The Forever Kiss

by Thea Devine

Genres: Gothic; Medieval Romance; Viking Romance

Synopsis

There is desire in deception.  .  .

On a bloody Victorian battlefield, the penniless soldier of fortune, Dar St. Onge, has just been recruited for a covert mission to uncover the dark secrets of a mysterious family by taking the place of its dying heir, Ducas Sangbourne, a man who looks enough like him to be his twin.

.  .  .lust behind fear.  .  .

From the moment he arrives at Sangbourne Manor, Dar enters a world of unimagined privilege and wealth, where every decadent craving is gratified, every erotic fantasy is fulfilled, and the sins of the past simmer just below the surface. Dar must navigate a minefield of things he doesn't know, and raw emotions he's never felt before to even scratch the surface of the secrets of Sangbourne Manor. But nothing can prepare him for the half-gypsy Angene, who is determined to become Ducas's mistress. Wholly feminine, exotically beautiful, and too suspicious of him by far, she has the power to destroy him--when she isn't bringing him to his knees with her warm, willing sensuality.  .  .

.  .  .and danger in total surrender.

Now, as darkness settles over Sangbourne Manor, a powerful and unholy menace is gathering force, an unnatural bloodlust that hides behind the veneer of society and threatens everything Dar has ever wanted. In this opulent world where everything has a price and no payment is too steep, two suspicious lovers will have to learn to trust each other as Dar battles body and soul to claim his woman and his destiny.

"Thea Devine continues to reign supreme as the divine queen of sensually spicy love stories." --Affaire de Coeur

"Thea Devine gives her fan exactly what they desire. She knows just the right sexual fantasies to tap into.  .  .There is no doubt that Ms. Devine intends to give bliss a new meaning." --Romantic Times

She's the hottest writer in the industry. Romantic Times calls her "The queen of erotic romance," and Affaire de Coeur hails her as "the divine mistress of sensual writing." She's Thea Devine, and she's the author of nineteen steamy historical romances (all published by Zebra Books), four novellas, and featured in the bestselling erotic romance anthologies, Captivated, Fascinated, and All Through The Night. She also writes contemporary romance and is a long-time freelance manuscript reader.

Release date: March 1, 2012

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 288

Sample

It was the blood. That gypsy blood pounding through her body that would never let anything go. And it was the house, Ducas’s house, a magnet, with the gas- and candlelit windows that beckoned deep in the night, especially when Lord and Lady Sangbourne were entertaining.

They were always entertaining. Lady Sangbourne had an insatiable need to surround herself with people all the time, fascinating people. People about whom you could find things out if you were clever enough and if you followed the lure of your gypsy blood.

Oh, there was something about the way it thrummed deep within her, blotting out her mother’s every attempt to turn her into the lady her father wanted her to be.

But then, her father didn’t know that her mother was a frequent visitor to Sangbourne Manor, because he himself was such an infrequent visitor to the house in Cheshamshire.

And this he didn’t need to know—that his exotic, alluring Gaetana was frequently the paid entertainment. They feasted on her, the wild gypsy dancer, as they gossiped about her, she who had enticed an earl and held him still in her thrall and they paid her to come to the Manor and dance for them. And she went, following the call of her nature, and in spite of the fact the Earl kept her like a queen.

It was the blood. It could not be denied. Not in her mother, not in her. And so Gaetana danced, giving herself to whatever voluptuous pleasures were on the menu on any given evening at Sangbourne Manor, and giving herself to her lover, the Earl, at his command.

Gaetana on the inside and Angene, her changeling daughter, on the outside, looking in, squirreling away secrets.

So many secrets. Her gypsy blood reveled in the secrets. Secrets were knowledge, secrets were power, and Angene knew it with every fiber of her gypsy soul.

And besides, what else had she to do until Ducas came back from the war? Dear God, Ducas, throwing himself in harm’s way in a godforsaken country thousands of miles away for no reason she could ever understand.

Ducas with his persistent tongue and honeyed promises.

Her body twinged just thinking of it. It was the blood; no decent woman would even conceive of doing what she intended to do when Ducas returned.

And he would return. There was not a doubt in her mind. And then . . . and then—she would become his mistress and enslave him forever, the way her mother had captivated the Earl.

