Three Weddings and a Murder (41 page)
Read Three Weddings and a Murder Online
Authors: Courtney Milan,Carey Baldwin,Tessa Dare,Leigh LaValle
We hope that you’ve enjoyed the stories in
Three Weddings and a Murder.
This is a very special project for us. We put together this anthology to honor women who have been important in our lives, who have suffered from breast cancer. All of the authors have had friends, mothers, or aunts diagnosed with this deadly disease.
We will be donating 100% of the profits from this anthology to breast cancer research and treatment, and on September 22 and 23 of 2012, we will be participating in the Avon Walk in Santa Barbara, California (three as walkers, and one as support staff).
If you want to follow our progress or make a donation to the Avon Walk directly, please visit the page for our team at
http://bit.ly/3weddings/
.
A Lady by Midnight
Spindle Cove Book 3
Available August 28, 2012, from Avon Books
A temporary engagement, a lifetime in the making…
After years of fending for herself, Kate Taylor found friendship and acceptance in Spindle Cove—but she never stopped yearning for love. The very last place she’d look for it is in the arms of Corporal Thorne. The militia commander is as stone cold as he is brutally handsome. But when mysterious strangers come searching for Kate, Thorne steps forward as her fiancé. He claims to have only Kate’s safety in mind. So why is there smoldering passion in his kiss?
Long ago, Samuel Thorne devoted his life to guarding Kate’s happiness. He wants what’s best for her, and he knows it’s not marriage to a man like him. To outlast their temporary engagement, he must keep his hands off her tempting body and lock her warm smiles out of his withered heart. It’s the toughest battle of this hardened warrior’s life…and the first he seems destined to lose.
From Chapter Two:
K
ATE PLUCKED A LONG BLADE
of grass and dangled it for the puppy to nip and bat. His long, thin tail whipped back and forth with joy.
“What do you mean to call him?” she asked.
He shrugged. “I don’t know. Patch, I suppose.”
“But that’s horrible. You can’t call him Patch.”
“Why not? He has a patch, doesn’t he?”
“Yes, and that’s exactly why you can’t call him that.” Kate lowered her voice, gathering the pup close and smoothing the splash of rust-colored fur around his right eye. “He’ll be self-conscious. I have a patch, but I shouldn’t like to be named for it. It’s not as though I need a reminder it’s there.”
“This is different. He’s a dog.”
“That doesn’t mean he has no feelings.”
Corporal Thorne made a derisive noise. “He’s a
dog
.”
“You should call him Rex,” she said, tilting her head. “Or Duke. Or Prince, perhaps.”
His gaze slid sideways. “What about that dog says ‘royalty’ to you?”
“Well, nothing.” Kate set the pup down and watched him scamper through the heather. “But that’s the point. You’ll balance his humble origins by giving him a grand-sounding name. It’s called irony, Corporal Thorne. As if I were to call you ‘Cuddles.’ Or if you were to call me Helen of Troy.”
He paused and frowned. “Who’s Helen of Troy?”
Kate almost betrayed her surprise at his question. Fortunately, she caught herself just in time. She had to remind herself that “corporal” was an enlisted officer’s rank, and most of the Army’s enlisted men had only a basic education.
She explained, “Helen of Troy was a queen in Ancient Greece. They called hers the face that could launch a thousand ships. She was so beautiful, every man wanted her. They fought whole wars.”
He was quiet for several moments. “So calling you Helen of…”
“Helen of Troy.”
“Right. Helen of Troy.” A small furrow formed between his dark eyebrows. “How would that be ironic?”
She laughed. “Isn’t it obvious? Just look at me.”
“I am looking at you.”
Good heavens. Yes, he was. He was looking at her in the same way he did everything. Intensely, and with quiet force. She could all but feel the muscle in his gaze. It unnerved her.
Out of habit, she raised her fingers to her birthmark, but at the last moment she used them to sweep locks of hair behind her ear.
“You can see for yourself, can’t you? It’s ironic because I’m no legendary beauty. No men are fighting battles over me.” She gave a self-effacing smile. “That would require at least two men to be interested. I’m three-and-twenty years old, and so far there hasn’t even been one.”
“You live in a village of women.”
“Spindle Cove’s not entirely women. There are some men. There’s the blacksmith. And the vicar.”
He dismissed these examples with a gruff sound.
“Well…there’s
you,
” she said.
He went stone still.
So. Now they came to it. She probably shouldn’t have put him on the spot, but then again—he was the one pressing the topic.
“There’s you,” she repeated. “And you can scarcely bear to share the same air I breathe. I tried to be friendly, when you first arrived in Spindle Cove. That didn’t go over well.”
