Baron of Blackwood by Tamara Leigh

Author:Tamara Leigh [Tamara Leigh]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Tamara Leigh
Published: 2016-07-30T07:00:00+00:00

Barony of Godsmere

The prize.

It made her quake with anger and shiver with fear.

The prize.

It tossed the contents of her stomach and tightened her throat in anticipation of bile.

“The prize,” she said low to determine if it was as offensive to the tongue as its written form was to the eyes.

Far more offensive, further reducing her to chattel—in this case, that of Sir Otto. Her cousin!

“Quintin.”

Gripping the parchment so hard it would forever be creased, she turned to her brother who stood alongside his wife in the solar. A quarter hour earlier, Lady Elianor had glowed. Now she was pale. But as disturbed as she was by the tidings from Emberly, hope was beneath the hand she pressed to the slight bulge below her waist.

Quintin’s remembrance of the comfort of her own hand knowing what the eyes of others were incapable of confirming caused the missive to further protest its abuse.

“Beyond the horror of what Baron Verdun and his wife endured and nearly suffered,” Bayard said, striding forward, “you understand what this could mean, do you not?”

When he halted, she said, “It means I am the perverse hope of the Foucaults. Ah, but if only they knew how false that hope!” As soon as she spoke, a thought struck her, and she caught her breath. “Mother did not reveal to Agatha what her scheming with Constance and Serle de Arell wrought. Had that witch known I am not likely to revive the Foucault line, I would have been of no use, as easily disposed of as were my father and mother.”

“Once again, your mother was protecting you,” Bayard said and took the missive from her. “There is good in this, Quintin. It further evidences the feud was instigated by Foucault supporters. And though two marriages have already been made, the third need not be.”

A laugh parted her lips, and she nearly confessed that what need not be done was done—even before Baron Verdun and Thomasin wed.

“Satisfactory marriages,” she said and looked to his wife. Despite the lady having imprisoned Bayard, regardless of what Quintin had lost that the other woman had gained, Elianor was agreeable.

Though in Quintin’s darkest moments she sometimes wrestled with envy, once she emerged from that darkness, there was happiness in seeing the two together. So quietly—and intensely—in love.

Quintin looked back at her brother. “Very satisfactory marriages,” she reiterated, referring also to what she had witnessed of Magnus Verdun and Lady Thomasin’s marriage when they had traveled to Castle Adderstone a fortnight past.

Naturally, her thoughts returned to Sir Otto, who had been part of the Baron of Emberly’s entourage when, attacked en route to Adderstone, it had prevailed over the brigands. Quintin had exchanged few words with the knight while he was at Adderstone, but she had been glad to see him—dangerously unaware that, as the devil her mother had said walked the corridors of Castle Mathe, he had stood to benefit from that first of two attempts to leave the barony of Emberly bereft of lord and lady.

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