“I give up,” he said in a muffled voice. “Dammit.”
“Does that mean you don’t want to marry me?”
“It means that you can keep your own earnings, but what I said before still holds—not a shilling from your father.”
“That sounds fair—” she began, and jumped a little as she heard the distant clank of a latch and the scrape of a door opening. The door that led to the kitchen, Lydia thought. It had to be the under-butler, finally sent to bring up more wine. She glanced down at herself and adjusted the waist of her gown, raising a hand to the pinned-up coils of her dark hair. Unfortunately, her coiffure was a bit disheveled, and her lips felt kiss-swollen, and she suspected that anyone who saw her would immediately know what she had been doing.
Jake’s sardonic smile confirmed her worries.
They waited expectantly, and in less than a half-minute, the under-butler appeared. He froze with a gasp as he saw them, his small, wizened face turning pale at first, then becoming rapidly infused with color. His distress was obvious as he wondered whether to acknowledge them or hurry away.
“Good evening, Mr. Feltner,” Lydia said calmly.
The servant found his voice. “Begging your pardon, Miss Craven!” He turned and fled, his short legs churning.
Lydia glanced at Jake. “He’s going to tell Papa,” she said. “Don’t worry, I’ll go to him first, and soften him a little—”
“No, I’ll handle it,” Jake replied firmly.
A smile spread across Lydia’s face as she saw that he was not intimidated by the prospect of confronting her irate father.
Jake stared at her, arrested. “God, what your smile does to me…” Reaching her in two strides, he wrapped his arms around her and kissed her soundly.
Lydia responded eagerly, then drew her head back. “Are you going to propose now?”
“I was considering it, yes.”
“Before you do, I want to ask you something.”
Tenderly he smoothed a stray lock of hair back from her face. “What is it?”
Her lips curved with an uncertain smile. “Will you stay faithful to me, Jake? With all your experience, I wonder if one woman will be enough for you.”
Jake winced as if she had touched a raw nerve, and pain darkened his eyes. “Sweet-heart,” he whispered. “I’ve never regretted my past behavior as much as I do in this moment. I can’t think of any way to make you understand how precious you are to me. I would never stray from you—I swear it on everything I hold dear. To come home to you every night, to sleep with you in my arms, is all I’ve ever wanted. If you could bring yourself to believe me, I would—”
“Yes, I believe you.” The naked sincerity in his voice was unmistakable. Lydia smiled and caressed his lean cheek. “We’ll have to trust each other, won’t we?”
He covered her mouth in a long, passionate kiss and held her so tightly that she could hardly breathe. “Will you marry me, Lydia Craven?”
She laughed giddily. “Yes. Though everyone will say we’ve gone mad.”
He grinned and kissed her again. “I’d rather be insane with you than sane without you.”
The moment Jake emerged from the cellar with Lydia, a footman approached him with the message that Mr. Craven would like to see him in the library without delay.
“That didn’t take long,” Jake muttered, reflecting that the under-butler had certainly wasted no time in going to Craven.
Lydia sighed grumpily. “I suppose while you talk to Papa, I had better go find Lord Wray. Blast, how am I going to explain all of this to him?”
“Wait until after I deal with your father, and I’ll help you with Wray.”
“No,” she said immediately, “I think it would be better if I spoke to Wray privately.”
“He may not take the news well,” Jake warned.
“You might be surprised,” came her dry response. “Although the earl’s pride might suffer some temporary damage, I have no doubt that his heart will remain inviolate.” Her earnest green eyes stared up into his. “Are you certain that you don’t want me to help you with Papa?”
Jake smiled as he looked into her upturned face. She was so much smaller than he that he was both amused and touched by her desire to protect him. “I’ll manage,” he assured her and gave her waist a squeeze before letting her go.
After going to his guest room to neaten his appearance and comb his disheveled hair, Jake went to the estate library. The heavy door had been left slightly ajar, and he knocked on it briefly.
