This Towering Passion Read online

  “Come here; Lenore”

  a rich, lazy masculine voice commanded from the shadows. The girl tensed but did not move. "Here, I said.” His long sinewy arm reached out and hauled, her so close that her soft young breasts were crushed against his hard chest and the buttons of his coat bit into tenderness. "Why d’ye not obey me?”

  "I’ll obey no man and certainly not you.”

  He laughed. Then his lips came down on hers in a compelling kiss. His mouth twisted over hers, forcing it open. Deftly, deliberately he thrust with his tongue so that she tingled when he abruptly let her go.

  "A whole month we’ve been on the run, you and I,” he murmured. "Yet still you fight me. Why?”

  “I’m not yours,” she replied unsteadily.

  "Think you not?” He laughed, as if answering a challenge, and seized her again. She fought desperately as his strong hands pushed down her bodice, releasing her blossoming breasts. She struggled, she knew, as much against her own wild nature as against the arms that held her fast. Suddenly she lost her footing and they fell together, like falling leaves, to the soft forest grass. Her senses swayed and tumbled, she felt herself yielding to the power of his desire for her . . . and she was borne up in ecstasy beyond the treetops to some bright world where summer never ended and winter never came.

  Also by

  Valerie Sherwood

  These Golden Pleasures

  This Loving Torment

  Published by WARNER BOOKS

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  WARNER BOOKS P.O. BOX 690 NEW YORK, N.Y. 10019

  This Towering Passion

  by

  Valerie

  Sherwood

  WARNER BOOKS

  A Warner Communications Company

  WARNER BOOKS EDITION

  Copyright © 1978 by Valerie Sherwood

  All rights reserved

  ISBN 0-446-81486-5

  Cover art by Jim Dietz

  Warner Books, Inc.,

  71 Rockefeller Plaza,

  New York, N.Y. 10019

  A Warner Communications Company

  Printed in the United States of America

  Not associated with Warner Press, Inc., of Anderson, Indiana

  First Printing: November, 1978

  10987654321

  Table of Contents

  This Towering Passion Authors Note

  PROLOGUE

  BOOK I THE LOVERS

  PART ONE

  THE HANDFAST BRIDE

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  PART TWO

  THE CAVALIER

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  BOOK II THE MISTRESS

  PART ONE

  THE TOAST OF OXFORD

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  PART TWO

  THE FORSAKEN

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  BOOK III THE LONDON WENCH

  PART ONE

  THE KING’S DOXIE

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  PART TWO

  THE ORANGE GIRL

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  Dedication

  To all the cats I've loved—and to wonderful Fuzzy,

  who smiled in adversity,

  most of all.

  Authors Note

  Although the historical background of this novel is as authentic as my research could make it, this is a work of fiction and should be so regarded. The encounters with Nell Gwyn, Charles II, Killigrew, and Lady Castlemaine are, of course, pure invention. It was another two years before Nell appeared on the London stage, another five before she became the King’s mistress. But even allowing for small deviations in the interest of clarity and plot, the spirit of these lusty times is carefully preserved.

  Valerie Sherwood

  England 1651

  PROLOGUE

  It was dark in the woods, but moonlight reached down through the branches and illuminated the rapt face of the girl, her violet eyes shadowed under dark lashes. Her shimmering red-gold hair cascaded around her bare shoulders, and the pale tops of her round breasts were silvered by the half-light.

  “Come here, Lenore,” a rich, lazy masculine voice commanded from the shadows. The girl tensed but did not move. “Here, I said.” His long sinewy arm reached out and hauled her so close that her soft young breasts were crushed against his hard chest and the buttons of his coat bit into tenderness. “Why d’ye not obey me?”

  Lenore, for all that she was held close and thrilling to his touch, gave her head a willful toss. “I’ll obey no man, and certainly not you.”

  He laughed, his eyes deepening as he tilted her chin up to smile down into her reckless face. “Faith, I think you mean that,” he murmured. Then his lips came down on hers in a warm, compelling kiss. His dark hair fell forward to mingle with her own shimmering strawberry-tresses, and his mouth twisted over hers, forcing it open. Deftly deliberately he thrust with his tongue so that she tingled and was panting slightly when he abruptly let her go.

  “A whole month we’ve been on the run, you and I,” he murmured. “Yet still you fight me. Why?”

  “I’m not yours,” she replied unsteadily.

  “Think you not?” As brusquely as he had left her he swooped down on her again, and this time there was a small tussle as Lenore’s bodice was pushed down so that her blossomed breasts burst free and her skirts were pulled up along her white legs. Desperately she fought him now, her breath coming raggedly as she struggled as much against her own wild nature as against the sinewy arms that held her fast. Suddenly she lost her footing and they fell together, like falling leaves, to the soft forest grass in the shadows of the oak branches.

