“Because then my Lady Thorton can go about her own business and…”
“And I can go about mine,” he whispered in her ear.
Maria let her arms go around Brock’s neck, pulling him tightly to her. He was there in her arms, alive and well and blessedly hers! Tear trickled down her cheeks as she inhaled the scent of him, felt the warmth and power of his body, of his existence.
“I love you, Brock,” Maria whispered. “Oh, if you only knew how perfectly I love you!”
“You had better love me, kitten,” he said, “for I love you more than life. And…I intend to keep you a prisoner forever…in my arms.”
“Truly, Brock?” Maria asked, wanting only for his mouth to take hers once more.
“Truly,” he said, sweeping her into his arms. “But first, my love…we must away for a visit with the curate, else the constable returns to clap me in irons for such endeavors toward you that are not yet honorable.”
“It is ever I have dreamed of this moment with you, Brock,” Maria said, caressing his face with the back of her hand.
“Then I shall grant your dreams, Maria,” he said. “Every one.”
“At last!” Lady Thorton sighed, dabbing at her tears with a dainty handkerchief as the curate ended the marriage ceremony.
“I…I am yours now, am I not?” Maria whispered as she gazed up into the handsome face of Lord Brockton Thorton.
“You are,” Brock said, gathering her into his arms and melding his mouth to hers.
“Brock!” Lady Thorton scolded. Upon witnessing the depth of passion springing from the kiss her son was bestowing upon his wife, she glanced around at the smiling faces of the on-looking Thorton Manor staff. “Brockton Thorton! You are not in private as of yet!”
“I will soon alleviate that particular impediment, Mother,” Brock said, lifting Maria into his arms.
“Brockton! Such behavior!” Lady Thorton exclaimed, smiling as Brock carried Maria toward the stairs.
Brock closed the door to his bedchamber, letting Maria’s feet fall to the floor.
“You are every wish I ever had come true, Brock,” Maria whispered as his mouth toyed with her neck, placing tender, lingering kisses there.
“It is how the heavens meant it to be, kitten,” he whispered as her fingers became lost in his hair. “For, above all else, I exist to adore you. And you, Maria,” he continued, his mouth a breath from hers, “were born for my sake.”
To my husband, Kevin…
My heart’s desire,
My every dream come true,
The love even I could never have imagined!
And now, enjoy the first chapter of
Shackles of Honor
by Marcia Lynn McClure.
Chapter One
Life had always been that of immense privilege for Cassidy Shea. Her father, Lord Calvert Shea, was a dominant figure in society. He was popular in the most desirable of circles not only because of his fantastic wealth and titled position but also for his profound physical attractiveness and unique good nature. Cassidy’s mother, Cylia St. Martin Shea, was also immeasurably well received. She was of excellent breeding, an erudite and magnificently gifted hostess, and also very beautiful. Cassidy’s elder brother, Ellis Martin Shea, was well educated, quite astoundingly handsome, and groomed to perfection, ready to accommodate his father’s mantle of title and position at any given moment. It was obvious and often said that the Sheas of Terrill were the finest of families—from all outward appearances well bred, happy, and content.
For Cassidy Shea, life could not have been more perfect from birth through her present seventeen years. Everything was delightful, every need provided for—every day without major tragedy or other undesirable incident. Her coming-out, for instance, had been glorious, grand, and indescribably successful. And she had immediately been bombarded with a barrage of handsome and worthy young suitors in the year and few months since.
Still, in spite of the family’s popularity and glory, the perfections of the house, stables, and gardens of Terrill, and all her father and mother’s attentions—the like of which many wealthy children were stripped, having been laid in the arms of nannies and governesses since the days of their births—it ever seemed to Cassidy that something lurked among the quiet corners of life at Terrill. It felt eerie, as if all truths were not perfectly tangible. For there had been times, especially of late, when she came upon her mother, a woman renowned for her command of emotions, dabbing at her eyes with a handkerchief or her needlework. Times when her father stood at the library window gazing out across the gardens, book in hand and open, yet never reading one solitary word upon its pages.