“Miss Taylor—”
“And it’s not that you’re uninterested in women. I know you’ve had others.”
He blinked, and the small motion made her uneasy in her skin. Amazing. His blink had the same effect as another man pounding his palm with his fist.
“Well, it’s common knowledge,” she said, quietly grinding her toe in the dirt. Digging for courage. “In the village, your…arrangements…are the subject of far too much speculation. Even if I don’t want to hear about them, I do.”
He rose to his feet and began walking toward the road. His massive shoulders were squared, his heavy paces measured. There he went again, walking away. She’d had enough of this. She was tired of shrugging off his rejections, dismissing the wounded feelings with a good-natured laugh.
“Don’t you see?” She rose and waded through the heather, hurrying to catch the border of his long, monumental shadow. “This is exactly what I mean. If I smile in your direction, you turn the other way. If I find a seat toward your end of the room, you decide you’d rather stand. Do I make you itch, Corporal Thorne? Does the scent of my dusting powder make you sneeze? Or is there something in my demeanor that you find loathsome or terrifying?”
“Don’t be absurd.”
“Then admit it. You avoid me.”
“Very well.” He drew to a stop. “I avoid you.”
“Now tell me why.”
He turned to face her, and his ice-blue eyes burned into hers. But he didn’t say a word.
Kate’s breath left her lungs in a sigh, and her shoulders fell. “Come along,” she coaxed. “Say it. It’s all right. After all these years, I think it would be a mercy to hear someone speak the truth. Just be honest.”
In an impulsive move, she reached for his hand and brought it to her face, touching his fingertips to her birthmark. He tried to pull back, but she wouldn’t let him escape. If she had to live with this mark every day, he could bear to touch it just this once.
She stepped closer, pressing her pigment-stained temple to his palm. His hand was cool.
She said, “This is the reason. Isn’t it? The reason you don’t take an interest. The reason no men take an interest.”
“Miss Taylor, I—” His jaw tensed. “No. It isn’t like that.”
“Then what is it?”
No reply.
Her face burned. She wanted to beat at his chest, crack him open. “What is it? For God’s sake, what is it about me you find so intolerable? So wretchedly unbearable you can’t even stand to be in the same room?”
He muttered an oath. “Stop provoking me. You won’t like the answer.”
“I want to hear it anyhow.”
He plunged one hand into her hair, startling a gasp from her lips. Strong fingers curled to cup the back of her head. His eyes searched her face, and every nerve ending in her body crackled with tension. The sinking sun threw a last flare of red-orange light between them, setting the moment ablaze.
“It’s this.”
With a flex of his arm, he pulled her into a kiss.
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A Lady by Midnight
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The Spindle Cove Series
A Lady by Midnight
(August 28, 2012)
Any Duchess Will Do
(2013)
The Stud Club Trilogy
The Wanton Dairymaid Trilogy
The Runaway Countess
“Naughty in Nottinghamshire,” Book 1
From Samhain Publishing
Her heart longs for justice, but her body clamors for sin.
Once the darling of high society, Mazie Chetwyn knows firsthand how quickly the rich and powerful turn their backs on the less fortunate. Orphaned, penniless and determined to defy their ruthless whims, she joins forces with a local highwayman who steals from the rich to give to the poor.
Then the pawn broker snitches, and Mazie is captured by the Lord Lieutenant of Nottinghamshire. A man who is far too handsome, far too observant…and surely as corrupt as his father once was.
Sensible, rule-driven Trent Carthwick, twelfth Earl of Radford, is certain the threat of the gallows will prompt the villagers’ beloved Angel of Kindness to reveal the highwayman’s identity. But his bewitching captive volunteers nothing—except a sultry, bewildering kiss.
And so the games begin. Trent feints, Mazie parries. He threatens, she pretends nonchalance. He cajoles, she rebuffs. Thwarted at every turn, Trent probes deep into her one vulnerability—her past. There he finds the leverage he needs and a searing truth that challenges all he believes about right and wrong.
From Chapter One:
S
HE HAD BUT ONE CHANCE
. She must play it out to perfection.
The salve smelled of calendula and comfrey, and Mazie smoothed some on her lip. Radford watched her as she gently dabbed the bruise and cut at the corner of her mouth.
She was close enough now. She would hit him once, as Roane had taught her. A strong, flat hand to the underside of his jaw, hard enough to stun him, incapacitate him.
His head would snap back. Maybe it would hit the wall. Maybe it would make a sound. She should be prepared for such unpleasantness.
Her heartbeat thundered. She needed to stop thinking and just do it already. She lowered her hand and his eyes jerked to hers, gauging her.
He was too alert, and she was too nervous. She must stop trembling. She must distract him. She must remember he would hang her. He would hang Roane.
