Page 1 of A Night of Forever
Prologue
OUTSKIRTS OFLONDON, 1816
Arend Aubury, the fifth Baron Labourd, saw the disintegrated carriage collapsed and lying on its side in the ditch up ahead, and prayed Marisa wasn’t in it.
Six horses lay a ways behind the carriage, screaming in agony, but their fate could wait until he found Marisa.
The enemy out to destroy Arend and his fellow Libertine Scholars might well have succeeded this time. Lady Marisa Spencer, Duchess of Lyttleton, had been kidnapped, and the carriage used to abduct her now lay splintered and spread beside the road like matchwood.
He cast a fleeting glance at Maitland Spencer, Duke of Lyttleton, Marisa’s husband, whose horse thundered along beside him.
The waves of pain and horror radiating from his friend swamped him. Marisa was more than Maitland’s wife. She was his heart. His soul. His life. If anything had happened to her—
Their enemy would pay. And pay dearly.
Arend kicked his horse forward, desperate to get to the wreckage before Maitland in case the sight was too horrific to allow his friend to see.
Even before the animal had come to a stop, Arend was out of the saddle and racing for the broken carriage door.
When he reached it and saw a woman inside, her chest rising and falling, the relief that she was still alive made him suddenly weak.
Moving quickly but carefully, he pushed aside the debris and eased into the wreckage until he was at her side. But when he rolled her gently over so he could lift her, the boiling blood racing through his veins turned to ice, his fists curled tight, and his need to avenge the hurt and pain that the Libertine Scholars’ enemy was inflicting on his friends burned like acid in his gut.
This woman wasn’t Marisa.
Arend had no idea who the stranger was, but prickles of unease slid through him.
The stranger had a nasty gash on her head, but she was breathing steadily.
She was about Marisa’s age, with Marisa’s dark hair, and a face that even a jaded man had to admit was a vision of perfection. Her perfectly shaped pouty lips, cute button nose, and long, thick eyelashes resting against her pale cheeks were the well-maintained features of a lady. For some unfathomable reason, he wanted to know the color of those eyes.
Besides, she was dressed in a ball gown.
But who was she, and why was she here? Was she an accomplice? All these thoughts jumbled in his head until the one thought that should have been uppermost in his mind howled at him to listen.
Where was Marisa?
Arend heard someone approaching, and came to his senses.
A voice called out, “I cannot find the kidnappers or anyone else. It looks as though they scampered before the crash. Perhaps even left the carriage to teeter out of control. It does look deliberate.”
He searched frantically. Where the hell was she?
For a few heart-stopping seconds he imagined perhaps they’d been mistaken or misled. That Marisa had not been in the carriage at all. But then he saw a piece of her torn jacket on the floor.
He shot a look over his shoulder and realized the man who had come up behind him wasn’t Maitland but Lord Hadley Fullerton.
“Whoever she is, she’s alive,” he said. “Get her out while I look for Marisa. Her jacket’s here. Don’t tell Maitland yet. Keep him with you, in case.”
He didn’t need to spell it out.
Hadley nodded, his face pale.
Arend eased his way out of the wreckage, and then slithered down the damp grass into the ditch where the other half of the carriage lay, partially in the muddy water.
His heart sank. No one could have survived that.
And that’s when he saw them. Marisa’s booted feet, barely visible under the mash of broken wood.
