Rachael Miles
Historical Romance
Lady Emmeline Hartley has overcome every obstacle life has thrown her way. A spinster, disappointed in love, Em is on the brink of a marriage of convenience, when the man who rejected her heart reappears in need of her help. It gives Em a chance to escape, put to use one of her most unusual talents–and perhaps convince him once and for all to risk his heart…
Adam Montclair–one of the most successful agents at the Home Office–rubs elbows with the highest levels of society. Even so, he wasn’t to the manor born. No matter how much he desires Em, as a match he is completely unsuitable. While it pains him to be near her, it’s a punishment he richly deserves. Now on a mission to uncover a plot against the government, Adam knows Em’s uncanny ability to recall voices will be essential. Yet as the two thwart the dangers in their path, it may become impossible to deny that Em is essential to happiness itself…
Book five in Miles’s The Muses’ Salon series (after Reckless in Red) delivers heady Regency romance featuring a refreshing heroine and a tantalizing mystery. Lady Emmeline Hartley permanently injured her legs at age six in the same accident that killed her mother and sisters. Her father abandoned her to be raised by servants, and Em has spent the intervening years caring for his estate with her faithful dog, Queen Bess, at her side. Now Em is on the brink of a marriage of convenience to longtime family friend Lord Colin Somerville—but she gets cold feet and flees on her wedding day, reluctantly accepting the aid of Adam Locksley, an agent of the Home Office and Em’s former lover, to get away. Though Em is angry at Adam over a perceived betrayal, Adam is determined to keep her safe. But in a delightful twist, the Home Office requests Em’s help to catch a burgeoning threat to England, and Adam and Em are quickly embroiled in a multitude of schemes. Em’s self-discovery is a delight to behold as she matures from impish child, to solemn bride-to-be, to fully self-actualized, independent woman working hand in hand with a partner. Series fans and new readers alike will be charmed.
— Publishers Weekly
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August 1819
The note was short. A time, a place, a handwriting she knew. But no apology.
Lady Emmeline Hartley read the note again.
I must see you. I wouldn’t ask, knowing how we parted. But I must say it: lives depend on it. Come to the great oak at midnight. The light of the moon will guide your way.
For months she’d imagined how she would
respond if Adam Locksley ever sent her such a note. After long con-
sideration, she’d determined she wouldn’t see him. She would let him and
his rabble-rousing friends go; she would do good in her own way. She
had her own funds. She didn’t need to overturn the aristocracy to feed
those on her estate or in her shire.
She threw the note into the fire.
But she had no choice but to meet Adam. A
week ago, Lord Colin Somerville had arrived, haggard and wounded both in
body and soul. He was her childhood defender, her dear and constant
friend. He’d asked for shelter and for secrecy. She’d promised him both.
She wouldn’t let her indiscretions alter that.
If she didn’t meet Adam, he would come to
the estate. He’d done it before, stood under her balcony with a hand-
ful of pebbles and hit every window but her own. In the months since
she’d seen him last, she’d moved her bedroom to another wing of the
manor, so whatever window his pebbles struck, it couldn’t be hers. That
made it more likely that Colin would hear him, and then she’d have to
explain. The thought of her upstanding defender pacing off a duel with
her criminal lover twisted her stomach.
No, she had to meet Adam. But she didn’t have to trust him.
She dressed quickly in a dark riding dress
covered by her grandfather’s greatcoat, shortened to fit her height.
Removing a muff pistol from her dressing table, she carefully loaded the
chamber, then tucked it into an inner pocket she’d sewn for the
purpose. When Em picked up her walking stick, her giant Newfoundland dog, Queen Bess, rose and joined her.
Taking a deep breath, Emmeline slipped into
the hall, Bess padding quietly behind. She stole down the staircase and
through the door leading into the kitchen garden. No one noticed.
At the garden, two paths led to the great
oak. The smoother, wider, but more public, route took her toward the
village, joining the forest where the bridge crossed the river. The
longer, but more secluded, route led through the uneven ground of the
churchyard. She chose the pri- vate cemetery path.
Since the moon was bright, she walked close
to the chapel walls. Inside the churchyard, she passed the graves of her
oldest ancestors. While she was within the view of the house, she
forced herself to move slowly, stepping from the shadow of one tree to
the next. If someone looked out a window, she wanted to appear no more
than a trick of the moonlight, or, for the more superstitious, a ghost
uneasy in the grave or one of the faerie folk come to dance among the
oaks.
At the graves of her sisters, she quickened
her pace. As a child, she had carried her bowl of porridge to their trim
plots, believing they could know she was near them. But as she’d grown,
she had set aside such fancies. Nursery rhymes and folk tales only
cloud the judgment. Even so, she was grateful her sisters had been long
silent: she would have hated for them to know what a fool she’d been.
