Defiant Hearts Series
Box Set
by
Sydney Jane Baily
Reviews & Accolades
"Many wonderful characters including nasty villains and villainesses. I had a hard time putting it down!"
~Lady McNeill, Mrs. Condit & Friends Read Books
"...a glittering tale of star-crossed lovers, threatened by a web of lies... a great new book in a new series."
~Adrienne deWolfe, Bestselling Author of Scoundrel for Hire
"...a tantalizing glimpse of the author's delicate writing style as she melds romance with humor, conflict, and adventure. An entertaining read."
~Marliss Melton, Bestselling Author
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ISBN: 978-1-61417-663-3
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Defiant Hearts Box Set: Copyright © 2014 by Sydney Jane Baily. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.
An Intriguing Proposition: Copyright © 2012, 2014 by Sydney Jane Baily. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.
An Improper Situation: Copyright © 2014 by Sydney Jane Baily. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.
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Table of Contents
An Intriguing Proposition
An Improper Situation
An Intriguing Proposition
The Defiant Heart Series
Prequel
by
Sydney Jane Baily
Dedication
Dedicated to my dearest friend,
Marliss E. Melton
You've been with me every step of the way.
And I honestly don't think I could have, or would have,
published my first book without your support.
Love you.
Acknowledgments
I want to thank my beta readers—Toni Echols, Marliss Melton, and PR. This was a better story because of all your input. And I offer my undying gratitude to my editor, Chloe Bearuski, who as usual infused my writing with her grace and composure.
Prologue
Boston, Massachusetts
"Father," Elise said, after tapping on the door, which was already slightly ajar. Family meant everything to Oliver Malloy, and his wife or any of his four children knew they were always welcome to enter his study.
He looked up from the paper he was perusing. "Yes, sweetcake?"
Sweetcake—the nickname for a child. Yet at 21 years, Elise was a child no longer. Today, she wanted to ask him a particularly delicate favor, perhaps the hardest thing she'd ever done, and it caused her stomach to clench with apprehension.
"Are you terribly busy?" she stalled as her heart raced.
"Never too busy for you." He removed his glasses and gave her his attention.
She walked around her father's paper-strewn desk and leaned against the edge of it, looking down at his intelligent, kind face.
"Remember that man we met today?"
He wrinkled his nose while thinking, a habit her youngest sister, Rose, had as well.
"A number of men crossed our path today." He smiled gently and cocked his head, once full of dark hair that was now mostly gray. "Which one?"
"At the bank, Father. You remember? The tall one with the coffee-colored hair and thoughtful hazel eyes."
Her father's eyebrows shot up while his eyes widened. "Oh!... Hm. Let's see. Hazel eyes, brown hair. The handsome young one, correct?" He couldn't help teasing her.
She blushed and nodded.
"You're interested in him, I take it."
She loved that he got right to the point. Shyly, she nodded again. "Would you find out if he is attached?"
Her father looked at her with his inky blue eyes so like her own. Reaching out, he patted her hand. "I'm glad you're not still grieving over young Randall."
The mention of her dear friend who had passed from consumption two summers earlier still elicited a wave of loneliness. They'd grown up side-by-side as next door neighbors, played together, learned to read together, ridden horses and shared their dreams, and it was widely assumed they would eventually declare a love match and marry. Her mind wandered to his fair-hair and blue eyes.
"First, we need to know his name," her father said. "I don't believe I recall—"
Her thoughts snapped back to the present. "His name is Mr. Bradley," she told her father softly. "Michael Bradley."
Chapter 1
Two years later
Elise stared down at the letter from the Massachusetts National Bank, sucking on her lower lip and considering. Even now, her first instinct on seeing it had been to run to her father. Naturally, this would have been his responsibility were he still alive.
Her thoughts flickered next to her younger brother; however, she was loathe to bother him. She knew Reed had been strained over the past few years—not only taking over as head of the family, but a couple years prior to that, the girl he'd loved had fled the country in the wake of a particularly nasty scandal.
Good riddance, Elise thought, having never liked Celia Amory.
Of course, Reed had willingly and effectively taken up the mantle of family patriarch after their father's untimely death a year earlier. Oliver Malloy's shockingly sudden passing after a brief illness had left them all reeling. Her brother had supported their mother with compassion and strength, set up his own law practice, and taken over the unenviable role of trying to keep his sisters safely out of harm's way while steering them toward happy, productive lives.
