A Valentine Wedding Read online

  Suddenly he stepped back until he was behind her. His hold moved to her shoulders. Emma seemed unable to move. And then she felt his breath on the side of her face, the lightest kiss on her ear. His tongue darted into the tight shell, and his teeth gently nibbled on her earlobe.

  And now Emma knew. That wicked tickling caress belonged to only one man. A man who knew exactly what squirming delight it gave her. She knew but she was frozen … frozen in this moment, in this enchanted garden. This was not happening in the real world. In the real world she would not want it. She didn’t understand how it could be happening but she didn’t need to understand it. Whatever was happening belonged on some other plane where all was paradox and paradox made sense.

  His mouth moved from her ear to her neck. His tongue drew a moist, tantalizing line from the little knob at the top of her spine up the shallow groove to the hollow at the base of her skull.

  Emma shivered with delight.

  He slid his hands around her body….

  Also by Jane Feather

  VICE

  VANITY

  VIOLET

  VALENTINE

  VELVET

  VIXEN

  VIRTUE

  THE DIAMOND SLIPPER

  THE SILVER ROSE

  THE EMERALD SWAN

  THE HOSTAGE BRIDE

  THE ACCIDENTAL BRIDE

  THE LEAST LIKELY BRIDE

  THE WIDOW’S KISS

  ALMOST INNOCENT

  TO KISS A SPY

  KISSED BY SHADOWS

  And coming soon in paperback

  VENUS

  Prologue

  TORRES VEDRAS, PORTUGAL JULY 18, 1810

  “They’re gaining on us, Ned.” The speaker swiveled in his saddle, one hand resting on his mount’s crupper as he stared across the darkening landscape behind them. He could see faintly the rising dust of a headlong pursuit. He cast a despairing glance at his companion. Edward Beaumont, fifth earl of Grantley, was leaning heavily over his horse’s withers, and his back was wet with blood.

  “I know it.” The words were a mere thread, tailing off in a gasp of pain as Ned dragged air into his shattered lungs. Blood bubbled from his lips. “I can’t outrun them, Hugh. You must go on and leave me here.”

  “No, I will not.” Hugh Melton leaned over and seized his companion’s rein, urging the horse onward. “I’ll not leave you to those Portuguese savages. We’ll be in Lisbon by dawn. Come on, Ned!”

  “No.” The flat negative had more force than anything Ned had said since he’d taken the Portuguese sniper’s bullet to his back an hour earlier. With his last strength, he hauled back on the reins. His horse whinnied and pranced, confused by the contradictory signals he was receiving. “Damn it, Hugh, you must go on … save yourself.” He struggled for a minute, fingers scrabbling inside his jacket. “There’s more at stake than you know.”

  Hugh was silent. He had guessed as much … had suspected for many months during this Portuguese campaign under Wellington’s command, that his friend played a more devious role than his simple title of aide-de-camp to the duke would imply. And he’d guessed that this supposed jaunt to Lisbon from the lines before Torres Vedras had more than a few days of well-earned leave as its purpose.

  “Here.” Ned pulled out two thin packets. Blood smeared the protective covering of oiled parchment that enclosed their contents. He swayed violently in the saddle as he leaned over, pushing the packets at Hugh. “Get these on the first ship out of Lisbon.”

  “What are they?” But even as he asked the question, Hugh understood that Ned would not give him a straight answer.

  “Send this one to Horseguards … Charles Lester.” Ned struggled for the breath to speak as he indicated one of the packets. “I haven’t written addresses … too risky. Do it when you get to Lisbon and make sure it goes on the first troopship!”

  Hugh took the parchment and thrust it inside the breast of his tunic.

  “This one is for my sister, Lady Emma Beaumont, at Grantley Manor in Hampshire,” Ned gasped, holding out the second packet. “For God’s sake, Hugh, go. The one for Horseguards cannot fall into their hands.”

  The wounded man slumped sideways in his saddle; the reins slid through his fingers. Only his feet in the stirrups seemed to hold him in place.

  “God’s grace!” Hugh reined in both horses before Ned could fall to the ground.

