by Kathryn Le Veque, Suzan Tisdale, Eliza Knight, Cynthia Wright, Christi Caldwell, Eva Devon
“I am returning the Theodosia sword.”
“The what?” she eyed him as though prepared to have the cart called for Bedlam.
Damian held the weapon up for her inspection.
“The Theodosia? To call it such diminishes our family’s rightful claim. It is a Gladius. An ancient Gladius, and…”
“And it belongs to her.” If that is what had brought her into his life, and everything to come after their meeting were lies constructed on pretense, that fealty should be rewarded with the piece that had earned that loyalty.
She flung her hands up. “Belongs to—” A choked gasp burst from her lips and she clasped her neck. “You are returning it to the Rayne woman?”
Yet the seeds of doubt planted by Rayne had since withered under all Damian had come to know about Theodosia. Theodosia would have her sword and Damian would have the truth.
His mother’s wishes and the feud be damned.
* * *
“What madness possessed you?”
Blinkblinkblink. Theodosia sat perched on the ivory upholstered sofa in the Ivory Parlor, blinking up at her mother. And father. And each of her brothers.
That particular “what madness possessed you” belonged to her mother—this time. With four sets of very displeased stares trained on her, she wet her lips. Lips Damian had kissed and explored with his own.
“She is blushing again,” Aidan spat. He glowered. “And after her shameful display with the devil this morn, I know precisely why she is blushing.”
“Hush,” their mother scolded. She shot a concerned glance over at the door. “If someone hears you she will be ruined.” A mournful cry escaped her and she buried her face into her hands. “By a Renshaw.”
“It looked a good deal worse than it was,” she offered with false cheer and a blatant lie.
“Where is your loyalty,” Aidan spat and came to a stop, towering over her.
She folded her hands and placed them on her lap. Studying the interlocked digits, she remained resolute in her silence.
“What of Richard?” Aidan continued, relentless in his rage.
“Damian did not bring Richard’s sadness to him.”
Silence met her quietly spoken words. The tick tock of the ormolu clock resonated in the parlor.
Then Aidan let out a thunderous bellow and she flinched. Through their eldest brother’s stoic silence, Richard gave no outward reaction to her words. The ensuing situation may as well have belonged to another family than his own. “He is a monster.”
Her patience snapped and she shot to her feet. “On what basis do you judge him?” she cried. “All of you,” she passed a condemning stare about the room, allowing it to linger on each of her family members. Not even a week ago, she was just as resolute in her loathing for all members of the Renshaw family. She gave her head a sad, slow shake, despising herself for being so very blinded to the truth. “Do you not see, the history between our families, it is not Da—the Duke’s doings,” she amended at the narrowing of her father’s eyes. “He is not the monster you,” Shame clogged her throat, making words difficult. “He is not the monster we have taken him for.” He is a man who’d been hurt and shamed for the mark of his birth and through that had established his strength and courage to face that scorn. In doing so, he’d masked his hurts…but Theodosia, he’d let in…And God help her, she didn’t want to get out. “Richard,” she said, turning to her once sensible, now brokenhearted brother. “Damian is not to blame for your Miss Roberts. Nor is his brother.” A muscle jumped at the corner of his eye. “Miss Roberts is to blame.” She held her palms up in supplication. “Surely you’d not have her as her heart belongs to another?”
“It matters not what you say here. You’ll not sway us to that bastard’s favor. He’ll not have you anyway.”
Theodosia swung her gaze to Aidan. Her heart pounded as a sudden unease traversed a path along her spine. “What are you on about?”
A cruel, ugly laugh filled the room. “I merely enlightened the Devil as to your true motives.”
Aidan’s words came as though down a long hall and she struggled to muddle through the dirtied water of his words. “What did you do?” she asked, her voice hoarse. A harsh, ugly grin turned his lips and she flew across the room, her hands outstretched, and took him by the lapels of his jacket. “What did you tell him?” she cried, giving him a hard shake.
