Excerpt: The Pearl at the Gate, 2008 CAPA nominated novella, Historical category

Finally decided on a PG13 excerpt of The Pearl at the Gate...so here it is! Enjoy...



Jenesta took a sip of coffee and carefully replaced the cup in its saucer. Roake followed the action, watching her graceful hand manipulate the fine china.

There was nothing wasted in the movement. Jenesta was calm, good-humoured and capable. In fact, prior to their marriage, she had been considered a fine example of Regency maidenhood.

He wanted to feel her hands on his body, surety of movement lost to passion, fingers clutching and stroking, calm shattered in the face of his lust. In his fevered imaginings, she screamed his name, begged and pleaded, caught in that place where pleasure hung torturously just out of reach. In his wicked mind, she writhed, suspended between wanting him to stop and never wanting him to stop, moaning as she waited to see which he’d choose.

After years at sea, Roake was more familiar with bordellos than with ballrooms, but he knew to leave the sexual knowledge gleaned on his travels outside her bedroom door. So he came to her in the dark, touched her as gently as he could, kept their encounters brief. Her acceptance, the warm regard with which she treated him, meant more than any treasure he had ever earned. If he were to frighten Jenesta, or give her reason to despise him, life would not be worth living.
If she knew of the dreams haunting him since they met, she would be terrified.

Again he swore to protect her from that knowledge. Protect her from him.

As the rain lessened, the clouds grew thinner and the quality of the light in the room improved. Jenesta looked up at the window, her face alight with the soft sheen of a flawless pearl.

How appropriate.

In some parts of the East, the pearl was revered as a symbol of purity, in others it represented perfection.

It had taken him one meeting to know he wanted her and six months to manipulate her father into a position where his suit could not be refused. Roake Barbenoir may have the stench of trade about him, but he was also exceedingly rich, and Viscount de Lindsay had five daughters to find matches for. Jenesta had all the characteristics Roake prized in a wife and mother. Confident but not bold, amusing but not silly, innocent and yet not so young that she had to be entertained like a child.

What was it in him that would have him destroy the very characteristics that first attracted him to Jenesta? Why did she bring out this almost demonic lust in him?

Roake looked away and forced his hands to cut a bite of herring, even though his stomach rolled at the thought of eating it.




“Will you still be traveling to Bournemouth today?”

Jenesta watched her husband put his cutlery on his plate and wipe his mouth before he replied. “Yes. I’ll be gone for three or four days.”

“May I perhaps come with you? It would be a good time to look at fabric for the morning room.”

Roake shook his head. “Not this time. With this rain, the roads will be a quagmire. I plan to ride instead of taking the coach.”

Jenesta stared down at her hands so he wouldn’t see her disappointment. In the six months they had been married, he had left her alone at Black Oaks several times, for days at a stretch. “I understand.”

Roake turned back to his breakfast and Jenesta glanced up at him from beneath her lashes. Even after all this time she found it difficult to believe this golden being with wheat-blond hair and the stern, craggy looks of a Viking was her husband.

Roake moved through the world as though it belonged to him. When he entered a room he overwhelmed it, no matter how large or full it might be. Effortlessly, he radiated power. His face and voice, even the way he held still, or gestured decisively, spoke to his core of steel. The first time she saw him, Jenesta knew—he could give her all she secretly craved.

Yet it was his eyes that affected her the most. So light as to seem blue one moment, smoky grey the next, they were most often unfathomable. At other times, his gaze swirled with emotions she could not name, knowledge she wanted to share.

When he looked at her that way, her body screamed to life and it took every ounce of self-control not to let it show. He was so big, more muscular than any other man of her acquaintance, his body coming not from the gentlemanly pursuits of riding and fencing, but from hard years at sea. A working man’s body—strong, yet leashed so tight she could feel the distance between them when he came to her bed.

Outwardly, she lay still and silent as he touched her, entered her body. Inside, she cried out for more. More, based on knowledge she should never have possessed. If he ever found out what she knew, how she felt, Roake would be disgusted.

I know what he could give me, if he would, if I knew how to ask, if it would not forever destroy me in his sight.

Heat rushed up from her belly toward her face and Jenesta dipped her head to hide the blush she knew stained her cheeks.

The Pearl at the Gate, available at Samhain Publishing