A bitter laugh shook her, any lingering hope that she had misjudged him shattered. A gust of anger swept through her, and throwing the paper in his face, she leaped to her feet. “Is that why you married me?” she demanded half-hysterically, half-furiously. “To get your hands on my mother’s money?”
The expression on his face frightened her, and as he surged upright, instinctively she took a step backward. His hands caught her shoulders and he shook her impatiently. “You little fool!” he snarled. “Is that why you have been acting as skittish as a cat with kittens lately? Because you think I knew? And married you with my eye on Hester’s fortune?” Almost with revulsion, he thrust her away from him. Keeping his hands tightly clenched at his sides, as if he did not trust himself not to do her a violence, he swore vehemently. “Good God! How wrong could I have been?” Shooting her a glance filled with dislike, he snapped, “And to think that I have been handling you with kid gloves because I didn’t want to rush you into making decisions that weren’t really what you wanted!” Advancing menacingly on her, the glitter in the golden eyes making her tremble, he snarled softly, “Well, the hell with that!”
Jerking her into his arms, he kissed her ravenously, like a man with a great hunger to assuage, and it was only when he felt her arms steal around his neck and her lips part for him that his mouth gentled. Clasping her to him, he rained half-tender, half-violent kisses on her mouth and throat, muttering fiercely, “You aggravating little baggage! How dare you think me a fortune hunter! I’m in love with you, you silly wench! I’ve been in love with you since that morning I came downstairs and found you gambling in the kitchen with Zachary and his friends.” Tearing his caressing mouth from the base of her throat, he pushed her away slightly and shook her soundly. “I love you! And it was because I love you that I married you!” He kissed her again, almost savagely, and added thickly, “I know I rushed you into marriage and I’ve been trying these past weeks to give you time to think things through ... to let you decide, now that you know your past, what you want to do. But I’m sorry, sweetheart, I’m afraid that as far as you are concerned, all my noble intentions have vanished—I love you too much to ever let you go!” His expression softened at the stunned look in her eyes. “Didn’t you ever guess? Do you think that a man in my position acts as I did if he is not under some powerful compulsion?” His gaze darkened. “I have never been so fearful as I was when I realized that the one-eyed man had you—Morgana, I thought I would die of terror until I held you in my arms again!” He shook her again. “You must believe me!”
It was the culmination of every sweet dream, and her heart beating with thick, painful strokes, she stared at him almost fearfully, hardly daring to think that he could truly love her. Steadily he returned her stare, the warm glints in those topaz eyes telling her the most wondrous things imaginable. Bitter remorse fought with wild ecstasy as she gazed up at those beloved features, and suddenly she did believe! Oh, dear God, she had wronged him frightfully! But he loved her!
Trying to excuse herself, she wailed helplessly, “But you could have married anyone! Yet you chose me—a penniless thief with no pretensions to family or fortune—and when it came out that I was really the Lady Morgana Devlin, what else could I think?”
Catching her up in a violent embrace, he kissed her passionately, and Morgana responded ardently, her slender frame straining against him. Blissful moments later, he put her from him and said huskily, “You could have thought the truth—that I took one look at the sweetest little face I have ever seen and fell violently in love with you!”
“Oh, Royce!” she breathed ecstatically, a dazzling smile on her lovely face. “I love you, too!”
“And I should hope so!” he retorted with brutal candor, a mocking light in the dancing golden eyes. “After all that I have gone through to get you! You have cost me a fortune! Loving me until the day I die is the least that I shall expect from you!”
“Oh, I will! I will!” she cried earnestly, and happily kissed his chin and jaw. “Till then and beyond!”
Her black curly head resting under his chin, their arms around each other, they stood there together for a long time, speaking the words that all lovers yearn to hear and cherish forever. It wasn’t until they were gathering up her things, preparing to walk back to the house, that Julian’s settlement came up again.
“Did you really mean what you said about wanting me to have this? So I will be independent of you?” she asked uncertainly.
