He cleared his throat. “I believe you must marry me, Miss Suchlike, in order for us to continue this discussion.”
She pulled back a little and stared up at him, completely at a loss for words.
He scowled. “What?”
“I thought you said you were too old for me,” she said.
“I did—”
“And that I was too young to know my own mind.”
“I did.”
“And that I ought to be looking at other men. Men more my own age, like that footman Sprat.”
His scowl became thunderous. “I don’t remember telling you to look at young Sprat. Have you?”
“Well, no,” she admitted.
It had nearly broken her heart when he’d said those words, for she didn’t want to look at any other man but him. The only thing that had saved her, in fact, was that he’d kept creeping up behind her in the mornings and losing his silly wager. Mr. Pynch didn’t seem able to stop himself from their flirtation, and she certainly couldn’t.
Not that she’d wanted to.
“Good,” he growled now.
She beamed up at him.
He stared at her a moment and then shook his head as if to clear it. “Well?”
“Well what?”
He sighed. “Will you marry me, Sally Suchlike?”
“Oh.” Sally carefully smoothed her skirt, because of course she wanted to marry Mr. Pynch. But she was a levelheaded girl, and she needed to make absolutely sure. Marriage, after all, was a very big step. “Why do you want to marry me?”
His expression was enough to send most girls into flight, but Sally had been studying Mr. Pynch and his expressions for some time now, and she knew she was quite safe with him. “In case you haven’t noticed, I’ve kissed you every day in this hallway for the past fortnight or more. And even though you are too young and much too pretty for me, and you’ll no doubt regret sooner or later being tied to an ugly bastard like me, I still want to marry you.”
“Why?”
He stared down at her, and if Mr. Pynch had had hair, he might’ve pulled it out in frustration. “Because I love you, you silly lass!”
“Oh, good,” Sally purred, and wrapped her arms about his thick neck. “Then I’ll marry you. But you’re wrong, you know.”
At that point, Sally was interrupted by the valet kissing her quite firmly and enthusiastically, so it was some time before he raised his head and said, “How am I wrong?”
Sally laughed up into Mr. Pynch’s lovely, scowling face. “You’re wrong that I’ll regret marrying you. I’ll never regret marrying you, because I love you as well.”
Which only earned her another enthusiastic kiss.
MELISANDE STRETCHED LUXURIOUSLY and rolled against her husband. “Good morning,” she whispered.
“Indeed it is,” he said. His voice was lazy, with just a hint of exhaustion.
She hid a smile against his shoulder. He’d nearly worn himself out, making slow love to her. He did seem to like waking her in the mornings.
A scratch and a whine came from her dressing room.
Melisande poked Vale in the ribs. “You need to let him out now.”
He sighed. “Must I?”
“He’ll only scratch more, and then he’ll start barking, and Sprat will come to the door and ask if he should take Mouse out.”
“Dear God, such a large ruckus for such a small dog,” Vale muttered, but he rose from their pallet and padded nude across the floor.
Melisande watched him under lowered eyelids. He really did have the most beautiful bottom. She smiled, wondering what he’d think if she said so.
Jasper opened the door to the dressing room. Mouse trotted busily out with a bone in his mouth. He jumped on the pallet and turned about three times before settling and gnawing his prize. Their pallet had expanded in the last month with the addition of a thin mattress and lots of pillows. Melisande had had the bed removed from her room altogether, and now the pallet took up pride of place against the wall between the windows. At night, with only a candle for light, she imagined that she lay in some Ottoman palace.
“That dog ought to have his own bed,” Vale muttered.
“He does have his own bed,” Melisande pointed out. “He just doesn’t sleep in it.”
Vale scowled down at the dog. Of course, he had been the one to give Mouse the bone, so no one in the room took the scowl very seriously.
“Be glad he no longer sleeps under the covers,” Melisande said.
“I am glad. I hope never to find a cold nose against my arse again.” He turned his scowl on her. “And what are you smirking about, my lady wife?”
“I beg your pardon, this is not a smirk.”
“Oh, yes?” He began to prowl toward her, all lean muscle and intent, interested male. “Then how would you characterize your expression?”
“I’m admiring the view,” she said.
“Are you?” He made a detour to where he’d carelessly flung his coat the night before. “Perhaps you’d like me to perform a gavotte?”
She tilted her head, watching as he dug in the pocket of his coat. “I might like that.”
“Would you, you insatiable baggage?”
“I would.” She stretched a bit on the pallet, letting her nipples pop from the coverlet. “But I can be satiated, you know.”
“Can you?” he muttered. His eyes were on her nipples, and he seemed a bit distracted. “I’ve tried and tried and still you’re eager. You wear a man out.”
Her lips curved at his plaintive tone, and she glanced significantly at his cock, standing proud and erect now. “You don’t look worn out.”
“It’s terrible, isn’t it,” he said conversationally. “You look at me and I become embarrassingly attentive.”
She held out her arms. “Come here, you silly man.”
He grinned and knelt by her side.
“What have you there?” she asked, because he held one hand behind his back.
His grin faded as he lay down beside her, propping himself on his elbow. “I’ve something for you.”
