The Heiress Bride - Catherine Coulter [0]
PROLOGUE
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
CHAPTER 21
Titles by Catherine Coulter
THE EDGE
THE COURTSHIP
THE TARGET
THE MAZE
THE WILD BARON
MAD JACK
ROSEHAVEN
THE COVE
THE WYNDHAM LEGACY
THE NIGHTINGALE LEGACY
THE VALENTINE LEGACY
LORD OF HAWKFELL ISLAND
LORD OF RAVEN’S PEAK
LORD OF FALCON RIDGE
THE SHERBROOKE BRIDE
THE HELLION BRIDE
THE HEIRESS BRIDE
SEASON OF THE SUN
BEYOND EDEN
IMPULSE
FALSE PRETENSES
To Stacy Creamer—
A woman who loves her crazed career, does it very well, and never loses her enthusiasm. A woman who’s honorable, bright, and a jock. And she likes my writing.
All my thanks, Stacy. I hope you and I are together until either you lose your passion for pounding the pavement or I expire over my computer keyboard. I’m happy. I’m happy.
PROLOGUE
Vere Castle, 1807
Near Loch Leven, Fife Peninsula, Scotland
HE STOOD STARING out the narrow window down into the courtyard of his castle. It was April, but spring wasn’t much in evidence yet save for the wildly blooming heather that poked through the patches of fog to dazzle the eye with a rainbow of vivid purples. Scottish heather, like his people, would burst through rock itself to bloom. This morning, fog hung thick over the stone ramparts; thick and gray and wet. He could hear his people clearly through his window two stories up in the north circular tower—old Marthe clucking to the chickens as she tossed them grain, Burnie yelling at the top of his lungs at young Ostle, a new stable lad who was also his nephew. He heard bowlegged Crocker yelling at his dog, George II, threatening that he’d kick the shiftless bugger, but everyone knew that Crocker would kill anyone who even said a cross word to George. The morning sounded no different from any he’d heard since he was a child. Everything was normal.
Only it wasn’t.
He turned away from the window and walked to the small stone fireplace, splaying his hands to the flames. This was his private study. Even his brother, Malcolm, when alive, had kept away from this particular room. It was warm in the room despite the sluggish fire, for thick wool tapestries woven by his great-grandmother were hung on every wall to keep away the damp and chill. There was also a beautiful old Aubusson carpet that covered most of the worn stones on the floor, and he wondered how his wastrel father or his damned brother had overlooked the carpet; it was worth a good deal of money, he imagined, and could have provided at least a week’s worth of gaming or wenching or a bit of both. So the carpet was left, and the tapestries, but little else of value. Over the fireplace on a nearly rotted tapestry was the coat of arms of the Kinrosses: Wounded But Unconquered.
He was nearly mortally wounded. He was in very deep trouble and the only way out of it was to marry an heiress, and quickly. He didn’t want to. He would rather swallow one of Aunt Arleth’s tonics than marry.
But he had no choice. The debts incurred by both his father and his now-dead elder brother had left him bowed to his knees and nearly beyond desperate. He was the only one to be responsible, no one else. He was the new earl of Ashburnham, the seventh bloody earl, and he was up to his peer’s neck in financial woes.
All would be lost if he didn’t act quickly. His people would starve or be forced to emigrate. His home would continue to decay and his family would know nothing but genteel poverty. He knew he couldn’t allow that. He stared down at his hands, still stretched toward the fire. Strong hands he had, but were they strong enough to save the Kinross clan from the gut-wrenching poverty that had been his grandfather’s plight after 1746? Ah, but his grandfather had been a wily man, quickly adjusting to a new reality, quickly ingratiating himself with the few powerful earls left in Scotland. He’d also been smart, not disdaining