The Black Angel (The St Ives)

by Barbara Samuel

  Thank you, Papa.

  Then they joined hands and walked back to Glencove Castle, which had stood for six hundred years, and was strong enough to stand six hundred more.

  ~~###~~

  For Lauerelean and James Samuel, who not only raised the wonderful man who is my husband, but are the best in-laws a woman could ask for.

  ~~~

  Don't miss

  The St. Ives Family Series - Book Two

  NIGHT OF FIRE

  Barbara Samuel

  Lady Cassandra St. Ives had sworn off marriage ever since becoming a happy widow, but lately her affections have been engaged by a mysterious, long distance correspondent. Cassandra has shared her soul with her far-off admirer, and when he invites her to visit his home she accepts the invitation gladly. Expecting a kindly of gentleman, Cassandra is stunned to find that Count Basilio Montevarchi is a virile man in his prime who knows her heart's most intimate desires—and is only too willing to fulfill every one...

  The moment Basilio sets eyes on the vibrant beauty he recognizes a soul mate he will never be able to claim as his own. A long-standing betrothal—and the honor of his family—dictate that Basilio must deny himself Cassandra's love. Still they cannot deny the force of their passion until the confines of responsibility finally force them apart. Now Basilio must find a way to keep his heart's desire—before he loses her forever.

  BARBARA SAMUEL O'NEAL

  Barbara Samuel (who also writes as Barbara O’Neal) is the bestselling author of more than 40 books, and has won Romance Writers of America’s RITA award an astounding six times, and she has been a finalist 13 times. Her books have been published around the world, including France, Germany, Italy, and Australia/New Zealand, among others. One of her recent women’s fiction titles, The Lost Recipe for Happiness (written as Barbara O’Neal) went back to print eight times, and her book How to Bake a Perfect Life was a Target Club pick in 2011.

  Whether set in the turbulent past or the even more challenging present, Barbara’s books feature strong women, families, dogs, food, and adventure—whether on the road or toward the heart.

  Now living in her hometown of Colorado Springs, Barbara lives with her partner, Christopher Robin, an endurance athlete, along with her dog and cats. She is an avid gardner, hiker, photographer and traveler who loves to take off at dawn to hike a 14er or head to a faraway land. She loves to connect with readers and is very involved with them on the Internet.

  You may read more about Barbara’s books at her main website, find her at her A Writer Afoot blog and on Facebook.

  Visit Barbara on the Web!

  www.BarbaraSamuel.com

  www.AWriterAfoot.com

  www.BarbaraONeal.com

  ~~~

  BONUS MATERIAL

  Please enjoy excerpts of some of Barbara's other Books:

  Excerpt: Night of Fire

  Excerpt: Lucien's Fall

  Excerpt: Heart of a Knight

  Excerpt: Dancing Moon

  Excerpt: A Winter Ballad

  Excerpt: A Bed of Spices

  Additional titles, including those from other genre, are listed at the end of the excerpts or click HERE to jump there.

  Barbara is very active writing new books and converting her backlist into eBooks. To find the most up to date information, please visit her website.

  NIGHT

  OF

  FIRE

  (Excerpt)

  by

  Barbara Samuel

  The St. Ives Family Series - Book Two

  Part One

  Ask me why I send to you

  This primrose, thus bepearled with dew?

  I will whisper to your ears

  The sweets of love are mixed with tears.

  ~ ROBERT HERRICK

  Prologue

  London

  May 1788

  Cassandra told herself that she had recovered. That she was a woman of the world, and did not fall to pieces over a doomed romance. But the moment she saw him, when he walked into a box across the opera hall, she knew she had lied to herself.

  He was out of place, and so unexpected that she gaped for a long moment before she could fit her mind around the fact that it was him.

  Basilio.

  Here, at the opera.

  In London.

  Blackness prickled at the edges of her vision. She realized she had not breathed, and inhaled deeply, but she could not look away.