It appeared to Cassidy that these times of unrest, of secret sorrow or worry, had increased since her own coming-out. It seemed that each time a young suitor was admitted into the parlor with her and her mother for a short visit, her mother glanced almost regretfully at Cassidy, as if she were somehow pitying her young daughter.
Ellis went about his life as casual and carefree as ever. He had no greater concern at times than whether his stallion were the fastest in the county. He never seemed melancholy, and Cassidy wondered if perhaps he was ignorant to whatever it was that seemed to unsettle her parents in rare and quiet moments.
The incidents of concern apparent in her mother’s countenance gradually escalated. As a result, one cool, late afternoon in spring, Cassidy found herself standing before the large looking glass in her chamber studying her appearance—the color of her skin and form of her body—wondering if perhaps she were stricken with some ghastly disease of which her parents had kept her ignorant.
She didn’t appear to herself as if she were disease-stricken. She had her father’s rather plain, unexciting hue of brown hair. Still, it was long, soft, and tinted with red highlighting when the sun caught it just so. Her complexion was her mother’s—porcelain smooth, fair, and flawless, save for the small and subtle brown mole just above her upper lip on the right corner of her mouth. Her nose was of normal shape and size, her chin not too pointy nor too flat, her cheekbones high with just the right amount of pronunciation. Her eyebrows matched the color of her hair, and her eyes were a rather common shade of hazel. Her eyes were one of her glories, for they were perfectly almond-shaped and shaded by long, dark, almost ebony-black eyelashes. Feeling satisfied with her head, for she had heard it said in quiet whisperings that she was considered nothing less than at least very pretty, she turned to study her shape and form at a sideways angle in the glass.
It was true—she was not overly tall. Neither was she too short. Her height measured five feet three inches—a height to be proud of, her mother told her. And her figure, though rather more buxom than she would have preferred but by no means abnormal, was quite well proportioned. Her hips were small but well curved, and her waist measured an enviable eighteen inches.
Turning to face the glass straight on once more, she frowned and sighed. She looked normal, but each time her parents studied her of late, there came an expression of regret of some sort across their faces.
Cassidy had only just stretched out her arms to her sides to assure herself regarding the straightness of her bones when Ellis stepped into the room. He leaned against the doorframe and folded his arms across his chest, studying her with an amused grin.
“Go away!” Cassidy ordered, irritated at his intrusion.
Ellis ran a confident hand through his rather mussed auburn hair and asked, “Are you simply drowning in vanity, dear one? Or can you offer some other explanation for your infatuation with that looking glass?”
Cassidy rolled her eyes exasperatedly and shook her head. “I said, ‘Go away.’”
“But I have news. And I think you will want to hear it.” Ellis smiled mischievously at his sister, his eyes fairly twinkling with the flicker of a secret cached.
“Let me guess. Is it something astoundingly profound, dear brother?” Cassidy asked, turning from the glass to look at him.
“Oh, astoundingly,” he teased.
“Such as…you have found a more efficient way of combing your hair?” she mocked.
“No. Not quite so important as that,” he answered. “And anyway, my hair is in perfect order as always, dear one.”
Cassidy sighed. She loved Ellis, dearly loved him. But he sometimes seemed so incredibly shallow. So…so lacking in brute masculinity. Not that he was feminine by any means, but he was too polished somehow.
“However,” he continued, “you will have to cut short your little tête-à-tête with Gavin Clark, for we are having the most important of visitors in to dine with us this evening.”
Cassidy’s eyes blazed with aggravation toward her brother. She absolutely despised the way he teased in such a condescending manner about Gavin.
“Gavin Clark is more of a man than you or your lavender-scented friends will ever be, Ellis!”
Immediately Ellis dropped his mocking expression, replacing it with that of apology for teasing his sister. “I am sorry to tease you, Cass. I know how well you think of him, and he is a fine young man. But…but, Cass…you know that Father would never approve of it. Gavin is common, after all. They will marry you to a titled man and no other. You know that.”
