Elizabeth Thornton (42 page)

He hustled her up the front steps and into the house. “I shall never understand the mind of a woman,” he growled. “If you love me, why did you look at me as though I were beneath contempt? Why did you say what you did?”

“Because I was scared out of my wits; because I thought you were going to become a spy again. I couldn’t help thinking what happens to gladiators. They’re never allowed to retire or give up. They don’t grow old. They just keep on going until they meet someone who is stronger, faster, more ruthless than they are.

“Do you think,” she cried softly, reaching her arms
around his neck and burying her face in his coat, “that I shall ever forget these last few days? Nemo with a knife at your throat? And you, inviting Langley to shoot you when you could barely hold your pistol straight?”

She began to shiver, and he opened his coat, drawing her into the warmth of his body. She looked up at him with huge, tortured eyes. “If you ever go back to that kind of life, how shall I endure it? Every day you were away from me, I would die inside. I never knew how fragile gladiators could be.”

He closed his eyes as the balm of her words healed every festering sore. With shaking fingers, he framed her face. He whispered hoarsely, “And I never knew how fragile I was until I met you. I love you, Abbie. As God is my witness, I love you.”

They didn’t hear the clash of thunderbolts or the raging tempest outside. They were locked in each other’s arms, and nothing existed beyond themselves.

Several weeks later, on their prolonged honeymoon in Endicote, Abbie was sitting up in bed, reading a letter from her sister, while Hugh snuggled close to her warmth with a big smile on his face. When his hand brushed an intimate part of her anatomy, she slapped it away. Hugh frowned. That had never happened before.

He propped himself up on one elbow and studied his beautiful wife. A frown marred her brow, and she was chewing on her bottom lip.

“Not bad news, I hope?” said Hugh.

“Harriet,” said Abbie fretfully, “is spending money like water.” She waved the letter under his nose. “This is nothing but a list of her most recent purchases. She has
even pursuaded Giles to buy her a phaeton so that she can drive in Hyde Park.”

“Why should that surprise you? Harriet loves to shop and Giles loves to indulge her.”

“The point is, she told me that after what had happened with George, she took no pleasure in things and that she would devote herself to people.”

“People will say anything in a crisis, and once the crisis is over, they go back to their old ways. There’s nothing unusual in that.” When Abbie’s frown did not fade, he said reflectively, “Quite frankly, I don’t relish the thought of Harriet doting on me, and I don’t think Giles would either. Men hate women who fuss. And now that I know Harriet better, I realize she’s a good sort. No really, I mean that. I like her just the way she is.”

“I suppose … but …”

“But what?”

She tossed the letter aside and snuggled down beside him. “When George was abducted, we all went through such soul-searching. And now look at us. Nothing has changed. We’re just the same old people we always were.”

“I don’t want you to change,” said Hugh. “Do you want me to change?”

“No. I just want us to cherish each other.”

“And that’s how it will be. It’s drawn us all closer together. That’s what matters.”

After several minutes of pleasurable activity, Abbie sighed into his mouth. “Hugh, will you still love me when I’m ugly and fat and swollen with child?”

“What do you think?”

She shook her head at his glowering expression. “I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: for someone as clever as you, you can be incredibly dense. Give me your hand.”

He gave her his hand, and she placed it with fingers splayed out against her flat stomach, then she watched the daze creep into his eyes as enlightenment dawned. She didn’t need words. In his eyes she read everything she’d hoped to see and more besides, and her heart sang.

But he gave her the words anyway.

Napoleon broke out of Elba in March 1815. Contrary to what many people expected, including the fictitious Colonel Langley, Frenchmen everywhere flocked to join their former Emperor. Three months later, on June 18, two of the most brilliant generals the world has ever seen, Napoleon and the Duke of Wellington, finally came face-to-face in the battle of Waterloo. Napoleon was defeated and spent the rest of his life in exile on the island of St. Helena.

Hugh and Abbie’s story is not quite finished. Though Hugh never returned to British intelligence, after much soul-searching, and with Abbie’s blessing, he rejoined his regiment to fight as an ordinary soldier at Waterloo. Harper went with him when the Prime Minister, in gratitude for Harper’s part in uncovering the plot to assassinate him, used his influence to reinstate Harper in the British army.

Hugh and Harper survived the battle. On returning to England, Hugh took up his life with Abbie, and they divided their time between Oxford and Bath. Harper, meanwhile, joined Richard Maitland’s staff when Maitland took over Langley’s job as chief of intelligence.

If you want to read the epilogue to Hugh and Abbie’s story, e-mail me [
[email protected]
] and I’ll send you a copy.

Now, it’s more than time that I let these characters go.…

T
HE
P
ERFECT
P
RINCESS

P
RINCESS
C
HARMING

S
TRANGERS AT
D
AWN

Y
OU
O
NLY
L
OVE
T
WICE

T
HE
B
RIDE’S
B
ODYGUARD

D
ANGEROUS TO
H
OLD

D
ANGEROUS TO
K
ISS

D
ANGEROUS TO
L
OVE

and coming soon

A
LMOST A
P
RINCESS

Read on for a preview
of Elizabeth Thornton’s next
thrilling historical romance.…

ALMOST A PRINCESS

On sale in
January 2003

December 1816

I
t was moving day for the members of the Ladies’ Library in Soho Square. Their lease had run out, and one of their staunchest supporters, Lady Mary Gerrard, had offered her mansion in the Strand. The house was buzzing as an army of ladies and their helpers set to work to transform their new quarters, room by room, from a palatial residence to a library with lecture rooms, reading rooms, and a bright and airy tearoom.

