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eBook Category: Erotica/Dark Fantasy
eBook Description: While hiding her true identity, Maddie must seduce the mysterious Lord Garon to cement their marriage contract to assure she won't be returned into her lecherous stepfather's care. Fresh from Crusade in Palestine, Lord Garon has a secret he must hide, a hunger that must be fed, and a dark and uncertain future. Having shed himself of a fiance he never met, he's home to lick his wounds. The only thing he wants is a warm-blooded meal--but the new housekeeper is strangely insistent on giving him much more.

eBook Publisher: Chippewa Publishing LLC
Fictionwise Release Date: January 2006

93 Reader Ratings: Great Good OK Poor

Available eBook Formats [MultiFormat - What's this?]: Adobe Acrobat (PDF) [659 KB], eReader (PDB) [52 KB], Palm Doc (PDB) [29 KB], Rocket/REB1100 (RB) [27 KB], Microsoft Reader (LIT) [90 KB] - PocketPC 1.0+ Compatible, Franklin eBookMan (FUB) [100 KB], hiebook (KML) [141 KB], Sony Reader (LRF) [99 KB], iSilo (PDB) [24 KB], Mobipocket (PRC) [30 KB], Kindle Compatible (MOBI) [82 KB], OEBFF Format (IMP) [42 KB]
Words: 8398
Reading time: 23-33 min.
Microsoft Reader (LIT) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
Adobe Acrobat (PDF) Format:  Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud DISABLED
All Other formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED

Maddie shivered at the creaks and groans as the portcullis slowly rose. The wind carried the noises and filled the silences in between with a howling that sounded like the hounds from hell had arrived at the castle gate. And in a way, one had.

Shouts outside the curtain wall had alerted them only minutes before of Lord Garon d'Angerville's arrival. With time to throw only a bliaut over her sleeping shift, she stood on the first step of the keep, holding a tray with a goblet of wine, ready to render a proper greeting to her overlord.

"Are you sure this is the way you wish to go about this, M--Maddie?" Egbert asked, fidgeting at her side.

She swallowed against the sudden dryness in her mouth and nodded.

"It be on your head, then," he said, his always mournful tone dire as one of Father Ansel's Sunday sermons.

The clatter of many hooves on the cobbled bridge beyond the gate was thunderous. From the encroaching darkness, the sounds were as deafening and ominous as the dark shapes looming on the gatehouse walls. The torches she'd ordered lit sputtered and flared, distorting their forms, elongating them so the men riding through the entrance appeared as giants.

Already tired and on edge from the days-long wait, Maddie's fevered imagination painted them darker still.

"Are they devils?" Egbert asked, his narrow shoulders shaking. "No one travels on a night with nary a speck of light in the sky."

"Hush!" The storm whipping at her clothing, and the fatigue from months of worry over this very moment, combined to make her own hands shake and dampened an already foul mood.

The horsemen entered the bailey and a large shape separated from the contingent that approached the keep. As he drew closer, her fears weren't eased one whit. The warrior sat atop a huge, black destrier, forcing her to raise her gaze quite high to seek his face.

He wore a helm that left only his square jaw exposed. The darkness cast by the metal nose guard concealed his eyes. Only his mouth gave hint of his mood--a thin straight line with the corners crimped downward.

Aware that he stared at her, Maddie's knees trembled, but her tray never rattled. She squared her shoulders and shot a glance about her at the castle folk. "Stephen!" she called to the stable master. "See to their horses."