Time After Time (230 page)
Authors: Elizabeth Boyce
Tags: #Fiction, #General, #Romance, #Historical
She gasped. Tears filled her eyes. She trembled. Indeed, she shook so badly, she thought her knees would buckle. Joy such as she’d never known flowed through her veins. Her heart raced, her pulse pounded in her ears.
Tristan opened his arms. Without hesitation, without a second thought, Caralyn flew into them. His lips met hers in a kiss so gentle, so tender, she felt as if heaven had blessed her. “Oh, Tristan,” she whispered, amazed. “I’m so glad you’re here but I don’t understand.”
“Neither did I until I met your grandmother. I think your father and mine,” he glanced at the earl, “have something to tell us.” His arms tightened around her. “I’m never letting you go again, my love,” he whispered as his lips found hers once more.
The earl chuckled and looked toward the chairs flanking the window on the second story. “Daniel, you can come out now. I do believe it’s time to confess to our plan.”
Caralyn looked toward the chairs as her father slowly stood, a sheepish grin on his face. He held up his hands in surrender. “Forgive me, Cara, but I wanted for you a love like your mother’s and mine, and a man who could understand your passion for adventure.” He stepped down the spiral staircase and strode to the desk.
Rayne took off his glasses and wiped his eyes as he addressed his son. “And I didn’t want for you the marriage your mother and I had. I wanted better for you, Tristan. I wanted you to find love, and I believe you have.”
“I knew from the moment I met Tristan, he would be the one for you, Cara. I knew, or rather, I hoped, given the opportunity, you would fall in love with each other. Forgive us our deception. We are but old men who only wanted happiness for our children,” Daniel said as he put his arm around his oldest friend.
Caralyn didn’t know what to say as she stared at them. She should be furious, and yet as Rayne and her father stood together, the both of them hopeless romantics and matchmakers extraordinaire, she couldn’t be. She glanced at Tristan, the man of her dreams, the one she could love until she took her last breath, and grinned. “Should we forgive them?”
Tristan held her gaze. In the depths of his sparkling, sherry-colored eyes, she saw the promise of everything she ever wanted. “I think we should.” He lowered his voice and whispered in her ear. “Because they were right. I do love you, Cara mia. Will you marry me?”
“Oh, yes.”
Epilogue
“Wake up, sleepyhead.”
The words whispered in his ear caused gooseflesh to pebble his skin. Tristan roused from sleep slowly as only a contented man can. Warm fingers tickled the thick mat of hair on his chest and caressed lower. His whole body came alive. He caught Caralyn’s hand and opened one eye. Bright sunlight streamed through the window and fell upon the impish grin on her face.
How he loved this woman. With every beat of his heart, every breath he drew, he knew how lucky he’d been to find someone as passionate, as beautiful, as adventurous as she.
“Now, you know what will happen if you continue to do that.”
Sleep tousled hair brushed against his chest as she nodded. “I know.” Her grin grew and a wicked light danced in her sea-blue eyes. “Happy anniversary, my love,” she murmured before she kissed his cheek.
Startled by her words and the fact he may have forgotten such an important date, Tristan mentally went over the calendar in his head and realized she must be mistaken. He smoothed his finger along the soft skin of her jaw. “Cara mia, today is not our anniversary.”
Caralyn nodded. “Ten years ago today, I offered you an outrageous proposition. I hired you to help me find a treasure.” Her eyes darkened to an even darker blue. “I fell in love with you the first time you kissed me, and when you played your violin, I knew my heart would always be yours.”
His heart swelled in his chest—with pride, with love. A lump rose in his throat and he couldn’t speak, but his lips could convey what he felt in his heart and he tasted her mouth with the sweetest of kisses as his hands caressed her through the silkiness of her nightgown.
“I have something for you.” She broke the kiss and stretched across him. Her breasts pressed against his chest and he groaned before he reached for her.
“Do you know what you do to me?”
She giggled and slapped his hand away as she dug in the bedside table drawer and withdrew a thick envelope.
“What is it?”
“Open it and see.”
Tristan sat up in bed with his back against the cushioned headboard. Caralyn settled beside him, her hand resting on his chest as he opened the envelope. A sigh escaped him as he read the letter from the lawyer.