  Behind him was a man she vaguely recognized, a ruddy-faced lord from a county near her estate, which only made it all the stranger. Two women had settled at the front of the box, but the men continued some deep discussion, their heads bent together, one graying, the other darkest black.

  A flash of memory hit her like a blow: her hand, white as moonlight against the jet of his hair, the curls leaping around the turn of her finger—

  "Oh, God," Cassandra whispered.

  Her brother Julian leaned closer. "I'm sorry—I didn't quite hear you."

  She put her hand on his sleeve, trying to remember how to arrange her expression normally. "Nothing."

  In the box across the crowded, noisy room, Basilio nodded seriously at something, and his hand settled in a quieting sort of way upon the shoulder of the small woman in front of him. She seemed hardly to notice, but even across such a distance, Cassandra read discomfort in her stiffness.

  Abruptly, Cassandra stood, her limbs quaking. "Julian, I feel quite ill. I must go."

  He leapt to his feet, his arm circling her shoulders. "What is it?"

  She waved a hand, bent to pick up her shawl from the seat, and dropped it when her betraying fingers could not hold on to it. She stared at it, the beads glittering along one edge. It looked like water, she thought distantly, the way it shimmered in a pool on the dark floor of the box. It made her think of another shawl, on another floor, and she closed her eyes against the pain of that memory.

  How could a week have changed her life so utterly? A single week, torn from the hundreds and hundreds that made up her life. Forty times that number had passed since then, and none of them had changed her, turned her inside out, made her into a woman she no longer always recognized.

  Julian swept up the shawl and captured her hands, bending to frown closely. "You're shivering like a wet pup!" Bracing her elbow, he said, "Let's get you home."

  "Yes." She vowed to keep her eyes lowered, but the temptation was too great. One more glance at him. Only one.

  But of course it was the dangerous one. For across that distance, across the milling scores of humanity in the gallery below, Basilio chose that moment to raise his head. Their eyes locked, and Cassandra's heart was flooded with the pain of his gentleness, his passion, his words.

  His love. Yes, his love, most of all.

  She fancied his face went pale, and he hastily removed his hand from the woman's shoulder, as if it burned him.

  It gave her courage. Tossing her bright copper head, she said calmly, "Please take me home, Julian."

  Part Two

  My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears,

  And true plain hearts do in the faces rest.

  ~ JOHN DONNE

  Chapter 1

  Eighteen months earlier.…

  Danger arrived in the form of a letter. On that cold and rainy day, Cassandra huddled close to the fire in her sitting room. Her hands were encased in fingerless gloves, her shoulders draped in a thick woolen shawl, her legs covered with a lap robe. Even so, her nose was cold.

  She was supposed to be working, but even with the gloves, her fingers had grown stiff after an hour, and it was not a particularly exciting project, anyway—a rote translation piece for a professor who would pay her well and claim the credit.

  Sipping tea, she stared gloomily at the long windows streaked with a cold March rain. Rain and rain and rain. Ordinarily she didn't mind it, she found stormy weather exhilarating and stimulating. But the sun had not shown itself in nearly a month, and even Cassandra was weary of it. If it went
on much longer, they would all have mold dripping from their fingernails. Society matrons would declare green hair to be the only shade for the season. She amused herself for a moment imagining a rout crowded with beauties sporting twists of mold from their coiffures.

  A sniffle in the hallway shattered the amusing picture just as Cassandra was about to embroider it fully— waistcoats brocaded in silk and mildew, perhaps. She sighed and turned. Her maid, Joan, had had a cold for a week.

  "Letter just come for you, my lady."

  "Thank you." At least it was something to break the monotony. Cassandra hoped it might be from her sister Adriana in Ireland, who had once been a very good correspondent—love had made her neglectful. Cassandra tried not to mind.

  At the sight of the thin, elegant writing on the letter, her heart jumped. Even better than Adriana! She had not dared hope for a letter from Italy yet.

