Amanda Rose Read online

  Copyright

  AMANDA ROSE. Copyright © 1984 by Karen Robards. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

  Warner Books

  Hachette Book Group

  237 Park Avenue

  New York, NY 10017

  ISBN: 978-0-7595-2031-8

  A mass market edition of this book was published in 1984 by Warner Books.

  First eBook Edition: March 2001

  Visit our website at www.HachetteBookGroup.com.

  Contents

  Copyright

  She Should Step Away From Him, She Knew.

  chapter one

  chapter two

  chapter three

  chapter four

  chapter five

  chapter six

  chapter seven

  chapter eight

  chapter nine

  chapter ten

  chapter eleven

  chapter twelve

  chapter thirteen

  chapter fouteen

  chapter fifteen

  chapter sixteen

  chapter seventeen

  chapter eighteen

  chapter nineteen

  chapter twenty

  chapter twenty-one

  chapter twenty-two

  chapter twenty-three

  chapter twenty-four

  chapter twenty-five

  epilogue

  SHE SHOULD STEP AWAY FROM HIM, SHE KNEW.

  His arms had loosened their hold on her waist, and all she had to do was take a single step backward to be free of his touch, but she didn’t. She told herself that she didn’t want to make it obvious to him how much his closeness disturbed her. The very warmth of his body held her in thrall.

  She could feel his muscles gradually stiffening against her, and her brow wrinkled as she puzzled at it. Perhaps she was hurting his wound? She shifted slightly. He tensed even more. Concerned now, Amanda pressed lightly against his chest with both hands, tilting her head to peer up at him. The darkness made it impossible for her to see his face.

  “Matt?” she whispered, his name a question.

  His hands clenched on her waist.

  “Oh, hell,” he growled softly. Her eyes widened. She knew then . . . he was going to kiss her.

  “Ms. Robards has the marvelous talent to zero in on the heart of erotic fantasy . . . no one writes with more fire.”

  —Romantic Times

  “One of the finest, most talented writers of romantic history today.”

  —Affaire de Coeur

  “Ms. Robards writes spellbinding romance.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  BOOKS BY KAREN ROBARDS

  Amanda Rose

  Dark Torment

  Loving Julia

  Night Magic

  To Love a Man

  Wild Orchids

  Published by Warner Books

  To my husband, Doug

  Dr. Walter L. “Pete” Johnson

  and my mother, Sally Skaggs Johnson,

  with love and appreciation for their

  help and support over the years

  Amanda Rose

  chapter one

  It was a perfect day for everything except dying.

  Matthew Grayson lifted his face to the bright April sunshine and sniffed the sweetness of the air, an automatic gesture born of years spent at sea at the helm of his own ship. In those days—were they only a few months ago?—he had thrived on storms and dangers and challenges of every sort, thrived on pitting his courage and skill against anything that sea or sky or man—or woman—could throw at them. Grappling with death had always exhilarated him, making his blood sing with the sheer joy of being alive. Only now, when death was a grim reality and not a faceless chimera, had the singing abruptly stopped.

  His eyes flickered once in his otherwise carefully expressionless face as he thought briefly, longingly, of happier days. The first time his men had seen him laughing at death—he had been hurling mocking defiance in the teeth of a killer hurricane that had sunk a hundred ships from one end of the Atlantic to the other—they had looked at one another in quaking disbelief, silently questioning his sanity. Then, when their own ship, the Lucie Belle, had emerged from the tempest unscathed, the more superstitious among them had stared fearfully at their black-haired, swarthy-skinned captain. His teeth were flashing white in an exultant grin as he worked with unflagging energy while the crew was ready to drop from the exhaustion of more than forty-eight hours spent battling the storm. And, one by one, they had crossed themselves. It was then that the whispers began: Matt Grayson had made a pact with the devil, had bartered his soul for his own and his ship’s safety. The Lucie Belle was blessed or cursed, depending on the speaker’s point of view.