He sent her a look. “Not too independent, I trust!” he teased gently. Tipping her face upward, he dropped a kiss on her nose and then said more seriously, “Julian is a young man with a great deal of pride. He very nearly lost everything that he had believed was his, and it is only through your generosity that he was able to retain it. There is nothing that you cannot ask of him that he will not do, but for his sake, take this money—it may mean little to you, but to him, it is of paramount importance.”
An arrested expression on her features, she slowly nodded. “I hadn’t thought of it that way.”
Arm in arm, instinctively they strolled over to her parents’ grave, the slowly fading sunlight gilding the weeping angels who stood with their wings outstretched over the graves. Reverently Morgana traced in the cool marble the dates of Andrew’s and Hester’s deaths. A tear trembled on her lashes. “They had such a short time together... .”
“But they had love, my dear, as we do,” Royce said gently. Watching her face intently, he asked quietly, “Will you mind leaving all this? America is very different. We have no titles there.”
Her eyes shimmering beneath their veil of tears, she shook her head. “I only want to be your wife,” she replied simply, which earned her a very satisfying kiss from her husband. Honesty, however, compelled her to add, “If I had grown up here as Julian did, I might feel a pang at leaving, but St. Audries Hall, beautiful as it is, has no meaning to me.” She glanced down at her mother’s Bible, which she carried in her hand. “This ... this means everything to me—it was hers, and I will cherish it forever!”
An odd look in his eyes, Royce asked quietly, “And the letter? What do you intend to do with it?”
She searched his face intently. Very slowly she asked, “Are you quite, quite certain that you are happy with the way things are? That you are not sorry that I did not claim Hester’s fortune?”
“Quite certain!” Royce growled, and dragged her into his arms to kiss her nearly witless. When at last he raised his lips from her love-swollen mouth, he muttered fiercely, “You are all the fortune I will ever want!”
A blinding happiness transformed her face, and stepping a little away from him, she handed him the Bible and extracted her mother’s letter. Holding it between her hands, she said mournfully, “I would like to keep it—next to her Bible, it is the only thing of hers that I have—but as long as it exists, there is the danger that someday the truth would come out ... and Julian and whatever family he may have would be devastated by it—perhaps not in our lifetime, but who knows what the future may hold?”
Gently Royce said, “I’d hoped that you would feel that way, but I didn’t want to ask it of you.”
She nodded and, smiling through her tears, tore the letter into tiny pieces. With Royce’s arm around her shoulders, they watched as the breeze scattered the fluttering pieces in all directions. It was done. Hester’s letter had served its purpose. Perhaps not quite the way Hester had wanted, but in the only way that Morgana could see would do the least harm to the innocent. The one-eyed man was dead. Stephen and Lucinda were dead. Andrew’s son, Julian, was the new Earl, and as for her ...
She glanced at Royce, and at the look of love he sent her, her heart soared. They would be leaving the Old World, sailing soon to the New World, where the love they shared would only grow brighter and stronger with every passing day, and with a joyful little laugh, she kissed Royce’s chin and was instantly enfolded in his powerful embrace. They started to walk away when something made her look back at h
er parents’ grave and her breath caught sharply in her throat. It was a trick of light, she told herself softly, a trick of light that for one fleeting instant made the angel on her mother’s grave appear to be smiling....
If you enjoyed WHISPER TO ME OF LOVE,
don’t miss Shirlee Busbee’s
PASSION BECOMES HER
Available for the first time
as a Zebra mass-market paperback,
on sale in June 2012.
From his place of concealment near the Marquis of Ormsby’s palatial London town house in Grosvenor Square, Asher Cordell watched the comings and goings of the multitude of handsome carriages that thronged the road in front of the brilliantly lit house. Any member of the ton still in town at the end of June, and fortunate enough to receive an invitation to Lord Ormsby’s annual masked ball, was here tonight. Instituted over two decades ago, in time the Ormsby Masked Ball had come to signal the end of the Season, and after tonight most of the gentry would scatter far and wide across the breadth of England to spend the remainder of the summer at their country estates.