The thought made her breathless.

How stupid of him to go to war. It wasn’t his war. And it was so far away that it could take him years to return. The idea of it yawned like an abyss, dark as the night that enfolded her. Perhaps that was why she so loved the night: there was always the promise of a new day, and with it, Ducas’s return.

But until that day, it was the house that drew her, and the sense that at night she could be close to him by just touching the cold stone walls, and by learning everything she could about those who were involved in his life.

By lurking in the shadows . . .

It was the blood: there was a turbulence in her that could not be tempered by all the good breeding of the man who had sired her, nor by a hundred lessons with the best tutors in deportment and manners her mother had employed.

She was what she was: daughter of a gypsy dancer and an aristocratic Earl, and the fact she was creeping along the outers walls of Sangbourne Manor was proof enough which part of her held sway.

And then there were the secrets, the delicious sensual secrets about the games that adults played.

Games that quickened her blood, because she and Ducas had played at those games, had skirted the ultimate conquest and surrender, with the full understanding and promise that someday, somehow, it would happen.

But for now, she moved noiselessly through the trees and into the bushes that fronted the windows of the grand parlor where the games would begin.

The dining first, hours of it with five or six courses of elegantly prepared food and the best china and silver; they began early in the country, on the evenings when they played their games. After dinner, the men would retreat for port and polite conversation as the tension and anticipation escalated to an unbearable degree. And finally the men would join the ladies for the evenings’ entertainment—this night, they would welcome yet again Gaetana the gypsy, well paid for her sensual dances, for her time, for her body.

A never-ending fascination, watching the aristocracy, as they ate, drank, eyed each other, flirted, paired off, disappeared; sometimes they imported girls from the village to service the gentlemen while the ladies went off with the goat boys and shepherds into the fields.

Or they would hire high priced courtesans for a more elegant and willful seduction.

Or they took each other up and off in private rooms in a variety of interesting combinations as they would do this night.

And the queen of all this rampant lasciviousness was Ducas’s beautiful exotic mother.

Gaetana would never talk about her, nor anything that went on at Sangbourne Manor. Secrets were safe at the Manor, kept beyond the grave in a devil’s bargain to shield the sins of the sinful. No one would tell, ever, about the things that went on there, the weekend-long things, the forbidden things.

Things perhaps Ducas had been a part of. Things, because of that, Angene had to know because she was certain they were things that would give her the power she needed to convince him to become her lover, forever. She was a bastard child of dubious lineage; she wanted, she could hope for nothing more.

As she peered into the tall, multipaned windows of the dimly lit grand parlor, she saw her mother dancing to a wildly strumming guitar, her skirts held high, her feet and legs bared to all. And the look on her face—the transcending look of joy that she could finally be herself, even among these heathens who had no idea of her life, her lore, her heritage.

It didn’t matter. Gaetana did not need to pretend in these wild hours. She could follow the dictates of her heart, her blood, and no one would tell.

In that curious honor among like-minded hedonists, her mother’s secret was safe.

Angene was the only one who knew—and she harbored a tumultuous desire to be among these libertine people, her hair, her skirts, her desire flowing free.

If only Ducas would return; Ducas understood her. Handsome, reckless Ducas with that irresistible combination of haughty aristocrat and primitive stable boy—and that tongue, that insatiable demanding tongue . . .

But wait—her mother’s voluptuous dance was finished, and the guests—three couples in all, excluding Lord and Lady Sangbourne—were clapping loudly and appreciatively.

She knew what came next in the sexual quadrille: these country weekends seemed to be almost a set piece, depending on the guests. In tonight’s little play, the lights would dim, a gentleman would rise and select the lady of his choice, who was not his wife, and away they would go into the shadows to explore the unfettered nature of men and the naked response of women.

Lady Sangbourne directed the scene, standing tall and slender in the center of the room, dressed in her habitual green, with her long thick hair that deliberately grazed her waist bound carelessly away from her narrow face; did she not know how much men loved long hair to curtain their sins? Yet she was always the last to go into the shadows.

She knew everything, Lady Sangbourne, and didn’t blink an eye as her husband chose his companion for the night . . .