“I told him the truth.”
What was the truth? She didn’t think Aidan had ever known a truth in his life, so mired as he’d been in fables and legends. Just as you were. Oh God. Nausea roiled in her belly and she shook him again. “What truth?” she implored.
“That you’d never wed a scarred beast and merely sought the return of the—”
Theodosia shot her palm out and cracked it across Aidan’s cheek. The sickening sound of flesh meeting flesh filled the room. Only the stark, white imprint of her hand upon his face gave her little discomfort. She staggered away from him and folded her arms across her chest. “What has happened to you?” she whispered. Her pale mother glanced down as though shamed. Good. They should all be ashamed. Theodosia included. “What has happened to all of you?” she asked, her voice rising in volume. For years they’d hung the circumstances of their family upon that cool, inanimate object fought over and about through time. Silence was her only reply. The history they’d found pride in had destroyed them all. How very close she’d been to being destroyed and eaten by those dark, cold emotions. “I am ashamed to call myself a Rayne.”
“That is enough,” her father said, the quiet of his tone more powerful than had he boomed with fury. “Leave us,” he commanded his son. “You are to stay, Theo,” he said not taking his eyes from her.
She fisted the fabric of her skirts. She’d rather walk the muddied, cobbled stones through London’s Seven Dials than have this discussion with her father. Alone. Her brother’s fury she could well handle. She’d braved Aidan’s explosive fits of tempers since he’d been a boy. Her father’s somber disapproval, she could do without.
After a long moment, Richard came to his feet and looked to Aidan. He glared at Theodosia and then all that remained of her living siblings started for the door.
Footsteps sounded in the hall and a quiet rap on the door froze the members of the room. Another knock sounded.
“Enter,” her father called out at last.
The butler, Watson, who’d been with their family since Theodosia had been in leading strings opened the door. “The Duke of Devlin,” he announced and stepped aside to allow Damian entry.
Hope sprung to life in her chest.
Damian.
He stepped into the room with long, slow strides better reserved for predator hunting his prey.
Then she registered the weapon carried in his hands and her heart started at her family’s silence to his unexpected arrival at last made sense. The legendary Gladius only spoken of amongst their family had never before been viewed or touched, but had instead existed as the stories told them as children. Until now. Now it became real.
“Your daughter attempted to steal my sword.” Damian’s gaze lingered on her, his ice blue, conveying nothing. “She entered my home, not once, but twice with the express purpose of stealing it.”
A spasm of pain wracked her heart and, coward that she was, she wanted to look away. But for every ill word that could be uttered about her, coward was not one of them. What a fool she’d been. How had she ever believed this cold piece of metal mattered so very much?
Her father opened and closed his mouth several times, but said nothing.
“Do you know what I realized Lavery?” Damian asked, not sparing so much as a glance for her brothers as he strolled past and then stopped before her father.
“We don’t give a damn what you realized,” Aidan exclaimed.
Their father gave his son a quelling look and the younger man looked away shamefaced. “What was it you realized, Devlin?” he barked, in a clear attempt to try and regain some mast
ery over this meeting.
“I came to find that I don’t give a damn about this weapon. I’m not the rightful owner.” He may as well have declared a treasonous plan to overthrow the king for as shocked as her gape-mouthed family was. “But neither are you the rightful owner, Lavery.”
Color splotched her father’s cheeks and he opened his mouth to speak.
Damian presented him his shoulder in a deliberate attempt to silence her father and turned to her. “I realized the Gladius belongs to you. You are not unlike Tonie.”
She cast a glance about for this rightful owner he spoke of and jumped at the cool smooth metal pressed against her hand. Theodosia and Damian stood, their hands united upon the Gladius. “You see, Theodosia, you would sacrifice all for it, when men such as me disrespect it by hanging it upon the wall and not considering the ancient story surrounding it. Your brothers and family,” he shifted his gaze about the room to her family members. “They will see an item and long for its return merely to wrest control back, but you, your hope was not for wealth, power, and control but for happiness. Just as Tonie found hope and love at the edge of this blade.” His mellifluous baritone washed over her, seducing her with the beauty in his words.