  It was a rumor that Matt did nothing to encourage, but he didn’t discourage it, either, because from then on men lined up in droves to sail on his ship whenever she docked in her home port of New Orleans. For every vacancy there were twenty applicants, and Matt liked being able to pick and choose. He prided himself on having the best crew afloat, and, in turn, the men prided themselves on their captain’s invincibility. It seemed that nothing could touch Matt Grayson—not storms, not bullets, not knives, not even the occasional jealous husband. Nothing, until the devil was ready to claim his own.

  The less superstitious among his crew had another, simpler explanation for their captain’s uncanny ability to bring them safely through the worst the sea could throw at them. “Those born to be hanged will never drown” was what they said of him when the ocean rose up in fury and threatened to crush the Lucie Belle’s hull like a giant, angry fist holding an eggshell, only to set her down again safely in calmer waters some hours later. The saying kept his men from despairing when the waves were thirty feet high and the sea and the sky met and seethed like a briny mixture from hell’s blackest caldron. Matt, hearing the words passed like a talisman from man to man, would throw back his head and laugh in incredulous amazement that grown men, and hardened sea dogs at that, could take comfort in something so ridiculous.

  But he was not laughing today—had not been laughing for some time now—because it looked as if he would, after all, meet the fate the men had prophesied for him. Three months ago, in a sequence of nightmarish events, he had been summarily arrested, tried, and found guilty of the grisly murders of Lord James Farrindgon, Tory nephew of the prime minister, and his wife and children; today Queen Victoria’s government meant to exact its vengeance on one who had removed a thorn from its side. Today they were going to hang him, Matthew Zacharias Grayson, by the neck until he was dead.

  “Aw right, get on down there.” Those words, uttered in a low growl by one of his three burly guards, brought him sharply back to the sorry present. So, too, did the nudge of a rifle butt in the small of his back with which the guard emphasized his command. Matt winced, stumbled, and would have fallen out of the back of the dirty farm cart, which had just rumbled to a halt after conveying him to Tyburn from Newgate Prison, if another guard, perhaps more humane than his fellow, had not caught hold of the chain that linked his shackled wrists and jerked him back upright. Not so long ago Matt would have felt a murderous flash of rage at being so treated, but lately he had been unable to summon emotion of any sort. He felt nothing but a curious blackness, as if he were already dead. Inwardly he blessed that lack of feeling. They were determined to do their worst to him, determined to wring every last drop of pain and suffering from his battered flesh. But he was beyond pain at last, and nearly beyond their reach. For that reason alone he was ready to welcome death wi
th open arms.

  “G’wan, get down. We ain’t got all day.” The first guard prodded him again with the rifle, sounding impatient. Matt thought wryly that he must be keeping the man from something important, like his luncheon. Well, no matter. He was ready to go. They were determined that he would die, and if he did not walk to meet the death they had decreed for him, they would drag him to it. He preferred to spend his last moments on earth like a man, not a cringing dog. Clenching his teeth so hard that a little muscle jumped in the side of his jaw, he clambered awkwardly down from the cart, stumbling and nearly falling as the short, thick chain between the irons on his ankles tripped him up.

  “Watch out there.” Immediately the guards were around him. Afraid he might try to escape, Matt surmised, and would have laughed if he could have summoned the will to do so. He was, or had been, a strong man, big, nearly six feet four inches, with muscles that had earned him a healthy respect in ports from San Francisco to Africa’s Barbary Coast. But the months in prison, without sufficient food or exercise and with frequent beatings and other tortures (they had hoped to wrest a confession from him; he took pride in the fact that they hadn’t succeeded), had shrunk the flesh from his bones. He was a mere shell of what he had been, and he doubted that he had the strength to overpower a girl-child, much less three guards who had surely been chosen for their bullish physiques. But it seemed they were taking no chances. They closed ranks around him, hustling him the short distance from the cart to the foot of the gallows as if terrified that he might break away.

