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Maiden Bride
Deborah Simmons
Gillian Haxham Soon Learned Her New Lord Was More Wedded To Revenge Than To HerFor Nicholas de Laci had sworn to exact payment for the sins of her uncle. Why, then, did his eyes belie his words, speaking naught of retribution - but promising nights of love? Fate had sent Nicholas de Laci the perfect bride to fill the aching need in his soul.With her tainted blood, Gillian Hexham would at last satisfy the raw hunger that near consumed him… but only in way he could never imagine!
Table of Contents
Cover Page (#u2b99e327-5853-5586-a192-82b153d8668b)
Praise (#ue73e8f03-511e-56e0-bc24-e24f989d5fc5)
Excerpt (#u9b17b257-baab-5de3-bb3e-51f9f04916ef)
Dear Reader (#u0c30ab71-6216-5b0b-832f-1046db1848e7)
Title Page (#u128a04a8-fa01-53ce-bb39-ee1e30940f43)
About The Author (#u26858f24-d585-5aec-98f3-c9a6fd9daf55)
Dedication (#uaa6f6750-9919-5628-8345-b950c639de1f)
Chapter One (#ub9ffe5f9-967f-544a-b9b8-6db4e7d9a4da)
Chapter Two (#udf19f4f7-bc2f-5394-881a-6fa81ca6da3f)
Chapter Three (#u2da9dabf-7d5f-5cdb-8871-f16423598b79)
Chapter Four (#ua7d1ede2-c696-5911-a8be-896506759cac)
Chapter Five (#u247d9695-631a-5dc9-b357-0d6641c4a199)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nineteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty (#litres_trial_promo)
Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
Praise for
Deborah Simmons
other works
Taming the Wolf
“…funny, challenging and exciting…5
s”
—Affaire de Coeur
“…thrilling,…a breathless love story…41/2”
—Romantic times
The Vicar’s Daughter
“…absolutely wonderful!…You won’t be able to put it down!”—Affaire de Coeur
“this one has found a place on my shelf for keepers.”
—Rendezvous
The Devil’s Lady
“Deborah Simmons guarantees the reader a page-turner…”
—Romantic Times
the Squire’s Daughter
“…a priceless gem…warms the heart and cheers the spirit…”
—Affaire de Coeur
“If he has done more than hold
your hand, I will kill you both,”
he promised, his voice a guttural bark.
His gaze never left her, bright and probing and denying her innocence. “Perhaps you did not realize that ‘tis not wise to be alone with a man!” He spat the words out as if they tasted foul upon his tongue.
“We were talking, nothing more!” Gillian protested, alarmed by the look in his glittering depths. “Trust you not your own guard?”
“Nay! I trust no one when it comes to you!” Nicholas growled, taking a step toward her.
Comprehension dawned slowly, laced with so much disbelief that Gillian shook her head, as if dazed. Regarding him with wide-eyed wonder, she whispered the truth. “You are jealous.”
He flinched, but did not deny it. “You are mine, body and soul, and you had best remember it!”
Dear Reader,
Whether writing atmospheric Medievals or sexy Regencies, Deborah Simmons continues to delight readers with her romantic stories, be they dark and brooding or light and full of fun. In this month’s Maiden Bride, the sequel to The Devil’s Lady, Nicholas de Laci transfers his blood lust to his enemy’s niece, Gillian, his future wife by royal decree. Don’t miss this wonderful tale.
Fans of Romantic Times Career Achievement Award winner Veronica Sattler will be thrilled to see this month’s reissue of her Worldwide Library release, Jesse’s Lady. We hope you’ll enjoy this exciting story of a young heiress and her handsome guardian who must survive the evil machinations of her bastard brother and a jealous temptress before they can find happiness.
Beloved Outcast by Pat Tracy is a dramatic Western about an Eastern spinster who is hired by a man with a notorious reputation to tutor his adopted daughter. And our fourth book this month is The Wager by Sally Cheney, the story of a young Englishwoman who reluctantly falls in love with a man who won her in a game of cards.
We hope you’ll keep a lookout for all four titles wherever Harlequin Historicals are sold. Sincerely,
Tracy Farrell
Senior Editor
Please address questions and book requests to:
Harlequin Reader Service
U.S.: 3010 Walden Ave., P.O. Box 1325, Buffalo, NY 14269
Canadian: P.O. Box 609, Fort Erie, Ont. L2A 5X3
Maiden Bride
Deborah Simmons
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
DEBORAH SIMMONS
Deborah Simmons began her writing career as a newspaper reporter. She turned to fiction after the birth of her first child when a longtime love of historical romance prompted her to pen her own work, published in 1989. She lives with her husband, two children and two cats in rural Ohio, where she divides her time between her family, reading and writing. She enjoys hearing from readers at the below address. For a reply, an SASE is appreciated.
