Lynne Connolly (34 page)

“It was never ours, always yours. It exploded before we could use it.” Julia again, causing trouble, trying to destroy what she couldn’t have.

“This one won’t. It’s larger than mine, a seagoing vessel, but since Gervase won his seat in Parliament, he’s not used it.” He smiled, and I was glad to see it. He hadn’t smiled much recently. “How would you like to winter in Lisbon?”

“And visit Lizzie? Oh, Richard!” I threw myself into his arms and covered his face with kisses, making him laugh while he disentangled himself. “When do we leave?”

“When you’re better. We might think about leaving in late September. Then we’ll winter at their estate and in Lisbon, and come back in the spring.”

It sounded wonderful. Lisbon didn’t have the hard winters that we had in England. I’d visit my sister, who I missed very much, and keep Richard happy by resting in the sun. And we’d have our children with us. All four of them.

Lisbon sounded good to me.

About the Author

Lynne Connolly has been in love with the Georgian age since the age of nine, when she did a project about coffee and tea at school. One look at the engraving of the Georgian coffee house, and she was a goner. It’s the longest love affair of her life.

She stopped looking around old houses and visiting museums long enough to go to work, fall in love for a second time, marry and have a family, but they have to share her with her obsession, which they do with good grace and much humor.

To learn more about Lynne Connolly, please visit
www.lynneconnolly.com
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Look for these titles by Lynne Connolly

Now Available:

Triple Countess

Last Chance, My Love

A Chance to Dream

Met by Chance

A Betting Chance

Secrets Trilogy

Alluring Secrets

Seductive Secrets

Tantalizing Secrets

Richard and Rose

Yorkshire

Devonshire

Venice

Harley Street

Eyton

Hareton Hall

Maiden Lane

Secrets can destroy you—and the one you love most.

Hareton Hall

© 2010 Lynne Connolly

Richard and Rose, Book 6

As Richard returns with Rose to her childhood home of Darkwater for two weddings, romance is in the air—but so is trouble. It begins with Rose’s stolen watch. Tensions rise when they learn their old adversaries, the Drurys, have taken a house nearby. A series of attacks on those they love, plus a rise in smuggling activity, only add to the threat of violence.

Then illness strikes at the worst possible time, threatening everyone in the district—especially the children. Questions abound: Was the infection deliberate? Is someone striking at Richard through Rose, or are their enemies targeting Rose for information she possesses?

Richard calls on his resources, public and private, to counter an enemy that threatens to destroy his beloved Rose. Rose is no helpless victim, however, and refuses to let anyone—even Richard—take away her independence. She finds ways to fight that aren’t in his armoury. Whether he likes it or not…

Warning: When Richard uses a topaz necklace to give Rose hot shivers, it might give you ideas, so keep a man handy to experiment on. But you can’t have Richard.

Enjoy the following excerpt for
Hareton Hall:

“Would you like me to get Nichols back for you?” he murmured. “Or will you accept me as your lady’s maid?”

“Do you need to ask?”

He laughed and kissed me, his tongue caressing my mouth with a gentle insistence I could never tire of.

He unhooked my gown at the front, pushed it off my shoulders and let the garment fall to the ground, leaving me in my stomacher, stays and petticoats. The stomacher was easily got rid of, being attached to the stays by a few pins only. It fell to the floor with a heavy thump, as the topaz brooches were still fastened to it. He reached round to the back and began to loosen my stay laces, taking the opportunity of our proximity to kiss me again, sweet kisses over my cheeks and throat, pausing to nip at my earlobe. While he was performing these actions for me, I wasn’t idle.

I undid the buttons on his waistcoat, feeling the hard, nubby surface of its heavy embroidery, then I slid my hands under it and felt his body beneath the fine linen of his shirt. He chuckled softly, and I felt my stays give way. The drawstring of my outer petticoat proved no obstacle to his questing, skilled fingers and my under petticoat and side hoops swiftly followed.

“Why do you like to undress me? I could come to you in my night rail.” I ran my hands up his back, feeling the hard, lean muscle respond to my touch.

“Because, my sweet delight, it’s unwrapping the best gift in the world. Because it prolongs the moment in a delicious way. I love to touch you, to hold you, and this way I can touch every part of you.” He kissed me and then bent his head to kiss my throat, and to push away the loosened drawstring of my shift, exposing my breasts to his caresses. I pressed myself against him, felt the buckles holding his stock at the back of his neck and unfastened them.

Then I put my hand up to undo the topaz necklace I still wore, but he lifted his hand and put it over mine. “Leave it. It looks lovely against your skin. Let me look.”

I let it be, instead pulling at the drawstring of my remaining petticoat and my pockets until they fell away. He removed his shirt in one smooth movement, so I could see and touch his chest and his back. The touch of my bare skin against his made me tingle, drew my nipples into peaks. The drawstring at the neck of my shift was now fully open, so I let it go all the way down my body to pool at my feet.

I was naked now, except for my stockings, and I knelt to help him with his breeches, unfastening the glittering buckles at his knee, the buttons at the sides, and the buttons holding the garment up at his waist, beginning to understand his meaning about unwrapping.

I touched, caressed, kissed him, and heard his sigh and murmur when I stroked the swollen, silken flesh before me. I bent my head, took him into my mouth, and ran my tongue around the tip.

