Harlequin Historical Holiday Giveaway 2013 : Marguerite Kaye

Today Marguerite Kaye's turn. SHe is giving away two prizes -- a lovely necklace and tea towels (plus books). Remember everyone who enters ges put in the draw for a Kindle Fire HDX.
http://www.margueritekaye.com/harlequin-historical-holiday-calendar-2013/ gives full details  of how to enter.

Lost in Time: His Lady in Green Chapter 18

by Marguerite Kaye

Eve screamed and the knife clattered to the floor, skidding over the polished wooden boards. Staggering back, she crashed into the door and was trying to fumble for the handle when a large hand clamped around her wrist.

‘How many times do I have to say it!  I must not be disturbed in the night.’ The man cursed heavily and the vice-like hold on her arm was released. A switch clicked, and the room – a bedchamber – was filled with a weak electric light.

‘It’s you!’

A sheen of sweat made his black hair cling to his furrowed brow. There were dark shadows under his blue eyes. Beneath the stubble which roughened his jaw, his skin was ashen. He did not look to be much older than when she had first encountered him in the trench, but there was something haunted in his expression that told of suffering beyond description. Eve reached out to touch the crescent-shaped scar on his cheek. ‘You survived the blast. I was so afraid – but you’re alive.’

‘Alive, though there are times when I feel I am in a living hell.’ Major Tristan Daubenay ran a shaking hand through his hair. ‘Every night since the war ended, it is the same. I close my eyes and they are there, the dead. So many of them, I can’t even remember their names.’ He padded over to the bedside table and slopped water into a glass from the jug there. ‘I dream I am back in the trenches fighting for my life. I almost strangled my mother one night, when she tried to waken me. That’s why I gave orders that no-one was to disturb me, not matter what racket I make. I took you for a German spy just now. You’re lucky I didn’t slit that beautiful throat of yours.’ He slumped down onto the bed. ‘Shell shock, they call it in the men. In we officers, it is deemed a lack of moral fibre. My mother is embarrassed by me.’ The major swore again. ‘I sometimes think it would have been better if I had died.’

Appalled by the naked suffering in his face, Eve sat down beside him, clasping his hand between hers. ‘We call it post-traumatic stress now. It is a recognised illness, nothing to be ashamed of. I cannot imagine the horrors you must have lived through.’

His fingers tightened in hers. ‘Nothing to what I’ve seen others suffer. I’m alive, and relatively unscathed. I should be grateful.’

‘Instead of which you feel guilty,’ Eve said gently.

He looked at her in surprise. ‘How did you know?’

She shook her head. ‘When I last saw you it was the night before the Somme. The odds were stacked against you, you said. And there was that huge blast, I still cannot believe you survived.’

He smiled the crooked smile she remembered, and fumbled with the buttons on his striped pyjama top to reveal a scar shaped like a starburst over his heart. ‘A miracle,’ he said, ‘and it was thanks to you in part.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I told you the angels of the battlefield signified either death or good fortune. You, my angelic lady in green, brought me enormous good fortune. He reached under his pillow. ‘This. I don’t know how it came to be in the pocket of my tunic, but it deflected the shrapnel which should have killed me. I carried it with me over my heart for the rest of the war. It is my lucky charm. In the night, when I feel the terrors starting, if I can just hold it – sometimes it keeps them at bay.’

In his hand, he held the large emerald which had formed the centre-piece of her necklace. Eve’s blood ran cold. ‘Your lucky charm,’ she repeated with a sense of foreboding. ‘But the scar?’ She placed her hand over the strange indentation, feeling his heart beat steadily beneath her palm.

For answer, he placed the emerald on the scar where it sat, looking curiously as if it had grown there. ‘They couldn’t understand it at the field hospital, by rights the stone should have pierced the bone and then my heart. It is absurd I know, but I fear that if ever I were to lose it, I would die. What is it, my angel, why do you look so sad?’

‘It’s nothing.’ She couldn’t ask him to surrender it, she simply could not. She could only hope that in some parallel universe, the emerald would find its way back to Sebastian’s family, but she was not going to be the one to deprive Major Daubenay of the one comfort he had. So many stories intertwined, so many of Sebastian’s ancestors she had encountered during this bewildering night, Eve felt suddenly quite overcome and in dire need of the one pair of arms she knew were the right ones, the only ones, for her.  ‘I must leave now,’ she said, getting wearily to her feet.

‘The last thing I remember before the blast was your lips on mine,’ the major said. ‘The sweetest of kisses, I know it would have been. I doubt I’ll see you again, my angel. Will you grant me that kiss before you leave?’

Hot tears streaked her cheeks as she twined her arms around his neck. With a muffled groan, he enfolded her, pulling her tight against him. ‘My angel.’

It was indeed the sweetest of kisses, tinged with regret, salty with her tears. ‘Darling Tristan, you’ll recover given time. Think of me whenever you hold the emerald,’ she whispered, as the floor began to rock and shift, the weak electric light dimmed, and Eve felt herself falling…

MARGUERITE KAYE

I write hot historical romances from cold and usually rainy Scotland featuring rakes, sheikhs and Highlanders. I also knit and like to drink martinis. I have a time travel short, Lost in Pleasure, out in March, and I'm currently working on a series of three linked short stories set in the First World War, due for release next year. You can find out more about me and my books on my website, www.margueritekaye.com, or join me for a chat on Facebook or Twitter. 