“Really?” Her brows knit. He hadn’t given her anything since the garnet earrings.
He took his hand out from behind his back and turned it over. In his palm lay a small tin snuffbox. It looked a little like the snuffbox she kept her treasures in, except this box was obviously new.
She raised her brows in question and looked from his palm to his face.
“Open it,” he said huskily.
She took it from his palm and was surprised at how heavy the little box was. She glanced again at his face. He was watching her with bright turquoise eyes.
She opened the box.
And gasped. The outside of the snuffbox might be plain tin, not ornamented at all, but the inside was glowing gold, set with precious gems. Pearls and rubies, diamonds and emeralds, sapphires and amethysts, jewels she didn’t even know the names of. They all sparkled from inside the box, nearly covering the yellow gold with a rainbow of color.
She looked up at Jasper, tears in her eyes. “Why? What does it mean?”
He took the hand holding the box and turned it over, brushing his lips against her knuckles. “It’s you.”
She looked down at the gorgeous, sparkling box. “What?”
He cleared his throat, his head still bent. “When I first met you, I was a fool. And I was a fool for years before that. I saw only the tin you hid behind. I was too vain, too asinine, too foolish to look beyond and see your beauty, my sweet wife.”
He raised his beautiful turquoise eyes, and she saw that they were adoring. “I want you to understand that I see you now. I’ve basked in the wonder of your beauty, and I’m never letting you go. I love you with all my battered soul.”
Melisande looked one last time at the treasure box. It was exquisitely lovely. This was how Jasper saw her, and it rather awed her. She closed the lid carefully and set the box aside, knowing it was the most precious, the most perfect gift he could ever give he
r.
Then she pulled her husband down into her arms and said the only thing she could. “I love you.”
And she kissed him.
Epilogue
The sword pressed very tightly against Jack’s throat, but still he spoke up bravely.
“I would tell you who won the rings, my liege,” he said, “but, alas, you would not believe me in any case.”
The king bellowed, but Jack raised his voice to be heard over the royal rage. “Besides, it does not matter who won the rings. What matters is who holds them now.”
And just like that, the king was silent and every eye in the royal banquet hall turned to Princess Surcease. She seemed as surprised as any when she reached into the little jeweled bag that hung from her kirtle and drew out the bronze ring and the silver ring. She placed them with the gold ring already on her palm, and then all three lay together.
“Princess Surcease has the rings,” Jack said. “And it seems to me that gives her the right to pick her own husband.”
Well, the king hemmed and the king hawed, but in the end he had to admit that Jack did have a point.
“Who will you choose to wed, my daughter?” the king asked. “There are men here from all corners of the world. Rich men, brave men, men so handsome the ladies swoon when they ride by. Now tell me, which of them will be your husband?”
“None.” Princess Surcease smiled, helped Jack to stand on his stumpy legs, and said, “I will wed Jack the Fool and no other, for he may be a fool, but he makes me laugh and I love him.”
And then before the stunned eyes of the entire court and her royal father, she bent and kissed Jack the Fool, right on his long, curved nose.
What a strange thing happened then! For Jack began to grow, his legs and arms lengthened and thickened, and his nose and chin receded into their normal proportions. When it was all over, Jack was himself again, tall and strong, and since he wore the wonderful suit of night and wind and carried the sharpest blade in all the world, well, you can imagine, he was a very fine sight indeed.
But poor Princess Surcease did not like this handsome stranger who stood so tall before her. She wept and cried, “Oh, where is my Jack? Oh, where is my sweet fool?”
Jack knelt before the princess and took her little hands between his big ones. He leaned his head close to hers and whispered so only she could hear, “I am your sweet fool, my beautiful princess. I am the man who danced and sang to make you laugh. I love you, and I would gladly take on that twisted, horrible form again, if only to see you smile.”
And at these words, the princess did smile and she kissed him. For although Jack’s form had changed so much she no longer recognized him, his voice had not. It was the voice of Jack the Fool, the man she loved.
The man she’d chosen to marry.
“The new master of the historical romance genre.”
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To Beguile A Beast
Available in May 2009
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Chapter One
Scotland
July 1765
It was as the carriage bumped around a bend and the decrepit castle loomed into view in the dusk that Helen Fitzwilliam finally—and rather belatedly—realized that the whole trip may’ve been a horrible mistake.
“Is that it?” Jamie, her five-year-old son, was kneeling on the musty carriage seat cushions and peering out the window. “I thought it was ’sposed to be a castle.”
“ ’Tis a castle, silly,” his nine-year-old sister, Abigail, replied. “Can’t you see the tower?”
“Just ’cause it has a tower don’t mean it’s a castle,” Jamie objected, frowning at the suspect castle. “There’s no moat. If it is a castle, it’s not a proper one.”
“Children,” Helen said rather too sharply, but then they had been in one cramped carriage after another for the better part of a fortnight. “Please don’t bicker.”
Naturally, her offspring feigned deafness.
“It’s pink.” Jamie had pressed his nose to the small window, clouding the glass with his breath. He turned and scowled at his sister. “D’you think a proper castle ought to be pink?”