  If he could have, he would have, Matt acknowledged silently, staring up dry-mouthed at the men who awaited him on the platform above. The first twinge of fear pierced the apathy with which he had armored himself as he recognized the black robes of a priest, and the hooded executioner. Matt cursed himself inwardly. He, who had never feared anyone or anything in his life, would not start now. He would meet death with his head up, his step unfaltering, and laugh in the faces of those who had come to hang him. They had taken from him all else that he valued; he would not surrender his pride.

  Urged on by the guards, he mounted the rough wooden planks, his movements slow and awkward because of the confining chains. Over their clanking, he suddenly became aware of a swelling roar. Surprised, Matt looked around and down. A milling, unruly crowd stretched around the gallows like an endless expanse of sea around a tiny island. The sight stopped him in his tracks. He had not been aware of them before, wished he had not become aware of them now. They were staring up at him, a featureless blur made up of hundreds of faces, come to watch him die. Their mouths shouted obscenities; their eyes screamed hate.

  “That’s him. That’s the one. Grayson—bloody murderer.”

  Matt stared at them. Missiles thrown by the crowd began slicing through the air around him, rotten tomatoes and eggs and even rocks. The guards, as caught up in the maelstrom of refuse as he was, cursed viciously and hurried him up the stairs. Matt did nothing to hinder them. Every ounce of his concentration was suddenly focused on fighting down the terror that tiptoed icily up and down his spine. He scarcely felt the rock that bounced off his left temple, leaving a darkening bruise and a trickle of crimson in its wake.

  The platform was long and narrow, just wide enough for perhaps four men to stand abreast. It stood a good fifteen feet off the ground—far enough so that there was at least an even chance that the drop would break the victim’s neck. After all, England in the year 1842 was a humane country; no one wanted a man to meet his death twisting at the end of a rope and choking for as long as a full half hour. No matter that it happened like that more often than not; at least it was not planned. Thinking of the horrible, blackened face and gasping sounds of a man he had once seen hanged and who had died hard, Matt promised himself he would watch for the hangman’s signal, then jump upward at the last moment so that he would fall through the trapdoor with a little extra force. All he asked now was that his finish be quick and clean. Being slowly strangled to death by a frayed piece of hemp was an end he preferred not to contemplate.

  He was not the only man scheduled to die that day, he saw as soon as he set foot on the platform. Two other poor wretches were there, their irons already replaced by a single rope securing their hands behind their backs in the attitude in which they would soon meet their maker. Each had a man with a rifle standing behind and a little to the right of him. The Crown was clearly taking no chances, even at this late date. Three nooses instead of the one he had envisaged swung gently in the breeze. Two sets of eyes other than his own were viewing the soft beauty of a budding spring day for the last time. Matt took odd comfort in the presence of the two other condemned men. Only now did he realize how little he had relished the thought of dying alone.

  “Over there.” His guards—he rated three, whereas the others had only one apiece, which surely meant that he was considered the most dangerous, or perhaps notorious, of the prisoners—shoved him into place before the closest noose. Its twisted brown length seemed to mock and beckon at the same time. Matt wished sickly that it was all over. It was not death he feared so much as the act of dying, he realized. Dying scared him horribly. He could feel cold sweat breaking out under his armpits and along his spine. Desperately he hoped that his sudden weakness was not apparent to the men around him. Clenching his teeth, he unobtrusively straightened his shoulders and forced himself to concentrate on the here and now. Philosophizing about death paid no tolls; in any case, he would soon be solving its mysteries for himself.

  From his position at the end of the platform, Matt realized that he would die last—or first. At this point he didn’t know which he preferred. But when the priest stepped up to the prisoner at the opposite end and began administering the last rites, Matt felt a dizzying surge of relief. It seemed that his stubborn body was determined to hang onto life as long as it possibly could.