  Twisting and turning in a last effort to escape him, Lenore felt a sweet restless frenzy rushing through her as she was crushed in the arms of her cavalier. Her senses swayed and tumbled as her defenses buckled. His questing hands roving over her body at will moved her to passion, and she felt herself yielding, yielding to the force of his will, the strength of his arm, the power of his desire for her.

  The world slid away, forgotten, and the coolness of the night was unfelt as the fever of wanting him raced tumultuously through her blood. A pulse beat in her forehead. and a wave of guilt was quickly overwhelmed by an all-consuming desire that flashed through her.

  She clung to him and murmured incoherently as her body quivered and her back arched and she flung herself against him. Then his passion enveloped her like a bright flame and. she was borne up in ecstasy to some high bright world beyond the treetops where summer never ended and winter never came.

  When at last she floated down and lay quietly beside him, brooding in the dappled moonlight, she remembered the day she’d met him, not so long ago. . . .

  BOOK I

  THE LOVERS

  PART ONE

  * * *

  THE HANDFAST BRIDE

  Worcester; England 1651

  CHAPTER
1

  All day the battle for England had raged beneath the hot September sun. The girl with the shimmering red-gold hair knew well her danger as she reined in her galloping white horse on the brow of a low hill overlooking the town. In her fine apple-green dress, she looked as carefree as if she were out for a canter in the country. Only her quickened breathing betrayed her excitement as her breasts rose and fell, thrusting against the thin material of her tight bodice. At a sudden boom of guns her horse reared up nervously, pawing the air with his forefeet, and the girl’s yellow petticoat billowed, showing a flash of dainty white legs.

  “Quiet, Snowfire.” She patted his tossing mane with an affectionate hand and spoke softly to soothe him. The girl was as jumpy as he, for twice she’d been stopped by Cromwell’s men and only her quick wits had got her through at all.

  Now she frowned as she pondered the City of Worcester in the valley that stretched out below her. Brilliant sunlight glinted on the spires of ancient Worcester Cathedral rising majestically above the smoke of battle. To the west beside it the River Severn’s placid surface glittered like so many golden coins tossed beside the town. Directly below she could see a confusion of armed men rushing about and hear shouts and screams mingling with the neighing of horses and the clash of arms. Death lay between her and the city gates, and even a brave man might hang back from what the girl intended to do. But Lenore Frankford was eighteen and impetuous and headstrong. Jamie—her Jamie—was in the town, and she had come to get him and bring him home.

  Flame-haired Lenore had ridden in from the Cotswold Hills, and all the way there had been rumors—most persistently that Cromwell had won and young King Charles and the Scots were in flight, but sometimes the other way around. Now her slender shoulders straightened and her delicate jaw set grimly. No matter that she was English and Jamie was a Scot. How the battle went— that was the will of God. But she must be there to know the outcome, and if the Scots lost, to find Jamie quickly and spirit him away. Her neighbors in the Cotswolds had discovered that Jamie had gone to join the invading army, and if Cromwell won and Jamie came home, he might well be hanged as a traitor.

  Handsome Jamie ... the night before he left, she’d cried into her pillow and told herself she no longer loved him. But when she’d waked to find him gone, she’d remembered abruptly that he was hers. And being hers, neither death nor the Roundhead army could have him. She had not yet relinquished her hold on him. It didn’t matter that they’d quarreled over that honey-haired wench with the swinging hips who had so brazenly flaunted herself before him at the smithy. Jamie had flared up at Lenore’s taunts and they hadn’t spoken since—nor had he crept as usual up the creaking stair to her tiny attic room to while the night away with warm embraces.

  His sister Flora had noted cynically that Jamie was sleeping on a pallet downstairs, but when confronted by Lenore’s mutinous expression she’d held her tongue—only looked pointedly at the pallet. Lenore had flushed and turned away. Now her fingers gripped the reins tautly. Lovers they might no longer be, but she was determined to bring Jamie home safe and make him humbly apologize—before she gave a haughty shrug and stalked out of his life. Forever.

  It was not love but something more complex that had brought fiery Lenore to the brow of this low hill.

  She gave that glittering cathedral spire below her a worried look. She must reach Worcester. If she could but cross that intervening vale of death and carnage and get into the town, somehow she’d manage to find Jamie and talk some sense into him. All day as she rode, she’d been marshalling her arguments. Scolding wouldn’t move him, she knew. She’d point out the bitter truth that Cromwell was Lord Protector of England and King Charles— if he lost—still a fugitive, except perhaps in Scotland. What a fool Jamie would be to throw away his life for a lost cause!

  It that argument failed, she’d throw in his sister, tell him vibrantly how lost Flora would be without him (though probably the shoe was on the other foot). As a last resort, she’d even claim she was pregnant and heap recriminations on him that he’d go off to fight for a chancy cause leaving her and his bairn to starve!

