In the Arms of a Marquess(105)

“Oh, then.” She grinned and gripped his hand to pull him toward the stair. “No time to waste.”

He laughed, the sun shone hot and delicious upon her skin, and she was home.

Author’s Note

Mughal princes in India decorated their palaces with pictures and sculptures of tigers to show their supreme power. This symbolism caught the imagination of the English who subjugated these native rulers through treaties and warfare. They imagined India as a tiger, a great fearsome beast that only the mightiest foe could vanquish—the regal lion, England as conqueror.

When England lost its colonies in North America to revolution in 1783, full attention turned toward its eastern prize. Sparkling like a familiar yet ever-mysterious jewel upon the threshold of the Far East, India was replete with riches and opportunity beyond imagining. Through steady conquest of the subcontinent and the sea routes around it, England gained enormous wealth that enabled not only its strength in the war against Napoleon but also the decadence of the Regency period.

A small note on one not-so-throwaway comment by Tavy: Although attributed to Byron upon its 1819 publication, The Vampyre was written by Byron’s physician, John Polidori. While Polidori’s elegant, enigmatic vampire did not shy from the daylight per se, he enacted wicked deeds upon innocent females, most certainly at night.

My humble thanks go to my university colleagues for research guidance on the East India Trade Company, to Dr. Joel Dubois for assistance with Hindi and Sanskrit, and to Gordon Frye for his vast knowledge of firearms. Special thanks also to Marcia Abercrombie, Elizabeth Amber, Anne Calhoun, and Sheetal Trivedi. Finally, many thanks to Faith Bodley for her fabulous trilogy title, Rogues of the Sea.

Keep reading

for a sneak peek at

WHEN A SCOT LOVES A LADY

The first book in

Katharine Ashe’s new series

Coming in 2012

from Avon Books



Prologue

London, 1813

A lady endowed with grace of person and elevation of mind ought not to stare. At two-and-twenty and already an exquisite in taste and refinement, she ought not to feel the pressing need to crane her neck so that she might see past a corpulent Louis XIV flirting with a buxom Cleopatra.

But a lady like Katherine Savege—with a tarnished reputation and a noble family inured to society’s barbed censure—might on occasion indulge in such minor indiscretions.

The Queen of the Nile shifted, and Kitty caught another glimpse of the masculine figure at the ballroom’s threshold.

“Mama, who is that gentleman?” Her smooth voice, only a whisper, held no crude note of puerile curiosity. Like satin she spoke, like waves upon a gentle shore she moved, and like a nightingale she sang. Or so her suitors flattered.

Actually, no longer singing like a nightingale. Or any other bird, for that matter. Not since she had lost her virtue to a Bad Man and subsequently set her course upon revenge. Vengeance and sweet song did not mesh well within the soul.

As for the suitors, now she was obliged to endure more gropes and propositions than declarations of sincere devotion. And for that she had none to blame but herself—and her ruiner, of course.

“The tall gentleman,” she specified. “With the dog.”

“Dog? At a ball?” The Dowager Countess of Savege tilted her head, her silver-shot hair and coronet of gem-encrusted gold glimmering in the light of a hundred chandelier candles. An Elizabethan ruff hugged her severe cheeks, inhibiting movement. But her soft, shrewd brown eyes followed her daughter’s gaze across the crowd. “Who would dare?”

“Precisely.” Kitty suppressed the urge to peer once again toward the door. Of necessity. If she leaned too far to the side she might lose her gown, an immodest slip of a confection resembling a Grecian goddess’ garb that her mother ought never have permitted her to don let alone go out in. But after thirty years of marriage to a man that publicly flaunted his mistress, and with an eldest son who’d long been an unrepentant libertine, the dowager countess was no slave to propriety. Thus Kitty’s attendance at a masquerade ball teetering perilously on the edge of scandalous. Truly she should not be here; it only confirmed gossip.

Still, she had begged to come, though she spared her mother the reason: the guest list included Lambert Poole.

“Aha.” The dowager’s penciled brows lifted in surprise. “It is Blackwood.”

To Kitty’s left a nymph whispered to a Musketeer, their attention likewise directed toward the tall gentleman in the doorway. Behind her Maid Marion tittered to a swarthy Blackbeard. Snippets of whispers came to Kitty’s sharp ears.

“—returned from the East Indies—”

“—two years abroad—”

“—could not bear to remain after his bride’s tragic drowning—”

“—infant son left motherless—”

“—a veritable beauty—”

“—those Scots are tremendously loyal—”

“—vowed to never again marry—”

Louis XIV kissed Cleopatra’s hand and sauntered off, leaving Kitty with an unimpeded view of the doorway. Garbed in homespun, a limp kerchief tied about his neck, a crooked staff in hand, and a beard that looked as though it were actually growing from his cheeks rather than pasted on, he clearly meant to pass himself off as a shepherd. At his side stood an enormous dog, shaggy quite like its master, and gray.