Stephanie Laurens
Mastered By Love
A Bastion Club Novel
Contents
The Bastion Club
One
It wasnt supposed to have been like this.
Two
Armor of the sort she needed wasnt easy to find.
Three
At nine the next morning, Royce sat at the head
Four
Royce strode into the breakfast parlor early the next morning,
Five
That evening, Royce walked into the great drawing room in
Six
Royce walked into the drawing room that evening more uncertain
Seven
The next morning, garbed in her riding habit, Minerva sat
Eight
Royce walked into the drawing room that evening, and calmly
Nine
Despite the physical frustrations of the night, Royce was in
Ten
The next morning, she commenced her campaign to protect her
Eleven
By lunchtime the next day, Royce was hot, flushed, sweatyand
Twelve
A full moon rode the sky; Minerva didnt need a
Thirteen
He woke her sometime before dawn, time enough to indulge
Fourteen
Royce woke her before dawn in predictable fashion; Minerva reached
Fifteen
Two nights later, Minerva slipped into Royces rooms, and gave
Sixteen
Minervatake off the gown.
Seventeen
Hamish OLoughlin, you mangy Scot, how dare you tell Royce
Eighteen
Minerva paused just inside Royces sitting room to drag in
Nineteen
At a smidgen before dawn, Minerva floated back to her
Twenty
The next morning, Minerva stood beside Royce as, with the
Twenty-One
The clamor was deafening.
Twenty-Two
Minerva had weathered the prick of the cravat pinmore through
About the Author
Other Books by Stephanie Laurens
Copyright
About the Publisher
The Bastion Club
a last bastion against the matchmakers of the ton
MEMBERS
Lady Letitia Randall
#7
Christian Allardyee,
Marquess of Dearne
Alicia Carrington Pevensey
#2
Anthony Blake,
Viscount Torrington
Phoebe Malleson
#5
Jocelyn Deverell,
Viscount Paignton
#1 THE LADY CHOSEN
#2 A GENTLEMANS HONOR
#3 A LADY OF HIS OWN
#4 A FINE PASSION
Lady Penelope Selborne
#3
Charles St. Austell,
Earl of Lostwithiel
Madeline Gascoigne
#6
Gervase Tregarth,
Earl of Crowhurst
Lady Clarice Attwood
#4
Jack Warnefleet,
Baron Warnefleet of Minchinbury
Leonora Carling
#1
Tristan Wemyss,
Earl of Trentham
And so it ends. DL
#5 TO DISTRACTION
#6 BEYOND SEDUCTION
#7 THE EDGE OF DESIRE
One
September 1816
Coquetdale, Northumbria
I
t wasnt supposed to have been like this.
Wrapped in his greatcoat, alone on the box seat of his excellently sprung curricle, Royce Henry Varisey, tenth Duke of Wolverstone, turned the latest in the succession of post-horses hed raced up the highway from London onto the minor road leading to Sharperton and Harbottle. The gently rounded foothills of the Cheviot Hills gathered him in like a mothers arms; Wolverstone Castle, his childhood home and newly inherited principal estate, lay close by the village of Alwinton, beyond Harbottle.
One of the horses broke stride; Royce checked it, held the pair back until they were in step, then urged them on. They were flagging. His own high-bred blacks had carried him as far as St. Neots on Monday; thereafter hed had a fresh pair put to every fifty or so miles.
It was now Wednesday morning, and he was a long way from London, once againafter sixteen long yearsentering home territory. Ancestral territory. Rothbury and the dark glades of its forest lay behind him; ahead
the rolling, largely treeless skirts of the Cheviots, dotted here and there with the inevitable sheep, spread around the even more barren hills themselves, their backbone the border with Scotland beyond.
The hills, and that border, had played a vital role in the evolution of the dukedom. Wolverstone had been created after the Conquest as a marcher lordship to protect England from the depredations of marauding Scots. Successive dukes, popularly known as the Wolves of the North, had for centuries enjoyed the privileges of royalty within their domains.
Many would argue they still did.
Certainly theyd remained a supremely powerful clan, their wealth augmented by their battlefield prowess, and protected by their success in convincing successive sovereigns that such wily, politically powerful ex-kingmakers were best left alone, left to hold the Middle March as they had since first setting their elegantly shod Norman feet on English soil.
Royce studied the terrain with an eye honed by absence. Reminded of his ancestry, he wondered anew if their traditional marcher independenceoriginally fought for and won, recognized by custom and granted by royal charter, then legally rescinded but never truly taken away, and even less truly given uphadnt underpinned the rift between his father and him.
His father had belonged to the old school of lordship, one that had included the majority of his peers. According to their creed, loyalty to either country or sovereign was a commodity to be traded and bought, something both Crown and country had to place a suitable price upon before it was granted. More, to dukes and earls of his fathers ilk, country had an ambiguous meaning; as kings in their own domains, those domains were their primary concern while the realm possessed a more nebulous and distant existence, certainly a lesser claim on their honor.
While Royce would allow that swearing fealty to the pres
ent monarchymad King George and his dissolute son, the Prince Regentwasnt an attractive proposition, he held no equivocation over swearing allegiance, and service, to his countryto England.
As the only son of a powerful ducal family and thus barred by long custom from serving in the field, when, at the tender age of twenty-two, hed been approached to create a network of English spies on foreign soil, hed leapt at the chance. Not only had it offered the prospect of contributing to Napoleons defeat, but with his extensive personal and family contacts combined with his inherent ability to inspire and command, the position was tailor-made; from the first it had fitted him like a glove.
But to his father the position had been a disgrace to the name and title, a blot on the family escutcheon; his old-fashioned views had labeled spying as without question dishonorable, even if one were spying on active military enemies. It was a view shared by many senior peers at the time.
Bad enough, but when Royce had refused to decline the commission, his father had organized an ambush. A public one, in Whites, at a time of the evening when the club was always crowded. With his cronies at his back, his father had passed public judgment on Royce in strident and excoriating terms.
As his peroration, his father had triumphantly declared that if Royce refused to bow to his edict and instead served in the capacity for which hed been recruited, then it would be as if he, the ninth duke, had no son.
Even in the white rage his fathers attack had provoked, Royce had noted that as if. He was his fathers only legitimate son; no matter how furious, his father would not formally disinherit him. The interdict would, however, banish him from all family lands.
Facing his apoplectic sire over the crimson carpet of the exclusive club, surrounded by an army of fascinated aristocracy, hed waited, unresponsive, until his father had finished his well-rehearsed speech. Hed waited until the expectant
silence surrounding them had grown thick, then hed uttered three words:
As you wish.
Then hed turned and walked from the club, and from that day forth had ceased to be his fathers son. From that day hed been known as Dalziel, a name taken from an obscure branch of his mothers family tree, fitting enough given it was his maternal grandfatherby then deadwho had taught him the creed by which hed chosen to live. While the Variseys were marcher lords, the Debraighs were no less powerful, but their lands lay in the heart of England and theyd served king and countryprincipally countryselflessly for centuries. Debraighs had stood as both warriors and statesmen at the right hand of countless monarchs; duty to their people was bred deeply in them.
While deploring the rift with his father, the Debraighs had approved Royces stance, yet, sensitive even then to the dynamics of power, hed discouraged their active support. His uncle, the Earl of Catersham, had written, asking if there was anything he could do. Royce had replied in the negative, as he had to his mothers similar query; his fight was with his father and should involve no one else.