Gaetana?

Angene’s heart sank. This she had never witnessed before, this wholesale taking of her mother, in spite of her allegiance to and her love for the Earl. But none of that ever counted here. And certainly not tonight, if her mother’s expression was any indication.

The air was thick with expendable lust, and every last guest only wanted that evanescent moment of surrender. Instinctively Angene understood that the crux of the evening was the pleasure point, nothing more, nothing less, and not even her mother was immune to the call of her blood.

She sank against the wall, her heart pounding painfully. This reality was not pretty, not even romantic. But then, wasn’t it what she wanted for herself? To give herself wholly and completely to Ducas, and to live, outside constraints, as the one and only desire of his heart forever?

Was there a forever when it came to the nature of men?

Would she entertain Ducas’s friends and companions, and would he just as cavalierly hand her over to whoever wanted her for a night? Was this the life she wanted to commit to, in her overwhelming desire to be with Ducas?

It did not bear thinking about. . . she couldn’t. He might be dead for all she knew, on that foreign battlefield, dead with no remains to be buried and mourned over . . . and this was worse than anything that might come of their life together.

Oh, dear Lord-Ducas . . .

Silence descended, the curious silence of the deep dark night, where the merest rustle of a leaf could set the blood thrumming. Not a star burned; the moon drifted behind a tail of clouds; every detail of the landscape merged into another so that suddenly there was only the flat black of nothingness around her.

There was nowhere to move, no landmark to guide her back home. In a breath, she was a prisoner of the dark, caught in that abyss of emptiness, that cold black hole she so dreaded. The cold began to seep into her bones. An owl hooted somewhere in the trees, underscored by the wind rustling through the leaves that sounded like bats, flurrying over her head.

She was trapped there for sure, her long, thin woolen cloak her only protection against the night, against predators, against death, and there was nothing she could do, nowhere she could move, she was blind as the night, and there was no other choice but to curl up against the cold stone walls of Sangbourne Manor for cold hard comfort until daylight.

She wouldn’t sleep; she was too cold, too saturated with fear.

Too aware of the endless noises in the night. Close. Subtle. Scared.

She slept.

The howling of a dog awakened her.

Dawn. Cold. Dank.

Jingling. A rasping rolling sound. Horses. A carriage emerging out of the fog that hovered just beyond the drive in front of Sangbourne Manor.

Dreaming. Too early in the morning for visitors . . . and besides, they were all still tumbled in their ruttish rest.

If she moved quickly, she could get back to her house before her mother returned.

Only, limbs stiff from the cold. Can’t move. Not yet. Slowly, slowly . . . no sound—if anyone caught her here, her mother would abandon her to the wolves . . . the carriage door opening—who . . . ?

A stranger. Wait—someone leaning on him . . .

Slowly easing out of the carriage—was it? The stranger, giving him a cane. A familiar stance, a bend of the body, the rumble of a word, the timbre of a familiar voice . . .

Oh, God—was it? Or was she dreaming? Ducas? Ducas? As if she’d conjured him to reality out of her dreams. Injured? Maimed? She couldn’t see clearly as she crouched, peering through the lower branches of the hedge in which she’d cowered the entire night.

Oh, mighty Lord in heaven, he must not see her here, not like this, not now . . . There could be no explanation, ever, for her skulking around his house like this. . ..

She ducked back into the bushes, and watched him walk slowly and painfully on the arm of the stranger up to the front door.

A jangling bell in the distance. Scurry of footsteps. The door opening. She couldn’t see anything—it couldn’t be him, could it?

But it must be . . . a word, a welcome, and he limped into the house.

The fog rolled up across the lawn, catching in the brittle branches of every tree and bush. Thank heaven for the fog—while they were all occupied by the surprise of his return, she could slip and slide away without anyone noticing, a swirling shadow swallowed by the mist.

But dear heaven, this was so unexpected, he couldn’t be back yet, could he? She felt so disoriented by the arrival of this man who looked like Ducas. It was so soon after he’d gone, so unreal, coming out of the fog.

She didn’t know what to think, what to do, as she slipped away from Sangbourne Manor as quickly as a wraith.

She had to get home, she had to think, she had to plan.

