The Earl Takes A Bride (Elbia Series Book 2)

by Kathryn Jensen

  She Was Trembling And She Didn’t Know Why.

  Diane met Thomas’s intense brown eyes and a shudder of realization raced through her. She wanted him to kiss her again. She wanted him to crush her in his massive arms and remind her how it felt to be a woman.

  Was that what she feared? That he would do all these things and more if she flew away with him to her brother-in-law’s palace in Elbia?

  “Say yes,” he said so low, the words were a barely audible rumble across her humble Connecticut kitchen.

  Diane looked up at the man who seemed to fill a good half of the room. His eyes were glistening obsidian, hard with determination.

  She drew herself up in her chair. Now or never…a persistent voice whispered through her mind. Take a chance. Grab the ring. Risk your heart. For once in your life, do what feels good!

  “All right,” she forced out at last. “I’ll go.”

  Dear Reader,

  Spring is in the air…and so is romance. Especially at Silhouette, where we’re celebrating our 20th anniversary throughout 2000! And Silhouette Desire promises you six powerful, passionate, provocative love stories every month.

  Fabulous Anne McAllister offers an irresistible MAN OF THE MONTH with A Cowboy’s Secret. A rugged cowboy fears his darkest secret will separate him from the beauty he loves.

  Bestselling author Leanne Banks continues her exciting miniseries LONE STAR FAMILIES: THE LOGANS with a sexy bachelor doctor in The Doctor Wore Spurs. In A Whole Lot of Love, Justine Davis tells the emotional story of a full-figured woman feeling worthy of love for the first time.

  Kathryn Jensen returns to Desire with another wonderful fairy-tale romance, The Earl Takes a Bride. THE BABY BANK, a brand-new theme promotion in Desire in which love is found through sperm bank babies, debuts with The Pregnant Virgin by Anne Eames. And be sure to enjoy another BRIDAL BID story, which continues with Carol Devine’s Marriage for Sale, in which the hero “buys” the heroine at auction.

  We hope you plan to usher in the spring season with all six of these supersensual romances, only from Silhouette Desire!

  Enjoy!

  Joan Marlow Golan

  Senior Editor, Silhouette Desire

  The Earl Takes a Bride

  KATHRYN JENSEN

  With deep thanks to my wonderful readers,

  who loved Jacob, Allison, Diane and Thomas in

  I Married a Prince…and wanted more of them.

  Books by Kathryn Jensen

  Silhouette Desire

  I Married a Prince #1115

  The Earl Takes a Bride #1282

  Silhouette Intimate Moments

  Time and Again #685

  Angel’s Child #758

  The Twelve-Month Marriage #797

  Silhouette Books

  The Loop

  Getting a Grip: Dig

  Getting Real: Christopher

  Getting a Life: Marissa

  KATHRYN JENSEN

  has written many novels for young readers as well as for adults. She speed walks, works out with weights and enjoys ballroom dancing for exercise, stress reduction and pleasure. Her children are now grown. She lives in Maryland with her husband, Bill, and her writing companion—Sunny, a lovable terrier mix adopted from a shelter.

  Having worked as a hospital switchboard operator, department store sales associate, bank clerk and elementary school teacher, she now splits her days between writing her own books and teaching fiction writing at two local colleges and through a correspondence course. She enjoys helping new writers get a start and speaks “at the drop of a hat” at writers’ conferences, libraries and schools across the country.

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  One

  Diane Fields, mother of three, aroused him.

  She pushed all the right buttons, as one of his American friends so aptly put it.

  She looked at him…and those soft, hazel eyes with a hint of playful sparkle melted his trousers. Worst of all, she made Thomas forget he was employed by Jacob von Austerand, King of Elbia, who had a temper to rival his own and wouldn’t be pleased to discover his trusted right-hand man was mentally undressing his wife’s sister. Particularly while he was on a royal mission.

