Reluctant Courtship (The Daughters of Bainbridge House Book #3) , livre ebook

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180 pages

English

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Honore Bainbridge has been courted by two men, one of whom turned out to be a traitor, the other a murderer. Banished to her family's country estate, where she will hopefully stay out of trouble, she finally meets the man she is sure is exactly right for her: Lord Ashmoor. Tall, dark, and handsome--what more could a girl ask for? But he too is under suspicion because of his American upbringing and accusations that he has helped French and American prisoners escape from Dartmoor Prison. For his part, Lord Ashmoor needs a wife beyond reproach, which Honore certainly is not. Amid a political climate that is far from friendly, Honore determines to help Ashmoor prove his innocence--if she can do so and stay alive.From the rocky cliffs of Devonshire, England, comes the exciting conclusion to the lush Daughters of Bainbridge House series. Award-winning author Laurie Alice Eakes thrusts her readers into high drama from the very first sentence and keeps them on their toes until the final page.

Informations

Publié par	Baker Publishing Group
Date de parution	15 octobre 2013
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781441243089
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0259€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

© 2013 by Laurie Alice Eakes
Published by Revell
a division of Baker Publishing Group
P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287
www . revellbooks .com
Ebook edition created 2013
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means for example, electronic, photocopy, recording without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
ISBN 978-1-4412-4308-9
Scripture quotations are from the King James Version of the Bible.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Published in association with the Hartline Literary Agency, LLC.
In memory of another author who profoundly impacted my writing, though she was gone before I ever heard her name the incomparable Georgette Heyer.
The Spirit of the Lord G OD is upon me; because the L ORD hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound.
Isaiah 61:1
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Epigraph
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Books by Laurie Alice Eakes
Back Ads
Back Cover
1
September 1813
Miss Honore Bainbridge was about to fall off a cliff. One minute she stood examining a fissure in the stratified rock, and the next, the crack turned into a gaping hole, ready, able, and apparently eager to swallow her whole. Her feet plunged off solid ground. Her pinwheeling arms grasped a spindly shrub struggling for life above the sea, and she clung to it with about as much hope of survival as the infant bush.
She did not scream. She had opened her mouth to do so, but her middle slammed into the rock, driving the breath from her lungs in an ignominious squeak.
And there she dangled with her arms around a sapling, her feet swinging two hundred feet over the sea, and a hawk circling above as though trying to decide if her feathered hat was some kind of new small bird.
“I am not your dinner,” she gasped out to the hawk.
More like supper for several schools of fish.
At least Papa would never know that his youngest daughter had culminated her disastrous penchant for falling in love unwisely by falling off a cliff.
“I suppose this is one catastrophe you can’t get me out of, Lord?” Through gasps for air from her constricted lungs, she managed the kind of cynical prayer that had become her usual way of communicating with God of late. “I suppose you can, but it looks like ”
The shrub began to loosen from its precarious hold on the thin soil.
This time Honore screamed.
“Hold on.” A male voice sped past Honore’s ears.
She gritted her teeth. “I am . . . holding.”
A pity the bush to which she clung was not. Half its roots, connected to the earth shallowly at best, now waved in the constant wind from the sea.
Like someone saying goodbye .
Honore kicked her legs, seeking the side of the cliff, seeking a toehold. No good. Empty space met her flailing limbs. A jagged edge of broken limestone scraped along her side. Inch by inch, her torso slid toward the abyss into water foaming and roaring over a tumble of serrated rock.
“If you get . . . me out of this . . . Lord . . .” No, she was not supposed to bargain with God. She made herself stop staring at the tearing bush between her hands and gazed into a sky made of the kind of clear blue that her beaux had described as dull compared to her eyes. “Please, God?”
The shrub tore a little further. Only Honore’s arms and hands clung to the earth. Only two thready roots still clung to the thin soil.
So, apparently God did not please.
She doubted she could even make the heroine of her novel in progress endure such an incident.
Honore closed her eyes. “Will I see you in heaven, Papa?”
He would not wish to see her if she died without doing something of which he could be proud.
Hands like iron bands grasped her wrists. “I’ve got you,” an unfamiliar voice with a peculiar accent pronounced.
Honore’s eyes popped open, closed, opened even wider the second time. She was not hallucinating. A being was indeed crouched in front of her and gripping her wrists.