  As the maid left, Cassandra put aside her tea and carried the letter to the window seat. It was colder there, but the light was good. For a moment, she only held it up to look at her name written in his beautiful script, letting the simple presence of it enliven her day. Already she felt warmer, as if the paper itself carried beams of Tuscan sunlight that now leaked into the room, buttery and rich. She lifted it to her nose and inhaled the evocative scent of the far-away—sometimes she thought it was the ocean breezes she smelled, at others she thought it might be his cologne.

  She ran her finger over the black ink that had written her name, Lady Cassandra St. Ives, feeling the faint indentation his pen had made. With her thumb, she brushed the raised letters of the words within the paper, a thick packet this time, words she would read, then read again, and put away, then take out and read again.

  Count Montevarchi. She imagined him to be a stout, short-sighted man, middle aged if she were to judge by the breadth of his studies and travels. He wrote magnificently well, bringing his lovely, faraway world to her.

  The correspondence had begun nearly two years before, when he'd written to praise an essay she'd written on Boccaccio. She'd been quite proud of it, thinking she had captured well the vivid, witty, even bawdy sense of the master, and Count Montevarchi's letter had commented on each of the points she'd thought particularly fine. He'd praised her mightily, which was heady enough.

  Then he had confessed he'd been languishing for over a year after the death of his brothers, and her essay had "broken through the clouds of sorrow over this man's heart and allowed the fresh breeze of laughter to enter." Touched, Cassandra had written back and enclosed a new essay, which she hoped he would find as cheering as the first.

  In return, he'd sent travel articles that he'd written—lush and sensual things that captured exotic and sunny places. They'd exchanged dozens of letters now, sometimes crossing in the mail in their eagerness, letters that became, somehow, very heartfelt. The Count was a thwarted scholar who'd had to don the mantle of his inheritance, returning to the provincial world where his compatriots did not care to discuss poetry. Though she already had a circle of witty and artistic friends, Cassandra had found it easy to express her deepest ambitions to him.

  It was safe. She knew that was a part of the appeal. A confirmed bachelor scholar, a thousand miles or more away, who listened. It was so very rare. And that he should also be a man with a soul painted in the colors of poetry, who responded entirely to her mind instead of her physical presence, made him a very dear friend indeed. He also embodied some of the qualities she would most like to develop in herself. His example had made her braver these past months.

  At last she turned the letter and broke the seal.

  Villa de Montevarchi, Toscana

  2 April 1787

  My Dear Lady Cassandra,

  I have had poor news and find myself driven here tonight to write to you. It is an affair of little importance, a matter of duty I must attend to which gives me no pleasure, so you need not worry it is some awful thing I dare not speak of. Only wearisome.

  I am honored that you enjoyed my essay on Cyprus—and will now urge you again to indulge that longing I sense in you to travel yourself. Why not begin by coming to my Tuscany? Here you would be able to test your bravery under the guidance of a friend. By your writings, I sense you are braver than you know, and since you are a widow, there is none to tell you it is not appropriate. Perhaps it is just the tonic you need to inspire your fine work even more. I will tempt you with the lure of my small collection of Boccaccio manuscripts, which I would enjoy sharing with one who appreciates their worth. Would it not be the deepest pleasure to hold them in your own hands?

  And here is more temptation: I would have wine sent up from my vineyards (truly, you are deprived if you have not drunk our wines) and have my cook prepare the best of his native dishes to shock your tender English palate. Perhaps we could travel to Firenze for the opera, or picnic by the sea. My land is beautiful, inspiring—I suspect that you would find it most agreeable.