  Thomas had watched her house for two hours before the lights in the end rooms dimmed and he decided it was probably safe to approach. Nevertheless, he remained behind the wheel of the glistening ebony Benz—concealed behind the glazed windows looking out at Long Island Sound, his strong fingers coiling and uncoiling nervously around the leather-wrapped steering wheel.

  He studied the front windows, following telltale wisps of shadows behind them. Was she in the living room or her own bedroom now? He couldn’t remember the exact floor plan of the little Cape Cod in this quaint Connecticut town—Nanticoke—a place reminiscent of Chichester on the sea-swept coast of England, where he’d been born.

  Maybe he should wait a little longer?

  He was stalling for time and he knew it. Thomas cursed softly under his breath and flung open the car door. Straightening all six feet five inches of his muscular body, he rose up out of the leather driver’s seat and quietly closed the door.

  It wasn’t that he didn’t want to see Diane, he told himself as he crossed the street. Lord knows he’d been thinking about the long-legged brunette off and on for more than a year and almost constantly for the past two days. Thomas remembered in disturbing detail the lovely contours of her face…and other intriguing parts of her body. Diane Fields was a good-looking woman with a no-nonsense attitude toward life he could appreciate. In her own way she was tougher than her sister, Jacob’s bride. Thomas had seen Diane stand up to Jacob on behalf of Allison before His Royal Highness married her. The woman was a force to be reckoned with. But apparently she was in trouble now.

  As chief advisor and security officer to one of the most powerful figures in Europe, Thomas Denton Smythe had been dispatched to find out what kind of difficulty the king’s sister-in-law was in and how bad it might be. As unofficial royal troubleshooter, he was expected to get to the bottom of things.

  Bottom.

  Why had he thought of that unfortunately provocative word? He marched forward, smothering a groan. Her bottom, he mused as visions of Diane appeared in his mind, at angles best not dwelt upon.

  As Thomas neared the driftwood-gray bungalow, another, fainter light from the interior of the house flicked off. He drew a deep breath and strode bravely across the lawn, already having decided on the side door that led from the driveway directly into kitchen. Logistically it made sense. He didn’t want to start off on the wrong foot by waking her children.

  Her husband was another reason for using caution. Gary’s truck had been conspicuously absent when Thomas pulled up in the sleek black sedan across the street. Even though it was nearly nine o’clock at night, well past the time a construction worker knocked off for the day, there was still no sign of the man.

  Before he knew it, Thomas was standing on the four-by-four cement slab outside her kitchen door. There was nothing to do but knock and get it over with.

  He waited for her to answer, his arms folded over his chest, wearing the same suit he’d traveled in—impeccable Italian tailoring, but cut much wider than the traditional sleek Continental silhouette to allow for his broad shoulders and muscled chest. He had taken clothes for granted in his younger days. But working for Jacob demanded a cert
ain image.

  Hasty, rustling sounds came from behind the door. As if Diane was throwing on a robe…or searching for a weapon before she opened her door at night to a stranger. Now he was certain Gary wasn’t around.

  Good, he thought. He wouldn’t have liked any man who had married Diane, but even with an open mind he hadn’t been impressed with Gary Fields. There was something about the fellow he didn’t trust.

  The white eyelet curtains lifted a bare inch from the left side of the window in the door. An apprehensive fern-green eye appeared for an instant, a sweep of chocolate-brown bangs, then the curtains swung back into place. But the door didn’t open.

  Thomas cleared his throat. “Diane, it’s Thomas Smythe, the king’s advisor. It’s important that I speak with you.”

  That did the trick. He heard the latch open. The door jerked wide. Diane stood in a splash of fluorescent light, backed by her kitchen table and a sun-flower-yellow decor. She was wrapped in a pink chenille robe. Quickly she pulled it into place when it slipped off one shoulder. Her hair looked damp, as if she’d recently showered and had only bothered to towel dry it. Even from a few feet away, she smelled of strawberries. She smiled in welcome, but looked a little puzzled.

