In My Wildest Fantasies (Love at Pembroke Palace Book 1)

by Julianne MacLean

  “Which is?”

  Blake faced him. “Father has spoken of the end more than a few times himself over the past month. Come here.” He waved Devon over to the window. “Look outside and you’ll see what I mean.” Devon stood and approached Blake, who pointed at the Italian Gardens. “There he is, out there in the rain.”

  Indeed, there he was—their father, the exalted Duke of Pembroke, powerful patriarch of this family, on his knees in the muddy garden. Or at least, what was left of it, for all the plants had been dug up, and there was nothing left but deep holes and piles of dirt. He was now digging up one last rose bush with a shovel.

  “He has been moving all his favorite flowers to higher ground,” Blake explained.

  Devon felt his temper rise. “God in heaven, where is the gardener? Why is he not doing it? And why is there no one out there with an umbrella over his head?”

  “Father won’t let anyone help him,” Blake said. “He insists on doing it himself, and just last week, he fired a footman who tried to push the garden cart for him.”

  “But what is he trying to accomplish?”

  “He says he is saving the palace, Devon—his beloved gardens especially—because he believes we are victims of some ancient curse, and that a great flood is coming and we are all going to be swept away.”

  “A curse!” Devon blurted out. “Bloody hell, Blake, has he lost his mind?”

  His brother sank down onto the chair behind the desk and took a drink. “Now you’re finally getting it.”

  Devon looked out the window again at his father, who had placed the rosebush in the wheeled cart and was struggling to push it across the muddy terrain.

  “But the real reason we are thankful that you have returned,” Blake said, “is because he believes you are the only one who can stop the curse.”

  “Me? How, for pity’s sake? I am the one he declared no longer his son.”

  “We do not know how,” Blake replied, “but we are eager to find out, which is why we wanted you to come home. He will want to see you, Devon, the very second he hears you are back.”

  Again, Devon looked out the window at his father. “I am no one’s hero, Blake. Nor do I ever wish to be. Ever again.”

  “I know that. I remember what you went through. But that does not concern him. You’ll have your work cut out for you, trying to convince him of it.”

  It would not be easy, Devon knew, and he doubted he could make a difference. But something had to be done. His father had to be brought in from the rain at the very least.

  Devon set down his glass and strode to the door to get his coat. He paused, however, and turned back to face his brother. “I don’t know what will happen out there, Blake, but I will at least bring him inside and, hopefully, I will return with answers.”

  Chapter 4

  Dear Diary,

  Surely, I am doomed.

  This morning, I woke in my bed in my father’s house with the early morning sun shining in on me and felt again those wicked sensations of need. I fought to resist them, truly I did, but alas, I was weak. I slipped out from between the thin sheets, dressed quickly, and went into the woods again.

  It was cool beneath the shelter of the trees, and the deeper I went into the forest, the faster my heart began to race with that wild and decadent excitement that will not release its hold on me. Soon, like all the other times, I did not even care how wicked it was. My skin was tingling with anticipation, and, oh, how I gloried in the cool perspiration that drenched my body! I pulled the pins from my hair and let it fall loose down my back, then I began to run, shedding all my inhibitions and reservations along the way. All I cared about was the irresistible pleasure I knew he would bestow upon me when I came to him.

  I reached the clearing and he was there, lying on the grass, bathing in the sweet warmth of the sun. If only I could describe the fire in my blood and the ferocity of my passions! I stood unable to move, blinded by my desire and bewildered by the impossible splendor before me. His smooth skin was gleaming, his long, muscular legs stretched out on the blanket. I could barely catch my breath!

  I could not wait another minute. I walked across the lush, green clearing toward him.

  He heard my soft approach and sat up. “Lydie,” he said in a deep, husky voice that made my heated body throb. “I knew you’d come.”

  “I couldn’t stay away.”

  He smiled at me with desire in his eyes. “Come closer.”

  When I stepped onto the soft, warm blanket, he rose up on his knees, helped me remove my gown, and touched his open mouth to my quivering belly, licking and suckling just below my navel until my—

  A knock rapped hard at the door, and Rebecca slammed the musty diary shut, then stuffed it under her pillow.

  Taking a few seconds to cool her thoughts and subdue her racing heart, she slid off the bed and crossed the small room of the Pembroke Village Inn. She paused briefly at the door, listening. “Who is it?”

  “It’s Grace,” her aunt whispered from the other side.

  Exhaling with relief, Rebecca smoothed out the fabric of her dressing gown before she opened the door for her aunt, who was barely visible beneath the flouncy mountain of costumes in her arms.

  “I’m glad it’s you.” Rebecca struggled to distract herself from her scandalous reading just now, by stepping forward to peer up and down the narrow corridor. “I panicked for a moment, thinking it might be Father.”

  She stepped back in.

  “He has no idea where we are,” Aunt Grace said. “We’re safe for the time being,”

  Rebecca looked more closely at her aunt’s gown for the ball that evening. “This is beautiful.”

  Grace was going to the Pembroke Palace Fancy Dress Ball dressed as Mary, Queen of Scots. Before she’d lost her head, of course. “I can’t wait to see you in it, Aunt Grace.”

