Lord Ruthven's Bride (15 page)
Read Lord Ruthven's Bride Online
Authors: Tarah Scott
Tags: #Romance, #Historical, #Scottish, #Regency, #Historical Romance
“How dare you?” she breathed. “I suppose you know me, but still manage to love me?”
“Aye,” he replied. “I love you more than life itself.”
She drew a sharp breath. His brow furrowed in question, then understanding glimmered in his eyes.
He leaned closer and Josephine could feel his breath on her face. “You could have accepted any of the half dozen offers you received while I was gone. Not to mention, the two offers you received in the month since my return. You didn’t love a one of them.” He grasped her shoulders. “Be done with this foolishness. Admit you love me.”
The truth rushed to the surface as if to break free of its own volition. Her heart sped up and for an instant she feared she would tell him the awful truth despite her resolution to keep silent.
She broke free and backed up. “If you expected sentimentality, you made a bad bargain. Now, forget the duel. It isn’t worth your life.”
“You should have thought about that before you let Beaumond undress you.” He picked up the drink and finished it on one long swallow, then turned to refill the glass. “Why did you do it?”
“I’m not the seventeen year old girl you left behind. As you say, today is a perfect example. Beware, Nicholas, Lord Beaumond will put it about that I was here with him of my own free will and that you have no call for challenging him. You will be a laughing stock.”
Walk away
, she mentally willed him.
Call off the wedding and walk away.
Nick’s head snapped in her direction and for an instant Josephine wondered if she’d spoken the last words out loud.
He faced her. “You know as well as I that Beaumond won’t spread a single shred of gossip about you. In fact, I will be forced to drag him from his bed tomorrow morning—if he is still here. I doubt he’ll stay in Inverness. Knowing him, he will take an extended holiday in France.”
Just as he had done after his affair with Deanna.
“No, Jo, he won’t spread that, or any other, rumor about you,” Nicholas continued. “Though I don’t give a damn if he takes out an ad in the Times announcing that he took your virginity.”
“Rumor?” she repeated.
His gaze bore into her. “It’s been six years. If you didn’t wait for me, I would understand.”
But she had waited for him. Two long years, she’d clung to the two letters he’s sent. But a third letter never came and when he didn’t return even after his father’s death, she finally accepted that he wasn’t coming back—at least not to her. Despite his silence and her anger, all other men paled beside his memory. She told herself she was remembering a man of such character and sentiment that no flesh and blood man could rival the memory…the legend. Then he’d returned. A man who made the memory seem like a mere shadow.
“I suppose I’m to blame,” he said with a bitter laugh. “I was a fool to think I could allay our families’ fears by going away until you turned eighteen.” He released a breath. “I said it a dozen times. But you won’t talk to me.”
Yes, he’d said it a dozen times in the last month. I never dreamed your father would betroth you to Lord Helmsley the week after I left. I had no idea you didn’t marry him. I love you. I’m here now. Marry me.
The truth was, she longed to know why he hadn’t gone against his father’s wishes and eloped with her. Everything would have been different and they would have been happy—until the truth surfaced. And it would have. It always did. Just as it had only two days after she signed the marriage contract.
“Please, Nicholas, no more explanations. It is too tedious.”
“As you wish, no explanations. But I will not withdraw my offer.”
She gave a hollow laugh. “Of course not. It would cost you half your fortune.”
“Not quite that much,” he replied. “But I don’t give a damn about the money. I care about the fact that you waited for me. You love me.”
Josephine snorted. “You professed love, Nicholas, not me.”
He nodded. “You forget that first kiss after my return, before you got into your head whatever it is that has you rebelling.”
Why, oh why, had he mentioned that kiss? She remembered it like yesterday. Nick appeared at some party she attended. She’d been so startled to see him that when he’d asked her to dance, before she realized it, he’d whisked her out onto the balcony and into his arms. Her stomach gelled with the memory. How could a single kiss plague her so? But she knew the answer, for the one and only other kiss he’d given her before he left had plagued her all these years, as well.