He gasped and murmured, “Oh Rose, oh sweetheart,” and he touched me, digging his fingers into my hair when I deepened the caress. I loved the feeling of control doing this gave to me and I felt him moisten, tasted the pearl of liquid he granted me and knew he wouldn’t last too long if I did this. I wanted him inside me so I released him with some reluctance, watching the glistening member strain as I drew back.

I sat on the floor, on top of the discarded heap of clothes, and slowly removed my shoes and stockings, drawing out the moment, displaying myself to him. He watched me, before he put his hands under my armpits and pulled me to my feet.

His eyes, usually such a gemlike sapphire, had softened to the blue of the sky just after dawn, and the smile playing about his mouth was the one only I ever saw. “You’re a witch,” he whispered, as he sought my mouth with his. He thrust his tongue into my mouth, sensuously exploring, sending flutters of sensation through my whole body.

Then he took my hand and led me to the bed. I lay down and held out my arms to him. He hardly paused, only looking at me, with that smile curving his lips. “The best gift in the world.”

He kissed me, touched me, took my nipples into his mouth and teased them into pinpoint hardness with his tongue.

I caressed him, his firm, satiny skin heating under my hands, and kissed him again as he found his way home, sliding his shaft along my innermost folds, then deep inside my body. I’d never yet been disappointed by Richard’s lovemaking, never been less than drowsily blissful when we had done. His long years of practice must have helped, but now that he was all mine he honed his skills, tailoring them to my pleasure, for my delight.

He kissed me, then drove in, to withdraw and plunge again, moving a little to find the most sensitive parts of me, then lifted his head and gazed down at me, pausing in his rhythmic movements. “How lucky can one man be?”

I smiled up at him. He moved again and laughed softly when I caught my lower lip between my teeth and made a small, wordless sound. “Oh, my love, that’s it, that’s it.”

He isn’t made of brass…but that won’t stop him from steaming up her nights.

Miss Minnie and the Brass Pluggit

© 2011 Sahara Kelly

Flouting convention and raising eyebrows from aristocratic drawing rooms to Whitehall, Lady Minnie Dalrymple takes men to her bed as she pleases. She doesn’t do favors outside the boudoir, particularly for politically powerful men whose motives are rarely pure. Yet when her lover asks her to visit the mysterious Dr. Pierce Lowell, she’s intrigued. Why should she be asked to essentially spy on the reclusive scientist?

Pierce has several projects under development, none of which he cares to share with the public. The arrival of any unexpected guest rouses suspicion, but the wealthier-than-God, eccentric young widow certainly isn’t threatening…not to his experiments, anyway. To his heart? That’s another matter entirely.

Their lighthearted, mutual exploration is interrupted by the discovery of a woman’s body found strangled just offshore. When Minnie learns this is the fourth such crime, it isn’t difficult to convince Pierce that working at his side to uncover the plot is the safest place to be. Until she is kidnapped. To save the woman he has come to love, Pierce must call on every ounce of ingenuity and brilliance—and reveal his most closely guarded secret.

Warning: Contains scientific references, unlaced Victorian desire and some really nasty villains at war with fascinating machines. Author is not responsible for any consequent urge to dismantle a vacuum cleaner and build a mechanical man.

Enjoy the following excerpt for
Miss Minnie and the Brass Pluggit:

Silence fell, a comfortable silence that spoke of mutual appreciation, relaxation and one of the most seductively soothing vistas—the sea.

Minnie’s thoughts roamed freely, darting from one place to another, before settling on those uppermost in her mind. “She was strangled. Were the others? Were there any signs of…well, any other injuries?”

He took a moment before answering. “Yes, she was strangled. And yes the others were, as well. The first had been in the water for quite some time.”

Minnie closed her eyes against the image.

“I’m sorry.” He spoke quietly.

“No. Don’t apologize. I need to know. It will help to have all the facts we have at our command right now. We cannot move forward without them.”

“Very well. The first was strangled but we simply could not tell if there were other injuries. The next two—both strangled. And yes. There were, as you put it,
other injuries
.”

“They were raped?”

“Repeatedly.”

Minnie swallowed. “Ah.” She absorbed the implications. “A man then. Or men. With the strength to restrain these women as well as strangle them.”

“Yes.”

“And disposing of the bodies in the sea would mean someone local?”

“Possibly. But I have another theory.”

Minnie glanced at his face, which was calm and expressionless. But she was learning more about him each minute they spent together. There was a fierce tension beneath the skin, an untapped savagery perhaps. Something that was seriously offended by these crimes.

“And that theory would be…”

“Ships. They’re being tossed away from ships.”

She frowned and once again worked her way through the various possibilities. “You mean they’re
recruited
, for lack of a better word? Paid to go on board as prostitutes for the voyage and then murdered?”

“Something like that.”

The sun set in a blaze of glory, there one moment and gone the next. The room darkened yet neither moved to light a lamp.

“That’s a likely scenario, I suppose.” She puzzled it through. “Where would they go to recruit women? If we could find that location, it would be a place to start looking for whoever is hiring them.”

“I did wonder about that myself.” He stretched out his arm to put his glass down and pour a little more liquid. “Would you care for brandy?”

“Thank you but no.” Her mind was still turning over what he’d suggested. “Why don’t they get rid of these bodies further out to sea?”