Currently, Reed was knee-deep in a high-profile trial that seemed to be going terribly wrong, while at the same time, he was considered the smart young lawyer who was supposed to make it right. He would be traveling to Portland, Maine, the very next day to depose a witness.
Elise fingered the thick cream-colored paper. Yes, Reed had enough on his sterling silver plate.
Her mother, who had sunk into a seclusion of deep grief from which she was only just emerging, was clearly overwhelmed by Elise's younger sisters: Sophie's latest desire to go overseas to study music had met with a lukewarm reaction from their mother, though Elise thought it was the best thing for her sister. Sophie, an accomplished pianist, would definitely rise to the occasion though she would have to get Reed on her side to make it happen.
Their mother worried about losing sight of any of her daughters, especially Rose, the little terror under their roof, an incorrigible flirt at age fifteen who was never beyond doing something impetuous.
Elise sighed. W
hat to do? She could probably handle whatever it was herself. With a sense of foreboding, she broke the seal, opened the missive, and scanned it. However, she barely took in its meaning before the name at the bottom leaped off the page: Michael Bradley.
The letter could have come from any other officer of the bank, but it hadn't. It had come from him, and it brought back her humiliation as if it were yesterday. Her father's discreet enquiry into Mr. Bradley's social situation had turned up the unwanted news that he was in fact seeing a woman, someone she vaguely knew by name. If that had been the end of it, it would have been nothing more than a minor misplacement of her curiosity.
However, someone with a loose tongue had wagged it unforgivably into the young banker's ear. The next time she saw him while waiting at the courthouse for Reed to take her to lunch, Michael Bradley had ambushed her like a fox on a hen. In the middle of broad daylight, he'd approached her across the vast expanse of the lobby. Her welcoming smile froze and then died as, to Elise's intense mortification, he had thanked her for her interest in him.
Her interest in him! Good God, she'd nearly died on the spot.
She still remembered the feeling of being unable to breathe while cool moisture seemed to break out all over her. Complete and utter humiliation. If he'd been a gentleman, he wouldn't have put her through it, but rather, he would have pretended to know nothing about the situation. If anything at all, he should have only vaguely smiled and nodded in her direction when he saw her.
He'd even expressed an apology—an apology for what, she had no idea! She had felt sorry for the young lady with whom he was involved, if he was going to go around expressing regret over said involvement. And the whole time, he had a smile on his face as if thoroughly pleased with himself.
Cocky bastard, she had thought to herself at the time.
Highly unappealing and again, not very gentlemanly. She'd barely stammered a useless denial when luckily, her brother had arrived to escort her to lunch. She'd been unable to even return Mr. Bradley's expression of good will and good day.
It had taken her a week to leave the house without ducking her head, imagining everyone was snickering at her behind their gloves and parasols—the girl who'd asked after Michael Bradley.
She had waited another year before going into the bank again, and that time, it was to accompany her mother after her father died. She'd made sure to stay well clear of the man's office and was grateful not to see hide nor hair of him.
Suddenly, to read his name at the bottom of the letter that had been addressed simply to "The Malloy Family," she felt startled by the unwelcome recollection. She began reading again from the beginning, but his words were obscure, even vague. All she knew was that a representative from their family needed to go to the bank for a meeting because of the "impending circumstances" regarding their house on Mount Vernon Street. There was no clue as to the reason, only an appointed day and time.
Frowning, Elise tossed the letter onto the buffet table in the front parlor and started to walk away. Thinking better of it, she picked it up once more, folded it carefully, and tucked it in the waistband of her skirt.
Reed would be furious if he found out she had hidden it from him, and truthfully, she hoped he would never find out. He was starting to look for a home of his own, something at the waterfront in a district their mother would never consider proper, but which Reed liked. If he thought his family's home was in peril, he would drop everything to focus on their well-being.
No, she couldn't let him do that. He might jeopardize his career. She would simply meet with the man, herself. The vaguely menacing words might be a misunderstanding, and she could solve the problem with no one becoming the wiser.
Pouring a cup of coffee from the silver urn, she stirred in a spoonful of sugar and added some cream before sitting down alone in the sunshine of the lovely June morning. She picked up the Boston Post, considering the front page without really seeing it. She felt a frisson of anxiety, like something unpleasant tickling her spine at the prospect of seeing Michael Bradley again. With a deep breath, she tamped the feeling down. A lot of time had passed, her father was gone, and she had matured. It didn't matter a whit to her what the man thought of her personally.
