ROMANCE: PARANORMAL ROMANCE: Coveted by the Werewolves (Paranormal MMF Bisexual Menage Romance) (New Adult Shifter Romance Short Stories) (306 page)

                      “What’s this?” Brent suddenly demanded, and this snapped Nicholas’s attention away from his musings to the present.  “What manner of incestuous nonsense is this?”  Nicholas had rarely heard temper in his brother’s voice, so the matter must be concerning, to say the least.

                      “It says there is a betrothal involved,” said one of the solicitors drily, cowering a bit at Brent’s fierce look.  “To one Lady Ania Cromwell.”

                      Nicholas felt his chest squeeze as he heard the name of his brother’s betrothed spoken aloud.  Although he knew that Brent had not felt any great love for his fiancé, he had been looking forward to an easy friendship and a calm relationship with the lady in question.  That fact was no secret as Brent began to bluster and go red in the face.  “And now—now she is to be wed to Nicholas?”

                      The solicitor did not appear to be happy to be the bearer of the news.  “It appears that Lord Connols had invested a great deal of money in propping up the lady’s family holdings and has entered a clause into the documents that reads that if the marriage between Nicholas—Your Grace—and the lady does not take place, then the dukedom will not be settled on anyone.”

                      The brothers Connols looked at each other, aghast.  It appeared that their father had quite the vindictive streak in him, and was determined to break apart what was left of the family.  If Nicholas did not marry Ania Cromwell, then his holdings would go into back taxes for the Queen, and neither Nicholas nor Brent would see a penny of his money.

                      “Well, surely my father cannot expect that I would fulfill this wish.  She was to be my brother’s wife, it’s—it’s indecent!” cried Nicholas, feeling a vein throb in his temple.  It was the same vein whose pulse he tried to slow by many stress-releasing visits to the brothels.

                      “It appears that it is so,” answered the solicitor, and Nicholas felt his heart drop in his chest.

                      “And what of the lady in question?” he asked, trying desperately to call to mind the face of Ania Cromwell, and coming up blank.  “What if she decides that she does not want to agree to this?” Even as he asked, Nicholas understood the futility of the situation.  Surely, the state of the matter was that while noble, the lady’s title held no monetary value and she would need to marry him in order to supply her family’s coffers in some steady supply.  Furthermore, within their circles, nobody asked the young wives to be of their opinions on their upcoming nuptials or husbands, for that matter.

                      It appeared that in addition to inheriting a dukedom, he would also be inheriting a wife.  An interesting proposition, providing his brother wasn’t so attached to the lady that it would cause an unspeakable rift between them.

                      “Is she quite the girl, then?” Nicholas asked his brother once the two of them had cleared out into the park outside.

                      For a moment, Brent did not say a word, but simply ran his hand through his close-cropped blond hair.  When he spoke, his voice was low.  “It’s not her, Nick,” he said, and Nicholas felt his heart catch at the old familiar name tossed between them.  “She’s a nice enough girl, smart even, and quite the looker, if you can learn to appreciate it.  It’s just this whole damn mess between Lord and Lady Connols.”

                      Nicholas knew what he meant.  Members of Society liked to pretend that just because they had money, the ordinary mortal troubles of the world did not concern them at all, and nothing could be more human than his mother being unfaithful to his father.  In many ways, he admired her gumption, but perhaps that came from reading so many dramatic novels.  Still, his father cut an imposing figure, and if Lady Connols was brave enough to risk his wrath and not only be with another man, but also bear that other man a child, well, he had to hand it to her, it was likely she possessed a steel pair of something only gentlemen were supposed to have.

                      He found it surprising that he could admire such a quality about her, but the fact of the matter was that members of their class never did marry for love.  In spite of the little matter that Brent had gone from being his brother to only his half-brother, Nicholas did not feel any more distant from him and the only rage he felt for his mother was directed at the fact that her indiscretion had been discovered and was causing such upheaval in all their lives.  But for the fact that she had found love?  No, he could never hate her for that.

                      Maybe that was the elusive element that had escaped him with every woman he had ever been with.  Renowned as an egalitarian lover, he had never wanted for a warm body in his bed; the women from the houses asked for him back sans charge, and many a lady had sidled up to him during a party to request a few clandestine moments alone with him.  Something, however, was always missing, and as he wondered what it was, his thoughts turned to his prospective bride, Lady Ania Cromwell.  If Brent held her in high enough regard to acknowledge her intelligence, then perhaps there was a chance something could be forged between them that could last. He knew that if anything, what he had learned from this whole mess with his family was that he would never stray if he could help it.  And so he would let Ania Cromwell know.  In due time.  After she had warmed to the marriage bed, as he sincerely hoped she would, knowing full well the capacities of the female body for pleasure, both his own and theirs.  He would give her the money her family desperately needed, and perhaps she would be the companion he had been looking for this whole time.

                      “This has been quite a lot to digest,” Nicholas finally said to his brother.  “Not only have our fates switched, but now there is a third party involved.  This is what not having at least a civil relationship with your lord leads to,” he muttered, feeling the bitterness rise sharply on his tongue.

                      “Nicholas, you’ve been reading those damn serials again!” Brent cried.  “All this talk of fates and civil relationships, what nonsense.  This is what our lives are; this is what they will eventually turn into.  Look, Ania is a nice enough girl, but she’s a gentle-bred lady.  So she spies in the bushes on romantic trysts—it doesn’t mean a damned thing!  She’s still a frigid little member of the ton, just like her impoverished parents.”