But you don’t have to do anything. Not yet, not now.

Ducas is home. . ..

It was the blood.

Or the lack of it.

Constable Croyd didn’t need to know anything more. It was yet another mysterious animal death in an intermittent series of them around the countryside. Never enough to arouse suspicions. Oh, every few weeks, someone would report an animal gone, drained of its lifeblood, with no earthly reason why or how.

Never any bites, tears, or marks. Just the animal, drained and dead.

They would notify him, as he had long ago instructed, and then they would cut up the carcass and bury it, with the proper precautions, just in case.

They never said in case of what, but Croyd knew. In the depths of the countryside, superstitions abounded, and while there was nothing about the deaths of the animals that could remotely be construed as suspicious or supernatural, no one ever wanted to take the chance that something had been . . . overlooked.

Even now, Croyd wondered if there was something he had overlooked. This newest animal demise was closer to home than usual. One of the Sangbourne tenant farmers, actually.

And the Sangbournes were an odd lot, to his mind. That son going off to South Africa on the turn of tuppence. The mother, so exotic, so beautiful, keeping to herself, even while she played bountiful lady of the manor. And Sir Eustace, of whom everyone was so fond, except they believed he’d been a little sun-touched all those years ago when he’d met and decided to marry Lady Veleka somewhere in the remote and erotic Far East.

There was one story about which no one would ever know the truth.

But what truth? The Lady Veleka was cordial and generous, as Sir Eustace’s wife should be, and just that little bit distant. And on top of that, a little strange. And the strangeness was the thing that Constable Croyd was watching, in his own quiet, unassuming way.

He couldn’t quite define it, or put his finger on just what it was. But there was something about Lady Sangbourne that nagged at him. So he watched her. Quietly, subtly. Never in any way that would reveal he was even aware of her, but he watched her.

And now he had an excuse to go to the manor, for surely Sir Eustace would want to be aware of what had happened on one of his tenant farms. Probably the farmer had sent word already, but it would be good for Sir Eustace and his lady to know that the law was following these mysterious killings as well.

Just in case. Their being so close to home, so to speak. The lord and lady should be aware, he thought.

With all due precautions.

It was like walking onto a battlefield blind, with every sense heightened, every nerve screamingly alert.

And yet, what could be more normal than the entrance hallway of Sangbourne Manor in the early morning hours when no one was awake, and the butler was stumbling sleepily down the hall, having been awakened by the odd jangling of the bell so early in the morning.

The butler knew him immediately. The first test passed. His eyes skewed suspiciously to Dar’s companion, Alton, and then back to Dar. There was no question in his mind, on his lips. Not a single doubt that he was Ducas Sangbourne come home.

So now the subterfuge began.

“Mr. Ducas . . .” The butler’s tone was apologetic, shocked, deferential, and foggy with sleep. “We had no idea, we didn’t expect . . . no one sent word—if we’d only known . . . do let me . . .”

Dar didn’t move. The butler stopped in mid-motion and looked at Alton.

“He doesn’t know you,” Alton interposed quickly. “He remembers nothing. He was badly wounded at the battle of Dundee, he spent two months at Cumberside, and even then . . . nothing. The doctors there could only do so much. It was thought best to bring him back to Sangbourne Manor, to what was familiar, to see if it would would shock his memory. But you must not hope—the doctor says it may never happen.”

“I see.”

Dar said nothing. It was better to say nothing, that was the strategy: to take Ducas’s place, and to navigate the tricky waters of his life as expediently as possible, “kill him” again, as it were, and get out before the family found out that Ducas was really dead.

“I see,” the butler said again, his tone more considering, his reserve snapping back in place. “Mr. Ducas, I am Holmby.”

Dar could see him looking for any sign that he was recognized. “Holmby,” he said slowly. “Holmby?” He shot a glance at Alton. Alton nodded. “Holmby, then.”

Alton said, “He really doesn’t remember—anything.”

“Inconceivable, ” the butler muttered, and then, “I must wake the family. Will you stay with him in the library?”

“For as long as necessary,” Alton said, shooting a glance at Dar.

The library was a cold book-lined room with stiff sofas and a long table that fronted a floor-to-ceiling window that framed the flaming sunrise.

