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Gallant Officer, Forbidden Lady
Diane Gaston
He’s fought for his country, now he’s fighting for his heart!The battlefields of Badajoz are nothing compared to the cutting tongues of polite society, but Jack Vernon has never been very ‘polite’. A canvas is the brooding artist’s preferred company – having once been an outlet for the horror he witnessed at war, it’s now his fortune.Painting the portrait of stunningly beautiful Ariana Blane is his biggest commission yet. Learning every curve of her body ignites feelings he thought were destroyed in battle. But he’s not the only man who has Ariana in his sights…
Jack watched her as they crossed the courtyard. Ariana’s party continued to the Strand, where a line of carriages waited. In a moment Jack would have to head home. This would be his last glimpse of her.
She turned and caught sight of him. Her face lit up and took his breath away. His gaze locked with hers, and he thought he sensed the same regret in her eyes that was gnawing at his insides.
‘Goodbye,’ she mouthed, before being assisted into a shiny, elegant barouche.
Jack watched her until he could see the carriage no more. He tried to engrave her image upon his memory but could feel it fading with each moment. He needed to reach his studio. He needed paper and pencil. He needed to draw her before the image was lost to him as well.
Praise forDiane Gaston:
SCANDALISING THE TON
‘[Gaston’s] sensitive, compassionate and sensual romance shows how the power of love can overcome adversity.’
—RT Book Reviews
INNOCENCE AND IMPROPRIETY
‘Diane Gaston’s unconventional male and female heroes give INNOCENCE AND IMPROPRIETY, her latest elegantly written Regency historical, a refreshingly different twist.’
—Chicago Tribune
‘If you are weary of aristocratic heroes and heroines in Regency historical romances, then Diane Gaston’s INNOCENCE AND IMPROPRIETY is just the book for you. Well-written and entertaining…provocative…highly recommended!’
—Romance Readers Connection
A REPUTABLE RAKE
‘…a delightful and thought-provoking look into a side of London we don’t usually get to see.’
—Romance Junkies
THE WAGERING WIDOW
‘The protagonists are so deeply sculpted into living, breathing individuals that the reader will immediately be feeling their emotional turmoil…the entire tone of the book is steeped in sensuality…reading of the highest order!’
—Historical Romance Writer
THE MYSTERIOUS MISS M
‘Wow…it’s a real emotional roller-coaster ride…you simply cannot put [it] down—absolutely mesmerising!…an unusual gritty Regency, packing such an emotional punch.’
—Historical Romance Writer
‘This is a Regency with the gutsiness of a Dickens novel. It’s not always pretty, but it’s real and passionate. Gaston’s strong, memorable debut provides new insights into the era and characters that touch your heart and draw you emotionally into her powerful story.’
—RT Book Reviews
Gallant Officer,
Forbidden Lady
Diane Gaston
MILLS & BOON®
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
As a psychiatric social worker, Diane Gaston spent years helping others create real-life happy endings. Now Diane crafts fictional ones, writing the kind of historical romance she’s always loved to read. The youngest of three daughters of a US Army Colonel, Diane moved frequently during her childhood, even living for a year in Japan. It continues to amaze her that her own son and daughter grew up in one house in Northern Virginia. Diane still lives in that house, with her husband and three very ordinary housecats.
Visit Diane’s website at http://dianegaston.com
Previous novels by the same author:
THE MYSTERIOUS MISS M
THE WAGERING WIDOW
A REPUTABLE RAKE
INNOCENCE AND IMPROPRIETY
A TWELFTH NIGHT TALE
(in A Regency Christmas anthology)
THE VANISHING VISCOUNTESS
SCANDALISING THE TON
JUSTINE AND THE NOBLE VISCOUNT
(in Regency Summer Scandals)
…and in eBook Mills & Boon® Historical Undone!:
THE UNLACING OF MISS LEIGH
In memory of my father, Colonel Daniel J. Gaston, who showed me the honour of soldiers
Prologue
Badajoz Spain—1812
Jack Vernon dodged through the streets and alleys of Badajoz as if the very devil were at his heels. Several devils, in fact.
Drunken, marauding British soldiers poured out of doorways and set buildings afire, the flames illuminating their gargoyle-like faces. Bodies of their victims littered the pavement, French soldiers and ordinary citizens, men, women and children, their bright-hued Spanish clothing stained red with blood. Jack’s ears rang with the roar of the fires, screams of women, wails of babies, but no sound was as terrible as the laughter of madmen with a lust to rape, plunder and pillage.
Jack gripped his pistol in his hand while several red-coated marauders chased him, hoping for the few coins in his pockets. These were the same men at whose sides he’d scaled the walls of Badajoz earlier that day while French musket fire rained down on them. Now they would impale him with their bayonets for the sheer sport of it.
The men were consumed with bloodlust, a result of the desperately hard fighting they’d been through that left almost half their number dead. A rumour spread through the ranks that Wellington had issued permission for three hours of plunder. It had been like a spark to tinder. The rumour was untrue, but once they had begun there was no stopping them.
The real nightmare had begun.
After the French retreated to San Crisobal and the looting started, Jack’s major ordered Jack and a few others to accompany him on a patrol of the streets. ‘We shall stop the looting,’ his commanding officer had said.
The plunderers almost immediately turned on Jack’s patrol, who ran for their lives. Separated from the others, all Jack wanted now was a safe place to hide until the carnage was over.