She'd never spoken with him again since that day at the courthouse. Of course, she'd run into him once or twice socially, or rather, avoided him at all costs if she spotted him at some event she was attending. Not that she'd been looking for him. But he had the sort of demeanor, tall and commanding, that stood out in a room, whether the large marbled foyer of the bank or one of Boston's treasured ballrooms.
In some ways, he reminded her of Reed, both in his height, his presence, and his reputed intelligence. However, there was one thing about this overly confident, handsome—now why had that ridiculously irrelevant thought occurred to her?—this banker that was nothing like her brother—he was arrogant, the essence of self-assuredness.
"Cocky bastard," she muttered, finally focusing on the news story in front of her. The first Kentucky Derby winner at Churchill Downs in Louisville, KY. "...the gallant Aristides, heir to a mighty name, that strides with sweeping gallop toward victory." And the horse wasn't even favored to place.
Suddenly, her mother was there, leaning over her shoulder, having entered on quiet, slippered feet. "Ten thousand people in attendance! Goodness gracious," Evelyn Malloy said. "But I thought you mentioned something about a cock fight."
Elise froze. "No, Mama, a horse race. Come sit with me and have some coffee."
* * *
Elise alighted from her practical conveyance, a lovely little Palmer & Doucet two-seater carriage made on the north shore in West Amesbury. It gave her a measure of independence, despite the fact that she was as firmly under her brother's protection in her mother's house as she'd been under her father's before he died.
One step, two steps along Devonshire Street, and she looked up at the daunting gray granite facade and graceful arches of the Massachusetts National Bank. Though nearly brand new, as most of the street had burned in the great fire just a few years earlier, it somehow managed to look ancient and imposing.
She swallowed, squaring her shoulders and adjusting her hat before she patted her favorite blue velvet purse with its silk cord handle and secure clip closure, assured that the cursedly ominous bank letter was secure inside it.
A bowler-clad doorman whisked open the door for her before she could even touch the handle. He bowed, she nodded, and then she hesitated. Normally, she would head toward a clerk, but today was different.
"I'm here to see, Mr. Bradley," she told the man. "I have an appointment."
"Just so, Miss," he said, and gestured to another man, who nodded when the doorman instructed him, "Please show this young lady to Mr. Bradley's office."
Elise followed the man with slicked back hair across the white marble floor, so shiny she could see her reflection as she looked down. She wore one of her favorite pale peach skirts and matching jacket, the color of which so well set off her dark hair, which all the Malloy children had inherited from their father's Irish side.
She wasn't trying to look her best or even impress Mr. Bradley. Of course not! She merely wanted the confidence that looking shipshape brought to her. But this skirt had a lovely draped bustle and a secondary overskirt in a slightly paler color of peach pulled narrowly around her legs. She felt quite put together.
Distracted by her heeled shoes clicking across the floor, she looked up to find herself in a small waiting area in front of a row of office doors. Here, the man left her with a small bow. Elise didn't have time to take a seat before the tall figure of Michael Bradley appeared in the doorway directly in front of her.
He stopped still for a moment, his eyes widening, and then a broad smile spread over his face. His forward motion resumed, and he approached her, taking her hand in his even before she offered it. He held it a moment, looking down at her with the lovely fawnlike green-brown eyes she remembered, and it became hard to breathe.
"Yes," she confirmed, and that was all she managed.
"Excuse me if I say that I'm surprised to see you. But not unpleasantly so."
Elise managed to get her brain working as he released her hand.
"Why surprised, Mr. Bradley? You did send a letter to my home. And you couldn't expect my mother to come."
"No, but your brother—"
"Is incredibly busy," she finished.
He frowned. "Too busy to protect his family's estate?"
She bristled, not liking the intimation that Reed wasn't looking out for his family's best interests. At the same time, her heart seemed to kick into her throat. What was the extent and seriousness of the problem? It sounded dire.
"He would have come if he'd known about the letter," she said.
"Ah," Michael Bradley's face softened. "I see. You've decided to come in his stead, and without giving him the opportunity."
"Well... yes," Elise admitted. "I share an equal interest in my family's well-being, and I like to think my mind is sharp enough to comprehend whatever you have to tell me."
"Oh, I'm sure you're quite sharp enough, Miss Malloy. Won't you come this way?" He gestured for her to precede him into his office with a wave of his arm and the slightest of bows. "Please, take a seat," he added to the back of her, and she felt his sonorous voice run down her spine like fingertips.
Quickly, she took the closest seat, plushly upholstered in a dark and light blue brocade.
"Would you care for some tea?" he asked her.
The Defiant Hearts Series Box Set Page 1