Bertrice Small
“TAKE ME, JARED.
OH, I BURN!”
She was not to be denied. Amazed by her passion, he drove deep into her eager body, reveling in the softness of her. Then through the fires of his lust he heard her cry out. Her body arched and, for a moment, their eyes met and he saw the dawning of knowledge in those sea-green depths before she fainted with the force of her orgasm.
She was stunning. An hour ago she had been a trembling virgin, and now she lay unconscious as a result of intense desire. A desire that she might not truly understand yet …
By Bertrice Small:
THE KADIN
LOVE WILD AND FAIR
ADORA
UNCONQUERED
BELOVED
ENCHANTRESS MINE
BLAZE WYNDHAM
THE SPITFIRE
A MOMENT IN TIME
TO LOVE AGAIN
LOVE, REMEMBER ME
THE LOVE SLAVE
HELLION
BETRAYED
DECEIVED
THE INNOCENT
A MEMORY OF LOVE
THE DUCHESS
THE DRAGON LORD’S DAUGHTERS
PRIVATE PLEASURES
The O’Malley Saga
SKYE O’MALLEY
ALL THE SWEET TOMORROWS
A LOVE FOR ALL TIME
THIS HEART OF MINE
LOST LOVE FOUND
WILD JASMINE
Skye’s Legacy
DARLING JASMINE
BEDAZZLED
BESIEGED
INTRIGUED
JUST BEYOND TOMORROW
VIXENS
The Friarsgate Inheritance
ROSEMUND
UNTIL YOU
PHILIPPA
THE LAST HEIRESS
The World of Hetar
LARA
A DISTANT TOMORROW
THE TWILIGHT LORD
The Border Chronicles
A DANGEROUS LOVE
A Ballantine Book
Published by The Random House Publishing Group
Copyright © 1995 by Bertrice Small
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
Ballantine and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Poem reprinted by permission of Grosset & Dunlap, Inc. from HIRAM AND OTHER CATS by Lawrence Dwight Smith, copyright 1941 by Grosset & Dunlap, Inc., text copyright renewed © 1969 by Margaret Nicholson.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 81-66654
eISBN: 978-0-307-79479-6
www.ballantinebooks.com
v3.1
For all those people
for whom
there is but one love …
Contents
Cover
Other Books by This Author
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Part I WYNDSONG, 1811
Part II ENGLAND, 1812–1813
Part III RUSSIA, 1813–1814
Part IV ISTANBUL, 1814
Part V ENGLAND, 1814–1815
Epilogue WYNDSONG, June 1815
About the Author
Chapter 1
“YOU DO REALIZE,” SAID LORD PALMERSTON SLOWLY, “THAT what you and I are doing could be considered treason by both of our governments? I am, you know, considered somewhat of a maverick because I prefer direct action to all the talk that goes on in Parliament and His Majesty’s cabinet.” He paused for a moment to contemplate the deep red claret in his glass. The etched Waterford crystal sparkled bloody crimson with firelight and wine reflecting onto Lord Palmerston’s handsome face. Outside, the midnight silence was broken by the soft hiss of the rising wind, bringing in streamers of fog from the coast. “Nevertheless,” continued Henry Temple, Lord Palmerston, “I believe, Captain Dunham, as do the interests you represent, that our real enemy in this situation is Napoleon, not each other. Napoleon must be destroyed!”
Jared Dunham turned away from the window, and walked back to the fireplace. The young man was lean, dark and very tall. He was considerably taller than the other man, and Henry Temple was six feet tall. Jared’s eyes were an odd dark green color and his eyelids were heavy, giving the impression of always being half-closed, weighed down by their thick, dark lashes. His long, thin nose and narrow lips helped give an impression of sardonic amusement. He had big, elegant hands with well-pared, rounded nails. They were strong hands.
Seating himself in one of the two tapestried wing chairs set before the cheerful blaze, Jared leaned forward to face Lord Palmerston, the English secretary for war. “And if you would successfully attack the enemy at your throat, m’lord, you would prefer not to have another enemy at your back. Am I correct?”
“Absolutely!” Lord Palmerston stated with complete candor.
A chill smile lifted the corners of the American’s mouth, not quite reaching his bottle-green eyes. “By God, sir, you are honest!”
“We need each other, Captain,” was the frank reply. “Your country may be independent of England these last twenty years, but you cannot deny your roots. Your names are English, your styles of furniture and clothing, your very government is much like ours without, of course, King George. You cannot deny the bond between us. Even you, if my information is correct, are due to inherit an original English land grant and title one day.”
“It will be quite some time before I inherit, m’lord. My cousin, Thomas Dunham, eighth lord of Wyndsong Island, is in excellent health, God be praised! I have no desire to be settled at this point in my life.” He paused a moment, and then continued: “America must have a market for her goods, and England gives us that market, as well as the necessities and luxuries our society requires.
“We have already rid ourselves of the French by purchasing the vast Louisiana Territory, but in doing so we New Englanders have allowed ourselves to be outnumbered by a group of enthusiastic young hotheads who, having grown up on exaggerated tales of how we whupped the English in ’76, are now spoiling for a fight.
