Freedom to Love Read online

  Freedom to Love

  By Susanna Fraser

  Louisiana, 1815

  Thérèse Bondurant trusted her parents to provide for her and her young half sister, though they never wed due to laws against mixed-race marriage. But when both die of a fever, Thérèse learns her only inheritance is debt—and her father’s promise that somewhere on his plantation lies a buried treasure. To save her own life—as well as that of her sister—she’ll need to find it before her white cousins take possession of the land.

  British officer Henry Farlow, dazed from a wound received in battle outside New Orleans, stumbles onto Thérèse’s property out of necessity. But he stays because he’s become captivated by her intelligence and beauty. It’s thanks to Thérèse’s tender care that he regains his strength just in time to fend off her cousin, inadvertently killing the would-be rapist in the process.

  Though he risks being labeled a deserter, it’s much more than a sense of duty that compels Henry to see the sisters to safety—far away from the scene of the crime. And Thérèse realizes she has come to rely on Henry for so much more than protection. On their journey to freedom in England, they must navigate a territory that’s just as foreign to them both—love.

  98,000 words

  Dear Reader,

  Happy New Year! As always, I’m eschewing any sort of formal resolution because I know it would be abandoned within a month (and probably by January 2nd). Instead, every year, I promise myself that I’ll continue to read widely and generously, across publishers, authors and genres, and that I’ll never apologize for either what I read, or how much time I spend doing it. I hope you’ll all join me in promising the same to yourself this and every year!

  This month, Washington, D.C., power couple Sam and Nick are back in Marie Force’s romantic suspense Fatal Scandal. This is a series it’s never too late to dive into and find out what thousands of readers rave about. Pick up Fatal Scandal today or go back to the beginning with Fatal Affair.

  Joining Marie in the D.C. setting is Emma Barry with Party Lines. In this contemporary romance, as a presidential campaign rages and a reckless affair becomes a relationship, a cynical Democrat and an ambitious Republican will have to choose between party loyalty and their hearts. Recommended for those who love Scandal, opposites-attract romances, or a book where a happy ever after seems impossible because the lives of our characters are just too different.

  Looking for a hot alpha male and a smart, self-sufficient heroine in a cracktastic contemporary romance read? Meet Metal: he’s trained to kill and to heal. So when a beautiful, wounded woman falls into his arms, he can save her and defend her against the ruthless enemies after the secrets in her head. Midnight Promises by Lisa Marie Rice delivers a sexy, page-turning read!

  Speaking of sexy, Jeffe Kennedy’s Under His Touch is sure to heat things up. Unable to resist each other, a reserved Brit and his much younger colleague defy common sense and convention to indulge in a very kinky secret affair in this erotic romance.

  For mystery fans, Shirley Wells is back with Dead Simple, which sees P.I. Dylan Scott put his personal problems aside to hunt down a killer and find justice for an old friend. See how the Dylan Scott Mysteries started in Presumed Dead.

  In Anna Richland’s paranormal romance The Second Lie, when an immortal Viking thief tries to scam a California wine merchant, he discovers he picked the wrong woman to rip off. Stig knows escaping their kidnappers won’t be easy, but gaining Christina’s trust is even harder.

  Also in paranormal romance this month is Broken Shadows by A.J. Larrieu, in which a telekinetic who’s lost her gift finds new purpose as a supernatural neutralizer—if only the man she loves wasn’t susceptible to her altered powers.

  Historical romance fans will be happy to see a new offering from Susanna Fraser. In Freedom to Love, a British officer wounded at the Battle of New Orleans is rescued by a mixed-race Creole beauty—and when he discovers she has dire troubles of her own, his honor as a gentleman demands he rescue her in turn.

  Last, we say goodbye to a beloved character and series in Transmuted, the last installment of Karina Cooper’s St. Croix Chronicles. She might have won the battle, but Cherry and her companions will risk it all to see the Karakash Veil’s threat finally ended. Don’t miss this wonderful conclusion, or start the journey now with Cherry and pick up Tarnished, available from Avon.

  Coming in February 2015: the first in a new erotic romance trilogy from Lynda Aicher, and three incredible new authors bring us Russian skaters, post-apocalyptic love and a fresh new adult mystery.

  Here’s wishing you a wonderful month—and a wonderful year—of books you love, remember and recommend.

  Happy reading!

  ~Angela James

  Executive Editor, Carina Press

  Acknowledgments

  Thanks are due to my wonderful editor, Melissa Johnson, and as always to my critique partners—Alyssa Everett, Vonnie Hughes, Rose Lerner and Charlotte Russell—who truly went beyond the call of duty while this manuscript was in revision.

  And above all I must thank Dylan and Annabel for their enduring love and support.

  Contents

  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

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  Chalmette Plantation, Louisiana, 8 January 1815

  Henry awoke to cold mud beneath him and a dull gray sky above. The stench of blood and filth assaulted his nostrils, and something soft, limp and clammy lay under his outflung hand.

