The Bad Luck Wedding Night, Bad Luck Wedding series #5 (Bad Luck Abroad trilogy) (44 page)

Nick's Rod of Steel stirred against her stomach. "Damnation." He laughed, rolled her on her back, and settled himself between her legs. "Get ready, Lady Weston, tonight is your lucky night. Your Good Luck Wedding Night."

"Yours, too?"

"Mine, too. Because every night for the rest of my life, I will be sharing a bed with you."

He brought his mouth down to hers and gave her a swift, hard kiss. "That, my love, makes me the luckiest man on earth."

The End

Page Forward for more by Geralyn Dawson

Excerpt from

Sizzle All Day

Bad Luck Abroad

Book Two

by

Geralyn Dawson

© 2000, 2011 by Geralyn Dawson Williams

Chapter 1

Scottish Highlands, 1884

Jake Delaney was
a man on the run.

From his mother.

"It's embarrassing," he told the small dog sharing the saddle with him. "I'm thirty-four years old. I'm my own man. I've driven cattle from Austin to Wichita. I've fought a gun battle with bandits in the West Texas badlands and won a knife fight with card cheats in a San Antonio whorehouse. I took my first drink when I was ten, loved my first woman at fourteen, and bought my first property at eighteen. I truly believed I had my share of sand."

The dog snorted.

So did Jake. Sand, hell. He'd taken one look at that matchmaking light in his mother's eyes and had run for the hills. The hills of Scotland, that is.

The dog gazed up at him with liquid brown eyes, her long ears flopping in cadence to the horse's gait. She'd been a good, if unexpected, companion on this trip north. Jake liked females who listened well and didn't wear out a man's ears with talk of hair styles and fabrics and fashion.

That's all he'd been hearing of late. He'd spent the past few months escorting his mother around London. Elizabeth Delaney had returned to England after more than twenty years in Texas, thrown herself into the welcoming arms of a blue-blood society, and decided her son needed to follow suit. Literally.

"A bit of wenching is fine, don't get me wrong," he told the dachshund he'd christened Scooter. "But I'm not about to marry one of those simpering English misses. If I did want a wife—which I don't—I'd want a female with some pepper in her. I like heat in my women."

And in the weather, too, he silently added as the dog whined and burrowed her way inside his coat. Here it was the middle of summer, but the day was cold as a dead snake in an ice house. Think of how miserable he'd feel had he made the trip during the winter months. That's when he'd first learned that the missing copy of the Republic of Texas's Declaration of Independence was likely hidden in a castle in the Scottish Highlands, and he'd been elected to go get it.

Jake believed it to be a worthy quest. When the state capitol burned four years ago, Texas's lone copy of the historically significant document was lost to the fire. Recently, research by the Historical Preservation Society in San Antonio confirmed that in 1836
,
five copies of the Declaration had been penned and sent by courier across Texas in order to inform citizens of the official creation of a new republic. What, then, had happened to the four unaccounted-for copies? The Society had made it their objective to find out. They would locate the lost Declarations and bring them home to the people of Texas.

Jake became involved because at that time, his mother had been an officer in the organization.

Originally, Cole Morgan—Jake's brother-in-every-way-but-blood—had been charged with the task of retrieving the copy rumor had placed in England. Cole's search proved to be quite an adventure, netting him in the end one wife—Jake's sister Chrissy—but no Declaration, only a lead about where to look for it next. Supposedly, a lost copy of the Republic of Texas's Declaration of Independence could be found in the Scottish Highlands, in a place called Rowanclere Castle.

"So here I am," he murmured. "Cold enough to spit ice."

Jake might have been born in Britain, but he was South Texas bred. He thrived in the sizzling heat of a Texas summer, and he wasn't cut out for cold. He was more than ready to reach his destination, recover the Declaration of Independence for the people of Texas, and start living his own life for a change.

Jake had plans. For years now he had spent his time fulfilling responsibilities to family, friends, and country. But now his sister was blissfully married to his best friend, his mother happily reconciled with her British family, his land sold, and his law partnership in San Antonio cheerfully disbanded. As soon as this last duty was accomplished, Jake would be free to shake off the clay that had long weighted down the wings on his feet.