He ran through the maze of streets, turning so often he no longer knew where he was or how to get out. Finally the pounding of feet behind him ceased, and he slowed, daring to look back and to catch his breath. He proceeded slowly, flattening himself against the ancient walls, and hoping the sound of his laboured breathing did not give him away. All he needed to find was an open door or a nook in an alley.
Shouts and screams still echoed and dark figures ran past him like phantoms in the night. The odour of burning wood, of spirits, blood and gunpowder, assaulted his nostrils.
Jack sidled along the wall until he turned into a small courtyard. From the light of a burning building he could see a British soldier holding down a struggling woman. A boy tried to pry the man’s hands off her, but another soldier plucked the boy off and tossed him on a nearby body. The man laughed as if he were merely playing a game of skittles.
A third soldier picked the boy up and raised a knife, as if to slash the boy’s throat. Jack charged into the courtyard, roaring like an ancient Celt. He fired his pistol. The soldier dropped the knife and the boy and ran, his companion with him. The man attacking the woman seemed to give Jack’s attack no heed.
Fumbling to undo his trousers, he laughed. ‘Come join the fun. Plenty for you, as well.’
Jack suddenly could see this man wore the red sash of an officer. The man turned and revealed his face.
Jack knew him.
He was Lieutenant Edwin Tranville, aide-de-camp to Brigadier-General Lionel Tranville, his father. Jack grew up knowing them both. Before Jack’s father had been dead a year, General Tranville had made Jack’s mother his mistress. Jack had only been eleven years old.
He stepped back into the shadows before Edwin could recognise him. He’d always known Edwin to be a bully and a coward, but he never suspected this level of depravity.
‘Leave the woman alone,’ Jack ordered.
‘Won’t do it.’ Edwin’s words were slurred. He was obviously very intoxicated. ‘Want her too much. Deserve her.’ A demonic expression came over his weak-chinned face and his pale blond hair fell into his eyes. He brushed it away with his hand and pointed a finger at the woman, ‘Don’t fight me or I’ll have to kill you.’
Jack stuck his pistol in his belt and drew his sword, but the woman managed to knock Edwin off balance and now stood between Jack and her attacker. She pushed at Edwin’s chest, driving him away while the boy vaulted on to his back. Edwin cried out in surprise and thrashed about, trying to pull the child off. He knocked the woman to the ground and finally managed to seize the boy by his throat.
Jack gripped the handle of his sword, but before he could take a step forwards, the woman sprang to her feet, the runaway soldier’s knife in her hand.
‘Non!’ she cried.
She slashed at Edwin like a wildcat defending her cub. Edwin backed away, but the drink seemed to have affected his judgement.
‘Stop it!’ he cried, the smile still on his face. ‘Or I’ll break his neck.’ He laughed as if he’d made a huge jest. ‘I can kill him with my hands.’
‘Non!’ the woman cried again and she lunged towards him.
Edwin stumbled and the boy squirmed out of his grasp. The woman sliced into Edwin’s cheek with the knife, cutting a long gash from ear to mouth.
Edwin wailed and dropped to his knees, pressing his hand against his bleeding face. ‘I’ll kill you for that!’
The woman shook her head and lifted her arms to sink the knife deep into Edwin’s exposed back.
She was suddenly grabbed from behind by another British officer.
‘Oh, no, you don’t, señora.’ He disarmed her with ease.
A second officer joined him. They were a captain and a lieutenant wearing the uniforms of the Royal Scots, a regiment Tranville had once commanded.
Edwin pointed to the woman. ‘She tried to kill me!’ He made an effort to stand, but swayed and collapsed in a heap on the cobblestones, passed out from drink and pain.
The captain held on to the woman. ‘You’ll have to come with us, señora.’
‘Captain—’ the lieutenant protested.
Jack sheathed his sword and showed himself. ‘Wait.’
Both men whirled around, and the lieutenant aimed his pistol at Jack’s chest.
Jack held up both hands. ‘I am Ensign Vernon of the East Essex. He was trying to kill the boy and rape the woman. I saw it. He and two others. The others ran.’
‘What boy?’ the captain asked.
A figure sprang from the shadows. The lieutenant turned the pistol on him.
Jack put his hand on the lieutenant’s arm. ‘Do not shoot. It is the boy.’
The captain held the woman’s arm while he walked over to Edwin, rolling him on to his back with his foot. He looked up at the lieutenant. ‘Good God, Landon, do you see who this is?’
‘General Tranville’s son,’ Jack answered.
‘You jest. What the devil is he doing here?’ the lieutenant asked.
Jack pointed to Edwin. ‘He tried to choke the boy and she defended him with the knife.’
Blood still oozed from Edwin’s cheek, but he remained unconscious.
‘He is drunk,’ Jack added.
The boy ran to the body of the French soldier. ‘Papa!’
‘Non, non, non, Claude,’ the woman cried, pulling away from the captain.
‘Deuce, they are French.’ The captain knelt down next to the body and placed his fingers on the man’s throat. ‘He’s dead.’
The woman said, ‘Mon mari.’ Her husband.
The captain rose and strode back to Edwin. He swung his leg as if to kick him, but stopped himself. Edwin rolled over again and curled into a ball, whimpering.
The boy tugged at his father’s coat. ‘Papa! Papa! Réveillez!’