Lord Caspar Devere stood just inside the marble entrance hall, taking it all in. He was a harshly handsome man, thirtyish, well above average height, with dark hair and gray, gray eyes that, for the moment, were distinctly amused.

He left his hat and gloves on a hall table and wandered into the main salon. Some of the men who were helping the ladies were known to him, and that brought a smile to his lips. Not many gentlemen wanted it known that their wives or sisters were members here.

As the Viscount Latham passed close by, carrying a chair, Caspar called out, “Freddie, where can I find Lady Octavia?”

On seeing Caspar, the viscount registered surprise, quickly followed by amusement. In a stage whisper, he replied, “I won’t tell anyone I saw you here if you don’t tell anyone about me.” Then in a normal voice, “Try next door. That’s where she has set up her headquarters.”

Caspar wandered into another salon, and there she was, the library’s founder and driving force, Lady Octavia Burrel. Dressed all in white in something that closely resembled a toga with a matching turban, she directed her small army as they came to her for their orders. Though there was much coming and going, there was very little confusion.

Caspar was not there to help but to gather information, and when the crush around Lady Octavia thinned, he quickly crossed to her. He was sure of his welcome because he’d known her for as long as he could remember. She and his aunt were close friends.

When she saw him, her chubby face lit up with pleasure. “Lord Caspar,” she said. “This is a surprise! I had no idea you were interested in our cause.”

As Caspar well knew, there was a lot more to the Ladies’ Library than its innocent name implied. The cause to which Lady Octavia referred was improving the lot of women by changing the antiquated marriage and property laws of England. The Library was also involved, so rumor went, in helping runaway wives evade their husbands. In some circles, Lady Octavia and her volunteers were seen as subversives. In the clubs he attended, they were frequently the butt of masculine laughter. But there were others who supported the aims of Lady Octavia and her League of Ladies. His aunt was one of them. He had never given the matter much thought.

“I suppose,” said Lady Octavia, “I have your aunt to thank for sending you to help us?”

He avoided a direct answer. “I left her in Soho Square, directing things there. I’m looking for Miss Mayberry. My aunt told me she might be here.”

“She’s in the pantry. Turn left and go past the green baize door at the end of the hall.”

As Caspar walked away, Lady Octavia’s gaze trailed him. He was easy to look upon, she reflected, this young man who appeared to have everything. His aunt, Lady Sophy Devere, had kept her informed from the day he was born. As heir to his father, the Duke of Romsey, wealth, privilege, and position were already his, and it showed, not in arrogance exactly, but in something close to it. But it wasn’t unattractive—just the opposite, especially to women.

There wasn’t a woman born, his aunt said, who could resist Caspar, more’s the pity. It would do him a world of good to taste rejection. Lady Octavia wondered how Lord Caspar had come to meet Jane Mayberry. Jane didn’t go into society.

She frowned when another thought occurred to her: Lord Caspar and his volatile mistress, La Contessa, had recently parted company.

She dithered, debating with herself whether she should go after him, just to make sure that he did not have designs on Jane, when Mrs. Bradley came up and said that she was wanted in the old earl’s library.

This request cleared Lady Octavia’s brain. She was letting her imagination run away with her. The poor man was just trying to help.

He found her in the first room past the green baize door. She hadn’t heard him enter, so he took a moment to study her. She was perched on a chair, on tiptoe, fiddling
with crockery on the top shelf of the cupboard. The first thing he noticed was a pair of nicely turned ankles. Unfortunately, they were encased in blue woolen stockings. He should have guessed. He’d made a few enquiries about Jane Mayberry and had learned, among other things, that she was a very clever young woman. Clever women, Lady Octavia and his Aunt Sophy among them, wore blue stockings as a badge of honor, a kind of declaration that their minds were set on higher things. “Bluestocking” was a derogatory term that had been coined to describe such women, and they wore that like a badge of honor, too.

With Caspar, it was silk stockings or he wasn’t interested.

Her fine woolen gown was a muddy green, “olive” his mistress would have called it, but it was not a color he particularly liked. All the same, it suited the honey-gold hair streaked blond by the sun. The gown was well cut and revealed a slender waist and the long, graceful line of her throat.

He coughed to warn her of his presence, then shifted his gaze when a tawny, bristling mass rose from the floor and positioned itself in front of him with bared fangs.

As she turned from the cupboard, Caspar said softly, “Call off your dog or I shall be forced to shoot it.”

“If you do,” she said coolly, “it will be the last thing you do.” Then to the dog, “Lance, down.”

The dog, of indeterminate pedigree with perhaps a touch of wolf thrown in—and that didn’t seem right to Caspar because there hadn’t been wolves in England for three hundred years—sank to the floor and rested its jowls on its immense paws. Its gaze never wavered from Caspar.