Devil in My Bed

Copyright © 2009 by Celeste Bradley.

Excerpt from Rogue in My Arms copyright © 2009 by Celeste Bradley.

All rights reserved.

For information address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.

ISBN: 978-0-312-94308-0

Printed in the United States of America

St. Martin’s Paperbacks edition / August 2009

St. Martin’s Paperbacks are published by St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue,New York, NY 10010.

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In memory of Jack Bird, at whose desk I write.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I could not have drawn Melody so convincingly if not for the help of little Frankie Jean Baca-Lucero and her moms. Frankie, of all the three-year-old big-eyed tornadoes out there, you are the coolest! In addition, I could not have managed the last year without my patient, tolerant and lovingly supportive friends and family: Joanne M., Robyn H., Cynthia T., Darbi G., and Cheryl L. Thank you all for the endless hours on the phone.

Good agents are hard to come by and good friends are even harder. My very special thanks to Irene Goodman, agent and angel.

And always, to my beautiful girls, thank you for the joy you bring me.

Did every woman want to vomit on her wedding day? Lady Melody shuddered. Well, perhaps not that.

Perhaps only to run screeching in tight circles, waving her arms and gibbering madly until someone force-fed her a few stiff brandies and sat upon her for awhile?

The mirror she gazed into had no answer for her. Idiot glass.

The window behind her betrayed only the faintest of dawn’s pale beginnings, yet there was no dismissing the fact that her wedding day had most definitely begun. She was still in her dressing gown, her hair still down around her shoulders like a child. Noting the faint trace of freckles that remained across her nose in the mirror, Melody felt as though she wasn’t really a woman at all, much less a bride.

In only a few hours she was to be married in the opulent chapel where her ancestors had been wed for centuries. So grand a chapter in a life which had begun so invisibly. She’d been found, she felt, not born.

Even she had no real memory of the life before this one. It was as if she’d appeared out of thin air somewhere around her third birthday.

She tried to picture herself walking down that aisle clad in satin, ready to give herself away forever.

Unfortunately, being at home on the family estate only reinforced the impression that she’d never grown up at all.

Nerves made her hands shake until she clasped them together before her.

Her maid was busy by the grand fireplace, pouring great brass pails of steaming water into the hammered copper tub and adding scented herbs for a soothing bath.

Melody closed her eyes, sure that there was not enough hot water in all of England to warm the chill ball of anxiety in her belly. “What if I’m wrong? What if he isn’t the right man?”

“You’re not a child, my dear.” The crisp voice behind her belonged not to her maid but to the man who had created her wedding gown. Her father had insisted upon the best for her, and Lementeur was the very best mantua-maker in all of England. He was also a long-time family friend.

Melody opened her eyes to meet his in the mirror. The world might know him as Lementeur, that arbiter of fashion for England’s most elite, but since early childhood she’d always called him simply Button.

He certainly looked the part. He was short and crisply elegant, with the crinkles of years of humorous observation about his eyes and the silver hair to match it.

Despite her anxiety, she could not help smiling at the picture of the very small man swathed in her very long veil. “Sorry about that. Her ladyship insisted that it trail halfway down the aisle.”

“Hmph. Well, your ladyship ought to have stood your ground. It is your wedding. This—” He hefted it off him self impatiently, his arms extended entirely upward and still not long enough to hold the miles of net off the carpet. “This extravagance almost treads on poor taste.” Then he smiled and smoothed the veil gently. “How delicious, that balancing point between luxury and vulgarity. You’ll start a whole new fashion. I think I’ll invest in a laceworks.”

“Another? I thought you owned one already.”

“I own two, actually, but one that exclusively produces wedding veils . . .” He trailed off in thoughts of cornering the lace market. Then he finally seemed to notice her malaise. “Mellie, whatever is the matter?”

Melody twisted her clasped hands in anxiety. “Button, I’m not so certain—”

He placed her veil upon its specially constructed stand and came up behind her. His blue eyes held her nearly matching ones in the mirror. “Pet, you are sure. You’re mad for the fellow and, of course, he’s entirely smitten with you.”

She shook her head, unwilling to be so easily reassured. “How can I know? The whole courtship was so complicated. Shouldn’t these matters be simple if they’re truly meant to be?”

He turned her then to gaze into her eyes, his own crinkled in amusement. He was so dear. She felt her anxiety begin to ease. “Mellie, my darling, don’t you realize that you come by your tendency toward complications honestly? You’ve quite the family history of circuitous romance. From the very beginning, even before your parents met—well, perhaps I ought not to carry tales.”

She leaned into his embrace and lay her head on his shoulder, as she had so many times in her life. For a moment she longed to be a little girl again, to live in simpler, easier times. “Carry tales, Button.” She closed her eyes. “Tell me a story.” Anything to still her wildly contradictory thoughts!

She heard him chuckle, then take a deep breath. “Well, I suppose there’s time.” He led her to sit on the small settee near the fire and nestled her into his side like a child, though she was a bit taller than he.

She let her eyelids close out the view of the wedding preparations. Her chambers were far from the pomp and madness elsewhere in the house. If she shut out all thought and simply listened the crackle of the small fire in the hearth, she could pretend, just for a moment, that this exciting, taxing day was still far, far in her future and that she was just a little girl hearing a favorite tale.

“Once upon a time,” Button went on, his voice low and soothing, “there was a man who had everything.

He was rich and handsome and wellborn, yet there was something missing in his life.”

Melody smiled slightly. “Me.”

Button laughed. “No interruptions, now. And no, not you, not quite yet. Now, one day this man was riding in his fine carriage down Bond Street, minding his own matters . . .”

