Healing Hearts
Authors: Taryn Kincaid
Healing Hearts
By Taryn Kincaid
As a girl, Emma Whiteside asked Adam Caldwell, Viscount Riverton, to wait for her to be of marriageable age. Now, twelve years later, Emma hates Adam as much as she once loved him, holding the former army major responsible for the death of her brother on the battlefield.
Adam already blames himself for the loss of the men under his command. But the fiery young woman Emma’s become sparks his arousal, as well as emotions Adam thought long dead. The passion between them makes him want to reclaim the man he was before the war.
Though she tries to hold on to her hatred, Emma’s longing for Adam is undeniable, especially after the two share a smoldering kiss. Still, Adam is certain no woman would want a man so damaged. Can Emma prove him wrong?
Dear Reader,
A new year always brings with it a sense of expectation and promise (and maybe a vague sense of guilt). Expectation because we don’t know what the year will bring exactly, but promise because we always hope it will be good things. The guilt is due to all of the New Year’s resolutions we make with such good intentions.
This year, Carina Press is making a New Year’s resolution we know we won’t have any reason to feel guilty about: we’re going to bring our readers a year of fantastic editorial and diverse genre content. So far, our plans for 2011 include staff and author appearances at reader-focused conferences such as the RT Booklovers Convention in April, where we’ll be offering up goodies, appearing on panels, giving workshops and hosting a few fun activities for readers. We’re also cooking up several genre-specific release weeks, during which we’ll highlight individual genres. So far we have plans for steampunk week and unusual fantasy week. Readers will have access to free reads, discounts, contests and more as part of our week-long promotions!
But even when we’re not doing special promotions, we’re still offering something special to our readers in the form of the stories authors are delivering to Carina Press that we’re passing on to you. From sweet romance to sexy, and military science fiction to fairy-tale fantasy, from mysteries to romantic suspense, we’re proud to be offering a wide variety of genres and tales of escapism to our customers in this new year. Every week is a new adventure, and we want to bring our readers along on the journey. Be daring, be brave and try something new with Carina Press in 2011!
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The wind blew off the sea, moaning and wild, buffeting the man pacing the cliffs.
Hidden by a wall of rock, Emma Whiteside shielded her eyes against the bite of salt spray and continued to watch him, as she did every dawn.
Today, she thought. Today she would approach him at last. Confront him. Give him the royal tongue-lashing he deserved. She had nothing left to lose, after all. And she might not have the opportunity tomorrow. Or ever again.
The things I will say to you, Riverton, will peel the skin from your bones and lay you lower than anything Napoleon’s
Grande Armée
had to offer.
A small voice nagged Emma from within, the advice reasonable considering her current dire circumstances.
Better to seek the man’s aid than chide him.
But she snapped her mind closed against the unwanted counsel. The viscount was the last man on earth she’d ever ask for help.
Grief chilled her, numbed her heart, deadened the tender feelings she’d once had for him. Only her need for vengeance broke through her frozen emotions now. She longed to set Riverton in his place, however little effect her words might have on a man so impervious to remorse.
But once again Emma could neither confront him nor beseech him. The evidence of his stiff-necked pride—and her own—continued to hold her back with as much force as if an unseen hand pressed down upon her shoulder. She glared in the man’s direction, as if it were
his
hand oppressing her.
Fierce gusts punished him, impeding his tortured progress. Pain twisted his handsome features but he confronted the gale without flinching. A tiny chip splintered off from the ice sheath encasing Emma’s heart.
Damn him.
How do you bear it, Riverton? Are you made of stone?
She knew he was not. She saw the agony against which he fought, the stalwart way he pushed himself onward, despite the uneven gait that hampered his progress.
A cold blast of wind whistled past, ripping the hood of Emma’s cloak aside, whipping her hair against her neck. The frigid current stung her eyes, wringing reluctant tears. She blinked the moisture away and rubbed the damp trail from her cheeks.
No tears, she instructed herself. Not for him.
Never for him.
Riverton wore no coat or cravat. His linen flapped about him, white shirttails torn from his trousers—an unlikely flag of surrender when he refused to give quarter.
Did you stand so against the French?
Emma could think of no oath dark enough to curse a man so remarkably stoic. She envisioned him in her mind’s eye, saber raised, hastening up and down the lines, shouting at his men to hold: Major Adam Caldwell, Viscount Riverton, at his most courageous.
She shuddered, conjuring the brutal attack that haunted her grimmest moments, the scene clouded by smoke and thunder, blurred by the limits of her grief and imagination. The battle where her twin had fallen, belly pierced by an enemy bayonet.
Michael admired you so, Riverton. I will never stop blaming you. ’Tis time you knew it.
Anger burned within her breast, bright as her love for the viscount once had.