“Linley,” came a dark, quiet voice that seemed to belong to the devil himself. “I’ve been expecting you.”
Jake entered a handsome room with walls covered in stamped and embossed burgundy leather. His future father-in-law was seated in a massive leather chair beside a heavy mahogany desk.
Though he had met Derek Craven on various occasions throughout the years, Jake was struck as always by the outsized presence of the man. Craven carried his power quietly, but he was clearly a man of consequence, a possessor of secrets, a man who was regarded with fear and respect. The amount of wealth Craven had accumulated was nearly incalculable, but it was not at all difficult to imagine him as the cockney youth he’d once been…dangerous, wily and completely without scruples.
Craven viewed him with menacing calculation. “Do you have something to tell me, Linley?”
Jake decided to be blunt. “Yes, sir. I’m in love with your daughter.”
Clearly the revelation did not please Craven. “That is unfortunate, as she is going to marry Lord Wray.”
“At the moment there seems to be some doubt on that point.”
The black brows drew together in an ominous scowl. “What happened in that cellar?”
Jake met his gaze squarely. “With all respect, sir, that is between Lydia and me.”
In the silence that followed, Craven seemed to be considering the options of dismemberment, strangulation, or a simple bullet to the head. Jake forced himself to wait patiently, knowing that in Craven’s view, no man would ever be good enough for his daughter.
“Tell me why I should even begin to consider you as a potential husband for Lydia,” Craven growled.
As he stared into Craven’s hard green eyes, Jake recalled that Craven had no family other than his wife and children…no relatives…no knowledge even of the woman who had given birth to him. Naturally that made his family even more precious to Craven. He would never allow Lydia to be hurt or mistreated. And from a father’s perspective, Lydia would be far better served by a marriage to an academic-minded peer than a commoner with a tainted past.
Jake sighed inwardly. It was not in his nature to be humble. On the other hand, it appeared to be the only way he could convince Craven to give his blessing to the match. “I have my faults, sir,” he admitted. “Many, in fact.”
“So I’ve heard.”
“I know that I’m not good enough for her. But I love Lydia, and I respect her, and I want to spend the rest of my life taking care of her, and trying to make her happy. The reason that I’ve never approached her before is that I believed Lord Wray was a better match for her.”
“But now you don’t?” Craven asked sardonically.
“No, I don’t,” Jake replied without hesitation. “Wray doesn’t love her—not as I do.”
Craven considered him for a long, uncomfortable moment. “We have some things to discuss,” he said curtly. He gestured to a nearby chair. “Have a seat—this will take a while.”
For the next three hours, Jake was interrogated in a relentless manner that would have frayed the nerves of the most scrupulous and upstanding of men—which Jake was not. It was rumored that Craven knew everything about everyone, but Jake had never fully believed it until now. The man displayed an alarmingly acute knowledge of Jake’s financial circumstances, his personal history, pranks he had played at school, women he’d slept with and scandals his name had been connected to. Good God, Craven seemed to know more about him than his own father did.
And as Jake had expected, he was merciless in demanding an accounting of matters so private that Jake was tempted more than once to tell him to go to hell. However, he wanted Lydia badly enough to endure this ruthless drumming of his pride with atypical humility.
Finally, just as Jake thought that Craven was going to take some perverse delight in denying him after all, Craven let out a long, taut sigh.
“I’m going to withhold my final approval until I determine for myself that this is what my daughter truly wants.” His green eyes flashed balefully. “But if she convinces me that she does indeed wish to marry you, I won’t stand in your way.”
Jake couldn’t restrain a sudden smile. “Thank you,” he said simply. “You won’t regret it, sir.”
“I already do,” Craven muttered, standing to return Jake’s vigorous handshake.
Epilogue
“Mama, Lydia’s kissing someone in the hallway, and it’s not Lord Wray!”