“I do not know it,” she argued. “You carry the weight of expectation, not I. I often pity you, Ellis, for I know what is expected of you. But surely Mother and Father would not present me to some elderly, bald, red-nosed old lord simply because of titles…which, by the way, are becoming more outdated and less important by the moment. They would not subject me to the same hopeless fate as Marietta Longswold’s parents did her.”
“Perhaps not. But they will not allow you to be given to a common fellow such as Gavin all the same.”
Cassidy knew that Ellis truly loved her and cared for her feelings. She appreciated his efforts to prepare her for life. “I have not said that I wish to be given to Gavin Clark, now have I?” she reminded, smiling reassuringly as she took her brother’s offered arm. “Now, do tell me—as you escort me out to the east lawns to meet my common beau—who is this astounding visitor who will be joining us this eventide as we sup?”
“That is the astounding part of it, dear one. I don’t know.” Ellis shrugged his shoulders when Cassidy looked up to him inquisitively.
“Come now, Ellis. A mystery visitor? There has never been such a thing in this house. Not since I’ve been old enough to evoke memory.”
“As I said…that is the astonishment. Neither Father nor Mother will reveal his identity to me.”
“That is astonishing,” Cassidy muttered to herself. Suddenly an involuntary shiver trickled through her body.
“Someone been planting lilies in your grave dirt, Cass?” Ellis asked teasingly.
But Cassidy could not dismiss the foreboding feeling. As she walked quickly toward the east gardens and Gavin, she could not rid herself of it. And as she considered the recent fate of her dear friend Marietta at having been literally given in matrimony to old Lord Rapier, her parents deeming him a suitable husband simply because of his title and wealth, she certainly could not induce the sense of impending doom to evaporate. Even when she saw Gavin sitting on the bench under the large black oaks of Terrill’s east lawns, she could not be rid of it.
Gavin stood and smiled as she approached. Oh, he is handsome, Cassidy thought to herself. She often wondered how she held his interest at all, for he was nearly twenty and she only seventeen. Yes, he was ever so handsome—and so rugged and strong! Gavin was a hard-working young man, wise in the things that young men couldn’t learn in university. How could any woman prefer a man who was weak-minded in such things as those wherein Gavin was wise? Or weak in body for that matter? And Gavin had wit—a wit that most young men in whose company she found herself could not begin to understand, let alone emulate.
As Cassidy approached him, she marveled again at the handsome state of her secret suitor. He stood tall, broad-shouldered, blue-eyed, and blond-haired. His face and arms were bronzed from hours of hard work outside, and his smile was like drinking in a warm mug of wassail at Christmastime.
“Cass!” he greeted as she rushed into his muscular embrace. He hugged her warmly, then held her away for a moment as he studied her, and said, “You are so beautiful.”
“And you are far too flattering, Gavin,” she scolded, though she loved his compliments. What woman wouldn’t? “But I should not let you embrace me so, for it is completely improper, you know.” She smiled and hugged him quickly once more before taking his hand in hers and leading him in a casual stroll toward the nearby gardens.
“So,” he began as they meandered along the garden paths among the bright yellow of daffodils and lavender of crocus, “what tales of adventure do you have to recite to me today, my beauty?”
“Ha!” Cassidy exclaimed, throwing her head back in a giggle. “Adventures? Me? Ah, yes. I do remind you of the great ones, don’t I? Joan of Arc? Guinevere? Yes, my life’s excitement far surpasses any they could have known.”
“Come now, Cass. Surely you have some news that you’re wanting to share,” he prodded.
Cassidy felt the cold chill trickling down her spine once more, and her thoughts were drawn to the news that Ellis had divulged to her mere minutes before.
“Well,” she dropped her voice secretively, “we’re having a mysterious guest in to dine with the family tonight.”
“And a fine horse he sits for certain. I’ve only just seen it on my way here.”
Cassidy looked to Gavin quickly. “What do you mean he? And where would this be that you’ve seen him, and how would you know that he’s meant to be our guest tonight?”
“I said I had seen the horse he sat, not he who rode it. And it was in your own stables just now. A magnificent bay that puts your brother’s black to shame.”
“Impossible! Ellis’s stallion is insurmountable in his perfection,” Cassidy argued.