“As a man of business, I disapprove of war. Oh, I can make a great deal of money running your blockade, but in the end we both lose for we cannot get enough ships through the blockades to satisfy the demands on either side. Right now there is cotton rotting on the docks of Savannah and Charleston that your factories desperately need. Your weavers are working only three days each week, and you have riots by the unemployed. The situation in both our countries is appalling.”
Henry Temple nodded agreement, but Jared Dunham had not finished.
“Yes, Lord Palmerston,” he went on, “America and England need each other very much, and those of us who see it clearly will work with you—secretly—to help destroy our common enemy, Bonaparte! We want no foreigners in our government, and you English cannot fight a war on two continents right now.”
“However, I am instructed by Mr. John Quincy Adams to tell you that your Orders in Council forbidding America’s trade with other countries unless we first stop in England or another British port must be canceled. It is a supreme piece of arrogance! We are a free nation, sir!”
Henry Temple, Lord Palmerston, sighed. The Orders in Council had been an extremely high-handed and desperate move by the English Parliament. “I am doing what I can,” he replied, “but we also have our share of hotheads in both Commons and Lords. Most of them have never held a sword or a pistol or seen battle, but all are more knowledgeable than either you or I. They still think of your victory over us as cheeky colonial luck. Until these gentlemen can be convinced that our fortunes are bound together, I, too, will have a rough road to travel.”
“Yes, an arrow aimed at England’s heart,” replied Lord Palmerston with savage hatred in his voice. “If he overcomes us, Yankee, he’ll quickly be across the seas and after you.”
Jared Dunham laughed, but the sound was more harsh than mirthful. “I am more well-aware than you, sir, that Napoleon sold us his Louisiana territories because he very much needed the gold America paid him in order to pay his troops. He could also not afford to garrison such a vast area peopled mostly with English-speaking Americans, and wild red Indians. Even the French-speaking Creoles of New Orleans are more American than French. They are, after all, the relatives of the Ancient Regime wiped out by the revolution that helped to bring Napoleon to power. I know that if the emperor thought he could have both American gold and American territory he would take them. He cannot though, and he would do well to remember the outcome of America’s war with England.”
“Damn me, if you’re not direct and to the point, sir!”
“A distinctly American trait, m’lord.”
“By God, Yankee, I like you!” replied Lord Palmerston. “I suspect we will do quite well together. You have already done quite well for a colonial,” he chuckled, leaning forward and refilling his guest’s glass from the decanter at his elbow. “I must congratulate you on your election to White’s. It is quite a first for them. Not only an American, but one who earns his own keep! I am surprised the walls didn’t come crashing down.”
“Yes,” Jared smiled now. He liked Lord Palmerston’s sense of humor. “I understand that I am one of the very few Americans ever admitted to that sacred grove.”
Palmerston laughed. “True, Yankee, but you realize, of course, that a true gentleman’s riches are supposed to just be there. No matter that too many of our gentlemen are badly debt-ridden, and quite to let in the pockets, they remain nonetheless unsullied by work. You must have powerful friends, Yankee.”
“If I am now a member of White’s it is because you wanted it so, m’lord, so let us not fence with one another, and my name is Jared, not ‘Yankee.’ ”
“And I am Henry, Jared. If our mission is to succeed you must associate with the right people here in London. It would be odd indeed if we were seen together without some obvious, harmless connection. Your cousin, Sir Richard of Dunham Hall, was a good starting point, and then there is your eventual inheritance from the current lord of Wyndsong Manor.”
“And, of course,” remarked Jared wryly, “my very full purse.”
“Noted reverently by the mamas of every fledging making her debut this season,” chuckled Lord Palmerston.
“Good God, no! I am afraid I shall be a great disappointment to the mamas, Henry. I enjoy the bachelor life too much to settle down yet. A skillful divertissement, yes, but a wife? No, thank you!”
“I understand your cousin, Lord Thomas, is lately arrived from America with his wife and two daughters. Have you called on them yet? I hear one of his girls is pure perfection, and already settling the gentlemen of the ton to poetry.”
“I only know Thomas Dunham,” replied Jared. “I have never even been to Wyndsong Manor Island, nor have I met his family. I believe he has twin daughters, but I know nothing of them, and I have no time right now for giggling debutantes.” He drained his glass, and abruptly changed the subject. “I’m after timbermasts in the Baltic. I assume England can use some.”
“Lord yes! Napoleon may be superior to us on the land right now, but England still controls the seas. Unfortunately the only decent timbermasts in quantity come from the Baltic area.”
“I’ll see what I can do, Henry.”
“Will you be back in England afterwards?”
“No. I’ll go directly home from Russia. You see I am expected to be a visible patriot also, and so as soon as I get home I must take my Baltimore clipper out on patrol. I remove impressed American seamen from English ships.”
“Do you indeed?” drawled Lord Palmerston.
