No Place for a Dame
Also by Connie Brockway
HISTORICALS
Promise Me Heaven
Anything for Love
A Dangerous Man
As You Desire
All Through the Night
My Dearest Enemy
McClairen’s Isle: The Passionate One
McClairen’s Isle: The Reckless One
McClairen’s Isle: The Ravishing One
The Bridal Season
Once Upon a Pillow,
with Christina Dodd
Bridal Favors
The Rose Hunters: My Seduction
The Rose Hunters: My Pleasure
The Rose Hunters: My Surrender
So Enchanting
The Golden Season
The Lady Most Likely,
with Christina Dodd and Eloisa James
The Other Guy’s Bride
The Lady Most Willing,
with Christina Dodd and Eloisa James
CONTEMPORARY ROMANCE
Hot Dish
Skinny Dipping
ANTHOLOGIES
Outlaw Love,
“Heaven with a Gun”
My Scottish Summer,
“Lassie, Go Home”
The True Love Wedding Dress,
“Glad Rags”
Cupid Cats,
“Cat Scratch Fever”
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Copyright © 2013 Connie Brockway
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Montlake Romance, Seattle, WA
ISBN-13: 978-1-477-80858-0
ISBN-10: 1-477-80858-2
Cover illustration by Dana Ashton France
Library of Congress Control Number: 2013906195
For Maureen Enger, thanks for being so special (and tolerant!)
Contents
Sign up for more from Connie Brockway!
Chapter One
November, 1819
I
t had been a mistake bringing Sophia to Killylea Castle, Giles Dalton, the Marquess of Strand, acknowledged as he sat staring broodingly into the Great Hall’s hearth fire and waited for his guests to join him for dinner.
Upon their arrival late last night, his bride-to-be had wasted not five minutes before launching into complaints about the castle’s inadequate lighting and frigid temperature. They were not unwarranted criticisms; Killylea did seem unusually cold and gloomy, made even more so by the winter storm blasting the ancient fortress’s sea-facing walls.
During his childhood here, he’d loved nothing better than a violent storm. He would stand on the parapets, the wind whipping his bare head, arms raised to the heavens, pretending he was a wizard conjuring the elements. Sophia did not share this predilection. But then, she shared nothing else with him either, not conversation or interests, ambitions or goals. Nothing except, a few times, her beautiful young body. Unfortunately, even that lovely vessel had ceased to hold his interest. Especially here.
How odd. But true.
When Sophia had invited him to her room last night, he’d found the notion disconcerting, even distasteful. It had been weeks since she’d sought the only sort of companionship they’d ever enjoyed with one another, not since she’d lost the child she’d allegedly carried.
Allegedly
.
Giles did not think her duplicity was at the root of his reluctance to renew that most intimate of relationships. He’d known all along that she might be lying. Even if she wasn’t, she’d readily admitted that the child she’d claimed to carry might not be his.
No, it wasn’t anger or disappointment that kept him from accepting her invitation. He was an old friend to duplicity and deceit. Such acts held no fresh surprises, nor their perpetuators the power to offend, let alone wound him.
It was something else that made him resist. This was his home. His real home. A wave of fierce pride swept through him. For two hundred years Daltons had lived here, fought from here, loved and lived and died here. He resisted dishonoring its ancient walls by using it as a place of… sport.
Though, he glanced around impatiently, such sport would risk a woman’s health in such a cold, dank place. What in bloody hell
had
happened to the lights? Though it was only five o’clock—dinner was always served according to country customs at Killylea—the sun had already quit the sky and the room was steeped in gloom, with only a few of the dozens of sconces and tapers that decorated the walls and tables lit.
For that matter, where were all the servants? Rather than the usual, seemingly endless line of servants that generally met his infrequent homecomings, only his steward, Travers, and a single maid and footman had met their arrival. The same maid had set his fire this morning and the same footman had attended him at breakfast, while Sophia and her father, Malcolm North, acting as chaperone in only the loosest sense of the word, had breakfasted en suite.
He knew for a fact that he employed forty-six at Killylea. Thus far he’d seen only three.
And then, of course, there was Avery Quinn, but she was hardly a servant. She was… well, what matter? It had been several years since his visit to the castle and hers had coincided. Indeed, he might never see Avery Quinn again, because he could not envision Sophia living here as
Killylea’s chatelaine. And during those rare times Sophia was in residence, he imagined Avery would disappear. He could not imagine two women with less in common. His small female scholar liked Killylea’s solitude while Sophia was far better suited to the bright artifice and sophistication of London.
As, he reminded himself, was he.
“Strand? Is that you? I can’t see. ’Tis too dark,” a female voice announced from the doorway. “Do not think I shall stand for such cheeseparing measures when I am marchioness. We shall have lights to rival Carleton House!”
Strand looked up from the fire, relieved to be distracted from the uneasy passage his thoughts had been taking. His bride-to-be had arrived.
Sophia North frowned pettishly as she peered about. The Great Hall looked just as dim, grim, and uninviting as the rest of this godforsaken castle. Only the muffled moan of the wind flinging itself against the thick stone walls broke the eerie silence. At the far end of the room a wingback chair stood facing a huge bed of embers in a hearth so high a man could walk into it upright. The only other furnishing was the monstrous banquet table.
“One might as well dine in a charnel house,” Sophia muttered.
“Best get used to it, Sophia,” her father said from beside her. “Strand’s ancestral home, don’tcha know.”
Ancestral home, bah
. Who would willingly live in such a place? She knew little about Giles Dalton’s immediate family. No one did. His father had not taken his place in Society, seemingly content to stay in this godforsaken castle with his books and letters. Strand’s mother, the marquess’s second wife, had relocated to Italy with Giles’s sister long ago, before Giles had become heir to the marquisdom. The first marchioness had died in childbirth.