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  Surrender in Moonlight

  Jennifer Blake

  An [ e-reads ] Book

  No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, scanning or any information storage retrieval system, without explicit permission in writing from the Author.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locals or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright 1984 by Patricia Maxwell

  First e-reads publication 1999

  www.e-reads.com

  ISBN 0-7592-0051-3

  Author Biography

  Jennifer Blake has been called the Steel Magnolia of women's fiction, and a "legend of the genre." She is a seventh generation Louisianian who married at 15, began writing at 21, sold her first book at 27, in 1970, and gained her first New York Times Best Seller nearly 20 years ago with LOVE'S WILD DESIRE in 1977. She has written over 50 books, including ROYAL SEDUCTION, FIERCE EDEN, SHAMELESS, TIGRESS, and her latest release GARDEN OF SCANDAL. A writer of international best-seller status as well, her books have been published in 17 languages for worldwide sales approaching 22 million. She was honored with the position as Writer-in-Residence for the University of Northeastern Louisiana, and is a charter, and honorary, member of Romance Writers of America.

  She has received numerous awards for her work, but among those she values most are the Golden Treasure Award for Lifetime Achievement from Romance Writers of America, induction into the Affaire de Coeur Romance Hall of Fame, and the Frank Waters Award for Excellence in Fiction.

  Jennifer and her husband of 41 years live at Sweet Briar, the home they designed and built in 1980 as an energy efficient replica of an old Southern Planter's Cottage. On acreage crossed by a spring-fed creek and enhanced by tall pines, beeches, dogwoods, wild azaleas, and Jennifer's garden of antique roses, they entertain friends and family, especially their four grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Here, as Jennifer says in her own words, "I write my fantasies of love and adventure in the romantic South. And sometimes, when I sit on the porch with the sunlight falling across the lawn and the smells of magnolia, sweet olive, honeysuckle and roses wafting on the warm air, I live them."

  Other works by Jennifer Blake also available in e-reads editions

  Love's Wild Desire

  Tender Betrayal

  The Storm and the Splendor

  Golden Fancy

  Embrace and Conquer

  Royal Seduction

  Fierce Eden

  Bride of a Stranger

  Southern Rapture

  Spanish Serenade

  Sweet Piracy

  The Secret of Mirror House

  Bayou Bride

  Notorious Angel

  Night of the Candles

  The Abducted Heart

  For my agent, Donald MacCampbell, a Civil War buff who pointed out the importance of the Nassau connection.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Surrender in Moonlight

  Chapter 1

  The quick tread of Lorna Forrester's riding boots was muffled by the thick Kirman carpet runner as she moved along the wide hall. Without pausing in her stride, she slipped the loop that caught up the flowing fullness of the skirt of her blue-gray poplin habit over her left wrist, tucked her crop under her arm, and began to tug on the calfskin gloves. There was a mutinous set to the finely molded curves of her mouth, and in her gray eyes a look of grim determination. She would not rest before dinner, would not lie in genteel fatigue upon her bed with warm milk punch at her elbow and a maid in attendance.

  The passageway was dim with the failing light of late afternoon, a condition unimproved by the dark maroon brocade that hung on the walls or the peculiar green light of an April storm that threatened beyond the end windows. After the heavy meal at noon, the cool dampness and early twilight had driven everyone else to their bedchambers, or so it seemed. Lorna was not tired, not even after the long steamboat trip upriver the day before. In truth, she was too overwrought to rest. If she did not escape from Beau Repose and the people the great plantation house held, including her uncle and aunt, she might well succumbed to the urge to scream and throw things. That would not be conduct at all becoming to a happy bride-to-be.

  An inane giggling, high-pitched yet masculine, drifted on the still air. It came from an open doorway a few yards ahead of her. Lorna recognized the sound. A spasm of what might have been dismay or disgust crossed her pale face, but her footsteps did not falter.

  As she drew near the bedchamber from which came that grating laughter, a low moaning blended with it. Rich, female, the soft, panting moans took on a higher note. "Wait, Masts' Frank, that hurts now! Don't do that, Masts' Frank, just be nice. Please, I-oh, don't, don't!"

  The import of the sounds, the words, did not immediately reach Lorna. It was only as she came even with the doorway that they took on meaning. In that instant, she glanced inside, and the breath was driven from her lungs in a startled gasp. She checked herself.

  On the rumpled surface of the four-poster bed within the room, a man and a woman strained and heaved in a tangle of white and black limbs. It was Franklin Bacon, the man she was to marry, with one of the housemaids. That he was hurting the girl, digging his fingers into her hips, and forcing her to take his hard, bestial thrusts, was immediately plain.

  The soft sound Lorna made drew the attention of the pair on the mattress. Franklin reared up, staring, his pale blue eyes bulging in stunned, vacuous surprise. His reaction was slow; then with a strangled cry, he floundered, pushing from his partner, kicking her away. He scuttled sideways on the bed in obscene and hairy nakedness that showed too well his barrel chest and swollen belly above the short, powerful legs and the wet and strutted jut of his manhood.

