Also by Shirlee Busbee
SEDUCTION BECOMES HER
SURRENDER BECOMES HER
Published by Kensington Publishing Corp.
SCANDAL BECOMES HER
SHIRLEE BUSBEE
http://www.kensingtonbooks.com
To my brother,
BILL EGAN, who has waited for far too long
for his book. There are
brothers,
and then there are brothers—
I’m lucky and proud to have you for mine.
You’ve done OK, kid.
And, of course,
HOWARD, my husband,
who shares the adventure
with me—and boy,
do we have some adventures!
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 1
The nightmare came shrieking out of the depths of dreamless sleep. One second Nell was lost in quiet slumber, the next the nightmare had her in its taloned grip. Thrashing amongst the covers of the bed, she fought to escape the ugly images that were flashing through her brain, but it was useless—as she knew from other terrible nights.
As had happened before, she was a helpless spectator to the vicious acts that followed. The setting was the same: a dark place that must have been in some half-forgotten dungeon hidden away under the foundations of an ancient ancestral home. The walls and floor were of massive, hand-hewn, smoke-stained gray stones…the wavering light from the candles revealing instruments of torture from an earlier, more savage age in England—instruments that he used when the mood suited him.
The victim tonight, as in other times, was a woman, young and comely and fearful. Her blue eyes were huge and full of stark terror, terror that seemed to please her tormentor. The candlelight always fell upon the faces of the women, the man remaining in the shadows, his face and form never fully revealed, yet every act he perpetuated on the young woman’s shrinking flesh was horribly clear to Nell. And in the end, after he had done his worst and taken the corpse and carelessly tossed it down the old sluice hole in the dungeon, the light would fade and Nell would finally manage to claw her way up out of the realms of the nightmare.
Tonight was no different. Released from the appalling images, a scream rising in her throat, Nell jerked upright, her sea green eyes bright with unshed tears and remembered horror. Throttling back the scream she glanced around, relief pouring through her as she realized that it had, indeed, been only a nightmare. That she was safely in her father’s London townhouse, the faint shapes of the furniture of her bedroom taking shape from the glow of the waning fire on the hearth and the soft dawn light that slipped into the room from behind the heavy velvet drapes. From outside her windows came the familiar London clatter, the sounds of horses’ hooves on the cobbled streets and the clang of the wheels of the carts, wagons and carriages that the animals pulled. In the distance she could hear the cries of the street vendors already hawking their various wares—brooms, milk, vegetables and flowers.
A shudder went through her. Ah, God, she thought, burying her face in her trembling hands, will the nightmares never stop? The infrequency of them was the only thing that kept her from going mad—no one, she was convinced, could remain sane if compelled to view such violence night after night.
She took a deep breath and pushed back a strand of heavy tawny hair that had fallen onto her breast. Leaning over, she groped for the pitcher of water her maid had set on the rose marble table near her bed. Her fingers found it and the small glass next to it, and pouring herself a drink, she gulped it greedily.
Feeling better, she sat on the side of her bed and stared into the gloom that greeted her, trying to get her thoughts in order, trying to take comfort from the knowledge that she was safe…unlike the poor creature in her nightmare. With an effort she wrenched her thoughts away from that track. After all, she reminded herself, it had only been a nightmare. A horrible one, but not real.
Eleanor “Nell” Anslowe had never been troubled with nightmares in her childhood. No bad dreams had ever disturbed her sleep until after the tragic accident that had nearly killed her when she was nineteen.
It was odd, she mused, how wonderful her life had been before the tragedy and how very much it had changed in the months that had followed her brush with death. The spring of that awful year had seen her triumphant London Season and her engagement to the heir of a dukedom.
Nell’s lips twisted. Having just celebrated her twenty-ninth birthday in September, as she looked back at that time a decade ago, it seemed incredible that she had ever been the carefree, confident girl who had become engaged to the catch of the Season, the eldest son of the Duke of Bethune. When Aubrey Fowlkes, Marquise Giffard, the heir to his father’s dukedom, had declared that he intended to marry the daughter of a mere baronet, albeit a very wealthy one, there had been much gossip about the match in that spring of 1794. And there had been even more, Nell thought with a snort, when the engagement had ended, that same year. The same year that she had suffered the horrific fall from her horse that had brought her near death and had left her with a leg that had never healed properly—to this day, she still walked with a limp, mostly when she was tired.
Getting up from the bed, Nell walked over to one of the tall windows that overlooked the garden at the side of the house. Pulling aside the rose-hued drapery, she pushed open the tall double doors that led to a small balcony. Stepping out onto it, she glanced down at the stone terrace below and the sculpted beds and shrubs that surrounded it, the mauve light of dawn fading, and the pink and gold flush of the sun beginning to touch the tallest rosebushes. It was going to be a lovely October day—the same sort of crisp, sunny October day on which she had taken that fateful ride that had changed her life forever.
She had arisen early that morning ten years ago at Meadowlea, the family estate near the Dorset coast, and had hurried to the stables. Heedless of her exasperated father’s admonishments not to ride alone along the cliffs, she had brushed aside the services of the groom, and once her favorite mount, Firefly—a sassy little chestnut mare—had been saddled, she had galloped away from the house and manicured grounds. Both she and the mare had been eager to be out in the brilliant sunshine and as they raced on their way, the cool morning air had whipped roses into Nell’s cheeks and made her eyes gleam with pleasure.
It was never clear what had caused the accident and Nell, once she regained her senses, never remembered. Apparently her horse had stumbled