By London standards the hour was still early, approaching midnight, and Asher decided that he had wasted enough time determining that everything was going precisely as it should. Tonight’s task wasn’t difficult. It was a simple robbery—child’s play for him. He’d already done two dry runs and could, he felt confident, find his way over the rear wall, through the spacious gardens, and into Lord Ormsby’s library blindfolded. The previous evening, during the final practice run, standing in the middle of Ormsby’s darkened library, he’d fleetingly considered stealing the famous Ormsby diamond necklace then and there, but decided against it. Changing plans on whim, he’d discovered, could cause fatal complications.
In the shadows of his hiding place, Asher grimaced. Christ. Could it ever! Last spring’s events at Sherbrook Hall had certainly proven that fact and he wondered if the outcome would have been different if he’d held to his original plan. He sighed. Probably not. Collard had been up to no good and there was no telling how it would have ended. Bad enough that Collard had murdered that unpleasant wretch Whitley. Bad enough that he’d shot and killed Collard, even if it had been to save his own neck.
He shook off the memory and concentrated on the task before him. This would be his last theft, he reminded himself; the last time he took such risks. After tonight, he would retire to Kent and spend his days overseeing his own holdings, becoming finally the respectable, wealthy gentleman farmer everyone already thought he was.
Eager to put the past behind him, he was on the point of slipping around to the back of the house when he recognized the latest vehicle to halt before Lord Ormsby’s doors. The coach was not in the first stare of fashion and was pulled by four rather unimpressive bay horses, but the moment the vehicle lumbered into position, as if royalty had arrived, the milling contingent of meticulously groomed gentlemen lingering on the steps leaped to attention.
Asher grinned. Who would have ever guessed that eighteen-year-old Thalia Kirkwood would take London by storm? Odes, poems praising her fair beauty were forever being written about her these past few months. Thanks to her, flower stalls all across London did a bustling business, the scented, colorful blossoms purchased by eager swains finding their way to the modest house just off Cavendish Square that her father, the retiring Mr. Kirkwood, had taken for the Season. It was rumored that at least one duel had been fought over the fair Thalia and gossip claimed that since May her father had turned down offers from at least a half dozen lovesick, imminently suitable gentlemen—a few with the prospect of a title in the offing. To the dismay and long faces of many young bucks tonight, the current betting in the gentlemen’s clubs was that before the family returned to Kent at the end of the week, Thalia’s engagement to the Earl of Caswell would be announced.
It might be a masked ball, but there was little effort at disguise and there was no mistaking Thalia’s tall, voluptuous form as she regally mounted the steps to the house, the upswept silvery fair hair gleaming in the torchlight. Her velvet cloak was sapphire blue, a perfect foil for her blond beauty, the color deepening, he knew, the icy blue of her brilliant eyes. The gentlemen swarmed around her, like bees to a fragrant bud, the servants bowing and scraping as they opened the heavy front doors.
Almost lost in the pandemonium surrounding Thalia’s progress was the descent from the coach of her widowed older sister, Juliana. Though her husband had been dead for four years, it still gave Asher a start to think of Juliana as a widow. His lips twitched as he watched her gather up the folds of her pale green gown. He’d always considered her, at twenty-eight, only five years younger than himself, in much the same light as he did his two younger sisters, and thinking of Juliana even being married had been a challenge for him. He shook his head. Damn shame her husband, the younger son of a baronet with extensive lands in Hampshire, had died of lung congestion only three years into the marriage. There had been no children, but Juliana had been well provided for and shortly after her husband’s death she had purchased a charming estate not five miles down the road from the home she had grown up in. With their mother long dead, upon Juliana’s return to Kent, she had fallen back into her previous role of surrogate mother to Thalia. Since Mr. Kirkwood abhorred the constant round of soirees and balls so necessary for a young lady’s successful Season, Juliana stepped into the role of chaperone for her younger sister’s London Season. The notion of Juliana being anyone’s chaperone was pure folly as far as Asher was concerned, recalling some of her youthful escapades. He decided that if anyone needed a chaperone, it was the elder sister, not the youngest.
