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Wicked Loving Lies
Rosemary Rogers
Born of scandal and denied his birthright, Dominic Challenger took to the sea, charting his own future. A true rogue, Dominic answers to no one, trusting only himself. Until Marisa.Born of wealth and privilege, Marisa is a prisoner to her father's expectations. When the sanctuary she has found behind the walls of a convent is threatened by the news that her father has arranged for her to marry, Marisa flees…right into the arms of a pirate.From the safety of a sheltered convent to a sultan's harem, from the opulence of Napoleon's court to the wilds of the new frontier, Marisa and Dominic brave all that they encounter in this thrilling age: intrigue, captivity and danger. And above all, an enduring passion that ignites into an infinite love.
Her golden eyes stared mesmerized into his sleepy gray ones with dark pupils that seemed to contract as recognition flared in them.
“You!” Suddenly he held her pinned down by the shoulders, his face staring down into hers. “How did you contrive it? Did you put one of your gypsy spells on poor Donald and my ship, as well? No wonder we’ve had such a bad voyage—a woman aboard ship always brings bad luck! What are you doing here?”
There was a cruel, dangerous look on his face, and sheer desperation made Marisa shout back at him.
“You—you threw me in here last night! And if I’m such bad luck, why don’t you just throw me overboard and have done with it? You’re such a rotten bully, no wonder all your men are so afraid of you! Well, I’m not. You can’t do anything worse to me than you have already—”
She was appalled at her own boldness.
He shook her, his fingers digging in to her bare shoulders.
“Don’t be too sure of that,” he muttered.
“This is exactly what her many fans crave, and Rogers serves it up with a polished flair.”
—Booklist on A Reckless Encounter
Also available from MIRA Books and ROSEMARY ROGERS
A RECKLESS ENCOUNTER
SWEET SAVAGE LOVE
SAVAGE DESIRE
Wicked Loving Lies
Rosemary Rogers
www.mirabooks.co.uk (http://www.mirabooks.co.uk)
To Bet with love
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE (#u082810c0-242f-563b-8ef8-1b680506c4e3)
PART ONE: A WALLED GARDEN (#ud4e4d227-7c6d-50c6-b7be-55e7962acd74)
CHAPTER 1 (#uf9762c87-274e-55b9-a9ff-9bf0585fd374)
CHAPTER 2 (#u33399655-f312-5190-8ab2-119442cd40c0)
CHAPTER 3 (#u3ac789f2-c1fe-59b9-8c4d-51cce385c86a)
CHAPTER 4 (#u9a9505cf-d962-5355-91ca-aa40478594dd)
CHAPTER 5 (#u350115a5-0790-5486-ae52-03ef4b8e7031)
CHAPTER 6 (#uf85babeb-e499-5b69-a4c9-c6a9edce735c)
CHAPTER 7 (#u29fd526f-82bc-5ca5-88c6-7b0a1d0bb15b)
CHAPTER 8 (#u51438c75-8205-50a1-b687-804134415a7c)
CHAPTER 9 (#ue710a86b-e8e9-5eb6-a7df-b49d25beefdc)
CHAPTER 10 (#u892f0b9e-251d-5826-9c0d-412e0b200f78)
CHAPTER 11 (#u9cc944be-5412-5c00-aba8-a6367d80db5f)
CHAPTER 12 (#ub072629c-dddb-5191-9133-9b25b84eaf7a)
CHAPTER 13 (#ude00fe38-bbb7-504f-8e2f-5183a49e799e)
CHAPTER 14 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 15 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 16 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 17 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 18 (#litres_trial_promo)
PART TWO: DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 19 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 20 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 21 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 22 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 23 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 24 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 25 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 26 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 27 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 28 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 29 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 30 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 31 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 32 (#litres_trial_promo)
PART THREE: THE PERFUMED DAYS (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 33 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 34 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 35 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 36 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 37 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 38 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 39 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 40 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 41 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 42 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 43 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 44 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 45 (#litres_trial_promo)
PART FOUR: THE SURGING TORRENT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 46 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 47 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 48 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 49 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 50 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 51 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 52 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 53 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 54 (#litres_trial_promo)
PART FIVE: THE ANGER AND THE PASSION (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 55 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 56 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 57 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 58 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 59 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 60 (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 61 (#litres_trial_promo)
EPILOGUE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER 62 (#litres_trial_promo)
PROLOGUE
The Rebels
As soon as the light began to fade, the mist crept in from the forest that bounded the far end of the great park. It was just as if it had lain hidden there crouched among the densely growing trees until the approach of nightfall sent it moving towards the huge house that dominated a rise in the gently sloping ground—sending long, exploratory grey streamers out at first to curl insidiously around the stone walls; and then, growing bolder, advancing like a gauzy cloud until soon the forest was quite cut off from view, and there was only the grey-white mass pressing against the windowpanes. It almost seemed to be waiting—angry because it could not penetrate stone and glass and wood, but patient, too….
Mrs. Sitwell hurried to pull the heavy velvet drapes together, shivering as she did so despite a roaring fire in the fireplace.
“Never did like the country very much! It’s almost like it was too quiet, you know? And then the fogs here—ain’t like the London fogs—at least you can see the street lights shining, all yellow and cheerful-like. But out here—” She lowered her voice as she glanced towards the vast, canopied bed that stood in one corner of the room. “Tell me, Mrs. Parsons, how is it that he—” a jerk of her head “—His Grace, I mean—well, it just don’t seem natural for him to be down there in his study, writing letters, with his own wife dying up here.”
Mrs. Parsons’s thin lips seemed to disappear into her seamed face as she pursed them. “His Grace has his own ways—and his own reasons. You couldn’t know, of course, you’ve only been here three weeks. But I could tell you—” The woman hesitated for a moment, her fingers tightening over themselves; but then, as the desire to talk to someone after all the lonely months proved too much for her, she burst out, “I could tell you—it’s a great deal stranger, all this, than anyone could guess! And of course I’ve been with the family—His Grace’s family that is—for years. I was here when he brought her here as his bride, and I was still here when he brought her back from the Americas. I could have told, even when I was a mere slip of a girl myself, that there was something wrong….”
The woman who lay so still in the depths of the big, dark bed heard them whispering by the fire. Over the sound of her own breathing—each breath more difficult to draw than the last—she heard words:
“Brought her here from Ireland, he did. He was only Lord Leo then, and no one ever dreaming he’d ever come into the title like he did….”
She was in that half-world that lies between coma and reality, and when she heard the woman say something about Ireland, her mind slipped back easily through time; reliving the beginning was so much more pleasant than waiting for the end. Whirling pictures slid through her mind, some of them all too clear, others seeming to curl and blur about the edges like old letters.
Ireland, and her girlhood, when no one had called her Lady Margaret or Your Grace. It had been Peggy or Peg then. Pretty Peggy, the young men had named her, bringing blushes to her cheeks. And after all, in spite of what all Irishmen referred to as “the troubles,” life had not been too unpleasant.
What did anything matter as long as she was young and pretty with all of her life still stretching endlessly and excitingly ahead of her? Even her brother Conal’s frowns and carping didn’t matter too much as long as she could escape from him to go down to the village for her stolen, secret confessions to Father MacManus or to visit some of her father’s old tenants. Things were different since her father, the earl of Morey, had taken sick and finally died—without, thankfully, knowing what Conal had done to keep the lands for himself. Turned Protestant, renouncing his own true faith—how could he?
