Beatrice set her hands on her hips and leaned forward, her voice shaking with rage. “Perhaps I am naive. Perhaps it is silly and girlish and… and foolish to think that one can settle even difficult matters in a civilized fashion. But I’d rather be a complete ninny than a nasty sarcastic man so lost to bitterness that he’s forgotten his own humanity!”
She turned to sweep from the room, but her dramatic exit was destroyed when he caught her wrist. He yanked, and, caught off balance, she fell back against the bed, across his lap. She gasped and looked up.
Into blazing black eyes.
He leaned so close she felt his breath across her lips. The muscles of his leg shifted under her hip, reminding her of her precarious position. His hands tightened around her upper arms, holding her prisoner. “I may indeed be a nasty, bitter, and sarcastic man, madam, but let me assure you that my humanity is more than intact.”
Beatrice’s breath stopped like a rabbit caught in the open before a wolf. She could feel the heat of his body coming off him in waves. Her bosom was nearly pressed to his chest, and to make matters worse, that sparkling black gaze fell to her mouth.
As she watched, his lips parted and his eyelids drooped as he growled softly, “And I will use any means at my disposal to win this war.”
So mesmerized was she by the wicked intent in his eyes that she started when the door to the bedroom opened. Lord Hope abruptly released her arms. He was staring behind her at the intruder. For a fleeting second, she thought she saw something like joy cross his face, but so suddenly did it disappear that perhaps she was mistaken.
In any case, both his countenance and his voice were stony when he spoke.
“Renshaw.”
Chapter Three
“Come, sir,” cried the Goblin King, “I’ll give you fifty gold coins for that sword. Tell me you’ll agree.”
“I fear I cannot,” Longsword replied.
“Then surely you’ll part with it for one hundred gold coins? It is but an old and rusting sword, and you can buy twenty more the same or better for that price.”
At this Longsword laughed. “Sir, I’ll not sell you my sword for any price you name, and I’ll tell you why: to relinquish this sword would cost me my very life, for it and I are bound together magically.”
“Ah, if that is the case,” the Goblin King said craftily, “will you sell me a lock of your hair for one penny?”
—from Longsword
For seven years, Reynaud had thought about what he would say and how he would feel when he saw Jasper Renshaw again. The questions he would ask, the explanations he would demand. And now, now that the moment was here, he searched within himself and felt… nothing.
“It’s Vale now,” the man standing by the door said. His face was a little more lined, his eyes slightly more sad, but otherwise he was the same man Reynaud had played with as a boy. The same man he’d bought a commission with. The same man he’d considered his best friend.
The man who’d left him for dead in a savage foreign land.
“You attained the title, then?” Reynaud asked.
Vale nodded. He still stood just inside the door, hat in hand. He stared at Reynaud as if trying to decipher the thoughts of a wild beast.
Miss Corning straightened from where he’d pulled her across his lap. So intent was he on Vale that he’d almost forgotten her presence. He made a belated grab for her hand but was too late. She’d moved away from the bed and was beyond his reach. He’d have to wait for another time when she might step unwarily close again.
She cleared her throat. “I believe we met once at one of your mother’s garden parties, Lord Vale.”
Vale’s gaze jerked to her, and he blinked before a wide smile spread across his face. He bowed extravagantly. “Forgive me, gentle lady. You are?”
“My cousin, Miss Corning,” Reynaud growled. No need to tell Vale the connection was not a blood one—he’d make what claim he could.
Vale’s thick eyebrows rose. “I never knew you had a female cousin.”
Reynaud smiled thinly. “She’s newly discovered.”
Miss Corning looked between the men, her brows knitted, clearly confused. “Shall I send for tea?”
“Yes, please,” Vale said, while at the same time Reynaud shook his head. “No.”
Vale looked at him, his smile gone.
Miss Corning cleared her throat again. “Well, I think, ah, yes, I think I’ll leave you two to yourselves. There must be many things you’d like to catch up on.”
She walked to the door where Vale still stood and whispered to him, “Just don’t stay too long. He’s been very ill.”
Vale nodded, holding the door for her and then shutting it gently after she’d left. He turned to look at Reynaud.
Who snapped, “I’m not an invalid.”
“You’ve been ill?”
“I took a fever on the ship over. It’s nothing.”
Vale raised his eyebrows but didn’t comment on that. Instead he asked, “What happened?”
Reynaud smiled sardonically. “I think I should be asking that of you.”
Vale looked away, his face paling. “I thought—we all thought—that you were dead.”
“I wasn’t.” Reynaud bit off the words, his incisors closing with sharp finality.
He remembered the stink of burning flesh. The binds cutting into his arms. Of marching naked through new snowfall. Her brown eyes stared up through a mask of blood…. He shook his head once, sharply, chasing the ghosts from his mind, focusing on the living man before him. His hand moved to the hilt of his knife.
Vale watched his movement warily. “I would never have left you had I known you lived.”
“Yet the fact remains that I was alive and you did leave me.”
“I’m sorry. I . . .” Vale’s mouth flattened. He stared at the carpet between his feet. “I saw you die, Reynaud.”
For a moment, demons chattered in Reynaud’s brain, whispering of treachery. He saw clearly the grimace a dying man made while being burned alive. Then, with an effort, he pushed back the image and the mad voices.
“What happened at the Wyandot camp?” he asked.
“After they took you away, you mean?” Vale didn’t wait for the reply but sighed heavily. “They tied us to stakes and tortured the other men—Munroe, Horn, Growe, and Coleman. They killed Coleman.”
Reynaud nodded. He’d seen how the enemies—both white and native—were treated by the Indians who captured them.