Deborah Simmons
P.O. Box 274
Ontario, Ohio 44862-0274
Special thanks to Linda Hoffman, Laurie Miller and
Jennifer Weithman for their insistence upon and
assistance with Nicholas’s story
Chapter One (#ulink_56539f7d-886f-51b0-a361-ff0b10c1fb69)
Nicholas de Laci leaned against the wall of the great hall, brooding over a cup of ale. He was not drunk; he never drank too much. It dulled the wits, and he had honed his to a razor sharpness. As if to prove his skills, he lifted his head at a sound from the arched entranceway, his eyes alert for any sign of danger, but it was only his sister, Aisley, and her infant son.
Hexham would not pass this way again.
The thought slipped into his mind like a dark phantom, despite his iron-hard discipline, and for just a moment Nicholas let himself dwell upon it. His enemy was dead. The neighbor who had waylaid him in the Holy Land, abandoned him there and returned to try to steal his lands had been cut down in this very hall by Aisley’s husband, Piers, who had deprived him of his revenge in one fell swoop.
Nicholas glanced toward two heavy chairs near the front of the hall. That was where they said it happened, by Aisley’s seat, but the tiles had long been scrubbed clean, and Hexham’s blood was gone. Forever. Nicholas would never see it spilled, never know the satisfaction of vengeance in the depths of his hungry soul.
He had tried other killing in the year since, hiring himself out as a soldier, but the deaths of strangers meant as little to him as the coins he received in payment. Nicholas already had great wealth and a prosperous demesne to call his own. Built by his father, Belvry was a modern castle and the envy of his peers, and yet it gave him no pleasure, either. And so he had returned here, to the scene of his bitter disappointment, vainly searching for a respite from the gnawing emptiness that had become his life.
Nicholas’s fingers tightened around the cup that held his ale. In truth, he found contentment nowhere, for nothing held meaning for him anymore. His sister was so much changed over the five years he had been in the Holy Land that he knew her not, and he resented her husband for taking what he had most wanted: Hexham’s life.
“Nicholas! I did not see you there against the wall. What are you about this afternoon?” Aisley asked, with that half welcoming, half wary smile that he had grown accustomed to seeing directed toward him. His lovely fair-haired sister was not sure what to make of him, but that hardly surprised him. Nicholas was no longer sure what to make of himself.
“Nothing,” he answered, brushing her query aside with a flick of his eyes. He nodded toward a long bench, and Aisley sat down, baby in her arms. “Look, Sybil, ‘tis your uncle Nicholas,” she cooed. “Uncle. Uncle Nicholas,” she babbled, crooning in a way Nicholas would never have thought possible.
The Aisley he had known had been an aloof childwoman, a skilled chatelaine, but certainly not the sort to lavish affection upon anyone. Now, instead of handing the infant over to a nurse, she dragged it around with her most of the time, carrying on over it in a way he found hard to fathom.
A sound from the entranceway drew his swift attention, and Nicholas saw Piers stride into the hall. A huge man, Aisley’s husband was capable of intimidating others, but rarely did so. Instead, he seemed to take infinite delight in the world around him, from which he had been briefly cut off during a bout with blindness.
“Piers!” Aisley’s voice rose in excited pleasure. “Look, Sybil, ‘tis your father!” she said, waving the baby’s tiny fist toward the great knight. Perhaps something about the birthing process had damaged her wits, Nicholas wondered, not for the first time during his visit. “Here, go to your uncle while I greet your father,” Aisley cooed.
To his utter horror, Nicholas found the infant thrust into his arms. It was small and fat and bald, and it smelled, with an odd sort of milky, soapy odor. He had known it to reek more foully. The thought made him rise to his feet and glance down suspiciously. If it soiled his tunic, he might have to strangle it. Cup in one fist, babe in the crook of his arm, he glanced helplessly toward his sister, but she was already beyond his reach.
With a happy smile, Aisley threw herself at her husband’s tall form, while Nicholas watched in amazement. He would never get used to that behavior. The two of them kissed passionately, just as though they were in their own chamber and not standing amid the rushes of the open hall. Nicholas found the display positively sickening.
He would have thought that Piers only indulged his daft wife at such moments, but for the fact that the knight sought her out with the same enthusiasm. Perhaps Piers’s sightlessness had left him sadly addled, too.
“Waaah!” The babe in Nicholas’s arms seemed suddenly to realize where she was and started screaming shrilly in protest. Nicholas’s gut churned in response to the hideous noise, and he wondered if he ought to depart Dunmurrow soon. He felt apart and alien among this strangely happy threesome who made his own life seem even more barren and aimless.
“Here!” he said, standing abruptly and holding out the child to its mother.
“There, there, Sybil, ‘tis time for your nap, perhaps?” Aisley whispered, and Nicholas stared, astounded at the way she talked to the thing, just as if it might understand her. His sister was beyond him now, as was everyone, everything, everyplace…His stomach twisted, reminding him that he ought to eat something, but food held no interest. Instead, he focused on the giant blond man who would call him brother.
“Nicholas!” Piers greeted him with the warmth that continued to annoy him. How dare the Red Knight eye him with that knowing look, as if seeing right through Nicholas’s skin to his hollow insides? How dare he tender advice, when his keep was shabby compared to Belvry?
