Silver Deceptions Read online

  Dear Reader,

  When Pocket Books brought my novel By Love Unveiled back into print, I was thrilled at the chance to revise and refresh one of the eight novels I penned under the name Deborah Martin. Those early works set the stage for my career to come: first, the historical detail, passionate action, and darker tone of the Deborah Martin novels. And later on, the sensual entanglements, sexy repartee, and lighthearted spirit of my recent Regency series, the Duke’s Men and the Hellions of Halstead Hall. Both romantic styles are infused with the sizzling sexual tension my readers have come to expect in my works. Every writer dreams of digging deep and finding the distinctive and authentic voices that make their stories come alive for readers. I’m profoundly grateful to be living that dream!

  Now I’m delighted that Silver Deceptions, another Deborah Martin novel, is available to you once again in this revised edition. For this tale of a London stage actress with a hidden plan and a seductive marquess trying to unravel her secrets, I heightened the drama and the danger, enriched the story line, tightened the dialogue, and stoked one very hot passion to make it burn brighter than ever. It was an exciting and rewarding undertaking, and one that, I sincerely hope, makes Silver Deceptions a satisfying and unforgettable reading experience for you.

  Enjoy!

  Praise for New York Times and USA Today bestselling author SABRINA JEFFRIES and her “addictive” (Library Journal) series

  THE DUKE’S MEN

  WHAT THE DUKE DESIRES

  “A totally engaging, adventurous love story . . . with an oh-so-wonderful ending.”

  —RT Book Reviews

  WHEN THE ROGUE RETURNS

  “For lovers of romantic fiction, Sabrina Jeffries has a gift for you. . . . [This] story . . . will leave you hungering for more adventures from The Duke’s Men.”

  —Novels Alive.TV

  HOW THE SCOUNDREL SEDUCES

  “A winner. . . . The setting is vivid, the lovers are well-drawn and colorful, and the mystery is intriguing.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Marvelous storytelling . . . destined to steal readers’ hearts. . . . A memorable romance.”

  —RT Book Reviews (41/2 stars, Top Pick, K.I.S.S. Award)

  “Scorching. . . . From cover to cover, How the Scoundrel Seduces sizzles.”

  —Reader to Reader

  THE HELLIONS OF HALSTEAD HALL

  THE TRUTH ABOUT LORD STONEVILLE

  “Delectably witty dialogue . . . and scorching sexual chemistry.”

  —Booklist

  A HELLION IN HER BED

  “Jeffries’s sense of humor and delightfully delicious sensuality spice things up!”

  —RT Book Reviews (41/2 stars)

  HOW TO WOO A RELUCTANT LADY

  “Steamy passion, dangerous intrigue, and just the right amount of tart wit.”

  —Booklist

  TO WED A WILD LORD

  “Wonderfully witty, deliciously seductive, graced with humor and charm.”

  —Library Journal (starred review)

  A LADY NEVER SURRENDERS

  “Jeffries pulls out all the stops. . . . Not to be missed.”

  —RT Book Reviews (41/2 stars, Top Pick)

  “Sizzling, emotionally satisfying. . . . Another must-read.”

  —Library Journal (starred review)

  “Superbly shaded characters, simmering sensuality, and a splendidly wicked wit . . . A Lady Never Surrenders wraps up the series nothing short of brilliantly.”

  —Booklist

  Thank you for downloading this Pocket Books eBook.

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  To my agent, Pamela Gray Ahearn of the Ahearn Agency, thank you for twenty-five wonderful years together. Here’s hoping we have twenty-five more!

  Prologue

  NORWOOD, ENGLAND

  MAY 1667

  “Death, in itself, is nothing; but we fear,

  To be we know not what, we know not where.”

  —John Dryden, Aureng-Zebe, Act 4, Sc. 1

  Dark clouds, their bellies full of cold spring rain, hovered over Norwood’s square waiting to dump their burden, and dirty piles of winter slush lined the bleak patch of ground. It was a perfect day for a hanging.

