An Excerpt from A LOVER'S KISS August, 2008 Harlequin Historicals ISBN # 978-0-373-29508-1

Sir Douglas Drury slowly opened his eyes. His head hurt like the devil and there was a stained and cracked ceiling above him. Across from him was a wall, equally stained by damp, and a window. The panes were clean, and there were no curtains or other covering. Beyond it, he saw no sky or open space. Just a brick wall.

He didn’t know where he was, or how he had come to be there.

His heart began to pound and his body to perspire. As fear and panic threatened to overwhelm him, he closed his eyes and fought the nausea that rose up within him. He wasn’t in a dank, dark cell. He was in a dingy, white-washed room lit by daylight. It smelled of cabbage, not offal and filthy straw and rats. He was lying on a mattress of some kind, not bare stone.

And he could hear, somewhere in the distance, the cries of street sellers. English street sellers.

He was in London, not a cell in France.

Last night he’d been walking and only too late realized where his feet had taken him. He’d been accosted by three…no, four men. They hadn’t demanded his money or his wallet. They’d simply attacked him, manoeuvring him off the street into an alley where he was sure they meant to murder him.

Why wasn’t he dead? He’d had no sword, no weapon. He couldn’t even make a proper fist.

Something had stopped them. But what? He couldn’t remember, just as he had no idea where he was, or who had brought him here.

Wherever he was, though, at least he was alive.

He tried to sit up, despite a pain in his right side that made him press his lips together to keep from crying out. He put his feet on the bare wooden floor and raised his head – to see that he wasn’t alone.

A young woman, apparently fast asleep, sat on a stool with her head propped against the wall. Her hair was in a loose braid, with little wisps that bordered her smooth, pale cheeks. Her modest, plain dress with a high neck was made of cheap green muslin. Her features were nothing remarkable, although her lips were full and soft, and her nose rather fine.

She didn’t look familiar and yet there was something about her that danced at the edge of his mind, like a whisper he couldn’t quite hear. Whatever it was, though, he didn’t intend to linger here to find out.

He put his hands on the edge of the narrow bed, ready to stand, when the young woman suddenly stretched like a cat after a long nap in the summer’s sun. Her light brown eyes opened and she smiled at him as if they’d just made love.

That was disconcerting. Not unpleasant, but definitely disconcerting.

Then she spoke. “Oh, Monsieur, you are awake!”

French.

She spoke French. Instantly, he was on his guard, every sense alert. “Who are you and what am I doing here?” he demanded in English.

The arched brows of the young woman contracted. “You are English?” she answered in that language.

“Obviously. Who are you and what am I doing here?”

She got to her feet and met his suspicious regard with a wounded air. “I am Juliette Bergerine, and it was I who saved your life.”

How could one lone young woman have saved his life – and why would she?

He was well known in London. Indeed, he was famous. Perhaps she hoped for a reward.

He rose unsteadily, the pain in his side searing, his head aching more. “Do you know who I am?”

Her eyes narrowed. “Don’t you?”

“Of course I do. I am Sir Douglas Drury, barrister, of Lincoln’s Inn.”

“I am the woman who threw the potatoes.”

Potatoes? “What the deuce are you talking about?”

“I threw my potatoes at the men attacking you to make them run away. And they did.”

Was that what he’d been trying to recall? “How did I come to be in this room?”

“I brought you.”

“By yourself?”

Anger kindled in her brown eyes. “Is this the thanks I am to get for helping you, to be questioned and every thing I say treated like a lie? I begin to think I should have left you in the alley!”

Trust a French woman to overreact. “Naturally I’m grateful you came to my aid.”

“You do not sound the least bit grateful!”

His jaw clenched before he replied. “No doubt you would prefer me to grovel.”

“I would prefer to be treated with respect. I may be poor, Sir Douglas Drury, barrister of Lincoln’s Inn, but I am not a worm!”

As her eyes shone with passionate fury and her breasts rose and fell beneath her cheap gown, and those little wisps of hair brushed against her flushed cheeks, he was very well aware that she was not a worm.