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Overview
The national bestselling author delivers a Regency romance with “a memorable heroine, steamy lovemaking and delightful scenes involving white magic” (Publishers Weekly).
During her years of exile in Wales, Serafina’s only solace has been the golden-haired lover who has haunted her dreams. She even convinced herself that he must be the man she is set to marry the next day. But during a moonlight walk in the woods she comes across a dark stranger who shatters her hopes with a kiss and a devastating revelation of the feelings of her betrothed.
Preparing to marry a woman he doesn’t know, Aiden Delaware, Earl of Aubrey, seeks solace in the woods, stumbling upon a maiden as beautiful as a fairy queen. He tells her his darkest secret: He already despises his betrothed and has no wish to be forced into an arranged marriage.
The next day, Aiden learns the shocking truth: The beauty from the woods he’d loved at first sight turns out to be the unwanted fiancée, who now knows his true feelings. Despite this inauspicious beginning, Aiden and Serafina gradually discover that marriage is more than a contract, and love can span more than a lifetime.
“Kingsley has done an excellent job of bringing us two wonderful lovers and a cast of secondary characters you can sink your teeth into.” —Rendezvous
“Another dreamspun romance . . . Once more Katherine Kingsley works her magic . . . in a story that lifts your heart and makes your soul sing.” —Romantic Times
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781626811393 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Diversion Books |
| Publication date: | 09/01/2018 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 416 |
| Sales rank: | 431,510 |
| File size: | 6 MB |
About the Author
Kingsley grew up between New York City, London, and Charleston, South Carolina and spent twenty-five years in the Vail Valley of Colorado where she was a firefighte/EMT and teacher before becoming a full-time writer. She currently lives in Southwest Florida with her husband and two Jack Russell terriers and spends her autumns in Mykonos, Greece.
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
January 12,1819Clwydd Castle, Wales
Serafina closed her eyes as the world spun before her, her head thrown back, her hair falling down her back, her arms raised to the sky in invocation as she sang her song. It was set to the melody of "Joyful, joyful, we adore Thee, God of glory, Lord of love."
Serafina had changed the lyrics to suit herself, which she knew would make the vicar's eyes roll up in his head and induce a slow faint behind the pulpit, but she hardly cared about that. And anyway, since God was the Lord of love, she didn't think He'd mind.
"Bring him to me, bring him to me, I've been waiting for so long. Blessed be the god and goddess, and I pray that they hear my song ..."
Her voice rang high and pure as she swept the last of the circles, her feet dancing so swiftly they felt as if they might lift her from the ground altogether and catapult her into flight. Serafina would have liked nothing better, but as all her childhood attempts at discovering the secret of flight had left her bruised and sore for days, she had given up that particular pursuit.
She laughed aloud in pleasure as a sudden gust of wind picked up the fragments of her song and swept it over the edge of the cliff, lifting it up to heaven like a bird on the wing. It would be heard, she was sure of that, but it never hurt to offer a daily reminder that she was patiently waiting. Very patiently waiting.
She lowered her arms and dropped to the frozen ground, pulling her worn cloak more tightly about her and tucking her legs up under it, suppressing a shiver as the cold wind cut across her back.
When it came down to it, she thought, she'd been waiting most of her life. First she'd waited nearly three months for her mother to return from London, a promise made as she'd left for the season in a swirl of skirts and perfume. But instead of her mother, a carriage had arrived swathed in black, carrying a coffin and her distraught father. His grief-stricken explanations of a runaway horse and a terrible fall had been hard for a child of five to understand, as hard as trying to grasp why her mother was locked away in a box and couldn't ever come out again.
And she had waited four years later as the doctors came and went for weeks from her father's room, until one day they didn't come at all and her beloved father was laid in the ground next to her mother. By then Serafina was old enough to understand the grim finality of death. She knew that no matter how many tears she cried, they wouldn't bring her father back.
But her father had left her with a promise before he'd gone, and it was the fulfillment of that promise that Serafina waited for now.