  You spoke again of my poetry. I do labor poorly at the art, and find it a most frustrating pursuit. How to capture the perfection of a moment, when the sunlight falls, just so, across the gray branch of an olive? And yet I am driven to it, again and again, like the painters who come here to revel in the light, driven to attempt to capture God in some small way. The holiness of a child's innocent smile, the way a woman bends her head and shows the soft, clean place on the back of her neck—even the burst of sweetness from a plum, plucked from the tree, its juices sweet and hot from the sun exploding from that tender layer of skin into my mouth! Even now, I hear the music from the kitchen as servants clean up the dinner they have served and make the room ready for morning, and I try to think how to snatch that sound from the air and send it to you. One man is singing, and his voice is as fine as any opera tenor, and now another joins, and another, and there are four of them together, their hands clattering pots and clanging spoons and sweeping, and woven all through it is that song. Down the hill, on the road below the villa, there is a woman laughing, and in my imagination I see her as a gypsy, wild dark hair falling from a fine white face, about to make love to her husband, and I smile that my thoughts should go in such a direction. On my table, a breath of sea-scented wind flutters over the candle and threatens to put me in the dark, and still I labor to capture the music of the night. Imperfectly. Always imperfectly.

  And, as my father always said, to what purpose?

  Ah, you see how melancholy lies upon me tonight. Let me banish it now by saying yes, you are brave, dear lady. Brave enough to carve that life you envisioned, brave enough to hold salons and gather like minds to you—as you have gathered mine. It is a gift, and I thank you for sharing it with me.

  Come to Tuscany, my lady. Breathe new winds.

  Your humble servant,

  Basilio

  Cassandra's eyes were inexplicably damp as she finished reading. She held the letter in her lap and looked out at the gray, wet world beyond.

  Test your bravery.

  Did she dare?

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  LUCIEN’S

  FALL

  (Excerpt)

  by

  Barbara Samuel

  PROLOGUE

  To souls oppress’d and dumb with grief,

  The Gods ordain this kind releif;

  That Musick shou’d in sounds convey,

  What dying Lovers dare not say.

  ~ John Dryden

  Lucien Harrow was drunk. It was not uncommon. In his set, to be sober at three of a muggy early summer morning would have been a far more unusual occurrence.

  What was uncommon was the fact that he sat in his shirtsleeves in his study, his brocaded waistcoat flung over the back of a chair, dipping his quill again and again in a pot of ink.

  A powerful sense of desperation—unblunted by the spirits he’d consumed—drove him to scrawl notations over the paper. In his head pounded a wild, ringing gypsy musi
c, a swirl and a dance, a little turn…

  He squeezed his eyes closed and pushed away from the writing table, dropping the quill and picking up his glass. His head bobbed in time to the sound in his mind, the notes undrowned. Unsteadily, he aimed himself for the sideboard and the decanter of claret.

  Crystal bottle in hand, he hummed the music aloud, over and over, swinging the bottle as if he were conducting. And as he hummed, he saw the notes as a river of colors. They rose and swirled, like an elaborate braid, each strand woven around the others, none muddied or muted. Unless he wished it.

  The claret shone in his glass, ruby colored, like the sound of viola. Lucien pushed his hair from his face and drank deeply, then stumbled back to his desk, carrying the glass. Some splashed onto his hand. A burn in his belly warned him to cease, but he drank it all in a single swallow.

  He then gathered the sheaf of papers over which he’d been laboring, and calmly, deliberately held them over the flame of the candle until they caught fire. When they were black and curled, he tossed them on the grate and stumbled toward bed, having silenced the sounds one more time.

  One more time.

  Chapter One

  Black or fair, or tall or low,

  I alike with all can sport.

  ~ Thomas Stanley

  A rose thorn bit Madeline’s finger, another tiny, stinging scratch to add to the many marks covering her hands. Absently, she straightened. Sucking welling drips of blood from her finger, she eyed a cloud of dust that marked the arrival of yet another pair of visitors. Their figures were haloed against the lowering gold light of a late May afternoon.

  Guests had been trailing in most of the day in a slow, sporadic trail, Londonites fleeing the strange early heat of the city. Among them would be the marquess Beauchamp.

  Madeline wondered if one of these might be he, the man who would, with any luck, be her husband before the year was through. As this pair, one on a horse, the other a phaeton, raced through dusty bars of sunlight on the drive, Madeline doubted seriously either of them was the marquess. She’d heard he was a conservative man.