Rapture Becomes Her

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Authors: Shirlee Busbee

BOOK: Rapture Becomes Her
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Also by Shirlee Busbee
Scandal Becomes Her
Seduction Becomes Her
Surrender Becomes Her
Passion Becomes Her
 
 
 
Rapture Becomes Her
 
 
SHIRLEE BUSBEE
 
 
 
ZEBRA BOOKS
KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP.
www.kensingtonbooks.com
All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.
For a pair of people who do, truly, make my
life a little less complicated—thanks!
MICHELLE SHARROCK—my patient Web designer who
is doing her best to drag me screaming and kicking into
the twenty-first century. She deserves
great
sympathy.
AND
JERRY MUNN—my favorite blackberry picker,
the kind you eat, and my main man when it comes
to delving into the mysteries of my computer.
He deserves some sympathy, too!
AND
As always, HOWARD, truly the love of my life.
Chapter 1
H
e was going to die, Barnaby thought incredulously. He was going to drown in the middle of the night, in the midst of a storm sweeping across the English Channel, and no one would ever know what had happened to the most recent holder of the title Viscount Joslyn. He would have simply vanished.
A crackling bolt of silver lightning snaked across the black night sky, and through the heavy rain, Barnaby glanced desperately around, trying to get his bearings, searching frantically for something to use to save himself, but all that met his gaze was roiling seas. There was no land or sign of rescue to be seen. He was going to die, he thought again as the brightness from the lightning vanished and he was left alone in the blackness. Fighting to keep afloat in the churning water, he admitted that there would be some in London who would rejoice at his passing, and heading that list would be his newly met English cousin, Mathew Joslyn.
Mathew had been furious that the title, long considered his, was going to an American and with it the Joslyn family fortune and estates. “A bloody, half-breed colonist, Viscount Joslyn? It is an insult!” Mathew snarled at their first meeting three months ago in October in the London solicitor’s office.
Barnaby didn’t blame Mathew for being angry. In Mathew’s shoes he might have felt the same way, but he wasn’t about to allow the slur to pass. “You are mistaken,” Barnaby drawled. “It was my grandmother who was half-Cherokee.” He smiled, showing his excellent teeth. “But I warn you—you would be wise not to use that term again in my hearing. As for being a colonist . . .” His black eyes full of mockery, he continued. “I think you forget that America gained her independence from Britain a decade ago. I am a citizen of the United States.”
“Very well,” Mathew snapped, his cheeks faintly flushed, “but it is insupportable that someone like you should think to step so easily into command of my great-uncle’s estates. Good God, man, you don’t know the first thing about running an estate like Windmere. You’re little more than a backwoods upstart!”
Barnaby held on to his temper with an effort, thinking that it wouldn’t help his cause any if his first act as Lord Joslyn was to throttle his cousin. He took a deep breath and, letting that last comment ride for now, said curtly, “I would remind you that I am not
un
educated and that I have been overseeing my own plantation in Virginia for a number of years. I’ll grant you that Green Hill is not as vast as Windmere—there will be differences, but I’m quite capable of managing Windmere.”
Mathew’s lips tightened. “Perhaps, but you are a fool if you think that someone with a grandmother who is a half . . . uh, part savage will be eagerly accepted by the
ton
as Viscount Joslyn.”