  Twenty-one-year-old Annabelle Taylor drew the hood of her woolen cloak forward to cover her hair and pushed through the crowd. No one must notice her.

  But she needn’t have worried. As she gained a spot near the gallows, the crowd that watched for the cart with sickening  jubilation paid her little heed.

  No one would expect her to watch her mother’s hanging. That was why her plan just might work. The sheriff and his men would be taken so off guard when she claimed the body herself that it might not occur to them to prevent her and her servant Charity Woodfield from carrying Mother’s body away in the wagon Charity’s father was bringing.

  “I have terrible news,” a voice whispered at Annabelle’s elbow.

  With a sudden foreboding, she glanced at the buxom, fair-haired widow who’d come to stand at her side. Only five years her senior, Charity was more like an older sister than a servant to her. “What is it? What’s happened?”

  “The surgeon can’t take yer mother.”

  “What do you mean? I gave him all the gold I had. He swore he’d do what he could to revive her!”

  She’d read tales of men revived after a hanging. If the neck remained unbroken, a person could still live through it, fainting before actually dying. Only last year, friends of a man in the next shire had secretly carried his hanged body off to a surgeon, who’d warmed and bled it until the man had revived. He now lived healthy as a horse in London, or so she’d heard.

  “It isn’t the surgeon’s fault.” Charity looked grim. “Some runagate told the sheriff about yer plans, and now there’s soldiers at the surgeon’s house waiting to seize you and the body if you come near the place. They’ll only let you take the body to the graveyard.”

  Despair clogged her throat. “It was my only chance to save her.”

  The pitiful hope that Mother might beat death in the end was what had seen her through Mother’s short imprisonment, trial, and sentence of death by hanging for murdering Annabelle’s father.

  No, he was her stepfather, a fact she had only recently learned.

  She choked back a sob. No one cared that Ogden Taylor had been beating her or that his poor wife could no longer endure such cruelties to her daughter. In the world’s eyes, Squire Ogden Taylor had merely been administering a proper punishment to his daughter when his wife had lost her wits and plunged a kitchen blade through his brawny chest.

  Tears slipped from between her lashes. “She can’t die, Charity. I can’t let her. If it weren’t for me—”

  “Don’t start blamin’ yerself. He pushed her to it, he did. At least yer mother had the satisfaction of seein’ him suffer in the end.”

  Annabelle couldn’t pretend to have loved the man, nor even to wish Mother hadn’t killed him. She only wished Mother had done it less publicly.

  The moment those wicked thoughts appeared, a superstitious fear made the sweat bead up on her forehead. Please, God, I didn’t mean it. Only let her live. If you save her, I’ll . . . I’ll . . .

  How could she tempt God into overlooking Mother’s crime? Her stepfather had called her the “spawn of the devil” because she suffered his punishments in silence. He’d said it was unnatural.

  Perhaps he was right. Then again, he didn’t know how she became someone else inside
her mind to endure his beatings, how she pretended she was suffering in battle as the warrior queen Boadicea or the goddess Athena or even Joan of Arc—anything to escape the pain.

  “What do I do now?” Annabelle whispered raggedly to Charity.

  Charity placed a soft hand on her arm. “It’s out of your hands, dear heart. There’s naught left but to flee this wicked place, turn yer eyes from the evil here, and set yer feet toward London.”

  “Not until the end.” With a shudder, Annabelle stared at the gallows crosspiece, the rough wood worn smooth in the middle where the rope was tied. “A miracle could happen. God may yet spare her.”

  “Yer mother’s put herself beyond helping,” Charity said without rancor. “Come on with you. We’ll travel to London and join my actress cousin. She says the theater’s full of women like us. With yer genteel manners, you could get a position easy.”

  “I’ll go soon enough.” Annabelle strained to see if anyone yet came down the road. “I have no choice—no one wants me here. But you don’t have to leave your family. You’ve got a chance for a good place as a cook.”

