Tiger's Eye
Tiger's Eye
Karen Robards
Karen Robards (2014)
Rating: ★★★★☆
Tags: England, Historical Romance, Love Story, Regency Romance, Romance
Englandttt Historical Romancettt Love Storyttt Regency Romancettt Romancettt
Lady Isabella St. Just is shocked to learn the identity of the daring champion who comes to her aid - for the man who rescues her from desperate felons is none other than Alec Tyron, the notorious king of London's underworld. Now she is beholden to an outlaw who is respected and feared throughout the city and stunned by her own intense desire for this dark man of mystery. Fate has united these strangers from opposite lives - the beautiful aristocrat and the brazen criminal outlaw. And now that the flame has been lit, no power on Earth will quench the fire of their passion...
or destroy a love that society cannot allow.
Lady Isabella St. Just is kidnapped. Realizing her captors intend to kill her, she escapes and runs straight into the arms of Alec Tyron, king of London's Underworld. Both are wounded and are forced to recuperate together in a bordello.
Drawn to each other despite their differences, the two battle their love as they seek the identity of those trying to kill them.
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KAREN ROBARDS
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Also by Karen Robards
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Tiger’s Eye
KAREN
ROBARDS
TIGER’S EYE
All Rights Reserved © 1989 by Karen Robards
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher.
Published by Karen Robards
Originally published by Avon Books
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
To Rusty and Iris—beloved friends.
And, as always, with much love to Doug and Peter.
Table of Contents
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Sample Chapter from To Love A Man
I
T
hunder 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 travelled 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.