  “Thomas, I didn’t recognize you. Is something wrong? Are Allison and the babies all right? And Jacob?”

  She would have kept rattling off questions at him if he hadn’t stepped into her kitchen, nearly filling it. And apparently startling the woman to silence. It was a reaction he often saw from strangers. The intimidation factor of his size was something he actively cultivated in certain situations. After all, he had been responsible for Jacob’s safety for many years, and now it was his duty to see to the entire royal family’s security.

  Unfortunately, in this case, his physique and threatening scowl wouldn’t work in his favor.

  With effort, he relaxed his shoulders, trying to make himself seem smaller, smiled and put on the charm he usually saved for visiting dignitaries and particularly bedworthy young women. “I’m sorry to arrive unannounced, Diane,” he lied in as soft a voice as his rumbling baritone could manage. “I’m in the States on several errands for Jacob, and I hoped you wouldn’t mind if I stopped by on my way through.”

  She smiled up at him, unsurprised, as if people frequently dropped in on her at odd hours. “You’ve shaved off your beard.”

  He chuckled. “Do I look very different?”

  “Only for a moment,” she admitted. “At the window, in the dark. Not many men can make themselves look like James Bond just by shaving.”

  He never went to films, but he was warmed by her comparison to a movie character she seemed to admire.

  “Although,” she continued, “you’re probably head and shoulders taller than 007.”

  He grinned, pleased. “Are the children still up?” he asked, knowing they weren’t.

  “No.” She sighed. “They would have loved to see you again. Tommy took an immense liking to you. Maybe because you have the same name. He’s grown, you know. You’d be surprised how much, for a seven-year-old.”

  Although she was smiling and chattering lightly, filling him in on accomplishments and changes in her three offspring—Tommy at seven, Annie, six and Gare, five—he could read an underlying tension in her nervous movements. Her fingers sought out unnecessary tasks—lining up the salt and pepper shakers on her table, straightening the kitchen towel hanging over the oven door handle. Another sign of anxiety revealed itself in the delicate lines around her pretty eyes and mouth.

  He concentrated too long on her mouth, her elegantly shaped lips…and felt himself lean toward her.

  She automatically fell back a step as if to make more space for him in the little room. “Do you have time for coffee? Or do you prefer tea?”

  “Coffee would be great,” he said, although it hadn’t been at the top of his list of desires.

  She spun around and busied herself with measuring grounds into the coffee maker, fetching milk from the refrigerator, digging two blue ceramic mugs from behind a collection of children’s plastic cups in the cupboard. She was offering him her best, though her mugs would have looked common beside the von Austerand’s fragile Sheffield bone china.

  “May I help with—”

  “No, no.” She cut him off with a wave of her hand as she transferred the sugar bowl and milk to the table. “Sit, sit. So, tell me how everyone is. Really,” she added breathlessly, sweeping damp brown tendrils out of her eyes. She looked suddenly very tired, holding herself together by threads as she swung back to the counter to watch coffee drip into the glass decanter. “Summer in Elbia…it must be lovely.”

  “You’ve never been there, have you?” Thomas asked.

  “To Elbia? To Europe?” She laughed. “Not likely. Do you realize the cost of foreign travel these da—” She caught herself, turned to blink at him and smile weakly. “Of course you don’t. Everything’s on the royal budget, isn’t it?”

  “Most everything,” he admitted quietly.

  “Must be nice,” she murmured, more to herself, he expected, than for his benefit. She sighed again. “Such an exotic world…far away…the stuff of dreams.”

  The coffeemaker sputtered out its last drops of dark, fragrant liquid. A pungent aroma filled the kitchen, and Diane pulled herself out of her reverie to fill the mugs and bring them to the table. She sat down heavily, with a little inward sound that wasn’t quite a groan.