She had been seventeen. He was twenty-five. Her parents took her to London where it would be more difficult for her and Nicholas to run back to Scotland to marry. He swore to be gone one year, then return for her. Then he’d drawn her to him and brushed his lips against hers. She was sure he intended an almost chaste kiss, but she’d melted against him and he’d pulled her across his lap and swept his tongue into the depths of her mouth until she trembled in his arms and begged him to do more. He’d held her so fiercely, as if he’d never let her go…as if he was afraid to let her go. Then he did.
The sting of tears pressed more fiercely against her eyes. She disguised the moisture she feared shone in her eyes by slanting him a sultry look from beneath her lashes. “I am a passionate woman. You are an attractive man. Passion is inevitable.”
His gaze sharpened. “Aye, and it occurs to me I have been remiss in that regard.” He set his glass down and stepped close to her. “I notice you’re still half dressed.”
Award winning author Tarah Scott cut her teeth on authors such as Georgette Heyer, Zane Grey, and Amanda Quick. Her favorite book is a Tale of Two Cities, with Gone With the Wind as a close second. She writes modern classical romance, and paranormal and romantic suspense. Tarah grew up in Texas and currently resides in Westchester County, New York with her daughter.
Sometimes, the hero must be the villain...
Fourteen months ago, Lady Rhoslyn lost her husband and infant son to a fever. Now, by order of King Edward I, she is yanked from the healing tranquility of a convent to marry the king’s favored bastard knight. Rhoslyn has no intention of returning to the home where her husband and child died. Neither does she intend to hand over her fortune to the ‘Dragon’—no matter his sweet promises and warm kisses.
Talbot St. Claire tires of war. Seventeen years is enough. King Edward will never release him from service, but the king promises Talbot will find some peace in front of his own hearth. Talbot expects to find a horse-faced, hostile woman in the Scottish heiress Edward commands him to marry. Instead, he discovers a fiery Highland beauty worthy of a man’s respect...and love. Talbot determines to do anything to win his new bride’s acceptance. Anything except the one thing she demands: betray his king and embrace his Scottish heritage.
Voted Indie Romance Convention Readers Choice Award's best historical romance of 2013
How does a woman tell her betrothed that she murdered her first husband?
Shipwrecked in the Scottish Highlands, American heiress Elise Kingston quietly plans revenge for the deaths of her daughter and the brother who sacrificed his life to save her.
When Marcus MacGregor, Marquess of Ashlund, returns to his Highland home to discover a stunning American woman has been taken in by his clan, his attraction is instant and he resolves to make her his—no matter what secret she's keeping.
Elise is shocked by her need for Marcus and, too late, discovers that her feelings make him a target of her enemy—a man powerful enough to destroy even a Scottish nobleman.
London Heiress kidnapped by the Marquess of Ashlund, read the headlines. Yet no one tried to save her.
Phoebe Wallington was seven years old when a mass assassination attempt rocked Regency England. Her father was the only accused traitor to elude capture. Seventeen years later, the one man who could prove her father's innocence is dead. Now as a grown woman and a British spy, she's no closer to learning what really happened that day.
Phoebe's quest for the truth takes a sudden turn when she's kidnapped by a suspected traitor. But Kiernan MacGregor, the Marquess of Ashlund, may not live long enough to stand trial. Someone wants him dead…and Phoebe stands in the killer's way. The only way to save her reputation and protect Kiernan is to marry him.
No man bargains for war when he chooses a bride, but when he steals her from holy ground, he can expect nothing less.
A midnight race for freedom leads Victoria Hockley, the Countess of Lansbury, to a churchyard deep in the Scottish Highlands. But not even hallowed ground can save her from the devil who’s pursued her from England, or from the furious Scot who swears to protect her.
Iain MacPherson swore he was nothing like his father, but his kidnapping of Victoria Hockley shows the same kind of obsessive jealousy that sent his mother to an early grave. Now Iain has hell to pay, and the devil may very well be the noble English lass who has bewitched his very soul…
Lady Riana Ellis will risk the fires of Hell for those she loves.
Can she let a man do the same for her?
As whore for the Duchess of Arundel, Lady Riana Ellis keeps her sister safe from the duke’s lascivious desires. Now the duchess demands that Riana murder the man already sent to her bed.
Sir Bryant Cullen determines to have the duchess’ whore. Her land is a prize, but it’s her secrets he wants. Once he knows what she knows, he will control one of the most powerful houses in Scotland. And she will be his.