  “Help me down,” Ned gasped. “I can hold my seat no longer … for God’s sake, man, quickly. They’ll stop for me and give you a few moments’ grace. You can outride them.” A spark of desperation for a moment enlivened golden brown eyes that were growing dimmer by the minute.

  Hugh swung off his horse. He caught his friend as he slipped from the saddle into Hugh’s arms. Hugh laid him down on the hard, summer-parched ground that still held the day’s heat. He stood looking helplessly down at the man whose blood was seeping inexorably into the earth. And then he heard the sound of hoofbeats, carrying on the still evening air, pounding the dirt.

  Ned’s eyelids flickered. “For pity’s sake, Hugh. Don’t let me die in vain.”

  Hugh hesitated no longer. He remounted with an agile spring and kicked his mount into a gallop. He would not, could not, think of his friend lying in the dirt waiting for the attentions of those who had been chasing them since early afternoon. If they were after what Hugh Melton now carried, they would not find it. By dawn it would be in Lisbon, on the first troopship bound for England.

  The four horsemen reined in their plunging horses as they came up with the inert body on the ground, the patient steed cropping at a low bush. One of them, whose lavish silver braid and epaulets denoted his rank, flung himself from his horse with an oath. He bent over Ned.

  “He lives yet,” he said grimly, his hands searching roughly, tearing at the blood-soaked garments, rolling the man over onto his belly heedless of his wounds. He swore vigorously as his search turned up nothing. “He hasn’t got it. Two of you go after the other one. Pedro and I will work on this one. For as long as he lives, he has a tongue.”

  Ned heard the words as from a great distance. A strange little smile quirked his lips as they yanked him over onto his back. He looked up at the swarthy face hanging over him. Hard black eyes, a cruel mouth beneath a thick waxed mustache.

  “My apologies, Colonel,” he murmured in Portuguese. “I may have a tongue, but it’s not at your disposal.” He closed his eyes, the smile still on his lips. He saw now a different face filling his internal vision. Eyes as golden as his own, a wide smiling mouth. “Em,” he said, and died.

  Chapter One

  GRANTLEY MANOR, ENGLAND DECEMBER, 1810

  “It’s outrageous! Insufferable! I absolutely will not tolerate it.” Emma Beaumont tore at the lace-edged handkerchief between her hands as she paced the elegant salon. The flounced hem of her gown of dove gray crepe swung with every step.

  “Oh, Emma, dearest, you cannot talk so,” declared a middle-aged lady in a round gown of dark silk. The lappets of her cap trembled against her cheek as she shook her head decisively.

  “Oh, can I not, Maria?” exclaimed the infuriated Lady Emma. “Mr. Critchley, something must be done about this. I insist upon it. I cannot imagine what Ned can have been thinking.”

  An embarrassed silence followed her declaration. Mr. Critchley coughed behind his hand and rustled his lawyer’s papers. The middle-aged lady plied her fan vigorously. An elderly couple seated side by side on a sofa with guilded scroll ends stared into space. The man thumped his cane on the Aubusson carpet with monotonous thuds, while his spouse pursed her lips and gave a sour little nod, as if vindicated in some way.

  “Emma … Emma!” a voice drawled from the far side of the room. “You’re putting everyone to the blush.�
� Alasdair Chase was leaning against the wall of bookshelves, hands thrust deep into the pockets of his buckskin britches. His mud-splashed topboots gave evidence of a day’s hunting. There was a wicked glimmer in his green eyes, a sardonic quirk to his mouth.

  Emma spun around on the speaker. “All but you, Alasdair, I daresay,” she said with the same bitter fury as before. “Just what arguments did you use with Ned to get him to agree to this … this intolerable insult?”

  The tapping of the cane grew more pronounced; the elderly gentleman coughed vigorously against his hand.

  “Emma!” moaned Maria from behind her fan. “Only think what you’re saying.”

  “Yes, indeed, Lady Emma … only consider,” murmured the distressed lawyer.

  Emma flushed and pressed her palms to her cheeks. “I did not mean …”

  “If you must rail at me, Emma, then do so in private.” Alasdair pushed himself away from the wall and crossed the room toward her. He moved with a lithe step; his slender body was supple as a rapier, giving the impression of sinew and speed rather than muscular power. A hand cupped her elbow. “Come,” he said in soft command, and drew her toward a door in the far wall.