  Lenore frowned as she studied the field below, hoping for a lull in the battle, and thought of all that Jamie MacIver had told her: Two years ago in Scotland he’d fallen afoul of the kirk when he had rebelled at attending church services every day, indeed four long services on the Sabbath, and had challenged the dour Covenanter’s denial of his right to laugh and dance. Hotfoot, he’d departed for England with his widowed older sister Flora. It was Flora’s widow’s mite that had purchased the smithy at Twainmere, a tiny crossroads village in the Cotswolds dotted with quaint thatch-roofed houses of honey-colored stone, built in Tudor times.

  In Twainmere, at sixteen, wild Lenore was the town flirt. Every man hungered for her. It was murmured already that she wasn’t averse to a kiss beneath some grape arbor or spreading meadow tree—although, it was regretfully added, that was as far as she went. For now. Ah, the man who got her’d have a hot wench on his hands; he’d need to be sturdy, they chuckled, else those clinging white arms would send him to an early grave! A tease, but waiting for marriage—and already she’d had plenty of offers. Why she’d taken none of them, no one could guess. Perhaps she hesitated to leave her delicate sister Meg, who was married to Tom Prattle, the town drunk, and regularly miscarried (because Tom beat her, it was whispered). Anyway, the orphaned sisters were close, and both could read and write after a fashion, having been brought up next door to the vicarage and the old vicar having been fond of them. Well, Tom Prattle had brought them low, all right!

  The little portion their hard-working carpenter father had left them had swiftly gone into the rum pots, and Meg had turned almost overnight from a smiling, light-footed lass into a dejected woman who walked bent over with her eyes fixed vacantly on the dusty road. There’d be no dowry for her little sister Lenore, either—not that she’d need it, for by the time she was twelve Lenore had a challenging look that made men straighten up and look after her thoughtfully. At sixteen she’d acquired a siren’s figure and a provocative sidewise glance that set the lads’ hearts athump. But poor Meg’s health, never good, was failing, and Lenore stayed faithfully with her, taking Meg’s part when Tom Prattle staggered home surly and drunk and knocked his bride across the room into a sobbing heap.

  Understandably, Lenore was shy of marriage, having before her the terrible example of her battered sister Meg. Unconsciously she had formed a grudge against all men, from watching Tom Prattle’s drunken fits of anger and brutality vented toward his wife. Love had been lacking in Lenore’s life, for her mother had died early and her father had turned grim and forbidding after that. The only real affection she had known had been Meg’s—and she was intensely loyal to Meg.

  The loveless girl was making men pay for it.

  She had become a shameless flirt and a tease, enjoying her power over men’s unruly senses, deliberately inciting them to passion and always skipping away—just in time.

  When two years ago the young Scot had arrived and set up his smithy, Lenore’s predatory ears had pricked up as rumors of his blond good looks reached her. Promptly she had ridden over to have her horse shod. Her white stallion was named Snowfire. She had inherited him as a colt from her father, who had taken the colt in barter payment for some work just before a falling beam had ended his life. Besides her clothing, Snowfire was Lenore’s only possession, and she was passionately fond of him, showering on the horse all the affection she withheld from the hot-eyed swains who pursued her so ardently. Snowfire returned her affection and nuzzled her daintily when she fed him sweets filched from the kitchen.

  He was fast as the wind, and when they galloped down the dusty road, the horse’s white mane flying, the girl’s skirts billowing and her long brilliant hair streaming out behind her, they were indeed a sight to see.

  When the pair of them flashed into the smithy that day and Lenore dropped lightly from her prancing mount’s saddle to stroll toward the
tall young smith, Jamie MacIver had stopped with his tongs in midair and stood staring.

  “D’ye always ride like that?” he’d wondered.

  “Always.”

  “Ye should race him at the fairs,” he murmured. “Get ye a good lad to ride him and—”

  “I’ll ride him. He’s my horse.”

  His shrug said a woman couldn’t race at the fairs; that was man’s work.

  Lenore couldn’t have cared less about racing Snowfire. She let Jamie go about his business of shoeing the horse, but stood nearby and watched him, letting her dark lashes droop low on her satin-smooth cheeks as she studied the young smith through wicked violet eyes.

  That tall blond leather-clad Jamie was aware of her, she had no doubt. His blue eyes had paid Lenore silent compliments and had traced every line of her slim, delicious figure as she moved restlessly about beneath the great chestnut tree that shaded his smithy. Noting that, she picked a time when his eyes were riveted on her and idly reached up a white arm to touch a bird’s nest poised on a lower branch. That indolent gesture caused her pert young breasts to soar forward against the thin material of her bodice, and she was gratified to observe that the young smith was so distracted he nearly burned himself by reaching absently in the wrong direction for his bellows.

  Lenore rode away from the smithy with her heart racing, intrigued by good-looking Jamie and absolutely certain that she had won him. Patiently she had waited at her brother-in-law’s cottage for Jamie to come calling, to shoulder his way through the other eager youths who thronged about her, vying for her favors.