“I thought you did not believe in the history of the sword.” She tightened her grip upon the hilt and he shifted his hand over hers.
Damian held her gaze. “In spite of the ancestors who came before who believed the weapon cursed, unless it was in the rightful owner’s true hands, you knew different. It can open the heart to love as it did for Tonie and Jean-Phillipe Beauvisage.” Her throat worked. Damian shifted his attention to her still silent father. “The true fortune that comes to the rightful owner is love and hope. Theodosia believes in the power of the sword and that reason is more honorable than the aspirations of wealth and power dreamed up by both of our families.”
Tears flooded her vision and his beloved visage blurred before her. “I don’t want the sword.”
A collective cry went up about the room at this latest betrayal. The list was growing with a remarkable speed.
“The Theodosia,” Damian corrected, stroking his thumb over her hand. “It is yours.”
I don’t want this cold, hard metal. I want you. She captured her lower lip between her teeth and bit down hard. “What my brother said,” her voice caught on a shuddery sob at those hateful, hurtful words Aidan had leveled at him. “They weren’t true. I—”
Damian touched a finger to her lips. “I know that.” A tear slid down her cheek and he caught it with the pad of his thumb. “If your daughter will have me, I intend to marry her,” he spoke with the firm, unyielding tone of a man accustomed to being obeyed.
Her mother wrung her hands together and looked from her husband and sons to Damian. She shook her head once, in an almost pleading manner, a woman afraid this union would tear her family asunder.
“No.”
“Yes,” Theodosia spoke over Aidan. “Yes, I will marry you.” Even if it means she was cast out of her family, even if she earned their displeasure and scorn. “I love you,” she said softly.
Her father let out a curse. “I don’t like you, Devlin.” The earl had made no secret of the truth all these years—he hated Damian, even as he didn’t know him. All because he’d been trained to detest the Renshaws for having attained that weapon that once belonged to them. Yet there was an easing of the tension in his bulky frame.
“Surely you are not considering allowing her to wed him?” Aidan cried out.
“Leave us,” their father ordered. Mother and sons lingered a moment with mutinous sets to their mouths and then together strode angrily from the room. They closed the door hard in their wake.
Through it, Damian continued to work his hand over Theodosia’s and then carefully, he held the sword out toward her father. Damian may as well have handed over the kingdom for his care. With almost reverent hands, her father took it silently and then he gave a nod.
Her lips twitched. Of course, a man who’d revered that Gladius since his own early days should un-hesitantly turn his daughter over to the care of a man who’d given over that precious item. Damian fished around the front pocket of his jacket. “I love you.” He withdrew a small bouquet of rumpled thistles.
Her heart warmed and she touched her fingers to her lips. This same man who’d first sneered at the legend behind the Theodosia now paid honor to the tales with each word, each offering. “The moment you entered my office, you failed to steal your legendary sword.” He paused. “Instead you stole my heart. Marry me.”
Emotion squeezed at her heart and another tear slid down her cheek. He was the other half of her soul she’d not known had been missing. Theodosia managed a jerky nod.
“My love for thee.” That gruff whisper that had first terrified her in his office less than a week ago now warmed her.
She leaned up on tiptoe and with their lips but a hairsbreadth apart, whispered, “For eternity it will bind us.”
Part Seven: Only Of You
By
Eva Devon
Chapter One
MacKenzie O’Neil pulled her rental up to the gates of Castle de Reyne and let out a slow breath. She was nuts. Totally nuts. The towering wrought iron gate barred everyone out and was flanked by stone walls that stretched as far as her eye could see. Said stone walls were covered in ancient ivy.
