Mark of Caine Trilogy: Book One: Hidden in the Shadows (Victorian Villains) (8 page)

In the morning, after she’d eaten and slept,
she would instruct him to order a coach to take her to London. Louise or her
father would pay the cost. She was not a prisoner.

As to the rest....

Tanner distressed her in a way that went
beyond the obvious. What he had done was a violation—she might have consented (she
wasn’t entirely sure she hadn’t) if he’d wooed her, flattered her and made her
laugh as Louise’s gallant Lieutenant Stirling had done during their courtship.

No. Laura had to admit the truth if only to
herself. Gallantry would never do for her. She was not as pure in heart as her
sweet friend, Louise. The young chivalrous boys of her youth had held no
appeal.

Tanner had not been gentle. She could tell
as much from the bruises on her buttocks. It had been a relief not to have to
think what to do or say. The power (and pleasure) of the sex act had taken her
mind off where she had been for the past eighteen months, shut up with
shrieking madwomen and her own terrifying thoughts.

He’d said it was hard to explain the
impulse that had overtaken him. She was having equal difficulty explaining her feelings
now. What he
ought
to have done,
Tanner did not do. But conversely, she did not behave with him as a lady ought.
When she undressed in the hedge maze, she hoped he would look.

Even now, disordered though she was in her
feelings, she was drawn to him. A terrible sort of craving had overtaken her to
have him near again.

What did he want with her? He declared he
was not heroic as though it were a point of pride. The shadow the man stood in
was too dense to penetrate. Mr.
Caine’s
mind was difficult
to read. Dr. Rutledge had been a pane of glass by comparison. She had known
exactly what to say to the doctor to make him believe what she wanted him to
believe about her.

Tanner
Caine
on
the other hand...

Perhaps that was the attraction. She had
married the one person she could not approach as anything except herself.

Even when his flesh was moving inside hers
in that profoundly intimate union, her deliverer remained an enigma. As hidden
in the shadows as he ever was.

§

HE DID not promise her and that was the
only decent thing he could reflect on about his conduct today. Tanner
remembered other men in history who had been driven to desperation by beautiful
women.

At least he’d had the courage to look her
in the eyes during the act. She’d watched him with a dark serious gaze, solemn
and perhaps a little dismayed.

That was not the man he’d set out to be
with her but it was too late now. He could not turn back now. In a way, taking
her that way had settled the rest of it for him too.

Tanner sat in the dim kitchen, waiting for
the kettle to heat for her bath. Bread, cheese and a slab of salt pork would do
for their meal. He missed the sea and fresh fish.

A single candle burned in its holder in the
centre of the table. He picked up the pistol and began taking it apart,
cleaning the barrel and flint. He idly pushed a measure of gunpowder into the
chamber.

His hair hung lank and black in his eyes.
She had said it absorbed the light like indigo ink. His mind turned again to
their wedding. She was … she was …
heartbreakingly
beautiful.

And she was
his
. In the eyes of the law, the girl was his responsibility now.

Women were not beings he was comfortable
dealing with.

He was not weak like his brother—or lucky.
Tanner
Caine
made his own luck. The notice paid him
by Queen Victoria was the only measure of luck he’d received in twenty-nine years
and he did not mean to squander it.

Tanner lifted the candle and moved to the
cracked mirror over the washstand. His marred visage glared back at him.
Half demon, half dandy.
Tanner grinned at the notion. A
dandy he never was and never would be. He had learned a long time ago that
those attracted to the right side of his face rarely stayed long after seeing
the left. For this reason, he treasured the left over the right.

Half of his image was almost as perfect as
Miss Mayhew’s.

When he was a boy and lived by the sea, he
spent a good deal of time alone watching the ocean. He came to know every shade
of green from the weeds in the seabed to the sky just before a storm. Her eyes were
like looking into that green again. They reflected every shade he knew as a
boy.

Tanner wished he could tell her that. His
sentiments were unlikely to be novel. She’d likely heard her looks praised many
times before. Ladies-in-waiting had their pick of the crop. Young men, old men,
footmen, soldiers—Laura Mayhew would have had her share of admirers.

He should tell her anyway. It was better than
saying nothing at all.

After dinner, he would put her in his room
for the night. It was the only one that had fresh bedding and a fire lit. There
were five bed chambers at Hawthorne Hall. Only one had ever been used.

Tanner lifted the pistol. His father had
cursed him with a curse.

He’d never had to kill anything so
beautiful before.

§

To be continued...

Book Two: Whispers in
the Fog

Catherine Lloyd loves reading, watching great episodic
television, and writing romance. Love stories that are hot and soul-satisfying
are her drug of choice. She was inspired to write
Victorian Villains
from the gothic romance novels she devoured as a
kid. Phyllis A. Whitney, Victoria Holt and Daphne du
Maurier
combined suspense and romance without the use of vampires.

She decided to release her Victorian stories in
installments in the tradition of serialized fiction of the Victorian Age.
Magazines nicknamed “the penny dreadful” published genre literature at a low
cost in bi-weekly installments. The Victorian Age was an exotic time of
science, exploration, high drama and passionate romance on stage and in books.
The villains were psychologically fascinating. And hot!