“It took me almost ten months, but I finally tracked it down. This is a map to Calico Jack Rackham’s last treasure. Or at least a map attributed to him before he was put to death.”
Tristan closed his eyes against the sudden moisture that made his vision blur. Beyond the privacy of their bedchamber, Winterbourne Manor burst at the seams. Friends and relatives converged on the manse to celebrate two amazing events. The release of Dr. Brady Trevelyan’s third book,
Adventures of a Treasure Hunter
, and Graham Alcott’s marriage.
The bigger surprise had to be the upcoming nuptials of Graham and Irene Baker. Graham said she reminded him a great deal of Caralyn. He met her, of all places, on the beach in Long Island, New York, while she dug for Captain Kidd’s buried treasure. It had been love at first sight.
He heard servants scurrying here and there, heard the voices of his guests, but above it all, he heard and reveled in the laughter of his children.
His children.
Jemmy, the child of his heart, home from school for holiday, chased his younger siblings up and down the hallway. His first born, Rayne Brady—all of eight and as serious as his grandfather had been—recited the rules of the game of chase. With his natural inclination for figures and finances, he would be running the Winterbourne estates before long, much to Jemmy’s profound relief as the boy had no desire to be landlocked.
Daniel Graham was thirteen months younger than Rayne and full of the same spirit of adventure Tristan never lost. He and Jemmy talked constantly of sailing the seas to find lost treasure.
A shout from the hallway made him swivel his head toward the door.
Temperance, a miniature version of Caralyn with snapping sea-blue eyes and light brown hair that curled around her little face, peeked through the bedroom door. Even at three years old, his daughter knew exactly what she wanted. He couldn’t help the grin that tugged at the corners of his mouth. Last week she’d told him, quite emphatically, definitely no to peas and carrots, but yes to Papa’s kisses. Again, his heart swelled almost painfully in his chest as she squealed, “Papa!”
“Good morning, my little sprite.” Tristan grinned as his daughter burst into the room, leaving the door wide open, and jumped on the bed. She snuggled between him and her mother, her little body warm. Caralyn wrapped an arm around her and nestled closer as Temperance grabbed the letter from his hand and pretended to read.
It didn’t take long for her brothers to follow her. Rayne and Daniel perched at the end of the bed and Jemmy, at nineteen, too old to climb into their bed, slumped in one of the chairs flanking the fireplace, his leg swinging over the arm.
Tristan glanced at each one of his children then turned to Caralyn, the woman who’d been the answer to every dream, every desire he’d ever had. “It’s a wonderful gift, Cara mia, but I don’t need it.” He smoothed his finger over her cheek and drew in a breath in an effort to keep the emotions threatening to overwhelm him at bay. As it was, he had to swallow—hard—to remove the lump from his throat. “I have everything I want right here. I don’t need to hunt for treasure because you, my love, and our children, are the only treasures worth keeping.”
About the Author
Marie Patrick has always had a love affair with words and books, but it wasn’t until a trip to Arizona, where she now makes her home with her husband and two furry, four-legged “girls,” that she became inspired to write about the sometimes desolate, yet beautiful landscape. Her inspiration doesn’t just come from the Wild West, though. It comes from history itself. She is fascinated with pirates and men in uniform and lawmen with shiny badges. When not writing or researching her favorite topics, she can usually be found curled up with a good book. Marie loves to hear from her readers. Drop her a note at
[email protected]
or visit her website at
www.mariepatrick.com
.
More from This Author
(From
Mischief and Magnolias
by Marie Patrick)
The Reluctant Debutante
Becky Lower
Avon, Massachusetts
This edition published by
Crimson Romance
an imprint of F+W Media, Inc.
10151 Carver Road, Suite 200
Blue Ash, Ohio 45242
Copyright © 2012 by Becky Louise Lower
ISBN 10: 1-4405-5162-6
ISBN 13: 978-1-4405-5162-8
eISBN 10: 1-4405-5142-1
eISBN 13: 978-1-4405-5142-0
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, corporations, institutions, organizations, events, or locales in this novel are either the product of the author’s imagination or, if real, used fictitiously. The resemblance of any character to actual persons (living or dead) is entirely coincidental.
Cover art © 123rf.com/© Natalia Lukiyanova, Evgeniya Tubol
I’d like to thank my critique groups and all the other dedicated early readers who help me get it right.
Contents
