Desire in the Sun (49 page)

Tears coursed from her eyes to roll down her cheeks like rain. Shaken to the core, Joss dropped on his knees beside the bunk, took her gently into his arms.

“Don’t cry, sweetheart,” he whispered tenderly, stroking her hair as she wept. “It tears the heart out of me when you do. Please don’t cry, Lilah.”

“I’ve been so frightened,” she murmured. “I’ve missed you so. Hold me, Joss.”

Joss slid into the bunk beside her, careful not to jar her in any way. She clung to him, never even noticing that he was dirty and half naked and probably smelled. She burrowed her head into the hollow between his shoulder and neck and told him everything, weeping until she had no more tears left. Then she drifted off to sleep.

Still Joss lay there, holding her slight weight against him, filled with a fierce tenderness the likes of which he had never felt before.

He stroked her cheek, her hair, kissed the silky top of her head.

“I’ve got you safe, sweetheart,” he whispered. “I’ve got you safe now, Lilah my love.”

EPILOGUE

One year later almost to the day, Katherine Alexandra San Pietro lay in her mother’s arms, nursing contentedly as she was rocked sleepily back and forth. Katy, as she was called, was not quite six weeks old and had not yet developed any concept of day and night. Consequently, she was unaware that it was three
A.M.,
or that she was in grave danger of being dropped on her head as her mother nodded and all but fell asleep in the rocking chair.

“Here, sweetheart, let me take her. You go back to bed.”

Joss’s voice roused Lilah enough to prevent Katy from taking a tumble. She blinked, smiled sleepily up at her husband, and allowed him to take the baby. Then she stumbled back to bed.

It was broad daylight when Lilah woke again. She opened her eyes to the sun pouring through the bedroom window of the big, comfortable house in Bristol, and realized with a rush of horror that Katy had not wakened her with the chickens as was her wont.

Had something happened to the baby?

On that horrible thought Lilah was ready to leap out of bed. Then she heard a contented gurgle and looked around.

Joss lay beside her, sprawled flat on his back, which
was surprising. Her husband usually slept on his stomach, and hogged two-thirds of the bed, too.

The gurgle came again. It could be his stomach, but she didn’t think so.

Pulling aside the blanket, Lilah had to smile. There, stretched out on her papa’s hairy, muscled chest, lay Katy, wide awake and cooing contently as she bobbed her head up and down.

“Oh, you precious thing.” Lilah smiled, leaning down to scoop up the baby.

“Dare I hope you are referring to me?” Joss was awake after all, Lilah discovered as he opened his eyes and grinned.

“Certainly,” Lilah said obligingly, leaving Katy where she was for a moment longer to plant a kiss on his mustachioed mouth.

His hand slid behind her head, pulled her mouth down for a heartier sample. Lilah felt the familiar heating of her blood, her hand came up to rest on his chest. …

And Katy promptly howled.

Joss released her, Lilah sat up, and this time succeeded in picking up the baby.

“Spoilsport,” Joss grumbled to his daughter, hitching himself up against the pillows.

“But we love you,” countered Lilah, smiling at him.

“And I,” said Joss, eyeing his two golden-haired, blue-eyed ladies as they cuddled and cooed on his bed, “love both of you.”

About the Author

Ever since I was a little girl, I’ve loved to write. My first book was a ten-page effort written at age five for my grandmother. Throughout grade school, high school and college I wrote for various school publications. When I was eighteen, my first professionally published piece—a humorous anecdote—appeared in
Reader’s Digest
. Still, it never occurred to me that I might become a professional writer. I aimed for a career as a lawyer and was actually in law school when I sold my first book. When that happened, the world lost a would-be lawyer and gained a writer. That book, which is still in print, is
Island Flame
, and it was published when I was twenty-four. Since then, I’ve written over forty books, which regularly appear on the
New York Times
,
USA Today
, and
Publisher’s Weekly
bestseller lists, among others. The mother of three sons, I read, I write, and I chauffeur children. That’s my life.

Connect with Karen Robards Online

Website:
http://www.karenrobards.com/

Twitter:
https://twitter.com/TheKarenRobards

Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/AuthorKarenRobards

Sample Chapter from
Tiger’s Eye

I

Thunder crashed. A great jagged bolt of lightning split the sky, its brilliant white light illuminating the muddy road ahead for no more than a few seconds. Still, it was time enough to reveal five ominous horsed figures leaping from the copse of oaks at the road’s bend to gallop furiously toward the oncoming coach.

“Stand and deliver!”

The terrifying cry, hurtled from the storm-tossed night, put the final, dismal cap on what had been, for all four occupants of the coach, a most harrowing day. Even as four pairs of eyes widened, and four spines straightened, the command was punctuated by a musket blast. The crested brougham swayed violently as Will Coachman, caught by surprise as he all but dozed on the high seat, snapped upright, his hands tightening reflexively on the reins. Beside him Jonas, the young groom pressed into service as outrider for this odd start of the earl’s, almost went off the bench seat as the coach’s wheels slipped in the mud. Saving himself with a hasty grab, he fumbled for the ancient fowling piece that Will had tucked beneath the seat at the last minute before departure. Before his hand did more than touch the cold metal, another musket barked, the ball whistling too close to the groom’s head for comfort. Jonas ducked, swearing, and abandoned all thoughts of heroics.