  "Lorna," he croaked, his voice rising behind her as she swung sharply away. "Come back! I Aeneid doing nothing. It's all right. You shouldn't have seen me, you shouldn't. You should have been laid down resting, like everybody else! Lorna? That’ll Papa say? Lorna!"

  She did not look back, though she heard him plunge out into the hall behind her. With her chin tilted and her face set in lines of tight control, she moved on along the hallway and down the great staircase. Her footsteps might have been a trifle fast, the hold on her crop a threat to her glove seams, but there was nothing else to reveal the agitation that gripped her.

  As she neared the bottom of the stairs, a man emerged from a room that opened to the left, the paneled library with its rows of books. He stood frowning, watching her descent, a folded news-sheet in one hand as if he had been interrupted at his reading.

  "My dear girl," he said as she neared the bottom step. "What can be the matter? What is the shouting about?"

  His voice was soothing, unctuous, indicating that he had guessed well enough. A man of medium height with heavy features and a compact frame, Nathaniel Bacon was of early middle age. He wore his hair, a nondescript brown streaked with silver, swept straight back in a pomaded pompadour style left just a trifle long to blend with his muttonchops whiskers
in the manner of an elder statesman.

  Lorna sent him a harried glance from clear gray eyes. "I must speak to you-" she began.

  "Yes, perhaps you had better come inside," he interrupted as Franklin, still unclothed, appeared above them, whining excuses. A short, hard gesture silenced his son's protests and sent him scurrying back out of sight. Turning with a smooth smile, he ushered Lorna into the library.

  "You appear to have inadvertently seen my son in a, shall we say, less than complimentary light. Regrettable, regrettable, but can assure you that you need not fear it's happening again."

  "That is, of course, a great comfort," Lorna answered, turning to face the man who would be her father-in-law, with her hand on the back of a leather armchair, scarcely aware of what she said.

  "It is no more than the truth. Franklin will be faithful to his marriage vows. I swear it."

  "I would as soon he-you-found another to take my place."

  "That would be impossible at this late date; you know that as well as I," Bacon returned, moving past her to where a great walnut desk held pride of place in the room.

  She might have known her plea would be ignored. Clenching her teeth in an effort to hold back another just as useless, she looked around her. The soft crimson, gold, and brown of the library, with its atmosphere of quiet erudition, did not suit Nathaniel Bacon. As if to point up the fact, he had been perusing a newssheet noted for its heavy humor and application to business concerns, rather than one of the new and expensive calf-bound volumes that lined the shelves of his retreat. Cigar smoke hung in a thick cloud, and the fumes from a brandy glass vied with the smell of the fine, leather book bindings. In build much like his son, Nathaniel Bacon-Nate to his close acquaintances-showed the same results of rich living in his rotund, short-legged body and the veining that made a telltale tracery on his thick nose.

  Pulling out a desk drawer, he rummaged inside, then moved to face her, holding out a box covered in midnight-blue velvet. "I had meant to present this to you tonight at dinner, or rather have Franklin make you the gift of it, but I think now is as appropriate a time as any."

  When Lorna made no move to take the box, he snapped the catch, revealing the glitter of sapphires and diamonds. It was a bracelet, symbol of betrothal in this society along the Mississippi River where the customs of the French-speaking population had come to the fore. Lorna's eyes widened at the magnificence of the jewels, the sheer ostentation of their size and brilliance. At the same time, she was acutely aware of the satisfied smile of the man who faced her as he noted her reaction.

  "Do you think," she said distinctly, "that this trinket will be sufficient to persuade me to forget what I witnessed just now?"

  "No, no," Nate Bacon protested, his smile disappearing as calm reassurance coated his tone. "I realize such a thing must be impossible for a lady of sensitivity, one as carefully reared as yourself. I only hoped you would consider, try to understand the depth of my son's gratitude for your sacrifice, and his awe at the coming union. If he were not so fearful of being wed to such a beautiful and gracious female, he would not be forced to seek bolstering for his low self-esteem as the wedding day draws near."

  "You speak eloquently for your son, sir, but I cannot be impressed by sentiments I have not observed in Franklin."

  Between Lorna and her fiancé's father lay the knowledge that it was Nathaniel Bacon, and not his son, who had initiated what might be called, by those with a sardonic bent, the courtship of herself. She was, in cold fact and despite the pretense otherwise, being given in marriage to the half-witted son of this man as partial payment of a debt contracted to the owner of Beau Repose by her Uncle Sylvester. The elaborate charade of normality that her future father-in-law insisted on bringing to the arrangement was abhorrent to Lorna, and somehow sordid.

  Nate Bacon seemed to divine something of her feelings from the tight expression on her classical features and the stiffness of her carriage. "Come, it will not be so bad. Franklin can be quite engaging on occasion. With your intelligence, you should be able to manage him easily. That is the main reason I selected you above your cousins, your uncle's own daughters. Charming creatures, all of them, but none, I venture to say, over-endowed with either wit or strength of will."

