free. “You have to end it, Collier. Whatever this thing is between your brother and you, it has to stop. Look what happened with—”
“It’s under control,” he said and felt the urgent press of the vial against his thigh.
She narrowed her lids. “Are you sure?”
Until three weeks ago, his dependence on painkillers had been under control. However, when the bid for Strivling started going James’s way, the pain had climbed up out of him. For days he had struggled to reject the promise of relief, then that long, excruciating night…
But he could quit. He had done it before.
“Quite sure. Now would you like a tour, or should we continue where we left off?” He moved his gaze to her lips.
Though her suspicion continued to fill the space between them, she said, “A tour would be safer.”
The strain about his mouth gave way to a smile that felt almost genuine. “In some things, Aryn, you are too proper—like the English of old.”
She bounced her eyebrows. “Who knows? Maybe this American’s roots were pulled from your English soil.”
He impressed her face on his memory, though it was hardly necessary since he would soon awaken to it every morning, happen upon it every day, and kiss it every night. But always this feeling it might be the last time he looked upon her…
“What is it, Collier?”
He blinked. “You’re right. Who knows?” He offered his arm. “Shall we?”
The final stop on the tour. Probably one they should have skipped, Collier reflected as Aryn stepped ahead of him into his bedroom.
She halted before the fireplace and tilted her head back to study the portrait to which he awakened when he resided at the manor. “How unusual. It’s a woman, isn’t it?”
He came alongside her. “It is.” At first glance, the mash of colors were without sense, making it appear more a piece of modern art than a portrait commissioned in the fifteenth century. But it did belong to that distant past, as did the lady revealed here and there through the landscape painted over her during the sixteenth century.
“Who is she?”
“It’s believed to be Catherine Algernon. The picture was removed from Strivling Castle in—”
“Strivling?” She looked around. “Didn’t it once belong to your ancestors?”
Once, and now again, but not to Collier. Forcing the darkness down, he said, “It did,” and returned to the safer topic. “The picture was believed to be merely a landscape.”
“No one knew what lay beneath?”
“Not until it had hung in the library of this manor twenty-five years with the morning sun on it. Then the top layer of paint began to peel away.”
“Why would someone paint over her?”
“She was never completed.” He pointed to a gap in the scenery which revealed the outline of hands, the only color that of the red rose clasped between them.
“I see.”
“Since the portrait would have been deemed useless in its unfinished state, it was overpainted with the landscape, a not uncommon practice with canvases never completed or deemed inadequate.”
“Aren’t you curious to know what, exactly, she looks like?”
“Always.”
“Then why not have the portrait restored?”
“It’s been attempted, but the landscape gives up only what it wishes, when it wishes.”
“As if it guards a secret, hmm?” She reached up and touched the frame. “I wonder why it was never finished.”
He considered the still blue eyes staring out from the canvas. “If it is Catherine Algernon, her sudden death would account for that.”
Aryn looked across her shoulder. “How did she die?”
He smiled. “You would know if you were English,” he said, though the truth of it was that the legend of Catherine Algernon had died long ago. Only the generations of Morrows kept it alive.
“Well, since I’m thoroughly and pitifully American”—she returned his smile—“you’ll have to enlighten me.”
He loved the sparkle of her eyes, one of the many things that had first attracted him to her.
“Was she a significant figure?”
He braced an arm on the mantel. “No. It was her death that put her name on men’s lips.”
“Which brings us back to how she died.”
“Have you heard of the Wars of the Roses—the House of Lancaster against the House of York?”
She wrinkled her nose. “Sounds familiar, but history and I aren’t on the best of terms.”
“It was a civil war waged for the throne of England. Catherine Algernon supported the Lancasters”—he indicated the red rose—“whereas the Morrows supported the Yorks whose badge was the white rose.”
“Hence, the Wars of the Roses.”
“As it was later called. In 1461, the Yorkists overthrew King Henry the sixth and installed Edward the fourth on the throne. In an attempt to subdue the northern barons who continued to support Henry, Edward sent a man named Montagu to besiege their castles. There was resistance, but eventually surrender. Edward’s policy being one of conciliation, he restored the castles to their Lancastrian lords. But in 1464, they revolted again, and with the same result. Among the last to fall was Strivling Castle. Catherine died in the final engagement.”
“Go on.”
“Legend has it that, following the death of Lord Somerton and his son—Catherine’s betrothed—the lady took control of the castle’s defenses.”
Aryn’s smile widened.
“Let me guess. This bit of history you do like.”
“Of course. It’s nice to know not all damsels were in distress. Continue.”
“Montagu announced that the man who succeeded in opening Strivling would be awarded the castle. Being a landless knight, my ancestor—Edmund Morrow—accepted the challenge. Unfortunately, he and the others who offered their services were defeated, and those not killed were captured and imprisoned, Edmund among them. On the day following his capture, he led an escape from the dungeon. He and his followers had just taken the winch room when Catherine—”
“Winch room?”
“It’s where the winches that control the portcullis and drawbridge are located.” At Aryn’s nod, he said, “Catherine defended it with this sword.” He touched the blue-black hilt of the weapon on the mantel.
Aryn
gasped, evidencing she had been too engrossed in the portrait to notice the sword. “She actually used that?”
“She did, but though she had the passion for fighting, she had none of the skill or strength. The sword was turned on her and she was slain.”
“Edmund killed her?”
Collier shook his head. “The man’s name was Walther, a mercenary knight the same as my ancestor. Catherine cut his sword arm and, in his fury, he killed her.”
Indignation rolled into Aryn’s eyes. “Chivalrous! Her life for a few drops of blood.”
He chuckled. “I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but regardless of how your Hollywood portrays knights, chivalry was often forgotten when there was blood to be shed and plunder to be had—especially when a man’s pride was trounced as Catherine trounced Walther’s.”
Aryn grunted softly, slid a finger down the blade.
“Careful. The edges are as sharp as the day they last drew blood.”
She turned her blue eyes on him. “So with Catherine dead, her enemy was let in and your ancestor awarded Strivling Castle.”
“Actually, Edmund’s reward was even greater. He was granted the entirety of the barony of Highchester, Strivling being one of its three castles.”
“Impressive. What of that pig, Walther?”
“Edmund awarded him charge of one of the lesser castles. Thereafter, the mercenary fell into obscurity.”
“Not soon enough for my liking.”
He grinned. “It’s over five hundred years in the past. Nothing to be done about it now.” He pulled Aryn toward him.
Shedding her indignation, she wound her arms around him, and Collier kissed her long.
“How I like what you do to me,” she whispered against his lips. “Too much.”
He groaned, raised his head. “Meaning stop.”
She lifted a hand and tripped fingertips over his stubbled jaw. “Afraid so.” She nodded at the bed. “Dangerous.”