  Thomas watched her as he lifted his steaming mug of black, unsweetened coffee to his lips. It was weak compared to the way he liked it. If they’d been together under different circumstances he’d have shown her how to make a strong European brew to his taste.

  He hastily shook away the intimate thought as he watched her add two spoonfuls of sugar and a generous dollop of milk to her own mug. He reminded himself of his mission.

  “You look well,” he said slowly.

  Her eyes were fixed on her beverage. “Absolutely,” she said with a chipper lilt that didn’t come from the heart.

  How to proceed? Thomas felt a little desperate. “I…we, that is, wondered…”

  An arrow of suspicion shot through her eyes as they rose to meet his. “So that’s what this is.” She sounded hurt, and he kicked himself for not handling the situation more tactfully.

  “Now, Diane—”

  “You’ve come to spy on me,” she accused with a touch of dry humor.

  “I’m sorry if I’m intruding,” Thomas whispered gruffly. “Jacob and Allison are worried about you and the children. They’ve received phone calls from Florida. Your parents believe you’re having problems of some sort but won’t tell them what it’s all about.”

  The touch of anger in Diane’s eyes softened. She set her mug down a little too hard, and coffee sloshed over the lip onto the tabletop. “It’s nothing they can do anything about. I didn’t want to burden anyone unnecessarily.”

  “I see.”

  She gave him a look that could only have come from deep sorrow. Whatever had happened must have been pretty awful.

  He set down his own mug firmly, hiked himself up even straighter in his chair and spread his huge hands over hers on the table in front of him. “If it’s that serious, Mrs. Fields, your family should be told.”

  “It’s nothing that I can’t— It’s just that—” Something seemed to catch in her throat. A watery glaze covered her eyes, and she looked away from him.

  Was she going to cry? He would never have thought it possible. Diane the fighter. Diane the veritable tigress when it came to chasing off the press in the days just after her sister’s marriage to Jacob, when no one in either family could go anywhere without a trail of reporters yapping like hyenas at their heels. He’d seen her run off a journalist and his photographer with a broom when the pair had tried to corner her children with questions in their own backyard.

  And here she was, an emotional disaster, on the verge—unless he was mistaken—of breaking down entirely. He didn’t have a clue what
to do.

  “Diane, let them help.”

  She pulled herself up and stood to face him as he rose from the table. The top of her head only reached the shoulder of his suit jacket. “I’m just tired. Days are pretty long around here. I should go to bed now.”

  “Tell me what has happened,” he said, emphasizing each word.

  She looked up at him, a spark of proud fire momentarily brightening her sad eyes. “Please go.”

  “You are not leaving this room, and I’m not leaving this house until you tell me what’s going on.”

  “Why does it matter?” Her eyes narrowed suspiciously. “It’s the possibility of scandal, isn’t it? If the press hears the king of Elbia’s sister-in-law is bereft of a husband and can’t pay her electric bill, they’ll have a field day. Won’t they?”

  Thomas’s heart stopped. So that was it. “Gary’s…left you and the children?” he asked hesitantly.

  “Gone…flown the coop…absconded with a floozy from the office…good riddance.” She fluttered a hand carelessly in the air, but the gesture didn’t fool him a bit.

  “Dear girl, I’m so sorry,” he muttered, trying to recover from his shock and think of something…anything appropriate to say.

  “Well, I’m not,” Diane said in a quiet voice just short of cracking. “It’s been a long time coming. I should have insisted years ago…didn’t…couldn’t find a way to—”

  The last ounce of strength drained from her. She turned with a choking sob and rushed toward the doorway into the living room.

  Thomas cut her off with one enormous stride. She ran smack into his chest with her bowed head. His big arms immediately wrapped around her, pinning her there. She struggled for exactly half of one second, then went limp in his bear hug of an embrace.

  Neither of them said a thing. But now that Thomas had her in his arms, her trembling body flush against his, he wasn’t sure what to do with her.