Aiden will be your husband when the time comes, Serafina, and he will love you with all his heart and look after you just as I would do. You won't be alone, child, I swear it to you. And his father has sworn the same to me this very day.
Serafina knew her father would never lie to her. And she knew that the man who had come that last day of her father's life, kindly Lord Delaware who had bent down and touched her face, pinched with misery and grief, would keep his word too. So now it was just a matter of time before Aiden arrived to sweep her off on the shining wings of love.
The only comfort she had while she waited was what she'd come to think of as the Dream. It had started in the summer of her fourteenth year and reoccurred with reassuring frequency. It was always the same: she rode on horseback toward a small city, a company of people with her, their richly colored costumes different from anything she'd seen in England and yet somehow perfectly familiar to her, as familiar as the man who stood on the hill, his golden hair blowing in the wind, his hand shading his eyes as he scanned the distance.
He too wore one of those costumes — his a white tunic with a blue embroidered cloak clasped by a brooch at his right shoulder. A calm, azure sea glittered far off to the south and the city climbed up the lushly vegetated hillside behind him, crowned by a castle that made her think of the Crusades.
Her heart burst with joy at the sight of him, and she couldn't wait another minute to be in his arms. She kicked her horse into a gallop and moved ahead of the company, calling and waving, and he suddenly saw her and called back to her, his voice filled with glad welcome. Only instead of calling her Serafina, he called her Sarah. And she called him Adam.
"Sarah, my love — praise God you're finally home!" He started down the hill at a run, and Sarah slipped off her horse and tore toward him, her arms outstretched.
"Adam! Oh, Adam, I can't believe it — it seemed like forever!"
He caught her up and spun her around in a wide circle before he pulled her close and kissed her hard.
"Don't ever leave me again, beloved," he whispered. "I can't live without you for more than a day, as these last four weeks have proved — I've wasted away from longing."
"That's odd; you look exactly like the magnificent husband I left," she teased him, running her fingers through his hair, gazing into his dark eyes, eyes that were filled with love for her. "Dear God in heaven, how I missed you." She buried her head in the crook of his shoulder and held him tightly to her, drinking in his warm, beloved scent.
"Swear you'll love me forever?" he said in a litany that had been repeated between them time and again.
"I swear it," she answered fervently, wrapping her arms even more tightly around his strong back. "I swear it. Forever and beyond."
"I'll hold you to your vow," he said, kissing her again until her senses swam and her knees turned to water. "And I'll renew my own pledge in the flesh the minute I have you to myself. Unfortunately my parents insist on seeing you immediately. I think I really might expire with longing." He nipped her ear with his teeth, his soft laugh filled with intimate promise as she shivered and raised her mouth to his again.
Sadly, Serafina always woke up at that point. It was terribly frustrating, since she longed to know just how one pledged one's vow in the flesh. Every sense told her it was a magnificent process, but she couldn't exactly ask her aunt. Aunt Elspeth had very firm ideas about propriety, to the point of forbidding Serafina any contact with men of her own age, citing the deep dark impulses to which they were prone.
Serafina suspected she might like those impulses, which was why she kept her dream to herself. Aunt Elspeth would never approve.
She couldn't explain it, or even how she knew without a doubt the two people were herself and Aiden in another time and place. But she knew. Oh, she knew it with every fiber of her being. And she knew that their vow had been truly made, that they belonged together through time and beyond.
"'Ere, Miss Serafina, have you been out there freezing yourself to pieces again?" Tinkerby turned from the stove and surveyed her with concern. "I was just making a nice hot pot of tea, and you look to me as if you're needing a cup. I don't know what foolishness it is that takes you out to that cliff every single day to go singing to the wind about some daydream yer auntie's put in your head." He reached stiffly for another cup and saucer and put them on the tray.
"It's not foolishness," Serafina said, rubbing her frozen hands together over the blazing kitchen fire. "It's simple practicality, Tinkerby. If you don't ask, how are you supposed to receive?"