“Considering the situation with France, you should be more worried about the fact that my grandmother’s father was a Frenchman,” Barnaby retorted. The expressions of horror on the faces of those present at this new abomination had Barnaby biting the inside of his cheek to keep from grinning. His gaze swept the handsome room, and with his foes momentarily silenced, he rose to his impressive height and walked to the door. His hand on the knob, he looked back at Mathew and said softly, “Upstart I may be, but I’ve never lived in the backwoods and you, sir, can go hang—and for all I care, take the damn title with you!”
It had been a pleasurable moment, but as he lifted his face above the next wave and the cold seeped deeper into his bones, Barnaby tried to remember the events leading up to his present predicament, but his thoughts were sluggish and erratic. Like a serpent curling around its prey, the icy water was inexorably draining the life from him and with every second, his will to survive wavered.
It would be so easy, so simple, he thought, to let the storm have its way, so easy to stop fighting and allow himself to be pulled down into the depths. . . . A wave slapped him in the face, startling him and shattering the seductive song of death that crooned in his head.
With a curse, he renewed his struggle to stay afloat in the darkness—if only for a few seconds longer. Ignoring the stinging pain at the back of his head, he vaguely remembered freeing his knife fastened at his ankle and then jettisoning his boots and heavy greatcoat, along with his jacket, within minutes of hitting the water, knowing they would only weigh him down. He’d held on to the knife for a while, until he realized it was hampering his ability to swim and then reluctantly he’d let the waves take it. Those memories did him little good because he still had no idea how he had ended up in the Channel, yet oddly enough he knew he
was
in the English Channel. But where, or how he had gotten there, he had no inkling. His mind was blank—as much from the lethal cold as the blood he had lost from the wound on the back of his head.
He frowned. How the devil did he know he had a wound? And how did he know that the wound had bled? Again he had no answers, and as his head slipped beneath the onslaught of another wall of water, the urge to end it, to let the cold and the Channel have its way, was nearly impossible to resist.
But as his friends often pointed out, he could be stubborn as a mule, and with a powerful kick of his long legs he surged up above the waves. He wasn’t, he swore, with a fierce grin, going to make it easy for anyone or anything to kill him. Another streak of lightning lit the black sky and in that moment, Barnaby spied something that made his heart leap: several planks linked together bobbed in the water not six feet from him. He half recognized them as being a section of the floor of the yacht he had inherited along with everything else owned by the late Seventh Viscount Joslyn. Fighting his way toward that beacon of hope those boards represented, he struggled to think where the yacht had been moored and then it came to him: near Eastbourne on the Sussex coast. But what in the hell had he been doing there?
He had no time for further thought—all of his focus was on surviving—and though it seemed that it took him hours to reach those planks, in mere minutes, his fingers brushed against the slippery wood. Getting himself out of the water took longer, the tossing waves and the shifting, slick surface of the planks thwarting his efforts, but finally, he was able to heave himself aboard the makeshift raft.
Gasping for breath, he rolled over onto his back and with his face pelted by rain, he stared up at the black sky. He was freezing, his teeth chattering, his body shaking from the cold, and he suspected he had traded one form of death for another. Exposure would kill him as sure as a hangman’s noose, but he wouldn’t die, he consoled himself grimly, by drowning. And that, he thought as he drifted into unconsciousness, was a victory of sorts.
 