  Emma went with him without protest. Her color was still high, her fingers still ripped at the now ragged handkerchief, but she was in control of herself again, aware once more of her audience and the impropriety of her words.

  Alasdair closed the door behind them. They were in a small music room containing a handsome pianoforte and a gilded harp. He went to the piano, raised the cover, and played a scale, a vibrant ripple of notes that filled the small chamber.

  Emma walked to the window. The winter afternoon was drawing in, the stark leafless trees bending against a sharp northeasterly wind coming off the Solent.

  The notes faded and she heard the soft thud as the lid of the piano was replaced. She turned around. Alasdair stood with his back to the instrument, his hands resting on the smooth cherrywood cover behind him.

  “So …” he invited with a lifted eyebrow. “Between ourselves, you may say what you please. I shall not take offence.”

  “It would ill become you to do so,” Emma retorted. “Your hand is in this, Alasdair. Do you think I don’t know how you could manipulate Ned when you chose?”

  A muscle twitched in Alasdair’s lean cheek and his eyes narrowed imperceptibly. “If you think that, you didn’t know your brother as well as we all believed,” he said, without expression.

  “If this was not your doing, then whose was it?” she cried. “I cannot believe Ned, of his own free will, would serve me such a trick.”

  Alasdair shrugged. “Why do you believe it to be a trick, Emma? Isn’t it possible Ned thought such an arrangement would be in your best interests?”

  “Oh, pah!” Emma exclaimed, and then was instantly furious that the childish exclamation had escaped her. She resumed her pacing and Alasdair watched her, the glimmer back in his eyes, as she stalked from one end of the small chamber to the other.

  Lady Emma Beaumont stood five feet nine inches in her stockinged feet and was built on generous lines. Alasdair Chase, from intimate knowledge, knew that her height masked the rich curves of her body, and he was, as so often, distracted by the mental image of the figure beneath the elegant gown—the wonderful deep bosom, the long slope of her back, the flare of her hips, the taut swell of her backside.

  Abruptly he turned back to the pianoforte and raised the cover. He played another cascade of notes.

  Emma stopped dead.

  Alasdair spoke almost casually over his shoulder as his fingers continued to ripple over the keys. “You know, my sweet, you had better accept it with a good grace. You’ll only make yourself ridiculous otherwise.”

  He saw her wide mouth tauten, her eyes, more gold than brown, burn with another flash of anger. A needle of wind found its way between the glass and the frame of the window. The fire in the hearth spurted and a flame shot up; the wax candles in the branched candelabra flamed on the console table beneath the window. The light caught her hair. Amazing hair, Alasdair had always thought. Striped hair, where onyx mingled with tortoiseshell amid swaths of pale gold, like summer wheat. When she was a child, he remembered, the paler colors had dominated, but as she’d grown, the darker strands began to predominate.

  “Don’t call me that,” she said with low-voiced intensity.

  Alasdair turned once more from the pianoforte with a small shrug. “As you please.”

  Emma hesitated, then she walked to the door leading back to the salon. Her shoulders were unconsciously squared as she opened the door and reentered the room.

  The scene hadn’t changed since her abrupt departure ten minutes earlier. The room’s four occupants still sat in the same postures, as if frozen in place by a wave of a wand. They stirred anxiously as she came in, with Alasdair on her heels.

  “Mr. Critchley, would you go through my brother’s will again,” she asked, her tone moderate, although her body still thrummed with palpable tension. “Begin at the beginning if you please.”

  The lawyer cleared his throat, rustled his papers, and began to read the dusty lawyerly language that seemed to Emma to confirm Ned’s death more decisively even than the formal notification from Horse-guards, the personal letter from the duke of Wellington, the flood of messages from his friends and colleagues—more completely even than Hugh Melton’s heart-wrenching account of Ned’s wound and death in the barren landscape between Torres Vedras and Lisbon.