  Where in God’s name was he, and how had he come to be there? He pushed himself up to a sitting position, the better to puzzle out the answer, then winced as a sharp pain lanced along his ribs. He took a shuddering breath and probed at the spot on his right side where it hurt the most. A hole in his red coat and warm wetness around it. He drew his hand away and stared at his own blood.

  Oh yes. The battle. He remembered now, pieces of it, though not receiving this wound nor falling to the muddy ground. He blinked hard and looked around.

  The horrid clammy thing was Private Lewis, dead and still, his eyes wide, pale and empty, staring up at the gray winter sky. All around lay dozens of others, death encircling him.

  Henry’s pained, ragged breath echoed in his ears above the uncanny quiet. It came to him, as simple as one plus one being two, that he must flee before Death noticed he yet lived and returned to claim him. He staggered to his feet, reeling at the pain, and stumbled toward a low line of trees many yards to his right.

  * * *

  At first the swamp seemed a sanctuary. No one could see him. Death couldn’t find him here. If the ground was sodden, if he stagger
ed through puddles and channels that almost overtopped his boots, what of it?

  But after a time his haze of pain and horror began to wear off, and he sank down to rest against the broad base of a cypress tree. He crossed his arms tight against his chest as shivers racked his body, and it dawned upon him that he’d acted the fool. If he’d stayed put, or staggered a few steps away from that gruesome tangle of corpses, someone would have come to his aid. An American someone, as likely as not, since he’d been under the impression his own army was being routed before he fell. But that wouldn’t have mattered much. Henry had never heard of Americans abusing enemy prisoners or wounded. They might be an upstart nation, but they fought by civilized rules. He would’ve been handed into the care of a surgeon, and, if he survived, sent home to England once the war was over.

  Now...well, he had no clear notion of when now was, nor indeed where he was. He’d wandered into the thicket of trees, so he’d started out moving northward, more or less, but he had no idea whether he’d maintained a straight course. The uniformly gray sky gave no hint of direction. He’d lost blood, he didn’t know how much, and he was cold, wet and shivering, lost in a trackless swamp in an alien land.

  He pushed himself to his feet and leaned against the tree, steadying himself. He would try to retrace his path back to the battlefield. It hadn’t been long. Surely some detachment of Americans would still be there, guarding the ground and tending the wounded, even if the British were in full retreat with that damnably clever American General Jackson leading his army in pursuit.

  For a few minutes, it worked. Henry traced his tracks through the mud until he hit a swampier patch where standing water obscured his footprints entirely. Try though as he did, he couldn’t find the spot he had come from on drier ground. He couldn’t keep stumbling through the water. He could hardly feel his feet as it was.

  What business did Louisiana have being this cold, even in January? It was supposed to be as hot as the Indies, but surely it was as cold as England, as cold as the mountains of Spain and Portugal during the winter campaigns. There at least he’d usually managed to keep his feet dry.

  Anger at the perversity of the climate gave him the strength to reach to a spit of dry land and follow it from tree to tree, clutching at the trunks for support. Something splashed behind him with a heavy plop, but when he turned he saw nothing but ripples in the nearest pond. Good God, what if he died alone out here, food for alligators, panthers or whatever other monsters lurked in this uncanny place? How would his family feel when he never came home?

  They’d sent him into the army because he wasn’t suited for any other younger son’s profession. Words and numbers on paper seemed to scramble before his eyes, and no one who struggled as he did to read and write was fit for the law or the church. He’d tried to make up for his deficiencies in the schoolroom by learning to read people—a skill that had stood him in good stead in the army.

  Yet to his family no amount of charm could measure up to his brothers’ academic laurels. Still, Mother’s letter upon hearing that the 43rd was to be sent to America after Bonaparte’s defeat had been furious and grieved. She’d wanted him home, she’d wanted him safe, and what business did the army have sending him off to yet another war?

  So when he wanted to sink to his knees and rest against the soft, cold ground, he kept going for his mother’s sake and for the hope of seeing his brothers and sister again. Felicity and Edward had grown from schoolchildren into a young lady and gentleman while Henry served in Spain, and Charles was married with a wife and two baby daughters Henry had yet to meet. He had to survive to see what his family had grown into during his long absence.

  At last he came up against a true creek, not an overgrown puddle or trackless bog. If he followed it, wouldn’t it take him to the river? And if he found the river, surely he’d find a road, houses, other people. It was the best hope he had.

  He stumbled onward, too tired and drained to think beyond the next step, the next tree. Even in the cold, soggy swamp he grew desperately thirsty, but he dared not drink from the muddy creek. He felt for his flask and found it still strapped to his side next to his pistol. It held the foulest rum he’d ever tasted, but he swallowed what was left of it in three great gulps.