Seated by the bedroom window with a cup of tea in her hand, Sara smiled at her youngest daughter, Daisy, a plump and vivacious five-year-old. Hurrying to Sara as fast as her short legs could propel her, Daisy climbed into her lap. Sara winced only a little as she saw that Daisy’s hands were sticky with strawberry jam that was smearing her white lace nightgown.
Derek was shaving at the washstand, his mouth tightening as his gaze met Sara’s in the looking glass. Clearly he was annoyed by the news of his daughter’s torrid embrace with Dr. Linley, but Sara knew that he had grudgingly reconciled himself to the fact that his daughter would soon be Mrs. Linley, and not Lady Wray.
She and Derek had talked well into the night about the situation, and Sara had reassured him that she believed it was all for the best.
“Mrs. Linley only recently told me that she thought her son was deeply in love with Lydia,” she had told him. “And he is a fine young man, Derek, even if his past has been a bit…adventurous.”
“Adventurous?” he had repeated with a scowl. “With the swathe he’s cut through London—”
“Darling,” she had interrupted gently, “a man can change. He truly seems to love Lydia. And I’ve never seen her as happy as she was this evening—she was positively transformed.”
“I wish to hell that Linley had transformed someone else’s daughter,” Derek had grumbled, making her laugh.
Bringing her thoughts to the present, Sara smoothed her daughter’s tangled brown curls. As the child began to explain further details of Lydia’s conduct with Linley, Sara tried in vain to hush her. “That’s all right, Daisy. You can tell me later.”
“Yes, but she was letting him put his hand on her b—”
“Don’t tattle, darling,” Sara interrupted hastily, seeing Derek’s growing scowl. “You remember when we discussed that the other day.”
“Yes,” the child said sullenly. “You said I should only tell on someone when they’re going to get hurt.”
“Well, Lydia is not in any danger.”
“He was kissing her hard,” Daisy said after a moment’s thought. “And he was hurting her, Mama, because she made a noise—”
“That’s enough, Daisy,” Sara said with a sudden gasp of laughter. “I’m certain that he wasn’t hurting her unduly.”
Derek sluiced his face, wiped the last trace of shaving soap from his jaw, and heaved a sigh. “My grandson was going to be an earl,” he said glumly. “Now he’ll probably be a sawbones like his father.”
Daisy jumped from Sara’s lap and went to her father, raising her arms to be picked up. “Is Lydia going to marry Mr. Sawbones, Papa?”
Derek lifted her against his chest, his gaze turning warm. “It would seem so.”
Her little hand patted his freshly shaven jaw. “Don’t be sad, Papa. I’ll save all my kisses for you.”
He chuckled suddenly, stroking her tangled brown curls. “Give me one now, then,” he said, and she pressed her jam-sticky cheek to his.
The nursemaid appeared, telling Daisy that it was time to wash and dress for the day, and the child wriggled from her father’s arms.
After the door had closed behind them, Sara went to her husband and smoothed her palms over the striped silk robe that covered his hard chest. “All my kisses are for you, too,” she told him.
“They had better be,” he said and covered her lips with his. The kiss stirred her senses pleasantly, and she linked her arms around his neck, enjoying the wicked caress of his mouth.
“Only four more to go,” she said when his head lifted.
He played with the long braid that hung down her back and let his hands roam intimately over her body. “I’m afraid I don’t follow you, angel.”
“Our other children,” she explained. “I’m going to help each of them find true love, just as I helped Lydia.”
Picking her up with ease, Derek carried her to the bed. “Helped her in what way?”
“I gave her the opportunity to talk in private with Dr. Linley,” Sara told him. “I was certain that if they just had a bit of uninterrupted time with each other, they would acknowledge their feelings, and then—”
“Wait,” Derek interrupted, his green eyes narrowing as he dropped her to the mattress. He crawled over her and braced his elbows on either side of her head. “You’re not telling me that you were the one who locked them in the damned cellar…are you?”
She smiled impishly. “You told me to give fate a push in the right direction, if I found the opportunity. And I did.”