1812, twenty-three years earlier

Her lithe figure caught Aidan’s eye first, for he’d never been one to miss something lovely within his sight. He wasn’t sure if the appeal lay in the turn of her shoulder or the fragile arch of her neck, but Aidan de Quincy, fifth Earl of Blankenship, found himself captivated by the slender widow as she strode the opposite way down the walk.

She looked . . . determined, just by the briskness of her walk and the set of her chin beneath the black net veil.

You can tell so much from a quick look at her profile and a rather more lingering stare at her backside?

Aidan sat back in tufted velvet seat of his carriage, wondering if she could possibly be pretty enough to live up to that graceful figure. Probably not—

Furtive movement at the edge of his vision caught his attention and he leaned forward once more to peer through the square window at the teeming street outside. It looked as though he wasn’t the only one to be snared by the allure of the lissome widow. Following her now was a man in dark, rough clothes with his cap pulled down over his eyes and a tendency to glance back over his shoulder a little too often.

When he shifted his attention back to the widow, Aidan caught a glimpse of an ivory cheek beneath the fluttering veil as the woman sent a worried glance over her own shoulder. Her renewed hurry indicated that she’d seen the man behind her and that she was alarmed by him. Intent on fleeing, she ducked into the nearest escape—a narrow alleyway between shops. The man followed her.

Damn.

There wasn’t time to order the carriage turned about—or even to call it to a complete halt. Aidan simply opened his door, hung there a moment with one foot on the running board, and then flung himself into the busy street. He kept his footing well enough on the slick cobbles but it was several breathtaking moments before he could dash and dodge his way through the oncoming carts and carriages to the other side of the street.

Aidan ran pell-mell for the mouth of the alley. Should he be calling for the watch? He doubted that the gouty old buzzards who served as watchmen would be any help at all, even if they managed to drag themselves there in time. No, better to appraise the situation himself first.

The situation, he found when he rounded the corner, was quite the classic tableau—a veritable cautionary tale of what became of unescorted ladies in lawless London.

Except that there was something wrong with this depiction. There was the thief, knife in hand—bloody hell, look at that knife!—with other hand held out to take what wasn’t rightfully his. There was the lady, cowed and trembling, backing away in the dimness with her hands held up in supplication.

But she wasn’t backing away at all. No, this lady was advancing—with a brick held threateningly high, no less!

Aidan wasn’t the only one nonplussed. The thief had halted his obviously well-practiced routine and now seemed to waver in confusion, his knife hand dropping slightly.

Aidan shook off his own paralysis of wonder and moved forward swiftly. “You there!” he shouted.

The brick sailed through the air at that precise moment, even as the thief whirled toward Aidan’s harsh command with his knife at the ready.

Aidan was helpless to stop his own reckless forward momentum. His boot soles slithered on cobbles slimed with years of best-not-dwell-upon-it while his horrified gaze riveted on the vicious gleam of the horrible curved blade pointed directly at his oncoming heart.

The brick missed the thief entirely but hit Aidan square in the shoulder—

Spinning him aside with not a moment to spare. His opposite fist, clenched from sheer terror, followed through on his spin to smash powerfully into the jaw of the startled thief. Aidan caromed off the brick wall of the neighboring building, barely managing to keep his feet.

I am a whirling dervish. How ridiculous I must look.

At the end of his wild spin, he blinked his gaze clear of dizziness to spy, with great surprise, that the thief lay face down in the ooze and the thief’s knife lay in the hands of the willowy widow, who stood triumphantly over the fallen knave’s body with her veil thrown back and blazing fury in her eyes.

Oh. My. God. She was lovely. Her features were delicate but dramatic, a queen carved in alabaster with huge dark brown eyes and full lips that gleamed richly red against her pale skin. Dark curls of fallen hair traced one perfectly carved cheekbone, gleaming nearly black in the dim alley. Her face more than matched her delicious figure. It surpassed it.

In that single breathless moment, Aidan was swept with a powerful urge he’d never before experienced.

He had no thought in his mind except a ringing deep in his primal mind. Must possess this woman. Must have her for my very own.

Always.

Which was ridiculous, of course, mad beyond words, complete hogwash, and many other such dismissive phrases—until he’d nearly convinced himself that it was only the close call with danger that spurred such a violent, aching, acquisitive lust.

Then she raised her fiercely gleaming eyes to meet his gaze. “That,” she said, satisfaction sizzling in her words, “was bloody brilliant!”

It was no use. He was a complete goner. Widow one, Aidan naught.

Like a fish hooked on a line, he moved toward her. He’d never been known as the sort of fellow to sweep a woman off her feet. Perhaps more the type to unwittingly intimidate—he preferred to think that rather than bore them to somnolence. Still, Aidan couldn’t help feeling an absurdly romantic surge of heroic protectiveness as he bowed over the lady’s hand.

Her gamine smile, her low, delicious laugh, the feeling of her slight hand lost in his large one—it was a heady combination. He liked the way she looked at him, as if he were nine feet tall and had dragon’s blood dripping from his sword. Charming. His title might be envied, his wealth very nearly adored, but he’d never had someone gaze at him—him!—with quite that mix of amusement and admiration.

“St. George, I presume?”

She was mocking him, but for once in his life Aidan didn’t mind being the butt of a jest, not if it bought him another moment of that husky laughter.

He bowed deeply as if sweeping his aforementioned dripping sword out of the way. “Sacrificial virgin, I presume?” God, had he truly said something so risqué to a respectable woman he’d not even been properly introduced to?

Luckily, his sally was rewarded with another laugh that made his chest expand and his groin tighten.