Behind those walls, she really prayed were some answers.
She was tempted to pull out the small poesy ring that her adopted mom had given her just before her death and see if it did something weird like vibrate or glow but she hadn’t completely lost the plot. At least not yet.
Mac glanced back at the narrow, one lane road that headed back to the main motorway and Newcastle City. A smart woman who didn’t want to come across as a total lunatic to a peer of the realm should get back on the road and just pretend she’d never sent those emails to the peer’s secretary.
Yeah. Well. She’d surrendered smart the minute she’d gotten on the plane in Portland, Oregon. It was amazing what six months of little sleep could do to a person and what crazy things that person might start doing. Like madly Googling English castles at four in the morning, night after night, because of dreams that made a person a candidate for the funny farm. Maybe some of it had to do with the loss of her adopted mom. That’s what her friends had tried to convince her at any rate, but Mac was certain that she wasn’t just completely blown over by grief. This was something more.
Slowly the gates started to swing open. No creaking. At least she wasn’t in a total gothic lovefest.
She stared up at the gates looking for a camera.
Ah. There it was. Tucked next to a rather ferocious gargoyle atop the fence was the security camera.
They were expecting her and she was late. She’d gotten lost, even with GPS, on the roads of Northumberland. She’d passed mile marker nine that the secretary had mentioned, thank goodness, and from there she’d found it with relative ease.
She wasn’t really surprised they had security, a family like the Reigns. Would they have an elegantly clad bouncer to kick her out if she let slip why she was really there?
Obviously, her story had checked out or James Reign, Viscount Blackpool, never would have agreed to meet her.
After all, she really was a grad student in theater studying the War of the Roses and Shakespeare’s history plays. So, it wouldn’t seem totally crazy that she’d sought out one of the last surviving lines of the Plantagenet family. Would it?
MacKenzie gripped the wheel and put her foot on the gas, relieved to be on a road that didn’t demand she drive on the wrong side. She wasn’t turning back now. She hadn’t had a decent night’s sleep in a year and some deep, visceral, unreasonable thing told her that the key to a long rest was in this castle.
As she drove down the oak lined road leading over wooded hills, she tried not to gape. It was so beautiful. She’d never been out of the States before. All her travel had been done in books, movies, and pla
ys.
She knew her adopted mother, the zany yet loving woman who’d raised her, had wanted to take her but there had never been enough money.
Mac had promised herself that once she graduated, she’d choose in Ph.D. Program in England.
It would have been nice if this had just been a vacation where she truly was just researching the history of the wars that had bloodied England’s fields so long ago. But nope. She had to be here on a crack-brained mission.
Ah well. Life wasn’t perfect.
She could still try to enjoy the sights.
As she came around a bend, the forest ended just before a bridge that crossed a surprisingly wide river. Up on the hillside, once jagged and worn smooth by hundreds of years of wind, stood an ancient castle.
And just to the left of that was an ancient ruin.
Jeez. The castle had a ruin?
It was impossible to miss the toppling rock wall and pele tower in the distance. No doubt, it had been the original family home before the new structure had been built.
She drove up the hill and pulled up to the outer keep. Mac stared up at the massive, wood door studded with black iron. From the towers flanking either side of her and the guard walls that loomed overhead, she couldn’t help wondering if they still had a dungeon. And if so, did they toss troublesome guests in it?
The door swung open and a man of about forty-five dressed in a simple suit stepped out. “Ms. O’Neil?”
She gave him her most innocent smile, the one she used on professors, deans, and crusty librarians. “Yes. Lord Reign?”
The man’s smile tensed. “No. I’m Mr. Allen, his lordship’s butler.”
Mackenzie cleared her throat. Great. Of course. Why would the lord of a castle open his own door?
“Do come in.” Mr. Allen stepped back.
She followed him in the door and she gasped. Ahead of her was another archway which led to an uncovered courtyard.