Stepping into the forest, Emmeline quickened
her step, but not because Adam waited. She could never make her way to
the great oak’s clearing without thinking of her mother and sisters,
lost in a carriage accident when Emmeline was just six. Her mother,
Titania—named after Shakespeare’s Queen of the Faeries—had believed the
clearing was one of the few remaining places where the human and faerie
worlds overlapped. On picnics, Titania would enthrall her daughters with
tales of magic and enchantment, her voice a lilting honey-gold.
Sometimes Titania would sing them an eerie, tuneless song she claimed
the Faerie Queen had taught her. On those days, Emmeline would dance
around the great oak, believing that she could see shadowy figures melt
out of and back into the trees.
Had Emmeline not grown up half in love with
faeries, she wouldn’t have fallen so easily under Adam’s spell. When
she’d first encountered him beneath the shadows of the giant oak, she
would have known that, though he was playing a lyre, he was just another
highwayman. Emme- line slowed, not wishing to tax her leg, as she
navigated her way carefully across the raised tree roots that broke up
the path. But even so, she reached the clearing long before the time
he’d set.
He stood much as he had the first time she’d
seen him. His long dark cloak was the color of shadows, and his doublet
and trousers were a rich forest green. This time, however, he had no
lyre, and, without his rich baritone, the clearing was oddly silent.
Even so, she wasn’t prepared for the
visceral jolt of recognition when she saw him or the way she longed to
feel the touch of his hands and lips. But she refused her desire. She
couldn’t allow herself to trust him again.
“No song tonight?” She kept her distance, keeping her hand hidden inside her cloak.
“I feel little like singing.”
Even in the dark, her mind saw his words as texture and color.
He walked to the altar rock, gesturing for
her to sit beside him as they used to do. His body appeared tense, his
shoulders and neck held taut.
“What troubles you?” She leaned up against
the giant oak instead. “Could you find no good and true English- men, to
seduce with your words?”
“You’re still angry.” He stepped toward her.
“No, to feel angry, I’d have to feel something for
you.” She held up her walking stick menacingly, and he stopped several
feet away. “But you killed my good feelings when you let those men die.
All that’s left is revulsion.”
“What if I told you that they weren’t dead?
That they and their families are living well on their own plots of land,
happy in the colonies?” He raised his hands in sup- plication.
“I’d ask what other fairy tales you wish for
me to be- lieve. I saw the notice of execution. My only disappoint-
ment was that your name wasn’t on it.” She knew the words weren’t true,
but she wouldn’t let him see other- wise. Her life would be better
without him.
“I knew this was a bad idea.” He raked his hand through his hair.
“After months of silence and last week’s massacre at Manchester, did you expect me to be grateful for your summons?”
“Then why did you come?” Adam held out his hand, but she ignored it.
“To warn you,” she said flatly.
“Of what?” He looked hopeful.
“Set foot upon my lands again or in the village or any where in this county, and I will have you hung. I will testify myself.”
“How can you testify without revealing your part in my crimes?” Adam’s tone sounded almost amused.
“I can’t. That’s your dilemma. You promised
me once that you would never allow me to be harmed by riding with you.
If you stay, I will have you jailed and tried, and I cannot help but be
harmed if I testify.” She spoke slowly. She would not be misunderstood.
“You have a choice. You may hold your meetings. Create your reform
societies. Tempt the farmers and workmen to peaceful protests like the
one at Peterloo, where they will be killed or maimed. But not here.”
“Em, I didn’t intend . . .” He stepped forward, but she held up the walking stick, stopping his progress.
“I don’t care what your intentions were. I
thought you were a good man, that you hoped to ease the sufferings of
your fellow men, that you wanted rational reform. You showed me those
sufferings in ways that I’d never seen before.” She willed her voice to
remain even. “But you betrayed the cottagers who believed in you, and
you led them straight to their deaths. And I was beside you. Their blood
is on my hands as surely as it is on yours. My only redemption will be
to oppose you and men like you to my last breath.”
“I need your help.” He held out his palms in supplication, walking toward her.
“Never. I reserve my help for the families
men like you destroy. Now leave my land before I set the magistrate on
you.” She let her cloak fall open and lifted her hand, di- recting her
pistol at his heart. “Or I will kill you myself.”
“Would you send me away if you knew it meant my death?”
She looked deep in his eyes and cocked the trigger. “Yes.”
Rachael Miles writes ‘cozily scrumptious’ historical romances set in the
British Regency. Her books have been positively reviewed by Kirkus, Publishers Weekly, and Booklist,
which praised her ‘impeccably researched and beautifully crafted’
novels, comparing her works to those of Jo Beverly and Mary Jo Putney.
Her novel, Reckless in Red, won first place in adult fiction:
novels in the National Federation of Press Women’s writing contest. A
native Texan, Miles is a former professor of book history and
nineteenth-century literature. She lives in upstate New York with her
indulgent husband, three rescued dogs, and all the squirrels, chipmunks,
and deer who eat at her bird feeders.
Website: rachaelmiles.com
