How to Plan a Wedding for a Royal Spy

“I don't have the right to do this, but I'm going to do it anyway,” he whispered.

He moved one hand to her jaw, cupping it while tilting her head back. Her mouth opened; whether in protest or shock, he couldn't tell. But it didn't matter, because he finally gave into the desire he'd been battling from that first moment he'd seen her on the lawn behind Maywood Manor.

As her arms stole up around his neck and she trembled within his embrace, the echo of their sweet, youthful kisses faded in the clamor of blood pounding through his veins and his heart hammering against his ribcage. Because it wasn't a girl he pulled close—it was a woman. And it wasn't just the lust-inducing feel of her pressing against him that inflamed his senses, it was the way she opened up to him, responding to his invasion with an enthusiasm that both startled and thrilled him.

If he'd ever needed confirmation that Evie was not the young girl he'd once known and that she was all grown up, this was it. Anything that had ever happened between them in the past couldn't begin to compare with this moment....

 

MASTERING THE MARQUESS

 

SEX AND THE SINGLE EARL

 

MY FAVORITE COUNTESS

 

HIS MISTLETOE BRIDE

 

SECRETS FOR SEDUCING A ROYAL BODYGUARD

 

CONFESSIONS OF A ROYAL BRIDEGROOM

 

HOW TO PLAN A WEDDING FOR A ROYAL SPY

 

AN INVITATION TO SIN

(with Jo Beverley, Sally MacKenzie, and Kaitlin O'Riley)

 

 

ZEBRA BOOKS
KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP.

All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

Table of Contents

My love and thanks to my writing partner and husband, Randy, and to my critique partner, Debbie Mason. They have pulled me from many a plot bear pit and also fixed my grammar. I'd also like to extend my gratitude to the publicity and marketing team and the art department at Kensington, who give me great covers and who are unfailingly supportive of The Renegade Royals.

 

I also owe many expressions of gratitude to my agent, Evan Marshall, and to my editor, John Scognamiglio. They do everything they can to make my writing life easier, and I so appreciate it!

 

I dedicate this book to my ninety-one-year-old father, Phil Kelly—a classic example of The Greatest Generation. He was the first person to encourage me to follow my dreams and resist limiting myself. My dad is the best and kindest of men, and I am truly blessed to be his daughter.

 

Death clawed at his boot.

Swiping away grit and sweat from his eyes, Captain William Endicott peered at the man crumpled at his feet. It was a French cuirassier, one of Bonaparte's elite cavalry officers. A dead officer, Will had assumed when he'd swung down from his horse a few moments ago, doing his best to avoid the tangle of broken bodies on the uneven ground. The battle had piled them up like a wave, one that had pounded relentlessly against the break wall of a British infantry square.

But this cavalryman, face down in the sodden earth, was alive. His gloved hand scrabbled desperately at Will's foot.

Breathing out a weary curse, Will pulled his sword from its scabbard and gingerly nudged the officer over with his foot. The Frenchman jerked as if he'd been kicked, then his entire body convulsed as he struggled to cough out clots of mud from his mouth.

The poor bastard, obviously too wounded to move, had been drowning in the mud that washed ankle deep all around them from last night's torrential rains. His throat must be clogged with blood, dirt, and God only knew what else that had been trampled into a fetid stew over the course of the day.

Hours of untold violence had bludgeoned Will into a state of insensibility. He'd seen hundreds of men and horses blown apart, trampled, or hacked to bits on the battlefield. But this new horror blasted through his emotional fog. He knelt beside the wounded cuirassier, acting on instinct as he pushed the man onto his side and thumped his back, supporting him as he spat out the foul black sludge. Once the man was able to draw breath Will carefully rolled him onto his back.

The officer stared blearily up at him, his eyes clouded with pain and the approach of death. Blood seeped from a hole in his chest, darkening the wine-red fabric of the distinctive uniform of the French 13
^th
Regiment, now barely distinguishable under its coating of mud.

The officer's cracked lips parted, his voice whispering out a single phrase:
“Merci, monsieur.”

Will had thought himself beyond feeling—outrage, regret, and even sorrow buried under the broken bodies of countless friends and men he'd known for years. Only survival mattered, and doing what needed to be done to carry out his commanders' orders. But now emotion battered its way up from somewhere deep inside him, surging in a black tide that threatened to close his throat. The target of his rage wasn't the officer lying before him, or even the enemy he'd fought so desperately all day. No, it was the tortured slide into death for this lone man, a soldier who had only been doing his duty, just like all the other unlucky souls this day—English, Scots, French, Prussians. They'd all simply followed orders to pound the other side into annihilation.

At what cost, Will couldn't begin to even fathom.

A moment later, the Frenchman coughed again and blood gushed from his mouth. He struggled once more for breath and then finally stilled, his gaze going fixed and glassy. Will closed the man's eyes then wearily hauled himself to his feet as he tried to hold back the disturbing emotions caused by this enemy soldier's death.

But he couldn't. The tide had been breached and everything he'd been holding at bay for hours came roiling up, making him light-headed. He tried to tell himself it was simply exhaustion, lack of water and food, and days of unrelenting tension and punishing physical and mental demands. It was more than that, though. He'd survived battles before and weathered the dangerous life of a spy in the Peninsula. And he'd done it with little fear and almost no doubt about his mission. But something had shifted today in a monumental upheaval that threatened to reorder his world. He imagined a pit opening under his feet, one that was dark and filled with too many unknowns.

Unconsciously, his hand reached out to grasp the mane of his charger. He leaned against the huge animal, taking comfort in its stolid strength and even in the acrid scent of its sweat. It felt like a miracle that something close to him was still alive.