This is erotic romance
The Pendulum: Legacy of the Celtic Brooch
Two Men.
Two murderers.
Two demands for the promised payment of marriage.
Murder, deceit, and fraud pull Lady Arin Keith between these men.
Which one will bed her, claim her...own her?
This is a twenty page short story.
On the fifth year anniversary of Margaret Moncreiffe's death, her husband Nathaniel kneels at her grave, asking the questions he fears were answered the night she died of a mysterious fever. As the evening progresses, however, a flesh and blood woman enters the battlefield he has created around his heart, forcing him to choose between life among the living, or life with nothing but memories of the dead.
It’s a Mississippi Deputy Sheriff’s duty to bring a serial killer to justice…even when he’s a three hundred year old Scottish lord. It’s an SAS agent’s duty to save her.
With each passing day, Lord Colin Morrison grows more furious...and more desperate. In three hundred years, not one of the women who shared his bed broke the spell that imprisoned him in Castle Morrison. Margot Saulnier is different. She can save him. All she has to do is give in to her desire for him. Then die.
Deputy Sheriff Margot Saulnier knows her best friend murdered her husband—Margot’s cousin—but she can’t prove it. Now, four years later, out of the blue, Cat calls Margot from Scotland and invites her to visit. Margot turns in her badge and leaves Mississippi. This time, she’ll do whatever it takes to prove Cat murdered Donny. Margot didn’t plan on falling in love with an SAS Agent—or a three-hundred-year-old Scottish lord. Now she must choose.
SAS Agent Charles McNeil is going to keep Margot Saulnier out of trouble—whether she likes it or not. He understands her need for justice, but with no proof and no authority, she’s headed for serious trouble. So is he. Charles didn’t plan on falling in love with Margot. Neither did he plan on saving her from a serial killer.
The Highlander’s Improper Wife
A proper young lady should never attend a Masque...Aphrodite is no lady.
Betrothal to the callous Lord Blackhall painted a future devoid of love. Upon his death, Lady Caroline Wilmont is promised to the younger brother. Caroline refuses to allow her first taste of desire to be at the hands of a man who would rather have any woman but her. This, her last night of freedom, is to be a memory of lust that she can take with her throughout her loveless marriage. As Aphrodite, Caroline attends a masque determined to find a man to initiate her into the intimacies of erotic love.
Taran Robertson, Viscount of Blackhall, makes no secret that he despises his obligation to marry the Sassenach heiress chosen for him by his father. As a last foray before his wedding, he attends a masque. However, the spirited vixen he meets and seduces has secrets...secrets that just may reveal he’s to have an improper wife.
Sara Martin has a problem. And it’s not the attraction she has for her co-worker Devon Curran…or the lust she feels for her sexy neighbor, Rigg. Yes, those are problems. But she has bigger issues. There’s been a security breach in the impenetrable computer system at work. Suddenly Devon doesn’t look happy. And that is a gun in his pocket!
Devon is working undercover…and Sara is about to blow his case. He’d rather she blow him. She’s as smart as she is beautiful. But he’s lied to protect her. What will she do when she discovers he works with a partner? Tonight, they are going to keep her close…very close…in their protective custody.
Ryalda - the Element heroes of old - leak from the dark void of nothingness, Ghen, and bring with them beauty, desire... and destruction.
Air Element, Erion aches to feel the heat of Kenna's emerging fire. However, merging his wind with the woman on the cusp of transformation comes with great risk. A risk he's unwilling to take. But with a male Fire Element intent on enslaving Kenna, Erion reconsiders his vow. To protect her, they must merge, but he will not bond his wind with her fire.
Aspiring glassblower, Kenna Lang finally has a showing that could launch her career - with
Drakaura, blown glass replicas of the dragons of her dreams. A chance meeting with Erion ignites an attraction hotter than the furnace used to blow glass. Drawn into an erotic joining, Kenna is born into fire. Now her world is going up in flames.
Merged as Air and Fire, their power is unimaginable. However, both are unprepared for the emotions awakened by their joining and the timeless battle waged against them. Only together can they defeat their enemies, both Element and Dragon, and escape the darkness of Ghen.