“Not anymore. I could take you to the stables to see the bay…but we may be seen together and then—”
“Then take me. I’ll only just pretend that we happened upon each other if we’re discovered.”
Cassidy’s hands began to tremble unexpectedly as she followed Gavin to the stables. First her hands, then her arms, and then her very soul. Something was lurking in the shadows of the future. She felt it, but she could not identify it.
She tried to concentrate on Gavin’s words as they walked, but she found herself preoccupied by the secretiveness of her parents concerning the guest. Never had they behaved so before, and she began to worry on various things. Perhaps her father was in financial ruin and had hidden it from them for years. Perhaps the guest was appearing to cart him off to debtors’ prison and throw the rest of the family out into the elements. Or perhaps it was a famous physician come to break the news to Cassidy of the ghastly disease that would soon lead her into a torturous death.
“Well, there he is, Cass,” Gavin announced as they entered the first building of stables. Pointing toward an enormous, wild-looking bay stallion, he added, “Magnificent beast, that one.”
“Beast is exactly the thing,” Cassidy commented. The horse was indeed beautiful but held a fire in its eyes as untamed and frightening as perdition itself. As she and Gavin approached the animal, it snorted, rearing up and neighing frightfully in its stall. It dug mercilessly at the straw beneath its feet and shook out its magnificent mane furiously.
“Oh, no, Cass! That’s an animal of pure and untainted breeding, of exceptional grooming and care. A true gentleman’s mount,” Gavin marveled.
“Why not a woman’s?” Cassidy asked, more desperate to minimize the importance of the evening’s dinner guest than to defend the worth of women.
“This horse isn’t tended to by merely a stablehand. Someone has spent hours in the breaking and grooming of it. And besides, he has the look of being just broken. A woman…most women would not feel safe with such an animal supporting them.” Gavin looked from the horse to Cassidy, wh
o was still staring at the animal in awe. “You’ve captured my heart you know, Miss Shea.”
Surprised by the sudden change in the conversation, Cassidy looked up to see Gavin’s mesmerizing blue eyes gazing admiringly down at her.
“You do flatter me far too often, Gavin,” she scolded.
“I speak only the truth to you. I…I must beg a favor of you, Cass.” Cassidy felt her heart begin to pound wildly, for she sensed the essence of the favor, and it caused her to feel delightfully unsettled in her stomach. “I would ask…I would beg the gift of one sweet taste of your lovely lips, milady.”
Finally, she thought to herself. She’d waited so long for her first kiss. For Gavin’s kiss. And now, at long last, the moment was upon her. Slowly he placed his strong hands, one at each of her shoulders, pulling her closer as his head bent toward her own. Then, delightfully at first, his lips caressed hers tenderly. His kiss was soft and sweet, pleasing to the senses in the first moments. But as his lips continued to linger on hers gently, she knew that this was not what she had always dreamed it would be. Her heart did not soar. Her spirit did not jump with elation. And when the mad pounding of the bay stallion’s hooves on the stall wall and his violent neighing startled the very essence of Cassidy’s senses, she broke from Gavin, pushing herself from his arms and backing further away from the frightening animal.
“He’s only just anxious to be out,” Gavin tried to reassure her. But Cassidy sensed something else. It was as if the animal were angry. As if it accused her of acting too rashly in her infatuation with Gavin.
“He frightens me, and…and all the same it’s time I was dressing for dinner.” Cassidy forced a smile at Gavin as he took her hand in his, kissing the back of it tenderly.
“You’ll tell me the tale? The adventure of the mystery dinner guest? Tomorrow when we meet?” He smiled, and it warmed her.
“Yes, I’ll tell you.”
She turned and, lifting her skirts to her ankles, hurried toward the house. Disappointment throbbed mercilessly in Cassidy’s bosom. Her first kiss was not at all as she had always imagined. She had expected to find herself near to a faint with ecstasy. Instead, she was relieved when it had ended. Disappointment had never before come so strongly to Cassidy. And now there was this mysterious dinner guest. What bend of fate awaited her in the dining hall?
Born for Thorton's Sake Page 12