He craved adventure. The wilds of Africa, the islands of the South Pacific, and the mysteries of the Far East were lures he need no longer resist. He couldn't wait to see it all, experience it all. To live it all.

Thinking about it spurred him into picking up his pace. A short time later, his horse rounded a bend and Jake spied the end of the current trail. "Rowanclere Castle," he murmured, reining his mount to a halt so he could study the place.

He scratched Scooter behind the ears as he blew a soundless whistle of appreciation at the sight of a fairy tale come to life. Turrets and towers and thick, weathered walls of stone rose high above the deep blue waters of a narrow lake—or loch, to use the vernacular. A colorful flag fluttered from the long pole reaching up into the sky from a tall, square keep. The rest of the castle was a hodgepodge of gabled roofs and towers and crenelated lines that softened the keep's imposing facade.

Jake had visited larger castles since arriving in Britain, but this was certainly the most beautiful. Rowanclere possessed an air of welcome lacked by the others he'd seen along the way. This castle was no forbidding hunk of stone and mortar, appropriate as a setting for one of Shakespeare's tragedies. Rowanclere was more a light-hearted, fanciful romance, a place for a princess to dance with her prince.

"Princess?" Jake muttered aloud. Hell. The cold must have frozen his brain. Next thing you know, he'd be composing poetry.

He'd better get his head on straight. Castles were historically places of intrigue, and the search for this lost document had already come close to costing his sister Chrissy her life. Besides, he didn't want to die before getting a good look at those bare-breasted Tahitian women.

Tucking that warm image pleasantly in mind to combat this wretched cold, Jake snuggled Scooter close to his chest, signaled his horse forward, and headed for the castle by the loch.

* * *

Gillian Ross stood at a tower window and watched the broad-shouldered man guide his horse across the small stone bridge spanning the burn. The wings of a thousand butterflies fluttered in her stomach as she sent up a silent prayer for the success of the plan she prepared to put into action.

Mr. J. A. K. Delaney of Texas had sent word to expect his arrival today. How would he react to what he found at Rowanclere Castle?

"I am having second thoughts," her twin sister. Flora, insisted as she nervously twisted the wedding band on her finger. "We should not do this."

"We have little choice at this point."

Flora grimaced and her arms fell to her sides. Dejection filled her voice as she said, "Aye, you are right."

Gillian couldn't help but smile at Flora's woebegone state. Adopting a cheer she didn't feel, she said, "Though I could happily skelp Uncle Angus for forcing this upon us, and our brother for abandoning us to our grand-uncle's whims."

"Now, Gilly. Nicholas left Scotland two years before Mama and Papa were killed. He did not abandon us."

"What would you call it? We have not heard a word from him in the longest time."

Flora shook her head. "Let us not argue over Nicholas. He has nothing to do with this. David is the one—"

"I will not speak of David," Gillian snapped.

Then, mindful of her sister's delicate condition, she reached for Flora's hand and gave it an apologetic, reassuring squeeze. "We've more important matters to occupy our minds. Lord Harrington arrives in little more than a fortnight."

"Aye," Flora said with a sigh. She trailed a finger along the wide window casement painted in Gillian's favorite color, a deep forest green. "Whether we wish it or not."

Gillian shared her twin's lament, though she refused to voice it. Not now. Not when doing so could serve no positive purpose. "That is beside the matter, sister. After a year of search, you and Uncle Angus have found a potential buyer for Rowanclere."

She returned her gaze to the window and the stranger approaching the castle. "All we need do is successfully navigate these next few weeks and come first snow, Uncle Angus will be safe from the danger this castle poses upon his health."

Flora resumed her hand-wringing. "But you will lose your home."

Gillian took her sister by the hands and stared into bluebell-colored eyes identical to her own. "Never. My home is my family, wherever we are, and I do not intend to lose a one of you. You and your Alasdair and babe to come. Uncle Angus and Robyn. And Nick, if he ever returns to us."

Flora's eyes closed and her shoulders slumped forward as she relaxed. "You are right."