And yet…her gaze swept him again, lingering on the trousers that molded his muscular thighs, the loose shirt that emphasized the breadth of his shoulders. ’Twas but the vicious wind that stole her breath, she told herself.
Why was he here? Why had he come
now?
What was he doing marching about the windswept cliffs so close to the manor when he had not had the decency to call upon her family? He had not answered the letters she’d sent after they’d first learned of Michael’s death at Albuhera. And now, considering her current untenable situation, Riverton’s presence here seemed too cruel a taunt.
Go to him,
her inner voice dared again.
Ask him for aid. You know he will help you.
Emma straightened and shook her head. She knew no such thing. She did not know this resolute, unyielding man at all anymore. No matter how dire her plight, she would never beg Adam Caldwell for a farthing. She might have little of value left, but she still had her pride. And that pride demanded she read him a scold—if she could only muster the courage to do so.
Emma studied Riverton’s grim, determined face, experienced etched upon the angles like the engraved lines on a printmaker’s plate. She stifled the sigh that threatened to escape her.
What would it be like to be held in this man’s powerful arms, crushed against his hard body? Odd tingles raced down her spine. Nightmares of war may have chased her girlhood dreams but her fascination with Riverton persisted, despite the world-weary air that now settled over him like a cloak.
The viscount planted one booted foot in front of the other and trudged across the rock-strewn ledge mottled with dying chalkgrass and choked with brambles. He clenched his jaw, as if grinding his teeth to bite back the pain.
Grudging respect for the single-minded effort with which he exercised his wounded limb stole over her. Warring emotions wracked her. She fought an urge to run to him, to soothe his knotted brow with her fingertips, stroking the grooved lines of care away. Bittersweet passions swelled and crested until her heart raced. Despite the wretched weather, a surge of heat engulfed her. She flattened her palms against her warming cheeks.
Damn his eyes.
“I am not that silly minx in pigtails anymore and I will not let you do this to me again!”
Emma gripped the embroidered handkerchief she had labored over with the last of her silk thread, never finished when the skein ran out. She forced her fingers to unclench before she tore the fragile muslin square.
How her circumstances had changed since that long-ago garden party!
Twelve years earlier, watching the viscount flirt with young ladies his own age, she’d marched over to him, abuzz with indignation. Throwing back her shoulders and jutting out her chin, she’d tugged on his coattails until he turned and smiled down at her.
“You have succeeded in capturing my complete and undivided attention, Miss Whiteside. Or should I call you ‘general’?”
The startling glint in his blue eyes—a sparkle bright as a shooting star streaking across the midnight sky—thrilled her. She’d ignored his gentle teasing.
“You will wait for me,” she’d ordered him.
He’d dropped to a knee, leaning toward her until mere inches separated his face from hers. A dark eyebrow lifted like an elegant black bird drifting into flight formation.
“What do you mean, poppet?”
“You will wait for me to grow. I will marry you and be your lady.”
He hadn’t laughed. Instead, he’d regarded her with wry solemnity.
“Of course, I will, poppet. You’ve stolen my heart. I will wait for you forever.”
Then he’d straightened, hauling her up with him and swinging her around until she’d shrieked with delight.
How stiff his left leg seemed now, in contrast to the nimble teenager he’d been. He favored it, as if uncertain whether the limb would bear his weight. She tamped down another unbidden flare of compassion.
A man like you will never need bend a knee.
But that was too callous a thought, she chided herself, even for a wretched man like Riverton.
Thank God she remained too far away to see his eyes. From the rigid set of his jaw, Emma suspected the horrors of war had doused the ready light that had once shined there. She was certain bleak shadows now dulled their remarkable blue the way a pall of smoke turned day to dusk on the battlefield.
Emma tried to stoke the fast-ebbing fires of her resentment. But the more she watched Riverton’s exhibition of sheer stubborn will, the more she softened, her pangs of longing growing ever more insistent.
Adam Caldwell still possessed the power to make her heart flutter. More so now as a virile man of nine and twenty than he had as a stripling of seventeen.
But she had lost too much. Her twin brother lay in a forgotten grave in Spain, her father had gone missing, and she would be turned out of her childhood home tomorrow.
Then what? How will I save Papa? How will I ever find him?
What if she could not secure a position as a governess or paid companion? Would she be forced to make her way in the world on her back? There was so little time left.
Talk to him.
Emma shivered and wrapped her cloak tighter around her to block out the persistent carping of the voice of reason. She knew now she was fooling herself. She would never confront the blasted Adam Caldwell. Not to dress him down. Not to ask his aid. But her predicament remained. High time to stop her useless spying on the wretched viscount and seek some other solution to her thorny dilemma.