The author has two grown children, two stepdaughters, a cat
named Harry (who thinks he’s a dog) and four grandsons. She lives with her
long-suffering spouse in the country where she enjoys having no hobbies and
writes full time.

Follow Catherine on Amazon to be notified of new releases
in this series.

Contact Catherine Lloyd at
[email protected]

Or visit:
Writewood
Creations

Or visit her
Author Page on Amazon

§

DEAR READER: In the age of
ebooks
, readers are the curators of literature. The New
York Times doesn’t have as much influence! Thank you for taking a moment to
leave a review of this novel and helping other readers in making a decision. ~
Catherine Lloyd
~

§

The
Windemere
Hall Trilogy

Book
One: Betrothed

Book
Two: Betrayed

Book
Three: Beguiled

Four brides.
Four seasons.
One rocky
road to romance.

THE JILTING
~
Summer

Best friends forever.
Until one of them falls in love
.
The groom is AWOL. It’s Scout Rutherford’s wedding day and in the next 24
hours, she is shot at, lied to, forced to reveal a secret, abducted at gunpoint
and thrown down a ravine. But a night spent in hiding with her best friend
Ryder Dean puts her in the worst danger of all.

LIE FOR ME
~
Autumn

Sworn
enemies, until they pretend to be lovers.
Is the lie really the truth?
Shelby Porter doesn’t like Sheriff
Sawyer McIntyre and everyone in town knows it except Dolly Porter, Shelby and
Sawyer’s much-loved, daffy aunt. Dolly’s health hasn’t been good of late. She
worries too much over Shelby’s single status. To ease her mind, Shelby tells a
little white lie that morphs into a whopper, until she is standing in Sheriff
McIntyre’s bedroom at three o’clock in the morning with a teeny request: “Lie
for me.” And that’s when things really get scary.

THE WAY HOME
~
Winter

The one thing they
agree on is to never fall in love
. Mandrake Falls is cocooned in a thick
blanket of snow when Michael Shannon, the star of
Tomorrow Never Comes
is dropped like a bomb into Hudson Grace’s
bachelor life. For the next seventy-two hours, due to a bureaucratic mix-up,
the forester is stuck with the daytime diva.
A fire on the
hearth.
A raging blizzard.
And
a three-year-old holy terror.
Who will crack first?

LOVE RISING
~
Spring

Nobody expected them
to fall in love
. Nerdy stage manager, Jeremy Marks sees right through
Jocelyn Tate’s stunning beauty to the vulnerable girl she is underneath. It’s
no secret he’s in love with her. Jocelyn thinks Jeremy is sweet but poor and
she’s determined to marry a rich man--preferably a billionaire. Jeremy doesn’t
have a hope until a mysterious notice appears in the Gazette announcing their
engagement. Thrown together, the young
couple form
a
bond to find out who has it in for them.

MANDRAKE
FALLS FOUR SEASONS ROMANCE ~ Boxed Set Edition

Contemporary Romantic Comedy.
Get
all four titles for one low price!

Love.
In a dangerous time.

WANTON

Callie of
Wideopens
is the
beautiful 18-year-old ward of Jane and Ethan. Ethan has had impure thoughts
about his ward. Jane is dying and the crone who supplies her herbs has had a
vision of a terrible act. In a misguided attempt to alter the fate of her
husband, Jane makes a desperate request of Callie. In doing so, she unwittingly
sets in motion the crone’s prophecy.

WASTREL

Lord Sebastian Redford’s drinking, card-playing and
womanizing is legendary at court and his brazen affair with the wife of the
most powerful man in England has put his life in danger. To ward off disaster,
Lord Redford’s man hastily arranges a marriage of convenience to Beatrice Fall.
Sebastian’s bride proves to be anything but convenient when he consummates
their marriage and their marriage of convenience becomes a dangerous wedding of
illicit love.

TRAITOR

The Earl of Dorset has betrothed his only child, pampered
18-year-old Lady Elspeth to the French lord, Tyndale to secure his
favour
with the new French king. The trip to Canterbury is
a great adventure accompanied by her father’s Captain of the Guard, Griffith of
Nottingham. The captain is a skilled bowman, loyal to the Earl and admired by
Lady Elspeth—he is also a double agent working to restore King John to the
throne.

Purchase the Boxed Edition for
$4.99!

Swords, horses and medieval adventure! Get
all three for one low price.

SOLDIER
~
A
Medieval Christmas Novella

Two amoral men are transformed by love. In
Mercenary,
Broderick has been made a new
father but his infant son is failing to thrive. Then Tess is brought before
him, the daughter of the lord whose lands Broderick has usurped. The new master
of
Castlemuir
confines the young woman to his inner
sanctum to nurse his son, but his desire for the silent girl drives him to take
dangerous risks. In
Jester
, Dumas is
a hideously deformed clown who travels the countryside in a caravan with his
young assistant, Fallon, a young woman disguised as a boy. In return for
keeping her identity a secret, Fallon must perform for the misshapen man each
night. But Dumas has a secret of his own as Fallon soon learns after a
performance at
Castlemuir
Hall.