Lost in Time: His Lady in Green, Chapter 8

by Marguerite Kaye  

All she had to do was keep going down the stairs to find the Great Hall and Sebastian. There were buffalo horns over the doorway, Eve reminded herself, impossible to miss. No way was she opening another door. Six gorgeous men from six periods of history might be someone else’s idea of bliss, but all she wanted was a familiar pair of arms around her that belonged to a man very much alive in the Twenty-first century. Real, not fantasy.

The stairway narrowed. And steepened. It grew darker. It felt damp. There was a smell of earth and – actually, she wondered if maybe the drains needed seeing to. Perhaps there had been a moat here at one time? As she reached the foot of the stairs, her heel sank into the ground with a soft squelching sound. What was that smell? A sharp crack overhead, and a streak of light made her jump. A starburst, beautifully bright and painfully vivid against the midnight blue of the night sky. Fireworks? Wait a minute, night sky?

Oh no! Yanking her heel from what appeared to be a mud floor, Eve staggered and found that she could actually touch the walls of the corridor on both sides. Except they weren’t walls, unless the walls had been stripped of paper and plaster. She could feel wood strapping. And – more mud? Another firework exploded overhead, singing through the air and landing with a heavy crump which shook the corridor. Her stomach tightened into a knot of fear. Not a firework. And this was not a corridor. Panic stricken, she began to run, heading for the tiny flicker of light she could see at a turn in the trench, for she knew now, with sickening clarity, that that is what it was. Another shell burst, and another. They were no longer beautiful but terrifying.

The light seeped from under a ramshackle wooden door. Panting, clammy with fear, Eve burst into the tiny room beyond. A narrow wooden bunk. Candlelight. An old-fashioned gramophone with one of those big speakers shaped like a horn. The music was melancholy. Schubert. The man sitting at the makeshift desk was staring at her as if he had seen a ghost.

His hair was short-cropped, black, standing up in little spikes, as if he had been running his hands through it. His eyes were a very familiar shade of blue. He had the same aristocratic good looks as her Sebastian, but this man wore them wearily. Tiredness furrowed his brow. A small scar like a crescent moon was carved into his cheek. Sadness clung to him.

‘You came,’ he said softly, putting down his pen and pushing back the ladder back chair which had seen better days. His smile, crooked, tender and tragic, made Eve clutch her hands to her breast. ‘It’s alright, I’m not afraid,’ he said, ‘I’ve been expecting you. Major Tristan Daubenay at your service.’

Eve pushed herself away from the door and made her way carefully towards him. It was only a few steps, but the rhythmic thud of the bombardment made the trench floor vibrate. A tiny fire burned in what looked like an old tin drum. ‘How did you know to expect me?’ she asked wonderingly, holding her fingers out to the welcome warmth of the smouldering embers.

‘I lead the men over the top again tomorrow. They tell us that this will be the final push.’ He smiled his weary, crooked smile again. ‘They’ve been telling us that for two years now. Marne, Ypres twice, Loos, and now tomorrow the Somme. It’s a well-kept secret, but we officers have a life-expectancy of about six weeks these days. The odds are well and truly stacked against me. There are many stories of soldiers seeing an angel just before a battle. Some say it signifies death, others good luck. It never occurred to me that my angel would take the form of the fabled Lady in Green. You are every bit as beautiful as the family legend claims.’

His fingers traced the outline of the emeralds at her throat. His touch was gentle, his hands cool on her skin. He smelt of old-fashioned soap. There was a tiny droplet of blood on his chin where he had cut himself with his razor. Unthinking, she blotted it with her thumb. Her heart contracted, for she knew he was right. The Somme had been a bloodbath. What kind of man made sure he was clean-shaven to face almost certain death?

His fingers feathered along her shoulder, down the sweep of her spine, his hands coming to rest on the curve of her bottom, urging her closer. ‘The Lady in Green,’ he said wonderingly. ‘Three times, she visits her one true love, but I fear you will only visit me once.’

He was so close she could feel his breath on her cheek. He had a beautiful mouth. His smile was no longer crooked but sensual. His thumbs caressed her in shivering circles. ‘Stay with me, my angel’ he whispered, ‘just for tonight. If I can spend my last night on earth in your arms, I can face tomorrow without fear or regret.’

She opened her mouth to speak. She knew she should leave. Then his lips descended on hers, velvet-soft. She closed her eyes and surrendered to the sweetness of his kiss. Lost in his embrace, Eve didn’t hear the warning screech as the shell exploded in the bunker. 

MARGUERITE KAYE

I write hot historical romances from cold and usually rainy Scotland featuring rakes, sheikhs and Highlanders. I also knit and like to drink martinis. I have a time travel short, Lost in Pleasure, out in March, and I'm currently working on a series of three linked short stories set in the First World War, due for release next year. You can find out more about me and my books on my website, www.margueritekaye.com, or join me for a chat on Facebook or Twitter.