  Down below, the crowd quieted as they realized that the first execution was imminent. Matt looked out over the sea of upturned faces, his lips curling with hatred and contempt as he felt the blood lust of those for whom his and his companions’ doom was merely an excuse for a holiday. A hanging was an event, more respectable than a cockfight or a bearbaiting but just as exciting. Fine gentlemen and ladies in their curricles jockeyed for position to one side of the gallows under a clump of tall young oaks whose just-greening buds provided some protection from the bright spring sun. Shop clerks and merchants’ apprentices, given the morning off by masters who were just as likely to be present, stood shoulder to shoulder with pink-checked scullery maids and prim seamstresses. Jammed almost underneath the platform itself were London’s street people—the whores and thieves and drunks who haunted the city’s byways at night. They were so close that they had to crane their necks uncomfortably to see the condemned men above them. But they were content: they were in the best possible position to hear the snap of a broken neck. Vendors made their way through the crowd, hawking meat pasties and hot chestnuts and lemon drinks. Overall hung an air of festivity, as if the citizenry had turned out to gawk at a carnival come to town.

  Matt scarcely felt it as one guard ponderously began to remove his irons while another kept him firmly fixed in his rifle sights. He was too caught up in the horror of watching another man suffer the fate that soon would be his. The priest made the final sign of the cross over the condemned man—a small, stooped fellow with a bald head and fear-dulled eyes—and stepped back. The executioner, a black hood obscuring all but his eyes, stepped forward to jerk a hood similar to his own over the victim’s face. Then, his movements quick and efficient, he grabbed the noose and pulled it over the man’s head until it rested against his scrawny neck. The man jerked as he felt the rough hemp against his flesh; through the obscuring hood Matt saw his lips moving, in what he guessed was a prayer, as the hangman tightened the rope and positioned the knot judiciously. Then the executioner stepped back and the drumroll began. The condemned man gasped audibly. To Matt’s horror and pity, he saw a wet stain spreading d
own the front of the fellow’s ragged breeches; the man’s fear had rendered him incontinent.

  “May God have mercy on your soul,” the priest intoned, and the doomed man gave a hoarse cry. Then the executioner lowered his hand in a sharp, slicing motion while his assistant obediently pulled the lever that opened the trapdoor. The little man screamed just once as he felt the floor dropping out from beneath his feet and himself falling through it. Matt had no time to breathe the prayer hovering on his lips, so quickly was the man gone. The rope snapped taut. The scream choked off in mid-cry. There was a sharp crack, followed by a moment of silence. Then the crowd roared its approval. It had been a clean death.

  “No. Oh, please God, no.” The next man to die, a huge, redheaded fellow bigger than Matt, lost all pretense of composure as the priest approached him. Matt could almost smell the man’s fear. The good father paid no attention to the man’s attempts to cringe away from him, but quickly muttered the service while two guards rushed over to assist the original guard, who had abandoned his rifle to lock the weeping man in a bear hug and wrestle him back into place. Matt felt goose bumps break out along his arms as the priest, hastily making the sign of the cross before backing away from the prisoner’s flailing legs, was replaced by the executioner. At the sight of that black-hooded figure, the man screamed horribly while tears rolled down his square yeoman’s face. Matt, watching as the hood was forced into place over the head of this second man, clenched and unclenched his fists in impotent sympathy. Would he, too, be so overcome by fear when his turn came that he would lose every vestige of pride and human dignity? he wondered desperately as bile rose in his throat.

  “You gonna cry for Mama, too, Grayson?” the guard tying his wrists behind him taunted in an undertone. Matt glared at the man, feeling a burning rage that the oaf should mock the terror of a man in such dire circumstances. In that single instant before his eyes locked with those of the guard who was squatting behind him, he registered that his irons had been removed and that the guard who was supposed to be keeping him covered was instead watching with wide-eyed interest the frantic struggle going on just a few feet away. Even before his brain had properly recognized the opportunity, his body, made desperate by the situation, acted. Before he was conscious that he meant to do it, he swung around, jerking his wrists from the guard’s hold, freeing them from the as-yet-untied rope in a single, violent movement that ended with his hands bunched into two fists that slammed into the astonished man’s temples like twin anvils. The guard crumpled with a single grunt; the other guard, the one with the rifle, looked back just in time to see Matt going over the side of the platform in a low, fast dive. Automatically he jerked his rifle up and fired. Matt felt the stinging sensation of a bullet plowing through the side of his right hip, but he didn’t slow down.