  “Fie on that! I want to seek my fortune on the stage. My cousin says the nobles fight over the actresses, and any bonny woman can find a duke willing to set her up—”

  “Don’t even think such a thing!” Annabelle hissed. “That sort of behavior is what landed Mother here. If she hadn’t taken up with a dissolute nobleman, she wouldn’t have been abandoned with me in her belly. Then her parents wouldn’t have forced her to marry the squire and live the hellish life that drove her to—” She broke off with a sob.

  “My poor dear.” Charity stroked her mistress’s back soothingly. “Come away. You shouldn’t be here.”

  The noise of the crowd suddenly increased, and Annabelle’s gaze shifted to where the cart track split from the road.

  First strutted the sheriff in his sable robes, appearing very dignified and aloof for a man who’d already purchased the Taylor lands from the Crown, since her stepfather had no heirs. Meanwhile, he’d made her an offer of a different kind that she had refused. No doubt that was why he sought to prevent her from any attempt to have Mother revived.

  She gritted her teeth. He completed the wheel of torment fashioned by Ogden Taylor and the unfeeling nobleman who was Annabelle’s real father. A plague on them all! How she hated them!

  Suddenly, the cart carrying Mother rumbled into view. Chains held her, with thick iron shackles that dwarfed her delicate wrists and ankles. Her beautiful, silver-streaked jet hair had been shorn, highlighting her expression of helpless confusion. As she knelt on the wobbling cart in her white gown, she clasped her hands before her, lips moving in prayer.

  “Mother!” Annabelle cried out and started forward.

  Charity held her back. “No, no, dear heart. They’ll be waiting for you to make a fuss, so they can throw you into gaol, too. Don’t give the bastards the chance.”

  This last was said with such venom it gave Annabelle courage. Annabelle let that venom seep into her soul. She’d need the strength of her hatred to avenge Mother.

  Not against the townspeople. Some were wretches, but most had been relatively kind to her and her mother. No, she must find her real father, the lord whom Mother had called Maynard, whose gifts—a signet ring and a poem with the signature The Silver Swan—Mother had sent her to retrieve from their hiding place in the harpsichord. Mother had told her of him only two days ago, urging Annabelle to seek him out and ask his protection.

  She’d sooner cut out her tongue. Instead, she would make sure he paid for abandoning Mother when she’d needed him most.

  A drunk voice in the crowd called out, “What a collar day! Perfect day for a murderess to be twisted!”

  Though someone hushed him, the word twisted made Annabelle’s fingers curl into fists. And when a hawker nearby cried, as if this were some merrymaking fair, “Mutton pies for sale, good and hot!” she would have lunged for him if Charity hadn’t slid an arm about her waist to restrain her.

  “Don’t torment yerself by staying here,” Charity muttered. “Yer mother is as good as dead now. You promised her you’d not witness the hanging. Keep that promise.”

  “I can’t leave her!” Annabelle hissed.

  Charity shook her head but remained at Annabelle’s side.

  The rough-hewn cart stopped a few yards in front of them, beneath the gallows with its dreadful rope hanging down like a hideous outstretched claw. Annabelle ached to run to Mother’s side, but she resisted the urge. If Mother saw her, it would make her last minutes intolerable.

  A man whose somber clothing and executioner’s mask marked him as the hangman jerked Mother to her feet, and the hot hatred filling Annabelle was so intense she thought she’d burst into flames.

  As the wind whipped Mother’s white gown around her, the hangman slipped the noose over her bowed head. He tightened it around her neck, and Annabelle’s own throat went numb.

  Please, God, save her. You must save her!

  The hangman stepped off the cart. The sheriff of Norwood repeated the sentence in a booming voice, then asked if the condemned had any final words.

  Her mother’s soft “Nay” incensed the crowd, who would rather have heard a long confession of her past sins.

  The hangman led the horse forward, while Phoebe Taylor’s feet dragged the bottom of the cart until they no longer found purchase.

  Annabelle shut her eyes. The silence of the crowd maddened her, because it allowed her to hear the gallows creak with her mother’s weight. But Annabelle didn’t scream or even cry. Instead, she prayed more fervently than she’d ever prayed in her life.

