Julia Ross
Dear Reader: Here's an excerpt from Games of Pleasure.
Happy reading!!
Games of Pleasure
Berkley Trade Paperback. November 2005. ISBN: 0-425-20565-7
As the book opens, we meet Lord Ryderbourne, eldest son of the Duke of Blackdown, riding his horse along the cliff path in Dorset on the south coast of England.
It's 1828, and Ryder's offer of marriage to an eligible young lady has just been turned down:
EXCERPT:
. . . . . It was, he supposed, a serious shock to his confidence.
Not to his position in the world, of course. To his faith in himself.
The sensation was both unwelcome and novel. It left him feeling oddly vulnerable, to which the best answer was righteous resentment. Any insult to the male heart fuels only anger.
Drizzle wet his face. The ground was getting slick. Just ahead, part of the road surface had fallen away, carried down with the collapsing cliffs toward the sea by a landslide the previous winter. The local people had beaten a new track across the tumbled earth and another, narrower path down through the uprooted trees to the beach, but no wagon or carriage could pass this way any longer.
He slowed his horse, then stopped to gaze out over the bay. Clouds gathered on the horizon. Jade-shadowed breakers shattered white against the broken rocks of the headland.
Something bobbed, appearing and disappearing among the swells.
Ryder shaded his eyes. A scrap of wreckage, perhaps? Whatever it was, it had vanished.
He took a deep breath. Salt air filled his lungs. Rollers surged up the Channel. Spume splattered onto cliffs. Waves dashed and sucked on the shingle far below.
He loved this land. He loved Wyldshay, his ancestral home, his joy, his burden. He loved his family. His father, the aging duke, who delegated more and more responsibility to his elder son. His mother, brilliant and demanding and a light in society. His sisters, who would soon be fielding suitors of their own. And his younger brother, Wild Lord Jack—the wicked, interesting boy with the face of an angel who had left home long ago to drift about the world—gone again now with his new bride to India, while Ryder was left to both the duties and privileges of being the heir.
He had never resented it before, but now a small disquiet seemed to be gnawing at him like a mouse at a grain sack.
Ryder shrugged and urged his horse forward just as the flotsam lifted, closer to shore than he had expected. Dipping and spinning, it tossed haphazardly toward the headland.
He pulled up abruptly. A dinghy. Foundering, without oars, without rudder, spinning straight toward the rocks.
Yet something fluttered, almost out of sight behind the prow—a scrap of fabric?
Someone lay in the slosh of water in the bottom of the boat.
The gelding sank its haunches. Hooves slid on mud as the horse hurtled downhill through the jumble of dislodged trees and shrubs. Pebbles rattled, then showered past, when they reached the shingle. Riding full-tilt toward the surf, reins dropped onto his horse’s neck, Ryder shed hat, cloak, and jacket. His heart hammered as he plunged his mount into the sea.
The gelding swam strongly. Cold water broke over Ryder’s chest, soaking him. The saddle turned to soap beneath his thighs. He urged his horse to swim faster, his hands filled with wet mane and reins like damp rubber.
The sinking craft had disappeared among the waves.
The gelding’s breath roared like dragon fire. Ryder shouted. The ocean swallowed the sounds in an infinity of moisture.
He circled his horse, shouting like a madman, when the little boat suddenly wallowed down the face of a breaker. Cold spume broke over Ryder’s face.
Half blinded, he grasped at the gunnel.
A woman. Almost naked. Ivory flesh shone blue-white beneath her corset and a scrap of soaked chemise, her thighs and arms bare to the cold rain and the sea. Beaten iron-salt hair plastered over white neck and shoulders, streamed like seaweed across a slim waist. Just clear of the bilge, her half-hidden face lay pillowed on one outstretched arm.
The next wave tore the boat from his fingers.
Ryder tugged the swimming gelding back toward the dinghy. A rope trailed from the bow, coy as an eel. Reaching from the saddle, he grabbed at it. Skin ripped from his palm as the next wave lifted the boat, and his grip on the rope tore him from his horse.
Cold ocean, loud with bubbles, closed over his head. Kicking strongly, Ryder grasped the end of the gelding’s tail. Fighting water, he looped a knot between tail and rope. As he surfaced and his horse turned back toward land, a flailing stirrup iron struck him hard on the elbow.
He cursed and hauled himself into the dinghy one-handed.
She was alive. As Ryder lifted her she groaned, her head falling back to expose her white throat. A red bruise marked one cheek. Streaks of color spoiled the flesh of her arms. He knew an instant of livid fury before he forced his mind back to the problems at hand.
The boat wallowed deeper as another wave broke over it. The nerve screamed in his elbow, numbing the muscles from wrist to shoulder. Nevertheless, he propped the woman against his own body with one arm and hooked a foot under the seat to jerk off one of his boots. He began to bail as if his life depended on it—though his life was not at stake, of course.
He could still swim to shore with one arm. Yet he probably could not carry her with him without both of them foundering.
Her life, then. Her life depended on it.
A woman. A stranger. Her bones as lovely as glass. Her long legs entangled in beauty and threat. Her hair a cloak of mystery. Her face damaged by a man’s fist. Other than the purple fingerprints branded onto her flesh, her body might have been carved from marble beneath the little stone ridges of crumpled wet fabric. A sensuous, enchanting body, ripe with female invitation.
He cursed again and kept bailing.
Freed of its burden of water, the dinghy lifted. The horse swam nobly, driven by instinct straight back to the beach. The woman coughed and opened her eyes. The deft curve of her waist burned beneath his palm as she coughed again, then thrust both hands back over her head, pushing the sea-tangled hair from her forehead.
Her breasts lifted, nipples shining dark beneath the soaked fabric.
She looked up at him from bleak chocolate eyes, her lashes spikes of distrust.
He met her accusatory gaze without flinching. Of course he was aware of the shadowed triangle between her thighs; her breasts thrust up in deliberate invitation by her corset; her naked legs and cold white feet—glimmering beneath torn silk stockings as if she had run unshod over stones. Did she think he was villain enough to pay attention to anything but rescuing her? To feel anything but this white-hot anger at her unknown assailant?
“It’s all right,” he said. “We’re almost ashore. You’re quite safe now.”
She shivered and crossed her arms as if hugging herself, moving as far from him as space on the seat permitted, yet her mouth quirked with a kind of wry bravado.
“So who are you?” she asked. “Sir Galahad?”
Games of Pleasure will reach stores on November 1, 2005. Happy reading!
Berkley Trade Paperback. ISBN: 0-425-20565-7
