Lord Stanton's Last Mistress Read online

  She saved his life...

  Now he can’t resist her!

  In this Wild Lords and Innocent Ladies story, Lord Stanton’s stay on the island of Illiakos is shrouded in memories of fever and his mysterious nurse. Years later, an Illiakan royal visit to Stanton Hall reveals the princess’s chaperone, Christina James, is the woman who saved his life! Alexander is a master of control, but Christina makes him long to unleash the sinful side he’s buried...and unlock her passionate nature, too!

  Wild Lords and Innocent Ladies miniseries

  Book 1—Lord Hunter’s Cinderella Heiress

  Book 2—Lord Ravenscar’s Inconvenient Betrothal

  Book 3—Lord Stanton’s Last Mistress

  “The second book in the Wild Lords and Innocent Ladies trilogy will thrill Regency fans.”

  —RT Book Reviews on Lord Ravenscar’s Inconvenient Betrothal

  “Temple has a delightful gift with words that is sure to have readers smiling as the story of blossoming love and Gothic mystery unfolds.”

  —RT Book Reviews on The Duke’s Unexpected Bride

  Wild Lords and Innocent Ladies

  Lord Hunter, Lord Stanton and Lord Ravenscar

  Three wild rakes whose seductive charms and aristocratic titles have the ladies of the ton swooning behind their fans. United by their charitable foundation to help those scarred by war, these lords are the firmest of friends.

  But they guard their hardened hearts almost as closely as they do their riches... That is, until they encounter three very special women.

  Could these innocent ladies be the ones to tame these wild lords once and for all?

  Read Lord Hunter and Nell’s story in

  Lord Hunter’s Cinderella Heiress

  Read Lord Ravenscar and Lily’s story in

  Lord Ravenscar’s Inconvenient Betrothal

  And Lord Stanton and Christina’s story in

  Lord Stanton’s Last Mistress

  All available now!

  Author Note

  Home is where the heart is.

  I saw that phrase stitched onto a pillow at my great-aunt’s house in Vermont. She had a lovely home, tucked into the woods, with an enormous window overlooking a stream with beaver dams, surrounded by maple trees they tapped to make their own syrup. My first visit there was after my parents’ divorce, and I remember pining for the idyll it symbolized and wishing that I could absorb the homely warmth and calm of that home into mine. In my third Wild Lords story I write about a hero and heroine who discover the truth of that platitude.

  Christina, my heroine, is almost magically (to a ten-year-old) transported to an island kingdom, where she becomes part of a small but loving royal family. Alex, my hero, is invited back to his home by a loving stepmother who gifts him with baby sisters. But magical gifts are hard to trust (they tend to disappear at midnight or at the first misstep, don’t they?), so Alex and Christina are both determined not to need anything beyond what they have, and certainly not from someone as damaged as they. So I wrote them a story where they come to realize the truth of this cliché—they took some convincing but they finally got the point!

  LORD STANTON’S LAST MISTRESS

  Lara Temple

  www.millsandboon.com.au

  LARA TEMPLE was three years old when she begged her mother to take dictation of her first adventure story. Since then she has led a double life—by day an investment and high-tech professional who has lived and worked on three continents, but when darkness falls she loses herself in history and romance (at least on the page). Luckily her husband and two beautiful and very energetic children help weave it all together.

  To Omer and Maya, I am so lucky you are part of my home and my heart.

  Contents

  Prologue

  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 Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Epilogue

  Excerpt from A Ranch to Call Home by Carol Arens

  Prologue

  Island kingdom of Illiakos, the Mediterranean

  —1817

  ‘Fools! Shooting into the fog like that. Two more minutes and they would have seen the Maltese colours! And if they must actually shoot someone, why not a Maltese? Why an Englishman? Now that Napoleon is finished the English navy rules the sea, which means it would be very inconvenient for me if he died.’

  ‘I am sorry for that, your Majesty,’ Christina said as she continued sorting through the herbs she and little Princess Ariadne had collected from the Palace Gardens.

  ‘Is he going to die, Papa?’ Ari asked, her hand sneaking into Christina’s.

  From the first night the King had sent Christina to the royal nursery, the four-year-old Princess had struggled into her bed and curled into her heat, her soft plump cheek resting on Christina’s palm. That moment Christina had fallen in love, as thirsty for affection as the little girl had been. Each time Ari still reached for her hand, Christina’s heart would squeeze at this remnant of their shared childhood. She stroked Ari’s curls and handed her another bundle of herbs to sort.

  ‘I don’t know.’ The King gave a huff of frustration. ‘I don’t trust that fool of a doctor. He says the bullet is out, but he doesn’t think the man will survive the fever. The poltroon sent for a priest. I want you to see to him, Athena.’

  ‘See to him?’

  ‘Yes. You always helped your father with patients. Use those herbs the women come to you for. I don’t like this. I’ve seen the man—everything about him says wealth and privilege and yet he carries nothing on him but gold, not even a letter. The Maltese captain says he paid above the asking price to be taken from Venice and that he saw him in the company of one of the Khedive’s top men in Alexandria. Someone like that, the English will come looking for. If he must die I would rather he does so elsewhere, so make him well enough to travel, Athena.’