Chores awaited her at the manor. The muslin torn from her few worn chemises would not block and stitch itself. Perhaps she could never satisfy Papa’s debts by embroidering handkerchiefs to sell at the village linen-draper and haberdasher shop, but at least she could stock the larder until she found a way to rescue Papa and save their home.
Some way other than the one with which Papa’s creditor had presented her.
Emma rose from her hiding place and brushed sand from her hands.
Riverton abruptly stopped pacing. He tilted around and stared straight at her. Emma shrank behind the stone outcropping again. Had he seen her? Impossible.
But his gaze skewered her like a rapier. He took the decision out of her hands.
“The show is over, madam. I’ve entertained you long enough.”
His deep voice reached her across the windy bluff, affecting her as if he stood close beside her, his hand encircling her wrist and pulling her forward. The rich timbre resonated through her, as intoxicating as sherry. Her hunger flared.
Emma took a gulp of salt-tinged air and emerged from concealment to face him.
“We meet again, Miss Whiteside.”
The young woman’s sudden appearance, after she’d remained hidden so long, broadsided Adam like a cannon shot.
He’d sensed her presence but had never actually seen her as anything more than a vague shadow, concealed in the gray mists of dawn as she darted to her secret observation post like a French sharpshooter. He had not placed her. Until now.
Her luminous countenance flooded with surprise as she swayed back against the shelf of rock, covering her mouth with two fingertips. The gesture drew Adam’s attention to her gently parted lips. Kissable lips.
Very.
“You did not expect me to know you, Miss Whiteside? You’ve changed a great deal. But I’d know you anywhere.”
Emma dropped her hand and her spine took on the brittle rigidity of iron. Swathed in her cloak, she gazed at him with fierce fire burning in her eyes, as long tendrils of wine-red hair escaped her hood and slashed her cheeks.
“Why have you come, Riverton?” Her tone could have peeled the rind from a lemon. He was not accustomed to such address; even during the war men had leapt to obey his barked commands. This young woman, such a study in contrasts, baffled him. His nostrils flared, like those of a beast aroused by its mate. His blood coursed faster.
Adam flicked his hand toward the steep cliffs and the churning waters that slapped the rocks below. “The air,” he informed her. “I’m taking it.”
“Why not? You’ve taken everything else precious to me.”
What in bloody hell was that supposed to mean?
Perhaps he
had
been tardy in paying his respects to her family. He had bided his time, healing his body, if not his soul, as he gathered his strength and—more recently—collected disturbing information in the village below. But devil take the wench, he was here
now.
Despite the physical and mental toll his presence on the windswept cliffs cost him.
Her acid words sizzled across the thick scar tissue encasing his heart, burning away all that no longer mattered. And undoubtedly producing the precise opposite of the effect she’d intended. It had been a long time since he’d looked at any woman with interest. But suddenly he hungered to run his hands over Emma’s flawless skin, taste her sweetness and tang on his tongue.
“Not
everything
precious, surely. I dare say we’d both have remembered
that.
”
His suggestive words found their mark. Color sprayed her face like a Spanish sunset, arousing him further. She did not pretend to misunderstand him, as a wilier girl would have. With no coy fan to hide behind, her emotions spilled across her expressive face as plainly written as the headlines of a broadsheet.
“I dare say your memory would be as suspect in that regard as in any other, my lord.”
“I’m rather certain the experience would prove unforgettable, madam. For both of us.”
What possessed him to say such outrageous, rag-mannered things to her? Was it the bold way she continued to hold his gaze with eyes the changeable color of a stormy sky? Or the troublesome rumors he’d heard at the local tavern?
“No doubt the war has robbed you of many things, my lord. As it has me.” Her gaze slid to his leg, the walking stick upon which he leaned, the edge of his jaw, where a thin, white scar crawled like a worm. “But despite the depths to which I may have fallen,
I
have managed retain my manners.”
He deserved nothing less than such a chiding, but he heard only half her rebuke.
“What depths?” he demanded, stepping forward and seizing her chin in his hand. Were the damned rumors true? If not, he’d flay the skin from the back of any man he heard spreading them. He tilted her face and stared into her eyes. “What depths, Emma?” Her color flared hotter and he felt the quickening of her pulse where the side of his hand rested against her throat. But she twisted out of his grasp.
“That is
my
business. I thank you for your interest in my affairs, my lord, but I shall take care of myself.”
Her cool, sarcastic words tore something within him. What had happened to her father? When last he’d seen George Whiteside, the man had been a complacent country squire, a regular fellow, if occasionally somewhat high in the instep, a man who’d sought the best for his children. Now his son and heir was dead and, if the gossip Adam had heard was correct, Whiteside had taken to drowning his grief, becoming a drunkard and inveterate gambler far out of his league. Was that it? Had Whiteside landed in dun territory, gambling away his daughter’s prospects along with her dowry?