For his part, Will thought for a moment of whipping up
the horses and making a run for it, but the beasts had traveled clear from Thetford that day and were as tired as he was. The earl’s instructions had stated clearly that they were to take no more than this single day upon the road. His lordship was of no mind to pay for a night’s stay at a hostelry when there was no need. He wished to see my lady in London on this very date, February the twenty-sixth. Will and the rest of the staff, as well as the lady herself, had all done their collective bests to comply with the earl’s instructions, though my lady had had only two days to prepare for her journey. And yet just look where such praiseworthy obedience had brought them: to a perilous clash on a dark, deserted road with near a half-dozen highwaymen brandishing muskets! Had ever there been such an ill-fated day?

First one of the horses had gone lame, which meant that the beast had had to be replaced with a post horse, an expense with which the clutch-fisted earl would not be pleased. Then the rain had started, an icy downpour that turned the post-road into a quagmire and sent the coach slipping off into a ditch. It had taken the stout backs of a willing farmer and his son, plus Jonas and himself, to get the coach back on the road again. Which mishaps, of course, had made them far later than they should have been in getting to London. At that very moment it was nigh onto ten o’clock, and here was yet another delay!

Perhaps that was not quite the right way to think of an attack by five armed bandits, but that was how Will saw it, at least in the first few, surprised minutes. After all, in this the year of our Lord 1814, with Napoleon Bonaparte running wild all over the Continent and England bereft of near all but lawless men, being held up was not so uncommon. If they did but cooperate, the old man thought hopefully, they would suffer no hurt but the loss of the lady’s valuables. And, bless her, she was not one to take on about that, nor blame him for that which he could not help.

Black-cloaked figures swirling out of the darkness to encircle the moving coach resolved his dilemma. Clearly,
the only thing that an attempt to flee would accomplish would be his own and Jonas’s ruination. With a silent, heartfelt apology to the lady within, Will bowed to the inevitable and pulled the coach up. Two of the thieving rogues immediately grabbed at his reins; his horses, unused to such cavalier treatment, reared up in the shafts, whickering shrilly with fright.

Inside, Lady Isabella Georgiana Albans St. Just sat a little straighter on the plush velvet seat as the coach jolted to a stop. The widening of her soft blue eyes was one of the very few hints of perturbation she revealed. Like Will on the box, she had been near dozing. Allowing her head to rest against the curved seat back had caused the masses of baby-fine brown hair that had plagued her since earliest childhood to work free of its pins, as it frequently did. Tickling tendrils straggled distractingly around her face as she blinked awake. It was a moment before she was certain that the muffled noises which had awakened her came from outside the coach and were real, not part of some disturbing dream.

If her pale skin went a shade whiter at the knowledge, the light from the single carriage lamp that was still lit was too uncertain to reveal it. Her fine-boned body in the unfashionably plain blue woolen frock remained stiffly erect but unmoving as she listened to the commotion outside. Long, slender white fingers tightened fractionally over the reticule she held in her lap, but the convulsive movement was covered by the lap robe that was tucked around her waist. The tip of her tongue appeared to wet lips that were far too wide for beauty. The nostrils of her narrow-bridged nose flared as she drew in a deep breath, for a moment calling attention to the dusting of freckles that had plagued her as long and persistently as her disobedient hair.

Then her breathing steadied. One hand emerged from the lap robe and rose in a gesture so automatic that it required no thought to brush the wayward strands of hair from her delicately boned face. She lifted her pointed chin
a scant fraction of an inch, squared her narrow shoulders, and waited with outward composure for what would come.

“My lady, what …?”

Across from Isabella, riding backwards, Jessup, her thin, sallow-skinned maid, was far less resolute. The first musket shot brought her starting from deep sleep. As the coach lurched to a stop she stared wildly around, clasping her bony hands so tightly together that the knuckles showed white. There was an odd rasp to her breathing as she grasped what was happening in the darkness beyond the confines of the cozily lit carriage.

“Calm yourself, Jessup, if you please! I cannot think you’ll be of any use to me or yourself if you give way to panic.”

“My lady, my lady, we’re being held up; we’ll likely be ravished by the rogues and murdered! Oh! Oh! To think that we should come to this!” Jessup was beyond being calmed as she sought to convince her mistress of their danger.

A faint crease of displeasure appeared between Isabella’s brows. Such fear was contagious, and she had no wish to lose her own composure. A stout heart would get one through most trials, she had found.

“Don’t be silly; they’ve no reason to harm us! They are simply thieves. If we give them what they want, they’ll be gone in a trice. I’ve a little money in my reticule, and you must give them my jewel case if they ask. If we do that, I’m sure we have nothing to fear.”

Isabella was not quite as unruffled as she sounded, but she had borne the many vicissitudes visited on her in twenty-three years of life with fortitude, and she saw no reason to lose her head over what, after all, would likely be a very brief, if admittedly unpleasant, encounter. ’Twould all be over very quickly, she was sure, and then another hour or so would see them safe in London.

“ ‘Tis unnatural, my lady, so calm as you always are!” Jessup sounded almost accusing. Her own agitation was obvious as she all but bounced up and down on the seat.

Isabella, with the majority of her attention focused on
trying to hear what was happening outside rather than her maid’s upset, supposed vaguely that Jessup had a point. Most ladies of quality were reputed to be possessed of exquisite sensibilities, and certainly any lady of sensibility would be giving way to the vapors about now, as shots and shouts sounded outside her carriage. But she had never had much sensibility, only sound common sense. Sensible Isabella, she had once heard her father describe her, to the man who was then, though she did not know it at the time, her prospective husband. Thinking back on it, Isabella supposed that her father’s description of her was far more accurate than she had known at the time. At any rate, she had never seen any good come from an unrestrained display of emotion. Certainly all her tears and pleas had not managed to save her from being married off to Bernard— or save her from Bernard himself, once they were wed. After the humiliating disaster of her wedding night, she had vowed to have done with tears. She had not wept since.