Forbidden to Love the Duke by Jillian Hunter

Author:Jillian Hunter
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2015-01-19T16:00:00+00:00

* * *

What a beautiful dream. Anne Boleyn stood on the brink of her revenge, watching as Henry was led to the scaffold, his head to lose. Beside her Rosemary heard the taunts and jeers of the spectators, the cries of treason from courtiers who jostled against her and pulled her back by the arm to squeeze in for a closer look.

“Don’t,” she mumbled, one insistent hand reaching through her dream to drag her across the bed. “Leave me alone. He deserves to die, and I shall be witness to justice served.”

A shrill voice assaulted her eardrum. “Thanks to you, he might well have died in there! What came over you, Rosemary? How could you be so unkind to a man who brought food to our table? One of these days you and Rue will murder some innocent who comes to our door.”

Rosemary groaned and buried her face in the pillow, but the tirade continued. “How could you mistreat the man who hopes to marry Ivy?”

Rosemary turned her head to avoid meeting Lilac’s baleful stare, only to look across the room into the smirking face of the man she had enclosed in the wall last night. And completely forgotten. She sat up in a swelter of guilt and resentment.

“He doesn’t look dead to me.”

“He was practically unconscious when I found him,” Lilac said, darting to Sir Oliver’s chair to dab his wrists and throat with the damp towel in her hand. “What if I hadn’t woken up in the middle of the night to check in on you? This is what happens when you overimbibe.”

“What if,” Rosemary mused, stretching her arms in the air. She narrowed her eyes. “What if that man who scribbles nursery rhymes hadn’t broken into the house and sneaked into Mother’s room, doing who knows what?”

Oliver surged from his chair. “Nursery rhymes?”

“Oh, I’m sorry. I misspoke. Nursery rhymes convey political messages and contribute to social improvement. Your poems are written to impress wealthy tarts and flatter flatulent old lords.”

“Oh!” Lilac’s hand flew to her mouth. “Rosemary, how can you speak such awful words?”

Sir Oliver glanced in the old looking glass to straighten his stained cravat. “She speaks the same awful words that she writes. She hasn’t the talent to become a success and so she despises those who have.”

Rosemary stilled. The smile that spread across her face felt like ice breaking in a frozen pond.

“Where is my gun, Lilac, dear?”

Lilac shook her head, disregarding this threat. “He wants to be our friend, Rosemary. The only friend we’ve had in years. What has he done to earn your distrust?”

“Ask him why he was in the passageway.” Rosemary’s anger surged to the surface. She’d never wanted to pummel anyone in her life as much as she did Oliver, not even the most ruthless of debt collectors who had hounded the sisters without mercy for months on end. He’d gotten under her skin, and he knew it. “Ask him the reason why.”

Sir Oliver glanced at Lilac and shrugged helplessly, the handsome prince confronted by an evil witch.

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