Lara Temple - The Lord’s Inconvenient Vow

What is the point? she thought, holding back from giving the table leg a kick. It was too late.

‘I don’t want to grow up. I know I will have no choice, but I don’t want to. Bad things happen when you do, like Lucas and Chase and you going to war or even worse things like my father being a fool and getting himself killed and my mother still mourning him and...’

And you marrying. You should not.

‘What is so wonderful about growing up?’ she demanded as he remained silent. He looked older. Not serious Edge poring over his books and artefacts, but the man she had felt against her.

‘It is not meant to be wonderful. It just is. There are things in life you do because you have no choice and you make the best of them. That is growing up.’

She covered her face with her hands, blocking it out, blocking him out.

‘Then I want none of it. I am sorry I offended you, but that does not give you the right to lecture me.’

‘You did not...never mind. Whether you want it or not, it has already happened. Your family and upbringing may not be typical among our class, but you are a Sinclair and very wealthy and that means you will be courted by some and regarded with suspicion by others. People will expect the worst of you because they do not know you as we do and if you behave as you did today...’ His voice dropped as he spoke, from smoke to gravel. ‘Whatever you think, I do not wish you to be hurt.’

She turned away. At least it was dark so he could not see the ruin she was becoming under his words.

He took a step nearer and stopped.

‘I don’t wish to hurt you, truly. I only want you to understand...oh, hell.’ He took another step and stopped again. Then he reached out, tracing a line by her brow.

‘You are bruised here. Is that my fault?’ He sounded so bruised himself she tried to force herself to smile.

‘No, I think we already established it was all my fault. It doesn’t hurt. At least it didn’t until you touched it.’

His hand dropped into a fist by his side and she wished she’d kept her mouth shut. Perhaps if she’d learned that valuable skill long ago she might have...what? Stolen Edge from the woman he loved?

‘I am sorry, Sa—Lady Samantha.’

Lady Samantha . She moved past him.

‘Goodbye, Lord Edward.’

‘Wait.’ He grasped her arm. ‘Please don’t be angry with me.’

‘What does it matter if I am angry? You have been crystal clear as always, Lord Edward. If it makes you feel any better, your arrows have sunk home. They are deep in my posterior.’

His laugh was a little strangled.

‘Blast you, Sam.’

‘That is at least your third curse today in my presence, Lord Edward Edgerton. You should keep your distance from me henceforth, I am clearly a bad influence.’

He grasped her other arm and for a moment they stood there. Inside she could hear Poppy on the pianoforte and her mother singing. Familiar and horrible. Nothing would ever be the same.

‘Yes,’ Edge said at last. ‘Yes, you are. I am leaving for Cairo at dawn tomorrow. I shan’t see you again. I wish you happy, Sam. Will you wish me the same?’

‘Always.’ That was the truth, whatever the pain.

‘God in heaven, how...’ He actively strangled the words, his fingers pressing into the flesh of her upper arms. There was such confusion in his voice she sank her fingers into his immaculate coat, crushing the lapels as if she could knead the very fabric of time and space and force it to her will. She rose on tiptoes and touched her lips to his cheek. He had not shaved and the stubble caught on her lips and this sign of imperfection filled her with such need she gave a little cry, a puff of a wail against his flesh. He turned his head, just catching it briefly with his mouth, his lips covering hers, drawing her breath from her.

His mouth fit perfectly, she thought. Two pieces of a warm, tingling puzzle. It was so right ...

And then she was free again.

She forced herself to speak the dreaded words, proper at last. ‘My congratulations on your upcoming nuptials. Godspeed.’

This time he didn’t answer as she left the veranda and made her way back to her room. In the morning he was gone as he had said.

But then Edge had always been a man of his word.

‘No one passes through the Valley of the Moon and emerges unscathed.’

— Lost in the Valley of the Moon, Desert Boy Book Three

Sam stopped at the rim of the Howling Cliffs above Qetara. Below lay the ragged rock-strewn valley and beyond was the gleam of the Nile, a grey-brown ribbon nestled between green swathes of reeds. The sun was hanging low and already tinting the hills beyond the Nile in orange and mauve and touching the white building of Bab el-Nur with pink. She could just make out the edge of the garden where the trees shielded her mother’s grave.

Could it possibly be three years since her mother’s death sent her back to Sinclair Hall in England? The last three months here in Egypt felt more substantial than those three years. More substantial even than the long years that had passed since she married Ricki. As if she’d not truly been awake from the moment she returned to Venice and set out on a quest to mend her tattered heart and pride by finding herself a home.

Not that she knew what a home was. Living on sufferance with her mother’s family in Venice or even as a valued and loved guest at Bab el-Nur with the Carmichaels did not constitute a home. Perhaps those two years in Burford in England when she’d been barely six—she remembered a vague feeling of being safe. Sometimes she wondered if she’d chosen Ricki from all her suitors because she’d discovered his father had a property near Burford, as if that created some magical link between him and her last memories of carefree happiness. They’d both expected the other to be something they weren’t—no wonder they’d both been disappointed.

If only they had been older they might have weathered that disappointment and perhaps even built something on its ashes. And then poor little Maria might still be alive. She would be almost ten years old now had she not drowned. Sam rubbed her face wearily, trying to chase away the dank taste of the canal water. Thoughts of Maria always brought back pain.

She scuffed at the pebbles with the tip of her boot, kicking a few over the ledge and hearing them snap against the stone as they bounced into the valley below.

Egypt wasn’t her home, but she loved it here. Thank goodness Chase and Lucas had all but forced her to return. It had woken her and the thought of slipping back into the half-existence she’d fallen into since her marriage to Ricki was unacceptable. She’d made a terrible mistake marrying him, but she was older and wiser now. Poppy and Janet knew many people in London with ties to Egypt. It was not in the realm of the fantastical that among them she might find someone who would wish to wed her and yet be a good, kind man and father. Someone who would watch the world transform from one magic to another with her. Perhaps even agree to howl with her.

How many times had she and Lucas and Chase and Edge scrambled up these cliffs as children, imitating the night yowling of the jackals? Well, not that Edge howled with them, he had always been too aloof for that, but he’d come none the less. Then they would watch the hills across the Nile turn from ochre to orange to purple and then fade into the indigo of night.

She tilted her head, baring her throat to the rising breeze, and breathed deeply, trying to chase away the murky taste of the canal waters of Venice that always followed thoughts of Ricki.