  “As your brother was unmarried and had no direct heir, the title, Grantley Manor, and Grantley House in London are entailed upon your uncle, Lord Grantley.” The lawyer raised his head and glanced toward the elderly man sitting upright on the chintz-covered sofa.

  The sixth earl nodded solemnly and his countess smoothed down her black silk skirts. “No hurry to leave, m’dear,” the earl said bluffly. “No hurry at all.”

  “No, no, you mustn’t think that we’re in haste to dispossess you of your home, my dear Emma,” the countess said. “But such a pity you haven’t found a husband as yet. However, I daresay there’ll be very few improvements that we’ll be wanting to make, so you must feel free to remain as our guest until you’ve established yourself comfortably.”

  “You need have no fear, ma’am, that I shall drag on your coattails,” Emma said dryly. “Pray continue, Mr. Critchley.”

  The lawyer looked uncomfortable. It was at this point in the earlier will reading that Lady Emma had lost her customary poise.

  Alasdair had resumed his position against the bookshelves, hands thrust deep into his pockets. He had the air of one amused by if not indifferent to the proceedings, but the gaze that rested on Emma was sharp beneath half-lowered lids. There was no danger of another public display of fury, he judged.

  “Lady Emma, you are your brother’s heir and inherit all of his estate that is not entailed,” Mr. Critchley intoned. “That is to say, the bulk of his fortune.” He cast an apologetic glance toward the sixth earl and his countess.

  “It does seem very odd of Edward, I must say,” declared Lady Grantley. “To leave nothing to his uncle … particularly when Lord Grantley will have all the responsibilities of maintaining the estate.”

  “The estate revenues, if ploughed back, will take care of all maintenance,” Emma pointed out through compressed lips.

  “To be sure … to be sure.” Lord Grantley, possessed of a much more conciliatory temperament than his lady, waved a hand in hasty acceptance.

  “Lord Grantley will find that the estate will run itself if he leaves it in the capable hands of Dresden and his stewards.” Alasdair idly flicked at a speck of mud on his coat cuff as he spoke.

  “Lord Grantley will make his own arrangements. He will wish to put in his own bailiff and steward,” said her ladyship in quelling accents.

  “Then he’s even more of a fool than I took him for,” murmured Alasdair in a voice that only Emma heard. Their eyes met, and he offered her a languid, conspiratorial win
k.

  Laughter glowed for an instant in her gaze, banishing the tension, and her wide mouth curved in an approaching smile. Then she remembered her grievances and turned away abruptly. Alasdair had always had the ability to make her forget that she was angry with him. It was among his most infuriating characteristics. He’d been able to do it with Ned too. As boys, when they’d come home from school for the long vacations, Alasdair for some reason would suddenly get the devil in him and delight in provoking the easygoing Ned to a flash of temper. Then he would change in an instant, joke and cajole until Ned couldn’t help but laugh.

  “Could we get on, Mr. Critchley,” she demanded, an edge to her voice again.

  “The late earl appointed Lord Alasdair as executor of his will and trustee of your fortune, Lady Emma, until such time as you should marry.”

  Emma drew in her breath in a sharp hiss. “And what precisely would Lord Alasdair’s responsibilities be as trustee of my fortune?”

  Mr. Critchley took a large crisp white handkerchief from Ms pocket, shook it out, and blew his nose vigorously. “Your brother has entrusted Lord Alasdair with the task of managing your fortune, Lady Emma. Lord Alasdair has sole control.” He buried his face in his handkerchief again before saying diffidently, “Your brother, ma’am, made provision for Lord Alasdair to be compensated for his efforts on your behalf. His lordship is to receive a yearly stipend of …” he shuffled through his papers. “Five thousand pounds … yes, that was it. Five thousand pounds.”

  Emma took another turn around the salon, her step agitated, her color fluctuating. “It is intolerable,” she said, but it was clear to her audience that she had herself well in hand.

  “Oh, surely you don’t begrudge me such a paltry sum, Emma!” Alasdair complained with a raised eyebrow. “You won’t even notice it, dear girl. And I do assure you, I shall earn it.”

  She spun around on him. “And just how do you intend to earn it?”

  He smiled. “By ensuring that your fortune grows apace. I have some small talent, as Ned knew very well.”