  It burned his throat but gave him strength to press on until the trees cleared and the creek straightened into a channel. Henry blinked. He’d found a plantation, but had all its inhabitants fled? Twenty feet to his right stood a handful of low cabins with no bustle of life about them, and beyond fallow fields he spotted a large house overlooking the mighty river.

  The whole place looked abandoned, but all the plantations hereabouts fronted a road that ran along the river. If he could make it that far, surely someone would pass by, though whether it would be before or after he died of blood loss and exposure remained in question. Doggedly he set off toward the house.

  As he passed through the empty slave quarters, he stopped to catch his breath, leaning against a cabin’s rough log wall. If the plantation was abandoned, it hadn’t been for long. The cabins were shabby, but in decent repair, and the vegetable plots around them still had clearly marked furrows and the decaying remnants of last summer’s plantings. But there was no human bustle, nor even so much as a dog or chicken roaming the empty grounds. Perhaps the owner had fled to the city as battle approached, taking his human property with him lest they flee to the British army and the freedom it offered runaway slaves.

  Henry needed to keep moving. But as he gathered himself to push away from the wall, he heard voices—young, female voices, not far away, speaking some language that sounded like French, but refused to resolve into comprehensibility. What was wrong with him? He understood French. It was the only language besides his own he’d managed to master. He must be in a worse case than he’d thought if his mother’s native tongue had deserted him.

  Which meant he needed their help. He staggered toward the sound. Whatever they were saying, they were lovely voices and happy ones. One, the younger and lighter of the two, rose in enthusiasm, a tumble of excited words, while the other, husky with maturity, responded with laughing joy.

  The voices ceased abruptly as Henry rounded the corner of the cabin and spotted the speakers. He stared at them, struck speechless by the sheer oddity of the scene before him.

  The pair knelt in the mud of a vegetable garden, dressed in boys’ clothes that did little to disguise their feminine forms. Even if he hadn’t heard them speak, he would have known them on sight for a half-grown girl somewhere between twelve and fifteen and a woman a few years younger than his own five-and-twenty. From the pile of mud at their feet, they’d been digging for some time, and a little wooden chest stood open before the woman.

  The girl was black, though light-skinned enough that she must have some white or Indian blood in her veins, too. She knelt leaning against a shovel, as weary as she was happy, but when she saw Henry she scrambled to her feet, dark eyes flashing defiance.

  The woman...she was a beauty. No amount of mud or shabby clothing could disguise regal loveliness that would have done a duchess credit. She put him in mind of the prettiest ladies of Spain and Portugal, with her straight black hair and smooth fair skin more ivory-and-gold than the pink-and-white of an English beauty.

  He fell to his knees, hands held out in supplication—and far away from his sword hilt and the pistol in his belt. For it wasn’t her surpassing beauty that arrested him. In her left hand, she grasped a magnificent emerald necklace. Treasure from the chest? Why bury it here, of all places? And in her right she held a tiny pistol, the sort of thing a dashing lady might keep concealed in her reticule, pointed directly at his head.

  Until the moment her half sister’s shovel struck solid wood instead of soft, heavy mud, Thérèse hadn’t wholly believed her father’s story about the treasure. Oh, she’d risked everything for it, sneaking out of the city and running toward the armies when a
ny person of sense would’ve run away, but it had been more gamble than faith. Maybe she was more her father’s daughter than she’d thought.

  So perhaps it wasn’t surprising that she hadn’t heard the wounded redcoat until he’d staggered to within a few yards of them.

  She didn’t want to shoot him. She’d never fired her pistol at anything more than a paper target, though Father had trained her to have a good eye and a steady hand. This poor man was already wounded. The quantity of blood staining his left side a darker red than his coat was enough to turn her stomach. And he hadn’t come here seeking to harm them. He was a stranger. He knew nothing of their business. But now he was here, and he’d seen their treasure—her dowry, her sister’s freedom. How could she let him live?

  “Go on,” Jeannette said. “Kill him.”

  She spoke Creole, and the Englishman frowned, more baffled than afraid. Then his eyes widened. Thérèse couldn’t help noticing those eyes, such a startling light blue. “No.” He swallowed, and that pale gaze wavered between her pistol and her face. “Please,” he continued in good clear French. “I won’t hurt you.” He lifted his hands yet farther away from his weapons. “If you’ll help me to the road, there—” he pointed his chin toward the river, “—I’m sure someone will come along who can take me back to my army. Or your army. It doesn’t matter which. Please help me.”

  It wasn’t his fault he was here. If she bought her independence and her sister’s freedom on his life’s blood, the guilt would haunt her for the rest of her days. She lowered the pistol.

  “Thérèse!” Jeannette hissed. “He’s seen.”

  “I don’t want your treasure,” he said.

  Jeannette tossed her head. “All men want treasure,” she said, smoothly switching from Creole to French. Really, the girl was far too cynical for a child of thirteen, but Thérèse couldn’t say she was wrong.

  “If I can live and go home to my family, that’s treasure enough for me.”