Tinkerby shook his balding head as he filled the pot with water just off the boil. "If I didn't know better, I'd think you'd learned that pretty sentiment in church. But you can't fool an old dog like me, missie. I know all about the heathen notions Miss Elspeth's brought you up with, and your poor father would be rolling in his grave if he had any idea." He placed the tray down on the kitchen table and pulled out a chair, gingerly settling himself into it.
Serafina turned from the fire with a smile. Tinkerby had been in the family for as long as she could remember, loyally accompanying her to Clwydd after her father had died. And although he expressed intolerance for her Aunt Elspeth's notions, she knew he was as fond of Elspeth as she was.
"Oh, I don't know, Tinkerby. I think Papa knew all about Auntie's ways, and he still let me come to live with her. And you know yourself that there's no harm in what she does."
Tinkerby snorted. "Not unless you count blowing up the cow shed. Then there was that little problem with the west wing, which I've spent most of this cold day trying to patch up. Then there was the time —"
"I know, I do know," Serafina said, cutting him off. She joined him at the table and poured tea for them both. "But what I mean is that she doesn't intend any harm, even if her spells sometimes go amiss. You have to admit, she can do quite a lot of good as well, especially when it comes to using her herbs for healing. Look at how much better your rheumatism is."
"Aye, it's a mite better," he admitted grudgingly. "But what I'm talking about is putting ideas into your head about gods and goddesses and divine plans for husbands. And you know just what I mean, so don't you try to deny it. It just don't seem right, Miss Serafina."
"But, Tinkerby, it's not as if Papa didn't make the arrangements himself."
"That's not what I mean, not that young Lord Aubrey shouldn't have showed up on your eighteenth birthday when he was supposed to, instead of leaving you hanging for these nearly three years. I'm talking about this nonsense about living lives before, and all the rest of the claptrap I hear Miss Elspeth pouring into your ear."
Serafina absently stirred a teaspoon of sugar into her tea, trying to think of yet another approach to explain to Tinkerby why Elspeth's theory made all the sense in the world. "Look, Tinkerby," she said after a long pause, "do you know the sea gulls that you like to watch off the cliff when the weather's fine?"
He made a grudging little noise of assent in his throat. "It's only because we didn't have sea gulls in Leicestershire," he said, as if embarrassed by this suggestion of sentimentality. "I like to observe the way they work the wind currents. It's a scientific interest, you understand."
"Yes, I know," Serafina said, suppressing a smile. "But my point is that a sea gull doesn't dive just once into the sea, does it, and then fly up into the sky and disappear forever? It dives over and over again."
"And how else do you think it's going to fill its belly?" Tinkerby asked sourly.
"That's what I mean," Serafina said, leaning forward to press her point. "Think of the sea as life, and the fish the sea gull feeds on as experience, and the sea gull itself as your soul. The only way your soul can fill itself with experience is to dive time and time again into life."
Tinkerby stared at her, his cup frozen in midair. 'You've lost your bloomin' marbles, miss, begging your pardon. Yer auntie's made even more of a mess of your noggin than I realized."
Serafina laughed. "Don't blame Aunt Elspeth. This is my own analogy."
"Analogy, phooey," Tinkerby added with a scowl. "No good God-fearing girl should be spouting nonsense about sea gulls and souls in the sea. You die, and if you've behaved yourself, you go to heaven to receive Our Lord's reward, and that's that."
"But I'm not saying that you don't go to heaven," Serafina persisted. "I'm only saying that after a while you leave it to try again. Honestly, Tinkerby, how do you expect not to make a hash of life the first few times you try it? That would be like expecting a babe to learn how to run after taking only one step. Life takes a lot of practice to get right, just like walking."
Tinkerby put his head in his hands. "Stark, raving mad," he muttered.
"I think it's a very sensible proposition," Serafina said. "I don't believe anything is a random accident, any more than the moon randomly completes its monthly cycle in the sky, or the earth randomly moves around the sun once a year, or the seasons randomly change. So why should my marriage to Aiden be random, either — why shouldn't there be a divine plan for us too?"