His expression was incredulous. “I didn’t mean for you to trap my innocent daughter in the cellar with a womanizer like Linley!”
“Lydia wasn’t trapped. She could have left any time she wanted to.”
“The doors were locked!”
“Not all of them.” Seeing his incomprehension, Sara smiled complacently. “Don’t you remember the little passageway that goes from the back of the cellar to the conservatory? The children still use it when they play pirates. Lydia knew full well that it was there. The only reason she remained in that cellar with Linley last night was because she wanted to. And it turned out perfectly, didn’t it?”
Derek groaned and dropped his head to the mattress. “My God. I’m not certain whom to pity more, Linley or myself.”
Knowing exactly how to disarm him, Sara parted the front of his silk robe and tangled her legs with his. “Pity yourself,” she advised, her small hands wandering busily inside the garment. “You’re about to be ravished.”
She felt Derek smile suddenly against her neck. “I do the ravishing around here,” he informed her…and he proceeded to prove his point.
Kinley MacGregor Midsummer’s Knight
Prologue
A tournament in Rouen
“Simon! Help!”
Simon of Ravenswood looked up from his table inside the blue-and-white striped tent.
Through the tent’s opening, he saw Christopher of Blackmoor running toward him as fast as he could. Barely three years younger than Simon, Christopher wasn’t the kind of man to ever run. He was normally slow to move, reluctant to exert himself, and had never once raised his voice. Some might call him lazy, but Simon knew otherwise.
Christopher was a dedicated man, albeit a leisurely one.
Christopher’s tunic was torn, his face pale.
Simon stood up immediately, his letter forgotten as he saw the panic reflected in Christopher’s green eyes.
The younger man rushed into the tent, straight to him.
“What is it, Kit?”
Christopher grabbed Simon’s arm and pulled him toward the entrance. “Come quickly. Stryder needs aid. He’s about to be torn asunder.”
Simon didn’t hesitate. Spinning out of Christopher’s grip, he grabbed up his sword from the cot and belted it on as he ran for the list where Stryder had been training.
Christopher’s elder brother, Stryder, the fourth earl of Blackmoor, was a man of many enemies and one of Simon’s closest friends. It wasn’t the first time Simon had heard of opponents attacking a man
while in the confines of a tournament or practice, but woe to those who would attack Stryder in such a cowardly fashion.
No one would ever attack a friend of his with immunity. Simon would have the villains’ heads.
Or so he thought.
He skidded to a halt as he came to the field where Stryder stood in the midst of what appeared to be two score of women.
Man-hungry women to be precise, who had a taste for an earl who was still in the prime of his life and fighting prowess.
They surrounded Stryder like a sea of sharks hungry for a morsel of flesh.
Among other things.
A tall, slender blonde shrieked, “Stryder! Take my favor.”
“I love you, Lord Stryder!”
“Move aside, you fat cow,” another woman shouted, “I can’t see him.”
“Lord Stryder touched me!”
The screams of the women were deafening as they elbowed and shoved one another in an effort to reach the poor man in their center. Stryder was trying desperately to extract himself, but the more he tried to flee, the more the ladies held him fast.
Simon burst out laughing at the sight of one of the most powerful men in Christendom being captured and jostled about by mere women. It wasn’t often anyone saw uncertainty from Stryder of Blackmoor.
And Simon had to admit he enjoyed seeing his friend at a loss for once. It was refreshing to know that Stryder really was human and not the soulless demon of Blackmoor legend.
“Stryder?” Simon called, raising his voice to make sure it carried over the women’s. “The leech gave me the cream you requested. He said your rash should clear up soon, but in the meantime, ’tis highly contagious.”
Silence descended on the crowd almost instantly.
“What did he say?” one of the women asked.
“Rash,” another repeated.
“I’ve no wish for another rash,” another chimed in, stepping back.
“Just how contagious is it?” Stryder asked, his blue eyes dancing with merry mischief as he joined the game.