Now was not the time to fall apart like some untried lad. The battle was won, but the day wasn't over. Napoleon's retreat had turned into a rout, with the Allied cavalry regrouping and heading out in pursuit. Will needed to find and rejoin what was left of his regiment as soon as possible.

He'd spent hours riding the line, relaying Wellington's orders to various commanders. He'd had two horses shot out from under him and his right arm ached like the devil from cavalry charges earlier in the day when he'd relentlessly hacked his saber through milling ranks of French infantrymen. Will had been one of the lucky ones, surviving with only a few cuts, a minor slash across his back, and a knock to the head when he'd been thrown from his horse by an exploding shell.

And since he
had
survived, it was time to find what was left of the 1
^st
Royal Dragoons and get on with his duties. The Union Brigade—three cavalry regiments including the 1
^st
Royals—had suffered devastating losses in the first charge of the day, with the officer ranks decimated in the carnage. Major Dorville, Will's regimental commander, would be looking for him to help remuster the unit and harry the enemy on its retreat.

For a few moments, he stood quietly with his horse by the side of the road as a regiment of Rifles—or what was left of it—trudged by. Once they passed, he was about to swing up into the saddle when a familiar voice called his name. Relief washed through him as he turned and raised his hand to the officer cantering up to him on a gargantuan black charger.

The rider was a brawny young Scotsman, clad in the mud-smeared dress uniform of the Black Watch. Clearly, Captain Alasdair Gilbride had gone directly from the Duchess of Richmond's ball to join his regiment at Quatre Bras. The 42
^nd
Highlanders had taken a fierce pounding in that battle but had still managed a quick march to Waterloo where they had acquitted themselves with great distinction. But their ranks had been decimated, and Will had lost sight of Alec earlier in the day. He breathed a silent prayer of thanks that his best friend had been spared.

The Scotsman swung down from his horse and pulled Will into a hearty embrace, thumping him on the back in what was, for Alec, an extravagant display of emotion. Will was not a small man by any means, but his friend was built like a brawler. Few could best the broad-shouldered warrior in a fight. But oddly enough for a man his size, Alec was self-contained and graceful, able to move with a lethal stealth that had been the downfall of many a Frenchman. He was also one of Wellington's most effective spies, and had been Will's partner in a number of missions in the Peninsular War.

Like Will, Alec was one of the illegitimate sons of England's royal princes. They were cousins, drawn together by inclination and duty, and by the fact that their status as royal bastards sometimes set them apart from their fellow officers and other members of the
ton
. Will had learned long ago to ignore the whispers of gossip—even if the crude, callous jibes still sometimes stuck in his craw—but the same could not be said for Alec. He'd fought often to defend their reputations over the years, pushing back at the sneering comments that questioned their parentage. Will tried to tell him it didn't truly matter what others said about them, but he and Alec both knew that wasn't true.

After the horror of today's battle, who or what their fathers were barely seemed of any consequence.

“Jesus, I'm glad to see you're still on this side of the dirt, Wolf,” Alec growled, using Will's nickname. Fatigue and worry sharpened his normally subtle brogue, making him sound every inch the Highlander. “I haven't seen you since you went ass over tea kettle off your horse in that last barrage. I tried to get to you, but Napoleon's blasted Guard regiment got in my way.”

“I was lucky with that one. I just got a knock on the head. Took me a few minutes to get my bearings after that, but I ended up right next to the line. Two Welsh fusiliers pulled me out of harm's way.” Will eyed his cousin's battered uniform with its missing epaulette and cuffs sliced to shreds. “Uniform aside, you don't look much worse for wear.”

Alec's expressive mouth pressed into a hard line as he glanced down at the dead Frenchman at their feet, and then at the dozens of bodies scattered by the side of the road. “Aye, luck was with me as well. Hardly a mark on me, and that's something of a miracle after the last few days.”

He didn't sound particularly grateful. That was understandable, given the grievous losses the Black Watch had suffered in not one but two battles. Will knew it wouldn't be long before guilt would begin to creep in for both of them. Guilt that they'd survived when so many others had not.

For a minute or so, they gazed silently over the battlefield, watching the chaotic retreat of French troops in the distance as they fled south toward Charleroi with the British cavalry hard on their heels. What had once been farmland, with gentle green valleys and fields full of ripening rye, had become a nightmare landscape of mangled bodies of horses and men, the once-beautiful countryside a charnel house of death. And God only knew how many soldiers were still breathing. Too wounded to move on their own, they could only wait helplessly for aid that might never arrive.

“Picton didn't make it,” Will said, referring to the commander of the 5
^th
Infantry Division and one of Wellington's top officers. “He caught it during the attack by d'Erlon's corps.”

“I heard. Hamilton got it, too,” Alec grimly replied, “as did Hay, Brudenell Forbes, and Gordon. I can't even begin to count all the rest.”

“Christ, what a disaster,” Will growled. Bitterness choked him at the thought of young Hay. The lad was only eighteen years old, barely out of leading strings.

“At least we won the bloody thing, although we'd best get going if we're going to help finish the job.” Alec peered at the chaotic movement of men and animals heading away from them. Dusk was coming on rapidly now, casting long shadows over the battlefield. “I don't fancy chasing down Boney's Imperial Guard in the middle of the night, Wolf. Not if I can help it.”

Will nodded. Getting the job done was what they did—no matter how ugly or pointless it seemed.

As they prepared to mount up, Alec glanced over, his gray eyes shadowed and somber. He looked hesitant, as if afraid to voice his thoughts. Will cocked an enquiring brow.

“Do ye think it was worth it?” Alec finally asked, unconsciously slipping into a heavier brogue. “After today, do ye think there's anything left worth saving? A good life, I mean, for us. For any of us.”

“There'd better be, mate,” Will grimly replied. “After the hell we've been through these last six years, there'd bloody well better be.”