Helen stifled a sigh and massaged her right temple. She’d felt a headache lurking there for the last several miles, and she knew it was about to pounce just as she needed all her wits about her. She hadn’t properly thought this scheme through. But, then, she never did think things through as she ought to, did she? Impulsiveness—hastily acted on and more leisurely regretted—was the hallmark of her life. It was why, at the age of one and thirty, she found herself traveling through a foreign land about to throw herself and her children on the mercy of a stranger.
What a fool she was!
A fool who had better get her story straight, for the carriage was already stopping before the imposing wood doors.
“Children!” she hissed.
Both little faces snapped around at her tone. Jamie’s brown eyes were wide while Abigail’s expression was pinched and fearful. Her daughter noticed far too much for a little girl, was too sensitive to the atmosphere adults created.
Helen took a breath and made herself smile. “This will be an adventure, my darlings, but you must remember what I’ve told you.” She looked at Jamie. “What are we to be called?”
“Halifax,” Jamie replied promptly. “But I’m still Jamie and Abigail’s still Abigail.”
“Yes, darling.”
That had been decided on the trip north from London when it became painfully obvious that Jamie would have difficulties not calling his sister by her real name. Helen sighed. She’d just have to hope that the children’s Christian names were ordinary enough not to give them away.
“We’ve lived in London,” Abigail said, looking intent.
“That’ll be easy to remember,” Jamie muttered, “because we have.”
Abigail shot a quelling glance at her brother and continued. “Mama’s been in the dowager Viscountess Vale’s household. Our father is dead and he isn’t—”
Her eyes widened, stricken.
Helen swallowed and leaned forward to pat her daughter’s knee. “It’s all right. If we can—”
The carriage door was wrenched open, and the coachman’s scowling face peered in. “Are ye getting out or not? It looks like rain, an’ I want to be back in th’ inn safe and warm when it comes.”
“Certainly.” Helen nodded regally at the coachman—by far the surliest driver they’d had on this wretched journey. “Please fetch our bags down for us.”
The man snorted. “Already done, innit?”
“Come, children.” She hoped she wasn’t blushing in front of the awful man. The truth was that they had only two soft bags—one for herself and one for the children. The coachman probably thought them destitute. And in a way, he was right, wasn’t he?
She pushed the lowering thought away. Now was not the time to have depressing thoughts. She must be at her most alert, her most persuasive, to pull this off.
She stepped from the rented carriage and looked around. The ancient castle loomed before them, solid and silent. The main building was a squat rectangle, with small windows irregularly placed in a flat front. A Gothic arch held wooden doors. High on one corner, a circular tower projected from the wall. Before the castle was a sort of drive, once properly graveled but now uneven with weeds and mud. A few trees clustered about the drive struggled to make a barricade against the rising wind. Beyond, nearly black hills rolled gently to the darkening horizon.
“All right, then?” The coachman was swinging up to his box, not even looking at them. “I’ll be off.”
“At least leave a lantern!” Helen shouted, but the noise of the carriage rumbling away drowned out her voice. She stared, appalled, after the coach.
“It’s dark,” Jamie obser
ved, looking at the castle.
“Mama, there aren’t any lights,” Abigail said.
She sounded frightened, and Helen felt a surge of sympathy. She hadn’t noticed the lack of lights until now. Perhaps no one was at home. What would they do then?
I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it. Helen tilted her chin and smiled for Abigail. “Perhaps they’re lit in the back where we can’t see them.”
Abigail didn’t look particularly convinced by this theory, but she dutifully nodded her head.
Helen took the bags and marched up the wide shallow stone steps to the huge wooden doors. They were almost black with age, and the hinges and bolts were iron—quite medieval. She raised the iron ring and knocked hard.
The sound echoed despairingly within.
Helen stood facing the door, refusing to believe that no one would come. The wind blew her skirts into a swirl. Jamie scuffed his boots against the stone step, and Abigail sighed almost silently.
Helen wet her lips. “Perhaps they can’t hear because they’re in the tower.”
She knocked again.
It was dark now, the sun completely gone and with it the warmth of day. It was the middle of summer and quite hot in London, but she’d found on her journey that the nights in Scotland could become very cool, even in summer. Lightning flashed low on the horizon. What a desolate place this was! Why anyone would willingly choose to live here was beyond her understanding.
“They’re not coming,” Abigail said as thunder rumbled in the distance. “No one’s home, I think.”
Helen swallowed as fat raindrops pattered against her face. The last village they’d passed was ten miles away. She had to find shelter for her children. Abigail was right. No one was home. She’d led them on a wild-goose chase.
She’d failed them once again.
Helen’s lips trembled at the thought. Mustn’t break down in front of the children.
“Perhaps there’s a barn or other outbuilding in—” she began when one of the great wood doors was thrown open, startling her.
She stepped back, nearly falling down the steps. At first, the opening seemed eerily black, as if a ghostly hand had opened the door. But then something moved, and she discerned a shape within. A man stood there, tall, lean, and very, very intimidating. He held a single candle, its light entirely inadequate. By his side was a great four-legged beast, far too tall to be any sort of dog that she knew of.