  “And I cannot wait to see you in your costume. Shall we begin?”

  Rebecca stepped aside to invite her aunt into the room, so they could assist each other in preparing for the ball. Neither of them, under the present circumstances, had dared to bring their maids.

  Her aunt squeezed her plump figure along with the oversized costume through the door. “I wore this two years ago at the Summervilles’ costume ball in London. I do hope none of the guests at Pembroke attended that particular evening, or I shall be quite embarrassed.”

  “There was hardly time to have new costumes made,” Rebecca reminded her, recalling with a shiver how they had fled her home in the night like two thieves making their escape. “I am sure it will be fine.”

  But would it really be fine? she wondered uneasily as she went to withdraw her own costume from her valise in the large armoire. Her whole life had been turned upside down in the past week with the devastating news that her father intended to marry her off to their neighbor, Mr. Rushton.

  Though he was handsome by some standards and could wield some charm when he wished to, Rebecca could never marry him. Not in a thousand years, for he was a bully and a tyrant. He slapped his horses in the face when they were not quick enough to obey him, and once, not long ago, when she was out walking, she saw him kicking his dogs into submission. She had boldly confronted him about it a day later when he paid a call to her father—for what purpose she never knew; they always conversed in private—but he denied doing any such thing and assured her it must have been one of his grooms. With a mocking, patronizing display of shock and concern, he promised to reprimand all of them.

  Even now she felt her jaw clenching as she remembered the incident.

  As for her father’s part in this... Well, she could only conclude that his pain was what made him irritable these past few years—so irritable that he seemed to resent her very presence in the house, despite the fact that she was the only person in the world who still endeavored to cling to the tattered remnants of her affectio
n for him.

  She often asked herself why she continued to cling to them with so little return of affection, and the answer, she supposed, was simple. Because he was her father and he was not well. She wanted to be a good and dutiful daughter, to be patient and understanding about his cantankerous moods. She did what she could for him. She wanted him to be comfortable. She genuinely did not want him to be alone in his discomfort, for there was a time, many years ago, when they had been close.

  But now, because of this misguided promise he had made to Mr. Rushton, with no concern for her wishes, everything was different. Her father’s actions had chipped away at her compassion. Now, all she could do was accept that his isolation from the world had caused him to lose all sense of reality. He had not stepped outside his home in over a year, and therefore could not comprehend that there was life beyond the borders of his estate. He could not even fathom that there were other men in England that she could marry. When she had suggested it, he had insisted that her duty was there, near the estate—to him and the Creighton title, for it was one of the few earldoms that descended through the female line.

  She laid her costume out on the bed and thought about how difficult it had been to deliberately defy him by leaving without a word. A daughter was supposed to obey her father. She knew that.

  But to marry Mr. Rushton?

  She sighed. Perhaps in some ways, she should be grateful for this call to arms, for she had been living far too long in the thin, dwindling realm of her optimism, clinging to her dreams and bright hopes for the future, even when her life had become unbearable, while she had remained at her father’s side.

  She had never had a proper debut or a magical first Season like other young women her age, nor had she accepted a single invitation to anything outside the vicinity of her father’s estate. A few country fairs and dances under the chaperonage of an elderly female neighbor were the most she had experienced.

  Looking back on all of it now—from a very different and desperate vantage point—she wondered if she had accepted that life for so long because she had been living in a world of dreams, and experiencing passion through someone else’s diary—the mysterious Lydie. Perhaps Rebecca might have fought harder for her independence if things had been different, if she had never found that diary to keep her dreams alive—dreams of a particular gentleman who had left England for America three years ago.

  Perhaps his absence was the very thing that allowed her to be content in her small world, because she knew someday he would return, and she was perfectly willing to wait for the kind of relentless passion she had been reading and dreaming about. The kind of passion she had known once before for herself on a deserted country road not far from the inn.

  Well, the waiting was over at least, she thought, struggling to regain her wounded optimism as she sat down in front of the mirror and watched her aunt sweep her wavy red hair into a knot on top of her head, then pull a single lock free to trail down her back. Lord Hawthorne had come home. He had arrived just in time for his mother’s fiftieth birthday celebration ball, and just in time to give Rebecca hope again. She, with her aunt as chaperone, would be in attendance at that ball, because Rebecca needed him. Urgently.

  “Do you think he will remember me?” she asked, working hard to sound relaxed and nonchalant as she looked at her aunt’s reflection in the mirror.

  She was going to the ball dressed as Helen of Troy and had chosen the costume with the express purpose of attracting his attention. Helen’s beauty had launched a thousand ships, after all.

  “I don’t know, dear,” her aunt replied as she pinned Rebecca’s costume more snugly over her shoulder. “He’s been gone for so long.”

  Rebecca wet her lips and nodded, trying not to feel too disappointed.

  Her aunt smiled at her in the mirror. “Oh, what am I thinking? In the past four years, how often could he have come to the rescue of a beautiful red-haired damsel in distress in a runaway coach, whose driver had fallen down drunk from his seat?”