  "You flatter me, sir," she answered, lowering her gaze to hide her contempt for this blatant appeal to her vanity.

  "Not at all." He tilted his head, trying to catch a glimpse of her features under the rolled brim of the shallow-crowned hat drawn low on her forehead, perched above the smooth figure-eight coil of hair the color of wild silk on the back of her head. "No, indeed, you were the pick of the bunch. You will be able to attract and hold my son by your beauty, and control him by your superior understanding of his needs and appetites. He is a perfectly normal man, despite the accident that robbed him of a portion of his mental powers."

  She knew precisely what was meant; it had been carefully, if delicately, explained to her by her aunt. At the same time, it had been impressed upon her that she could not refuse the flattering suit by proxy pressed by the man who held her uncle's note-of-hand, one of the richest men among the wealthy planters along the great river.

  "Yes," she said, allowing her gaze to move to the windows of the room that overlooked the river, framing the stretch of flowing water before the white-pillared mansion, and also the gray afternoon. "I am aware." He reached to take her hand, placing the velvet box in her nerveless grasp. "Accept this token of my esteem, then, and of my son's recognition of his proper duty toward you. Regard it, if you will, as a surety of his future conduct. I promise you that his behavior will, from this day, be all you would wish in respect and honor, and that from your wedding day tomorrow you will have no cause for complaint, nor reason to regret the bargain you have made."

  From the tenor of his words, Lorna thought Franklin's father entertained some notion that she feared her husband-to-be might forsake her bed for that of his brown mistress. How wrong he was! He should know better for it had been he, just the night before, who had interrupted when Franklin had cornered her on the gallery after dinner, only hours after their arrival. Her fiance had pushed her against one of the great, soaring columns, attempting to capture her lips with his wet, open mouth; pawing, squeezing her breasts with hurtful, clumsy hands. Her shuddering distaste must have been obvious to any man not willfully blind. But, reluctance to acknowledge the engagement was not the only reason she hesitated to accept the bracelet being thrust upon her.

  "I cannot, must not, take it," she said.

  "Come, I insist."

  "It wouldn't be right, not at this time," she insisted in a low tone, "not while women all over the South are giving their jewelry, even their wedding bands, to aid the Confederate cause and bring an end to this war."

  "Such matters should not concern a pretty thing like you."

  "No, really, I couldn't bring myself to wear it."

  "Then, you must keep it until your tender conscience dictates otherwise."

  "That will only be when this conflict is at an end and our men can come home-if I still have it then."

  An opaque expression seeped into Nate Bacon's light blue eyes, so like those of his son. "Is there just maybe a special young man you are waiting for now?"

  "No, nothing like that," she answered without hesitation.

  "Good," he said, smiling once more. "Good."

  She grew aware that he still held her fingers in his warm, damp grasp. She pulled them back slightly, but could not free herself. "If you will excuse me now, I had meant to ride."

  He released her, and, though he appeared reluctant to break his hold, he retained his grasp on the jewel box, taking it back into his possession. "As you will, though it looks as if we may be in for a storm. If you will be guided by me, you will reconsider."

  "I…would rather take my chances."

  He looked for a moment as if he might insist. Lorna stared at him with a shading of defiance in her level gray gaze. Finally, he shrugged.

 
; "I will send to the stables to have a mount saddled and a groom ready to accompany you." His thick, formless lips lifted in an indulgent smile. "I expect you will be glad enough to scurry back to shelter at the first thunderclap."

  She had been fearful that he meant to come with her; there had been a hint of calculation in his pale eyes, as if he were weighing the pleasure of her company against the effort required to venture forth. The comforts of his study, the news-sheet, the cigar, and glass of brandy that awaited him won, and Lorna made good her escape.

  There was no such thing as true escape, however. She was just as much a hostage to her uncle's failure as a businessman outside the house as within it. If keeping to the bridle path that was carved through the fields and woodlands of Beau Repose, while perched upon the proper and uncomfortable dignity of a sidesaddle with a groom trailing ten paces behind her, did not satisfy her yearning for freedom, the fault lay within herself; for a female there was nothing closer to be had. She would have to make the best of it, just as she must learn to endure the marriage that awaited her on the morrow. Escape from that, and all its attendant duties, was also impossible, though she would rather give herself to any man other than the mindless and vicious creature to whom she would be joined. Any man at all.

  Catching one side of her bottom lip between her teeth, Lorna considered going to her uncle and pleading to be released from this betrothal. Even as the idea came, it was banished by the image of her aunt: stem, overbearing, with deep etchings of disappointment along either side of her long nose. Uncle Sylvester would listen to Aunt Madelyn, would do as she said, and it was her aunt's contention that women were born to sorrow and shrinking from their wifely obligations, regardless of the man they married. Her aunt thought it reason for congratulations that she was not marrying a poor man, that it would not be necessary for her to scrimp and be eternally saving in order to feed and clothe her children, and any other unfortunate waif who might be foisted upon her.