Embracing Ashberry

Embracing Ashberry

Serenity Everton

Copyright 2005 Serenity Everton (
[email protected]
).

Smashwords edition.

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Everton
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LICENSE NOTES, SMASHWORDS EDITION

All rights reserved. No part of this
publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a
retrieval system, transmitted by any means (electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording, etc) without the prior permission of the
author, above.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters,
places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or
are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or
dead, is entirely coincidental.

This text was previously published online,
with free excerpts still available online at
Out of My Mind
(http://fiction.kinkyfirehouse.com
).

.

ABOUT EMBRACING ASHBERRY

The Marquess of Ashberry had never planned to
marry or have children, but there is something about Ella Whitney
he can't quite ignore. Her skittishness, her inclination to
overlook his existence and her vulnerability has him re-thinking
his future.

Ella Whitney is timid, and for very good
reasons. But she can't avoid Ashberry's company all the time with
her brother marrying his sister. Instead she has to face her fears,
stand up to her family, and remember her dreams.

This novel is over 100,000 words in length. It
is a romance. In the romance genre, the story moves forward as the
relationship between the primary characters develops. Sometimes
progress in this relationship is marked by sexual content. In this
story, Ella and Meriden do explore an intimate relationship within
their marriage, but secondary characters do engage in less savory
behavior. Readers should expect explicit language and adult
situations.

DEDICATION

I spent many hours writing this story in 2003.
When I wasn’t writing, I was sleeping. Later I had to put it away
to function as a new mother, but it came back to life as our family
began sleeping more than three or four hours at a time.

So in those long hours of early morning, where
my little girl slept on the couch more easily than in her cradle or
crib, and I sat beside her to be sure she didn’t roll off to the
floor, I finished the story.

To my husband Chris, who brought me the baby and
bought me the laptop that made it possible.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Title Page

Dedication

Prologue

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

March 1786

PROLOGUE

Abandoning the idea of waiting patiently in
bed, Ellie threw back the covers and impulsively drew a heavy robe
around her slim frame. She didn’t wish to wake the maid quite so
soon but decided instead to visit the garden one final time. It had
been the scene of many happy childhood games, and Ellie knew she
would miss the glorious roses of summer and the beautiful morning
glory vines that grew up the side of the manor from April until
October.

In the chill of the pre-dawn light she
slipped silently out of her chamber and down the main stairs,
crossing the carpets until she stood before the large doors from
the dining room that opened into the garden. Ellie unfastened the
bolts and moved outside, closing the doors quietly behind her to
keep the damp air out of the house.

The girl had been packed for weeks, and had
impatiently—anxiously—tried to speed up her family’s preparations
for the journey to London until her brothers were too annoyed to
even speak to her. Just shy of eighteen years, her mama and papa
had finally agreed she should spend the Season with her parents and
older brothers.

In London, Ellie knew Lord Whitney would
take his seat in Parliament and continue teaching her eldest
brother Edward the business of being a baron. She and her mother
would concentrate on their own business—finding a suitable husband
for the only Whitney daughter.

The nightmare began only a few minutes
later. Ellie trembled, a mixture of fear and anger coursing through
her blood. “Bastard,” she seethed, squaring her chin and stiffening
proudly.

The forbidden epithet came unexpectedly,
from the deepest core of her soul, an unmistakable manifestation of
her terror. It would have earned a whipping from her governess, not
to mention what punishment her mother and father would have
imposed. He, however, hardly flinched but instead had the audacity
to reach out and seize the cashmere above her heaving chest in one
fist. The fabric rent apart, baring her breasts to the early
morning mist. Deliberately, he traced his knife down between the
untouched globes, pressing the blade against the soft undersides of
her bosom. Suddenly, he laughed cruelly and stepped even closer,
pushing the sharp tip into Ellie’s skin. She started to back away,
her chin still high, but clearly there was no place for her to
go.

The cool stone of the manor house scraped
her shoulder blades.

The stranger leaned even closer, his hot
breath against Ellie’s ear. “Yar a leetle beech, girlie,” he
whispered in a peculiar vernacular. Without even a second to
reconsider, he drew the edge across Ellie’s stomach, cutting a
delicate sliver into her innocent white skin. His other hand was
already probing its way inside what remained of her dressing gown,
ripping open the front of her sleeping jacket as he searched. His
fingers slipped between her thighs as he said softly, “Open yar
laigs or I make a new sleet in yar bailly.”

Unable in her distress to make any rational
decision, Ellie did as he demanded. The blood trickled from her
stomach and dripped against the tattered fabric as his hand cupped
her woman’s flesh. The knife began to strip away the fabric she
clutched against her as the strange, heavy presence of his hand
between her thighs began to probe even more earnestly. Her ears
drumming hard and her eyes burning, Ellie stared down at the knife,
as if its experienced movements fascinated her.

Even through the haze and confusion in her
mind, Ellie saw the blood beginning to puddle in the crevices of
her own navel. The humiliation and the pain became too much.