Eyes narrowed, he watched as Juliana, a pair of elegant gentlemen on either side of her, followed her sister up the steps. Her cloak was in a soft shade of lavender and, as tall as Thalia, she carried herself with much the same grace as her younger sister. There was a glimpse of sable hair as Juliana passed by the torches on either side of the door and then she was gone.
Annoyed for allowing Thalia and Juliana’s arrival to distract him, Asher shook himself and focused on the task at hand. After a last look around the area, he worked his way to the alley that ran behind the handsome homes that faced the square. His dark clothing making him nearly invisible, like a shadow he flowed along the wall at the rear of the houses. Arriving at the section of the wall he wanted, he made a careful survey and, seeing nothing to alarm him, he swung up and over the stone wall and silently dropped down onto the other side. Several feet beyond the place where he stood was the tradesmen and servants’ entrance to the house and in the faint light of the small flickering torch above the doorway, he saw that the area was deserted.
Excellent, he thought, as he did a slow scan of the grounds. It was unlikely there would be any trysts by the staff tonight—from past experience he knew that every servant, even those hired just for tonight, would be far too busy seeing to the needs of the aristocratic guests to have any time for dallying.
He easily found the doors to the library and within two minutes of having breached the rear walls was standing inside Lord Ormsby’s library. He stood motionless a moment, his gaze moving slowly around the room. A faint sliver of light showing beneath the door that opened onto one of the hallways of the interior of the house broke the utter blackness. Dark shapes loomed up here and there but, already familiar with the layout, he quickly crossed the room to where Ormsby’s ornate desk sat in front of a pair of long windows.
He’d discovered Ormsby’s hiding place the first night he’d broken into the house, although “broken in” and didn’t quite describe simply pushing open the door to the library and strolling inside. He’d also learned during his observations of the routine of the Ormsby household, except for the front door and the gates at the rear of the building, that there was nothing to halt anyone with thievery in mind. The house was a sitting goose, ripe for plucking. He grinned. Which made his job so much easier. Sliding out the bottom drawer on the right side of the desk, his skillful fingers made s
hort work of finding and opening the secret drawer. Something resembling a sneer crossed his lean features. Did Ormsby really think that a clever thief wouldn’t discover the drawer and its contents?
Asher needed no light to find the famed Ormsby diamond necklace; the size of the diamonds and the heavy weight of the necklace told him the minute he touched it. He’d never actually seen the real necklace; in fact, except for the occasions the current marquis had shown it off to his various acquaintances, it had not been seen in public for nearly fifty years, not since Ormsby’s mother had died. But Asher had once seen the necklace in the portrait of Lady Mary, wife of the first Marquis of Ormsby, which hung in the grand gallery at Ormsby Place.
Though he’d made note of the necklace—after all, it was rather famous—he hadn’t thought to steal it ... at the time. Like a dutiful guest he had studied the painting, his keen eye making note of the size and brilliance of the stones even in a mere portrait. No, he hadn’t thought to steal it then and he wouldn’t be here tonight taking it from the secret drawer and carefully slipping it into the specially sewn pocket of his jacket, if Ormsby hadn’t ...
His mouth tightened. He didn’t as a rule steal from people he knew, nor was he inclined to hold grudges, especially against neighbors, even vain, arrogant, obnoxious neighbors, but in Ormsby’s case he was willing to make an exception. Bastard shouldn’t have shot my grandmother’s favorite old dog, he thought grimly.
Petty to steal a priceless family heirloom because of the death of a dog? Asher shrugged. Perhaps. But it would be a long time before he forgot his grandmother’s grief-stricken features when the body of her elderly spaniel, her companion and friend of many years, was dumped at her feet by one of the Ormsby grooms.
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