“Angel,” she murmured.
If angels possessed medium-dark hair and eyes, and skin too bronzed to belong to a gentleman. Perhaps angels were not gentlemen.
A giggle bubbled into Honore’s throat. She swallowed it down so as not to sound mad laughing while she dangled off a crumbling cliff.
“No, ma’am, I’m not an angel,” the stranger said. “I’m just a flesh-and-blood man who heard you scream. Now, if you’ll ”
The cliff trembled. The rough-edged rock digging into Honore’s collarbone broke away. She wanted to scream, but tin-tasting lint seemed to have replaced the moisture in her mouth, keeping her silent.
The man flattened himself along the ground. “Let go of the bush and grip my wrists.” His voice was deep, slow, even. “I’m less likely to lose my grip that way.”
“I ca-cannot.”
“And I can’t let you go, so we’ll both go tumbling into the sea.”
She could not be responsible for another death. Nor could she get her hands to loosen their grip on the shrub.
The man’s hold tightened on her wrists. “So one of the Bainbridge daughters is a coward.”
“Yes, me. I.” Another chunk of limestone broke away, slamming her diaphragm against the striated wall of rock. “Ooph!”
The man laughed. The gall of him.
She could not let him get away with laughing at her, this this peasant. She would show him.
She kicked her legs as though the air was water and the motion would propel her forward. The motion set the cliff face trembling.
“Don’t move.” He yanked her hands apart, tearing her gloved fingers from their tenuous clutch on the sapling. “Now hold on to me.”
“I do not think ”
He narrowed his eyes and flashes of gold speared into hers. “I would rather live another thirty years or more. If you wouldn’t, tell me so I can let go and save my own neck.”
“Why, you heartless, unfeeling ”
A slab of cliff large enough to form a table for King Arthur and his knights broke off not a foot away. Chalky dust misted the air. Honore cried out and lunged for her rescuer. Her fingers scrabbled at his shirtsleeves, tore through fabric, held.
Muttering something unintelligible above the thunder of falling rock and crashing waves, he started to rise. His body reared up from the ground. Honore slid over the edge of the cliff. What was left of her pelisse tore down the front. Muscles bulged against the sleeves of the man’s shirt. Her muscles strained, ached, surely were tearing away from her bones. Hiccuping sobs shredded her throat. Her fingertips shredded his shirtsleeves. The wristbands ripped away and she lost her hold.
But he gave a mighty heave. She slammed onto the ground. Air whooshed from her lungs.
And the earth tilted beneath her.
“Move!” He surged to his feet, dragging her up after him.
He sprinted inland. Honore followed, limping, skipping, hopping to keep up with him. Beneath them, the cliff side shivered like a giant with the ague. Behind them, veined stone tore free and boomed into the sea. Ahead of them, a low stone wall that had graced the Devonshire coastline for centuries promised stability and safety.
Honore collapsed upon it and doubled over, gasping for breath. Her hat had vanished. One shoe likely provided a home for the fish, and even a rag picker would reject her gloves and stockings as too damaged, not to mention her skirt, pelisse, and petticoat sliced to muslin ribbons.
“You’ll be wanting this.” Soft wool settled around her shoulders.
She glanced up at him through a spill of hair freed of its pins, took in his torn shirt, and shook her head. “You look as though you need it more than I do.” She curled her fingers around the coat’s collar, intending to hand it back to him.
He stayed her fingers against the fabric. “No, Miss Bainbridge, you keep it. You, er . . .” He looked away, his ears turning a fiery shade of red beneath shining waves of auburn hair.
“But you have done enough, and ” Honore glanced down at her ruined garments and gulped.
No wonder he had given her his coat. No wonder his ears looked about to catch fire. Only her lace fichu, snagged and frayed but still in place, lay between her stays and the view of the world.
She grabbed the lapels of the coat and wrapped it across her chest. Her own ears, along with her cheeks, throat, and everything below her fichu, burned. “Th-thank you.” She kept her head bowed. “Thank you for everything. If I can repay you in any way, just give me the word.”
From the quality of his coat, his shirt even if it was in tatters and his buckskin breeches and Hessian boots, he did not look in need of money. But he did not talk like a gentleman. His voice was pleasant, kind of smooth and rich like Devonshire cream. Yet he sounded like no Englishman she had ever heard, so he was likely not a gentleman. Perhaps a merchant from the provinces or one of the Channel Islands.
“I am a Bainbridge.”
“Yes, ma’am, I know.”
“Of course you do.” She twisted one of the brass buttons on his coat between her thumb and forefinger. “Then you know I have considerable influence in the county.”
And money at her disposal, since she had been left in charge of the estate by default.
He coughed. “Thank you. I don’t need any thanks or favors. I didn’t do anything any man wouldn’t have done had he been near enough to help.”
And strong enough to lift her.
“I-I think you were an answer to prayer,” she admitted.