He lifted his head slowly and gazed at her with weary eyes. "I knew it," he said. "I knew you'd get around to him sooner or later. You always do."
"It's because I still believe he's coming for me, even if you don't," she said, twisting her cup around in the saucer. "I don't see why you have such a hard time trusting that he will."
"Because the world don't work like that," he said with exasperation. "Aye, the sun might rise and set because God put it in the sky and wanted it that way, but people aren't nearly so ordered. You haven't heard a word from that family since the day your dear father died, and I say you're not going to be hearing." He reached for the pot and refilled his * cup. "Just because Miss Elspeth insists on filling your head with foolish dreams doesn't mean they're going to come true any more than I'm going to sprout wings and fly."
"You'll see, Tinkerby," Serafina said. She squeezed her eyes shut for a brief moment. Believe it, Serafina. You have to believe it with all of your heart and hold tight to your love for him. He'll come. He has to come.
April 26, 1819 Townsend Hall, Rutland
"You did what?"
Aiden, staggered by his father's announcement, took a furious step toward his father's chair, and the marquess's face, already pale, turned even whiter, two flaming spots of red the only color left in his cheeks.
"I did the only thing left to be done," Lord Delaware stammered, recoiling against his son's rage, his hands tightening on the arms of the chair. "The banks wouldn't give me another loan — I'm already in debt up to my eyebrows." He took a large swallow of wine from the ever-present glass at his side.
"So you now bother to inform me, although I had an inkling we might be in trouble when I was refused credit for the last load of goods I was supposed to ship home from Barbados. That only came as a bad shock. But now you tell me you've arranged my marriage to someone I've never even heard of — what in the name of God has gotten into you?"
"I — I realized that you might be angry, but there was not time to consult you," Lord Delaware said, wiping away the thin film of perspiration that had sprung to his brow. "You were halfway across the Atlantic Ocean, unreachable in a time of crisis, and the marriage was the only way to secure enough money to save us from ruin. Serafina Segrave has a fortune, a very large fortune, and it is yours the day you marry. The contracts are already signed between her aunt and myself."
"I see," Aiden said, his voice sounding amazingly controlled to him, considering the acute shock he was laboring under. He'd been home only ten minutes and his father had wasted no time in informing Aiden of his latest and most profound idiocy in a lifetime of idiotic mistakes. But this one really took the prize. And it appeared that from this one there was to be no salvation.
"So to save the shipping company and your own skin, you bartered me," he said coldly, his mouth tightening into a hard line. "Youbartered me, damn you, sold me off like some prize piece of cattle!"
"Now Aiden, be reasonable," his father said nervously, the tips of his fingers working fretfully on the threadbare tapestry of the armchair. "If I hadn't acted quickly, what would have become of us? Just think of your poor sister ..."
Aiden glared at him with disgust. The man never missed an opportunity to drive Aiden's obligations home, as if Aiden hadn't always taken responsibility for Charlotte. But his father was right. Charlotte didn't deserve to live in poverty, not on top of everything else she had suffered. Still, he wasn't about to let his father off the hook so easily.
"Be reasonable?" Aiden said dangerously, leaning slightly forward, his fists clenched by his sides. "Tell me, why should I be reasonable? In one fell swoop you've taken away _ my freedom, not to mention making a travesty of my free will. And I'm supposed to get down on my knees and be thankful, I suppose?"
"It's no good losing your temper now," his father said, not meeting his eyes. "The bargain is sealed, and unless we want to face a breach-of-promise suit on top of everything else, you'll have to go through with the marriage. The situation can't be unmade at this late date."
Aiden bowed his head, staring at the floor, at the tip of his boot, at anything that might distract him and keep him from putting his hands around his father's neck and wringing it. "Maybe you'd like to explain how you got us into this financial mess to begin with?"
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "In the Wake of the Wind"
by .
Copyright © 1996 Julia Jay Kendall.
Excerpted by permission of Diversion Publishing Corp..
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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