                      Nicholas was a bit shocked.  He knew that once the day was over and the dust had settled, Brent would return to his normal, jovial self.  But what sparked his interest was more what his brother had just mentioned about Ania Cromwell.  Perhaps that natural curiosity she seemed to have would bode well for them both in the bedroom and out; he admired an inquisitive mind and always found that the more intelligent a lady was, the more inventive she was in the bedroom.

                      “I say, Brent, you’ve gone quite sour.  What if I asked you to manage my estate?” Nicholas asked.

                      His brother’s light blue eyes lit up.  “You mean it, Nick?”

                      “Yes.  I can’t be bothered with any of that, and you know all the ins and outs of it.  You will be my right-hand man.  I’ll have enough on my hands with this impending family you know Lord and Lady Connols will want me to start right away.”

                      His brother nodded slowly. “That will leave me free to read, and everything else.  Nick, it would be an honor.”

                      Nicholas let out a sigh of relief.  His brother’s face had returned to its normal, serene expression, and the tumultuous world around them returned to its epicenter on them both.  Finally, they had narrowed down the fallout after the disaster to just the two of them.  While it had affected them, surely it would affect no one else.

                      Surely.

*                    *                    *

From the edited version of the Illustrated Lady’s serial:

The Princess and the Pirate

                     
The pirate’s hands closed roughly around the breadth of her hips, and Marguerite gasped, equal parts outraged and excited at what was happening.  Ever since three days ago, when she had been taken prisoner aboard the ship, she had been unable to ignore the handsome captain’s dark blue eyes and chiseled chin.  It was only the fact that he was a damnable scoundrel who had robbed her father’s ship of goods that kept Marguerite from pursuing all manner of indecent thoughts whenever he strode into a room.

                      At first, she had hated him most acutely.  But ever since he had unchained her from the bottom bunk below deck and begun treating her like the lady she was, she had allowed herself to see a gentlemanly side to him that she had not considered him capable of.  That was true, until she had demanded a better dinner and he had flown into a rage, calling her a snob and a half.

                      How dare he?  How dare the scoundrel?  If he knew, if he only knew, how hard she had had to work to achieve her manners after her mother had died in the fire she, Marguerite had caused.  And although she had done it escaping from the terrible truth about her father, she still blamed herself for it every single day of her life.  So what right had he to judge her for everything that she had accomplished?

                      “You think you know me,” Marguerite hissed fearlessly into the pirate’s face.  “But you know nothing about me.”

                      “And you think you know me?” he demanded to know.

                      “I know honorless swine when I see it,” Marguerite replied and watched his blue eyes darken until she was sure she had gone a step too far and this, surely, would cost her her life.  After all, heavens only knew what they had done to her father; she had not seen him in days, and for all she knew, they had made him walk the plank ages ago.  She swallowed a lump as the pirate’s face began to bear all the signs of his exploding his anger on her.

                      “Where do you get off saying I have no honor?” he finally asked her, and for the first time, Marguerite considered that she may have actually wounded his pride.  Who would have thought a scoundrel capable of such an emotion?

                      The pirate’s hands moved from her hips to tangle with the small fingers of her equally small hands.  At first, Marguerite could barely breathe, since she thought he was going to pull her towards him, but quickly realized he was taking her somewhere.  She tried to staunch the foolish thumping of her foolish girl heart as they rushed past the crew, who were at this point roaring drunk and beyond the point of caring that their captain was carrying on with the booty.  So to speak.

                      He led her deep into the bowels of the ship to a door that was locked.  From the belt on his own deliciously slender hip, from which Marguerite found it difficult to draw her eyes away, he procured a key, which he proceeded to fit into the lock, rusted by the dampness in the deepest part of the ship.  Terrified of what lay beyond the door, Marguerite held her breath as she heard a low moan emanate from behind it, but the captain fearlessly pushed it open.

                      There, in the deep dark through which not even the light from the flickering torch the pirate captain brandished like a weapon could pierce, something shifted. A wave of fear passed over Marguerite and she drew closer to the pirate, clasping her hands around his arm, her terror so acute that she barely noticed the bulge of muscle beneath her palms as she gripped the captain for dear life.  A shape was emerging from the depths of the shadows, a hunched-over, lumbering shape that looked sickly like the nightmares Marguerite had suffered soon after her mother’s death.

                      Death, death, it was Death who was coming from the depths!

                      But quite suddenly, just like that, the face of the great monster from the dark was coming into the small pool of light and its features were arranging themselves into some semblance of a face, and not just any face, but a familiar one at that.  With an audible gasp, Marguerite realized who it was that was coming at the pair of them from this great hidden part of the pirate ship.

                      “Papa?” she asked, hardly believing it to be true.

                      Oh, but she would remember that moment for the rest of her life.  The way she and her father gripped each other, sagging with relief at knowing that they were not lost to each other forever.  The way her mind filled with a spreading pool of calm for now she knew that she would not have to search the whole world through to find him, that he was not lost to her the way her mother was lost, that at the very least, she had not destroyed both of her parents within a year of each other.

                      It was, after all, her fault her father’s ship had been captured in the first place.

                      Long after, after she had convinced the pirate captain to update her father’s lodgings from the straw he was currently on to a rudimentary, but far more comfortable bed, that Marguerite realized why her father had been hidden away at all. He was the one man aboard his entire ship who knew the secret of the coveted Black Pearl necklace.  The pirate captain had hidden him away to learn his secrets for himself, and the thought of it filled her with a simmering rage.

                      Back in his captain’s cabin, the pirate set down the torch, allowing for a small golden pool of light to gather at the center of the room.  He made no motion to indicate to Marguerite what she should do with herself, and seemed, in fact, to be ignoring her completely.  She held her breath as he stripped off his greatcoat, unbuckled his sword from his narrow waist, and began to unbutton his shirt, quite as if he had forgotten she was in the room at all.