  Rebecca tried to smile. “You are right, Aunt Grace. Surely he must remember that night, but what I want to know is—will he remember me, or more importantly, will he treat me differently, now that I am older? I was only seventeen then. I am almost twenty-one now.”

  Six days shy of her twenty-first birthday, to be exact. And six days short of her majority.

  Her aunt toyed with the fabric of her Trojan costume, adjusting the way everything draped in the front. “He has kept you and your father on his family’s guest list all these years, so that is a good sign.”

  “He probably put us there and promptly forgot about us, since we haven’t gone to one single party.”

  At least now, she understood why she had never been permitted to attend any gatherings. It was why she and her aunt were here, registered at the Pembroke Inn under false names. It was why she had snuck away in the night like a criminal.

  Just the thought of it filled her with sickening grief over her father’s betrayal, and a genuine fear for her future. She could still hear the impatient tremor in his voice from three days ago. You will not refuse him, Rebecca. He won’t stand for it. Nor will I.

  She turned to her aunt. “Thank you, Aunt Grace, for helping me. I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t been willing to take this risk. It means so much to me.”

  Her aunt touched her cheek. “How could I possibly say no? Your mother was my beloved sister, and when she was alive, we would have done anything for each other. I could not let you be forced into marrying that man. Have you decided which earrings to wear?” Aunt Grace was clearly eager to change the subject, for the hour was growing late. She held both pairs up for Rebecca to consider.

  She examined them only briefly. “I like these,” she said. “They will bring out the color in my eyes and I will need all the help I can get from behind this mask. Oh, how I wish this was a regular ball, not a masquerade. He won’t even be able to see my face.”

  “I disagree, dear,” Aunt Grace said. “There is nothing more appealing to a man than a woman of mystery, and when we arrive, remember what I told you in the coach on the way here. If you wish to entice him, you must be confident and elusive. You cannot be presented to him like a drooling puppy with your tail wagging, or like a young woman who wants something from him. Being the heir to a dukedom, I am sure he encounters women like that every day of his life. You must tease him and lure him in your direction. Make yourself into a golden ring he cannot quite grab hold of, then at the end of the night, you will be the one he will remember. The one he will wish to see again. Then you, my dear, will be safe from Mr. Rushton, for you will have caught yourself the son of a duke.”

  Rebecca sighed and nodded, even though it was not his station in life that had brought her to Pembroke after fleeing her home and the prison of her future. It was the very man himself who had haunted her dreams for four difficult years. It was the memory of his touch, his strong and capable hands on her body that wild and dangerous night when she had met someone who was everything a man should be—confident, honorable, heroic.

  She longed to see him again with every breath in her body. She wanted him to be the one she would marry, not Mr. Rushton. She wanted to feel passion for her husband, the kind of passion Lydie wrote about in her diary.

  Perhaps, if the fates were kind, Rebecca would feel that passion tonight, and maybe even secure a happy future. She certainly hoped so, because if she were forced to marry a man she did not love, she might as well give up breathing.

  Devon strode out of the palace doors into the cold, hard rain, and raised an umbrella over his head. He crossed the flagstone terrace to look over what had once been the renowned Italian Gardens and saw only a muddy ruin.

  His father had completely destroyed the garden. He had moved the shrubs and hedges. He had dug up bulbs, leaving deep holes and large mounds of earth scattered indiscriminately. All that remained was t
he large fountain in the center and the beautiful statue of Venus, abandoned, left alone in a devastated wasteland. No wonder Mother had wished Devon to return.

  Gathering his coat collar tighter around his neck and noting the fact that he could see his breath in the damp chill, Devon tightened his grip on the umbrella handle and looked toward the highest point on the property. There, he saw his father with a garden spade, digging another hole.

  Devon left the stone terrace and tried not to limp as he walked up the gravel path. He ran a hand down his thigh to massage the pain out of his knee. When he finally reached his father, he stood quietly for a moment, watching him.

  The duke forced the shovel into the tough ground and tossed the wet earth carelessly behind him. Water dripped from the brim of his hat, and his coat was soaked straight through. He did not seem to care, however. His only concern was the hole in the ground.

  Devon cleared his throat. “Father.”

  The duke continued to dig, so Devon took a step closer and spoke again, louder this time. “Father!”

  The duke stopped and turned and stared bewildered at him. “My son!” He dropped the shovel, rushed forward and wrapped his arms around Devon. “Thank the Lord! You’ve come home!”

  Devon managed to hug his father and hold the umbrella over both their heads, while his emotions fell into turmoil. His father was not the same. He did not seem to recall the terrible fury and anger upon which they had parted three years ago. It was as if it had never happened.

  “Yes, Father, I have returned,” he said warily. When they stepped apart, Devon held the umbrella over his father’s head, not his own. “Blake said you wished to speak to me about something.”

  “Yes, it’s very important.”

  “Why don’t we go inside and talk,” he suggested. “It’s pouring rain, and you’re soaking wet.”

  “Not yet. I must save the garden. Everything needs to be right here, exactly where we are standing. On high ground.”