  Let the rope break, God. They’ll not hang her again if the rope breaks. They’ll take it as a sign. Let her live, and I’ll be pure and holy all my days, I swear it. Save her and I’ll be your servant forever. Please, God, I swear it!

  She didn’t realize she was babbling the words aloud, her voice rising above the hush of the crowd, until Charity began dragging her backward.

  “Come, dear heart, we’re leaving now,” Charity whispered. “God has taken her into his bosom, where she belongs. He ain’t going to release her. Come on!”

  A clap of thunder sounded nearby, and Annabelle’s eyes shot open. It was an answer, wasn’t it? God would spare Mother?

  Then she saw the gallows, and she screamed. She wrenched her gaze from the horrifying sight before her, one last supplication tumbling from her lips.

  The rope held.

  In that moment, Annabelle shoved her soul and her childhood dreams into a cupboard in her heart, then closed it against the pain threatening to overwhelm her reason. And as she hardened her heart against men and all their cruelties, she vowed that one man at least would pay for taking her mother from her.

  Her father.

  Chapter One

  LONDON

  JANUARY 1668

  “Robes loosely flowing, hair as free:

  Such sweet neglect more taketh me,

  Than all the adulteries of art;

  They strike mine eyes, but not my heart.”

  —Ben Jonson, Epicœne, Act 1, Sc. 1

  A mischief upon all Fools!”

  Act 3 of Dryden’s Sir Martin Mar-All was well in progress when those words temporarily lessened the din in Lisle’s Tennis Court, which had served as the playhouse for the Duke of York’s acting company since the theaters reopened. All eyes were on the actress who’d spoken the line with contemptuous pride.

  Colin Jeffreys, Marquess of Hampden, who’d just arrived, surveyed her from a first-tier box with particular interest, then glanced at the playbill to make certain she was the woman whom the Earl of Walcester wanted him to spy upon. It read, Rose, played by Mrs. Maynard.

  That certainly fit. Although the earl had mentioned she was unmarried, all the actresses were called Mrs., married or no, and Colin doubted there was more than one going by the surname of Maynard.

  His gaze followed the tall woman as she crossed the prosc
enium stage. She played the witty servant Rose very well, which intrigued him. Few of the actresses had much interest in their profession; most were on the stage to find a protector.

  Not that this one couldn’t if she wished. Although the requisite short curls framed her face in front, the rest of her hair tumbled to the middle of her back, a shimmering robe of ebony in the light of the theater’s candles. She was well proportioned and fine-limbed, and she moved with the bearing of a queen.

  Yet she still projected an elusive quality of innocence. That took some fine acting indeed. And perhaps a bit of cosmetic manipulation—while Moll Davis wore a heavy shade of rouge on the cheeks of her white-powdered face, Annabelle Maynard wore little and thus looked fresh and unspoiled as wild rosemary.

  In short, she was the perfect antidote to the jaded sensibilities of an oversophisticated court . . . and not at all what he’d expected. Perhaps he indeed had the wrong woman. He hadn’t been to a play at the Duke’s Theater since he’d returned from spending three years in Antwerp in the king’s service, so he wasn’t familiar with all the players.

  “Sir John!” he called to his friend over the loud hum of voices. How on earth did anyone listen to a play in this din?

  “Not now.” Sir John Riverton drew closer the giggling vizard-mask who sat between them, plying her whore’s trade. “Can’t you see this poor girl’s lonely?”

  The “poor girl” was sliding her bejeweled hand up Colin’s thigh even while her other hand worked at tantalizing Sir John.

  “Lonely isn’t the word I would choose,” Colin said dryly as he brushed her hand away. “She can wait. Tell me about the actress in white.”

  Sir John turned his attention to the stage. “The Silver Swan, you mean?”

  Ah, yes, Colin had forgotten that bit. He noted the beauty’s slender neck and graceful gestures as well as the silver ribbons she wore not only in her hair but threaded through her lace cuffs and in bows on the tips of her white satin slippers. On her bodice, a silver brooch winked in the lights. A swan, no doubt.