  The note of worry in the King’s voice distracted Christina from the enormity of the task and the knowledge she was wholly inadequate. She would do anything in her power for the King and Ari. She owed them more than her gratitude; she owed them her loyalty and her love.

  ‘You know I will do anything I can to help, your Majesty.’

  ‘I know that. You can be as stubborn as the Cliffs of Illiakos when you set your mind to something. So go and set it to getting this Englishman on his feet. Off with you now.’

  ‘Can I go and swoon over him, too, Papa?’ Ariadne said hopefully.

  ‘What in the name of Zeus do you mean by swoon, Ari?’ Usually people quaked when confronted head-on with the King’s anger, but twelve-year-old Ari clearly knew as well as Christina that her father’s bark was worse than his bite.

  ‘I heard the maids say he is as handsome as a god and they take peeks and swoon over him. So may I?’

  ‘No, you may not. There will be no swooning. But you have a good point. When your father died, Athena, I swore on Zeus’s head I would protect you just as I would my own daughter and that applies as much to your modesty as to your life. You will don veils while you attend to him and I will have Yannis stand guard. We know nothing of him, after all.’

&n
bsp; ‘But, King Darius, tending to a patient in veils is not very—’

  ‘And take some of my English newspapers to read to him.’

  ‘If he is unconscious, reading to him is hardly likely to—’

  ‘Must you argue with me over everything, Athena?’ the King interrupted, throwing his hands to the sky. ‘Perhaps hearing his mother tongue will remind him of his duties and revive him. Now go and see what is to be done, do you hear me?’

  ‘Half the castle can hear you, your Majesty,’ Christina replied as she brushed the remains of the herbs from her hands. ‘I will return soon, Ari.’

  ‘And tell me if he is really beautiful?’

  Christina smiled at the King’s growl as she pushed back the tumble of dark curls from Ari’s forehead.

  ‘It isn’t a man’s beauty that matters, Ari, but his heart,’ she said, a little pedantically, and added for good measure as she went towards the door, ‘Not to mention his good nature and even temper.’

  She didn’t wait to hear the King’s response to her mild impudence, but went directly to the prisoner’s room. She had no real expectation of being able to oblige the King by reviving the Englishman. She might share the King’s disdain for the doctor who took her father’s place, but she didn’t presume she could do better.

  ‘Hello, Yannis, the King sent me to see if there is anything that can be done for the Englishman.’

  Yannis, one of the King’s most trusted guards, raised his brows.

  ‘Kyrie Sofianopoulos says he won’t survive the fever.’

  ‘Then I am not likely to do any harm, am I?’

  ‘Not much good, either. But if the King told you then of course he knows best.’

  Christina smiled at the blind acceptance of the King’s infallibility and entered the room, preparing for the worst. As she approached the sickbed her mind did something it had never done before—it split in two. Sensible Christina assessed the hectic colour in the Englishman’s cheeks and all along the left side of his bare chest. The wound was just below the ribcage and was covered with a linen bandage stained orange and brown with dried blood. But even as she set to work removing bandages and cleaning the wound, a part of her that was utterly foreign raised its head and offered an opinion.

  The maids were right. He might be dying, but he was the handsomest man she had ever seen.

  She had sometimes watched the fishermen in the port stripped to the waist and though they, too, might possess impressive musculature, this man was on a different scale. Tall and lean, but with shoulders and arms that looked fit to topple a temple, and a whole landscape of hard planes and slopes, marred here and there by scars, several of which looked suspiciously like old knife wounds, including two rather deep gashes to his forearm. Aside from these imperfections he looked like a northern version of Apollo, with silky, light brown hair, like a field of wheat seen from afar. Even in his fever there was a tightness of action in his expression—his features were chiselled into spare lines, with no excess of flesh on the strong angles of his cheekbones and chin and the carved lines of his lips. His mouth was bracketed by two deep lines that put the final touch on a face that was more that of a statue of what Apollo might look like on a rather aggravating day of dragging the sun across the sky than an actual person.

  But it wasn’t his looks that held her immobile. For a moment, as she stood over him, his eyes opened and latched on to hers. They were an ominous deep grey, shot with silver like clouds poised the moment before succumbing to a storm. His voice was rough thunder, a warning ending on a plea.

  ‘The snow...it’s freezing... Morrow shouldn’t have left her. Too late.’

  He was looking through her, but she grasped his hand to answer that plea.

  ‘It’s not too late.’

  ‘Too late,’ he repeated, and this time his eyes did fix on hers and she smiled reassuringly because even if he was dying, he shouldn’t do so without hope.

  ‘No, it isn’t too late, I promise. Trust me.’

  His gaze became clearer for a moment, moving over her, his pupils contracting until she could see the sharp edge of silver about them. But then his lids sank again and his restlessness returned, his hand pulling at the bandage, and she dragged her attention away from his face and focused on her duty.