Overwhelmed, she cried out, the horror and
agony unmistakable before she dropped the ragged cashmere and
pushed the man with unrestrained strength that would later amaze
her.

The stranger cursed, for Ellie’s terrorized
wail was loud enough to wake the manor’s residents. With only
seconds to spare before enraged rescuers would peer from the upper
windows, he made three deep and deliberately damaging cuts: one
from the underside of each breast to her navel in the form of a
large V and the third from her navel down into the most innocent
skin kept shielded by her mahogany curls. He smiled maliciously,
accepting that Ellie’s shocked face would have to satisfy him for
the moment.

Still, he couldn’t resist a last jibe.
“Don’cha worry, girlie,” he sneered, shaking the blood from the
knife, “I be back ‘ta finish zee job.”

Despite the stirring he could hear above him
and the horrified scream from inside the house, the man stepped
back and watched Ellie crumple to the ground.

The shouts came an instant later, but by
then he was just a fleeting figure on the edge of the forest. To
the family, Ellie was of primary importance.

October 1789

ONE

Ellie’s smile remained frozen on her pink
lips, tenuous at best. The dinner party was loud and boisterous,
quite unlike the silence and solitude she had craved so desperately
for months. She’d been in public since then, of course, but those
limited experiences in Austria and Germany hadn’t prepared her for
the overwhelming masculinity presiding in this room. She didn't
pretend anything other than time and experience would alter that
reality.

Her eldest brother Edward, the heir to the
Whitney barony and legendary lands on the crags of Cornwall, was
recently engaged to Lady Charlotte Trinity, one of the
twenty-year-old twin sisters of the Marquess of Ashberry. The
nobleman himself was dining at the Whitneys' home, along with his
three younger brothers, sister Charlotte and his mentoring,
maternal aunt. The menagerie, along with Ellie’s own two parents
and three brothers, plus the four footmen and butler, filled the
dining room to its seams. The eight gentlemen, ranging in ages from
fifteen to fifty-five, were as proper as a lady could expect, but
their collective gregariousness at the dinner table would have
greatly unsettled Ellie only a year earlier.

Indeed, the attack Ellie had endured in the
garden of her family’s estate had finally faded from her immediate
memories, but the scars hadn’t healed completely. In fact, in many
ways the villain who had assaulted her had succeeded—Ellie was no
longer the self-confident, impulsive and eager young lady she had
once been.

When her mother led the four women into the drawing
room, Ellie’s shoulders relaxed just slightly. No one had said
anything out of place and Ellie had been seated between two of her
own brothers, but generally she didn’t socialize outside her family
and a very few acquaintances. However, evading this celebration
dinner was impossible—even her youngest brother Richard had joined
them.

The padded chairs in the luxurious drawing room were
drawn close around the fire, for the early October evenings had
already begun to age into the frigid nights of English winters.
Lady Whitney and Ashberry’s aunt, the Countess Westhouse, chatted
lightly as Ellie’s mother brewed the tea, while Ellie and Charlotte
quietly compared notes on the upcoming wedding.

In the feminine surroundings, Ellie was most
comfortable. She was unpretentious, but spoke to the countess only
when directly addressed. Still, such decorum ought not seem unusual
to the countess. Ellie looked young and was frequently assumed to
still be in the schoolroom—and her parents had agreed that this
common supposition could be perpetuated to avoid otherwise awkward
questions.

Ellie felt no compelling reason to object to their
decree. Indeed, it was easier to be excused and retire just before
the gentlemen joined them anyway.

* * * *

Ashberry settled back in his chair, gazing moodily
at the brandy balloon in his hand as he considered Charlotte’s
obvious contentment when she was with Edward Whitney.

Charlotte had made a love match with the young
Whitney, and though Caroline had not said so specifically, Ashberry
liked to think that her twin was just as happy. Caroline had
married her earl earlier in the summer—a man significantly older
than Caroline but with the aura of invincibility that Caroline
claimed made her feel safe.

Caroline and Charlotte were, in many ways,
Ashberry's daughters. The marquess did not remember his mother, who
had died in childbed along with her second child, but his memories
of his father’s second marchioness were vivid and loving. Elizabeth
Shelling—Aunt Lucy’s sister—had passed too, from the dreaded fever
after the births of the two youngest Trinity twins seventeen years
earlier.

The late marquess had been devastated by the loss of
both his wives and had not recovered. Within a year, he had turned
into a reclusive drunk, leaving much of the responsibility for the
young Trinity children and the family's estates on the shoulders of
his eldest son, only fourteen years old at the time and not
prepared to even be out of the schoolroom.

Ashberry had assumed the title that accompanied
those duties ten years ago, when the former marquess had sent a
champion stud careening over a fence and into a pond. Its agonizing
cries had been heard across the fields, bringing help quickly but
for no gain. After finding his father’s neck broken from the
accident, a twenty-one year old Ashberry had been forced to shoot
the arrogant stallion that had carried his father and was the pride
and primary source of breeding profits for Ashberry Stables.