“I do,” and Jared Dunham laughed. “Sometimes I wonder if the whole world has not gone mad, Henry. Here I am working as an undercover agent for my government in cooperation with your government, and then upon finishing my mission here in Europe I shall hurry home to do battle with the British navy. You don’t think that slightly mad?”
Henry Temple was forced to join his American guest in genuine laughter. “You certainly have a more unique viewpoint than I do, Jared. It is all madness, but that is due to Napoleon, and his insatiable desire to be emperor of the world. Once we have destroyed him all will be well again between us. You wait and see, my Yankee friend. Wait and see!”
The two men soon took leave of one another. Lord Palmerston slipped first from the private room in White’s Club where they had been meeting, and Jared Dunham departed minutes later.
As he rode in his carriage, Jared felt along the velvet seat for the flat jeweler’s case he had tossed inside earlier that evening. It contained a diamond bracelet of the first quality, his going-away present to Gillian. He knew she would be disappointed, for she was expecting a great deal more than a bracelet. She was expecting something he could not give her.
Gillian expected a declaration of his intentions once she was widowed, an event that seemed imminent, but he had no intention of marrying—at least not yet and certainly not Gillian. Gillian Abbott had slept with half the fashionable and unfashionable bucks in London, and she assumed he didn’t know it. He would enjoy her favors this one last time, proffer his gift, and bid her farewell, explaining that he must return to America. The diamond bracelet should soothe her. He had no illusions about why Gillian Abbott wanted to marry him. Jared Dunham was a wealthy man.
He might never have been, had it not been for the foresight of his maternal grandmother. Sarah Lightbody loved all her grandchildren, but realized objectively that only one of them, Jared, had the need for her wealth.
Her daughter Elizabeth had three children, and although she loved them equally, her stern husband, John Dunham—a pious hypocrite if Sarah Lightbody had ever seen one—was always singling out his younger son, Jared, for abuse.
At first Sarah Lightbody had not understood the reasons for her son-in-law’s behavior. It bordered on the cruel. Jared was a handsome boy. Indeed, he and Jonathan, his elder brother, were identical in looks. Jared was well mannered, and highly intelligent, yet if the two boys were caught misbehaving it was always Jared who was blamed and beaten, Jonathan let off with a warning. Jared was criticized for the very things Jonathan was praised for. And then one day, Sarah Lightbody suddenly realized the reason. There could be only one Dunham heir, and John thought that if he could break Jared’s spirit he would protect Jonathan’s inheritance and position. Then, when Jonathan took over the Dunham shipyards, he would have an obedient and underpaid clerk in Jared.
Fortunately, the brothers’ ambitions were not similar. Jonathan had the Dunhams’ love of shipbuilding, and was a skillful, inventive ship designer. Jared, however, was a merchant-adventurer like his Lightbody relations. He found that making money was the supreme game. He enjoyed pitting his wily mind against odds and winning. His instincts were excellent and he never seemed to lose.
Because Sarah Lightbody’s home and heart were always available to Jared, she was the one to whom he turned. The one who was always honored with his confidences and his dreams. In his youth he had never complained of his father’s unfair treatment, bearing all stoically, even when his grandmother was tempted to take a poker to her coldhearted son-in-law’s head. Sarah had never understood her daughter’s love for the man.
When Sarah Lightbody was close to death she made a will. Then she called Jared to her side, and told him what she had done.
He had been astounded, then grateful, and had made no foolish protestations. She could see his subtle mind already working on his inheritance.
“Invest and reinvest, as I’ve taught you,” she said to him. “Keep an ace or two up your sleeve, boy, and remember to always have a rainy-day fund.”
He nodded. “I’ll never leave myself short, Gram. You know, of course, that he’ll try and get his hands on your money. I’m not yet twenty-one.”
“You will be in a few months, boy, and until then your uncle and my lawyers will help you keep him at bay. Hold your ground, Jared. He’ll cry disaster, but I know for a fact that the Dunham shipyards have never been in better shape. Don’t let him fool you. My fortune is meant to free you from him.”
“He wants me to marry Chastity Brewster,” said Jared.
“She’s not right for you, boy! You’ll need a creature of fire to hold your interest. Tell me, what do you want to do right now?”
“Travel. Study. I want to go to Europe. I want to see what they want in the way of American goods, and what they have to offer us in return. I want to learn something about the Far East. I think there’s a helluva trade to be had from China, and you can bet that the English will be there first if there is.”
“Aye,” the old woman said, her eyes misting with dreams there was no time to fulfill. “There’s a great age coming for this country, and damnation! I wish I were going to be here for it!”
She had died peacefully in her sleep several weeks later, and when the news of his inheritance was made known, Jared’s father tried to claim the fortune for his shipyards.
“You’re underage,” he said coldly, ignoring the fact that his son’s coming of age was but a few weeks away. “Therefore it is up to me to administer your money. What could you possibly know of investment? You would squander it.”
“And just how do you plan to administer my money?” demanded Jared just as coldly.
Jonathan stood back, seeing the clash coming.
“I don’t have to answer the questions of a stripling,” was John Dunham’s icy reply.