  A look at the ragged and inflamed state of the wound and the sickly tint of his skin under the heat of his fever told her the doctor was not unjustified in his gloom. It would take more than a newspaper to revive this man.

  ‘He’s in bad shape, isn’t he?’ Yannis asked conversationally over her shoulder. ‘Told you. I told the King to put him on the next boat to Athens. Let him die there. We don’t need trouble with the English.’

  She unlocked her jaw. There was no point in being angry at Yannis.

  ‘And what did King Darius say?’

  ‘Nothing I can repeat to you, little nurse.’ Yannis grinned. ‘My punishment is to stand guard and help you see he doesn’t die. So. What do we do first?’

  ‘First you send for a large pot of water while I fetch my father’s bag and those foolish veils.’ There was no point in hoping the King would forget his stipulation.

  ‘Veils?’

  ‘The King said I must wear veils while I see to the Englishman.’

  ‘Good idea,’ Yannis approved. ‘Can’t trust a man without a name. Who knows what he’s running from?’

  She didn’t answer. Not because it was foolish to see ghosts where there were none, but because there was something in the Englishman’s eyes and voice that gave too much credence to Yannis’s half-joking words. It didn’t matter—all that mattered was that a man might be dying and perhaps she could save him and thereby repay some of the debt she owed to her adoptive family.

  * * *

  Thus began of one of the strangest weeks of Christina’s life. She came several times a day to tend to the Englishman while Yannis helped ensure he drank the broths she prepared. She even, though she felt rather foolish, did the King’s bidding and read the English newspapers to him every day. Within two days what she had thought would be an irksome task took on an almost superstitious weight. It was imperative he survive, not just for the King, but because it just was. She fought for his life with the same fervour as she would for Ari or the King had they been ill, which made no sense at all.

  The veils were a nuisance, but soon she found they had a peculiar freeing effect. Like a toddler who is convinced they can’t be seen when covering their eyes, Christina found herself free to truly watch the Englishman without worrying about being pierced again by his icy gaze. In the darkness imposed by the cloth, she didn’t have to avert her eyes from his face or magnificent physique, despite the shame of finding herself doing covertly what the female servants did overtly every time they brought provisions or tidied the room.

  ‘Isn’t he as handsome as Apollo? And look at those shoulders...’ they would sigh in Greek as Christina tried hard to ignore their raptures and her own internal upheaval.

  After a week, his pulse steadied and she noticed his expression change when she read the newspapers, his sharply carved mouth shifting as if in internal conversation with the topic. Politics would be accompanied by a frown and news of London society with a faint curl of his thin upper lip. But his face became most expressive when she indulged in her own fascination—the advertisements in the agony columns. She had never read these before, but when she exhausted the more respectable pages of the two newspapers she became completely enthralled in reading them. There was something so touching and perplexing about them—little snippets of drama and romance that would remain unexplained for ever. Without even noticing it she began discussing them with her unconscious patient.

  ‘Here, listen to this,’ she informed him. ‘This is a very passionate fellow. ‘“To M-A”—which I presume is Maria, or could it be Margarita? That would add an exotic touch. Anyway, he writes: �
��Do I deserve this?” In capital letters, too. I wonder if that costs more? Then he continues: “Is it generous? Is it equitable? If I hear not from you by Wednesday hence I will strike thy graven memory from my heart and endeavour to efface thy sweet smile from my soul. Orlando.” This was three weeks ago, so Wednesday has come and gone and I shall never know if Orlando has been blessed by his Maria or whether she has chosen someone rather more sensible. I think living life in capital letters might be a little tiring. Oh, no—here, this one is even worse! “To P. If you could conceive of the sorrow and despair into which I am plunged, you would not raise your head. With you I could suffer every privation. Alone I am all misery. A hint of kindness could obliterate all pain. S.B.” Goodness. Well, I think it is very brave to put such pain on paper, but I cannot imagine ever writing something so...’

  ‘Maudlin.’

  The paper scrunched between her hands. The word was faint but decisive and for a moment she searched the room for its source until she realised it came from the Englishman. He was awake, not the brief surfacing of the past few days, but truly awake and inspecting her. Lucid, his eyes were even more dramatic—as sharp and steely as a sword.

  ‘Where the devil am I?’ he asked as she remained tongue-tied, her pulse as fast as his had been at the height of his fever.

  ‘Illiakos.’

  ‘Illi... Hell. I remember. The storm. They shot at us.’

  ‘They thought you were pirates.’ She tried to be conciliating, thinking of the King.

  ‘We were flying Maltese colours. Clear as day.’

  ‘Yes, well, it wasn’t. A clear day, that is.’

  He groaned as he tried to shift on the bed.

  ‘I remember. The blasted fog. We rode up on the shoals. Why are you reading the agony columns? Out loud, too, for pity’s sake.’

  ‘King Darius requested that I read the English newspapers to you. He thought it would help you recover.’

  ‘That mawkish pap is more likely to send me into a decline. I had no idea people wrote such drivel.’