Dar sat gingerly on one of the couches and looked around. Sat down right in Ducas Sangbourne’s life—one that was so diametrically the opposite of his own, one filled with luxury and servants, and beautifully bound books and elegant furniture.

And parents.

There were parents; this he knew from the colonel who had given him a precis of Ducas’s background obtained from the records and from the information gleaned by the attendants who had nursed him. He knew about Ducas’s beautiful and intense mother, his scholarly and gentle father, about Sangbourne Manor, and the neighboring village.

All this he knew, and then he knew what he himself had sensed as he limped into the Manor hall—the thick scent of lust and unbridled emotion, overlaid with a cool deliberate constraint.

It was so palpable, it was almost tangible, and yet there was nothing in the shadowy corners of the hallway and library to even warrant such conclusions.

But he never ignored his senses.

“What do you think?” Alton whispered.

“I’m in way over my ears,” Dar muttered. Way over his heart and deep into his emotions already about the complications of this mission. He hadn’t even considered he might have strong feelings about Ducas’s parents, or even the consequences of his deceiving them so cruelly.

On the battlefield, in discussion, it had been such an abstract thing. Sitting in the beautifully appointed library, waiting on the butler, the parents, he comprehended it was something else quite again, and that there were pitfalls he never even considered.

It would be too easy to fall into the trap of becoming their son, for one thing. Too easy because it was something he had yearned for all his life: parents, a home, stability, love.

And Ducas had had it all, had betrayed everything he held dear, and given his life in the process, so that he, Dar St. Onge, could step into Ducas’s life, and briefly give back to his family what had been taken from them. And then, when he was integrated, when he fulfilled his mission, when he was ready to leave them, he would kill Ducas all over again.

Hell. Shit.

So be it. This was war, and Ducas was suspect, and no matter what his upbringing, no matter how much he was loved and coddled in his sphere, justice must be done.

He heard a woman shrieking in the distance as footsteps pounded down the stairs. The mother—it had to be the mother.

“Ducas? Ducas—where are you? Dear heaven, where are you?”

“. . . library, mum . . .” the butler’s voice faintly behind her, and a moment later, she appeared in the doorway in a swirl of green satin and lace.

Dear God, she was beautiful. And younger than he would have thought. And that hair—thick, dark, down to her waist. Holding out her arms, her hands, with their long tapered fingers beckoning him as he rose to his feet as she entered with melodramatic flair.

He knew her, from everything the colonel had told him, he knew her. And it was so hard not to go to her, as Ducas’s ghost, and let himself be enfolded in her arms.

“He doesn’t know you, my lady,” Alton, finally speaking, said.

Her flashing green eyes speared him. “How so?”

“His memory, my lady. Gone. Utterly. I have all the reports and papers here. It was thought best to send him home and see if being among familiar faces might be of some benefit—or comfort.”

He didn’t have to say, for you.

She made a move, and the tall gray-haired man standing behind her with his hands on her shoulders, immediately restrained her.

“Veleka.”

So that was her name. And he was Sir Eustace, Ducas’s father.

“I want to hold him, he’ll know me then, he will . . .”

“Veleka, my dear, you didn’t believe Holmby, so let us listen to . . . this gentleman—”

“Alton, sir . . .”

“—Alton . . . who has accompanied our son home.” He moved her into the room, to the sofa opposite the one in front of which Dar stood; the butler drew the curtains so the rising sun would not glare in her eyes, and everyone sat down, slowly, gingerly, while Veleka’s hot green gaze poured all over him.

“Sir. Mr. Ducas was wounded at Talana Hill, took a very bad hit on his head, was in the hospital for these two months, unconscious, and came out of it with no memory of who he was or what had happened. The doctors thought it best to send him back home. It might help, it might not. There’s no way to tell.”

“I see,” Sir Eustace murmured.

“Well, it’s just not possible,” Veleka said, jumping to her feet. “He will remember everything, I will see to it. I will make it happen.” She was at Dar’s side instantly, taking his hands, gazing into his eyes. “It will happen. How could my son not remember all that there is to remember? His life here was happy, fulfilled, his need to go to war the patriotism of a son of England. And now he will be repaired, I swea. . .