“Is he dead?” asked Jeb Brown ghoulishly above the shrieking wind and rain whipping around outside the best room at The Crown. It was a pleasant room with high, open-beamed ceilings and a gleaming oak floor covered here and there with cheerful rag rugs, the space dominated by a huge bed, impressively draped with a rich green silk canopy. A fire glowed orange and gold on the brick hearth; soft yellow light from several candles lit by Mrs. Gilbert, the widowed owner of The Crown, flickered about the room and, despite the snarling storm, cast a cozy spell.
Mrs. Gilbert, her liberally streaked gray hair half hidden beneath a muslin cap, gave a sharp shake of her head. “No, he’s not dead. Half drowned and near frozen, but not dead.”
Jeb looked to the other occupant in the room, a tall, fair-haired youth wearing breeches, boots and a leather jerkin over a billowy long-sleeved shirt. Looking beyond the boy’s garb, closer inspection revealed that the slim shape and finely etched features belonged to a young woman, her thick silvery-blond hair pulled back into a queue tied with a bit of black ribbon.
“I tell you, Miss Emily, it was pure luck I spied him,” Jeb said, his wrinkled fisherman’s face full of wonder. “With the storm and all, it’s black as midnight out there, and if it hadn’t been for this bloody big bolt of lightning at the very second I was looking in his direction, I never would have seen him.” He shook his head. “Good for him that we had a run tonight else we’d be finding his body washed up somewhere along the shore—if we found it at all.”
Emily Townsend nodded and walked closer to stare down at the man Jeb had pulled from the waters of the Channel. “He was indeed lucky,” Emily said, her gaze running over the man who lay still and silent beneath Mrs. Gilbert’s examination. His hair was black, his skin so dark it was almost swarthy—except for the worrisome blue cast to his lips. From what she could see, he was an exceptionally tall, fit man—and a stranger to all of them.
Mrs. Gilbert muttered, “He had the devil’s own luck, I’d say.” Looking up from her examination, she added briskly, “And most likely will recover with no ill effects.” Her hand on the cold, damp blankets that Jeb had wrapped the stranger in once he’d dragged him on board his boat and stripped off the wet clothes, she glanced over her shoulder. “Miss Emily, you need to leave the room now,” she ordered, “and let Jeb and I put this nightshirt on him and get him into a warm bed.”
When Emily hesitated, Mrs. Gilbert’s plump face softened and she said, “I know you have dozens of questions to ask Jeb, but go fetch those hot water bottles I left in the kitchen.” When Emily’s jaw took on that mulish cast they all knew so well, Mrs. Gilbert said firmly, “It wouldn’t be proper for you to stay. By the time you return, we’ll have him snug and warm between the sheets. Now go.”
Emily snorted at Mrs. Gilbert’s determination to treat her like some gently born miss just out of the schoolroom. It was true, she was gently born—her father had been the local squire until his death seven years ago—but she’d turned six and twenty months ago and was no child. And, she reminded herself, if it weren’t for her, Jeb wouldn’t have been running a load of contraband from France tonight and the stranger wouldn’t have been found. She had every right to remain, but from past experience she knew that there was no arguing with Mrs. Gilbert and reluctantly she left the room. Never one to brood, by the time she reached the inn’s kitchen she was smiling. No one, she admitted ruefully, as she picked up the hot water bottles and accepted the heated brick thrust into her hands by Flora, the middle Gilbert daughter, no matter what age or standing, disobeyed Mrs. Gilbert. Even her cousin, the dissolute Squire Townsend, was known to scamper away like a schoolboy to escape a tongue lashing by Mrs. Gilbert.
When she had returned, the stranger was decently garbed in an old nightshirt that had belonged to Mrs. Gilbert’s deceased husband and tucked beneath the quilts. The heated brick was placed at his feet; the water bottles snuggled up against his sides. Mrs. Gilbert shooed Jeb from the room and after taking one last look around, said to Emily, “I’ll send Mary up with some warm water and a cloth—you can clean that nasty gash on his head.” With a meaningful look at Emily, she added, “We’ve wasted enough time as it is—the others need to be on their way.”
Emily opened her mouth to protest but Mrs. Gilbert shook a finger at her. “I know,” said Mrs. Gilbert, “you think you should be the one down there dealing with them, but for once act like the lady you were raised to be and stay up here out of sight. Please.”
Emily hesitated. “Keep an eye out for anything out of the ordinary,” she finally said. “My cousin has been acting strangely lately and I think he is spying on me.” She took a deep breath and confessed in a rush, “Every night for the past week or so someone, and I suspect it is my cousin, has tried the knob to my room.” At Mrs. Gilbert’s quick intake of breath, she said quickly, “Don’t worry. I keep the door locked and a chest of drawers pushed against it—as does Anne—so whoever it was goes away. But it would not be good if my cousin found me gone from my bed.” She swallowed. “If he were to discover what we are about—”
Mrs. Gilbert looked grim. “You don’t think he saw you leave tonight and followed you when you left the manor, do you?”
“I don’t believe so, but I’ve had the feeling ever since I slipped from my room that something wasn’t right, that something was wrong.” She glanced at the stranger. “First him and then . . .” She shivered. “I feel like a goose, but I still haven’t been able to stop myself from looking over my shoulder all night. I keep feeling as if someone is watching me . . . us.” Wearily, she added, “If the door to my bedroom was forced and Jeffery discovered my room was empty this is probably the first place he’d look.”
Mrs. Gilbert’s lips thinned. “Well, he won’t find you. We’ll have you on your way back to the manor quicker than a cat can lick its ear!” Giving Emily a fond pat on the shoulder, she said, “You worry too much, my dear—you always have. The stranger’s arrival has put us all in a dither, but I’m sure that’s all it is.” She looked around the room one last time and said, “And now I must go and see if Jeb and the others are loaded up and ready to leave. I’ll send Mary to you with those rags and the warm water. She can keep you company while I’m gone.”
Mrs. Gilbert bustled from the room and shortly Mary showed up with the cloths and bowl of water. At seventeen, Mary was the youngest of the five Gilbert daughters, and her blue eyes wide with excitement she approached the bed and stared at the stranger.
“Coo!” she exclaimed. “He isn’t dead, is he?” she asked, echoing Jeb’s earlier question.
Emily smiled faintly and said, “No. He just looks dead, but your mother says he will recover.” Her smile became a grin. “And we all know your mother is never wrong.”
Mary grinned back at her. “You can wager your last guinea on that!”

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