Unconquered
Authors: Bertrice Small
Tags: #Romance, #Fantasy, #Historical, #Historical Romance
“
TAKE ME, JARED
.
OH, I BURN!
”
She was not to be denied. Amazed by her passion, he drove deep into her eager body, reveling in the softness of her. Then through the fires of his lust he heard her cry out. Her body arched and, for a moment, their eyes met and he saw the dawning of knowledge in those sea-green depths before she fainted with the force of her orgasm
.
She was stunning. An hour ago she had been a trembling virgin, and now she lay unconscious as a result of intense desire. A desire that she might not truly understand yet …
By Bertrice Small:
THE KADIN
LOVE WILD AND FAIR
ADORA
UNCONQUERED
BELOVED
ENCHANTRESS MINE
BLAZE WYNDHAM
THE SPITFIRE
A MOMENT IN TIME
TO LOVE AGAIN
LOVE, REMEMBER ME
THE LOVE SLAVE
HELLION
BETRAYED
DECEIVED
THE INNOCENT
A MEMORY OF LOVE
THE DUCHESS
THE DRAGON LORD’S DAUGHTERS
PRIVATE PLEASURES
The O’Malley Saga
SKYE O’MALLEY
ALL THE SWEET TOMORROWS
A LOVE FOR ALL TIME
THIS HEART OF MINE
LOST LOVE FOUND
WILD JASMINE
Skye’s Legacy
DARLING JASMINE
BEDAZZLED
BESIEGED
INTRIGUED
JUST BEYOND TOMORROW
VIXENS
The Friarsgate Inheritance
ROSEMUND
UNTIL YOU
PHILIPPA
THE LAST HEIRESS
The World of Hetar
LARA
A DISTANT TOMORROW
THE TWILIGHT LORD
The Border Chronicles
A DANGEROUS LOVE
A Ballantine Book
Published by The Random House Publishing Group
Copyright © 1995 by Bertrice Small
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
Ballantine and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Poem reprinted by permission of Grosset & Dunlap, Inc. from HIRAM AND OTHER CATS by Lawrence Dwight Smith, copyright 1941 by Grosset & Dunlap, Inc., text copyright renewed © 1969 by Margaret Nicholson.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 81-66654
eISBN: 978-0-307-79479-6
v3.1
For all those people
for whom
there is but one love …
Contents
About the Author
Chapter 1 
“Y
OU DO REALIZE,” SAID
L
ORD
P
ALMERSTON SLOWLY, “THAT
what you and I are doing could be considered treason by both of our governments? I am, you know, considered somewhat of a maverick because I prefer direct action to all the talk that goes on in Parliament and His Majesty’s cabinet.” He paused for a moment to contemplate the deep red claret in his glass. The etched Waterford crystal sparkled bloody crimson with firelight and wine reflecting onto Lord Palmerston’s handsome face. Outside, the midnight silence was broken by the soft hiss of the rising wind, bringing in streamers of fog from the coast. “Nevertheless,” continued Henry Temple, Lord Palmerston, “I believe, Captain Dunham, as do the interests you represent, that our real enemy in this situation is Napoleon, not each other.
Napoleon must be destroyed!
”
Jared Dunham turned away from the window, and walked back to the fireplace. The young man was lean, dark and very tall. He was considerably taller than the other man, and Henry Temple was six feet tall. Jared’s eyes were an odd dark green color and his eyelids were heavy, giving the impression of always being half-closed, weighed down by their thick, dark lashes. His long, thin nose and narrow lips helped give an impression of sardonic amusement. He had big, elegant hands with well-pared, rounded nails. They were strong hands.
Seating himself in one of the two tapestried wing chairs set before the cheerful blaze, Jared leaned forward to face Lord Palmerston, the English secretary for war. “And if you would successfully attack the enemy at your throat, m’lord, you would prefer not to have another enemy at your back. Am I correct?”
“Absolutely!” Lord Palmerston stated with complete candor.
A chill smile lifted the corners of the American’s mouth, not
quite reaching his bottle-green eyes. “By God, sir, you are honest!”
“We need each other, Captain,” was the frank reply. “Your country may be independent of England these last twenty years, but you cannot deny your roots. Your names are English, your styles of furniture and clothing, your very government is much like ours without, of course, King George. You cannot deny the bond between us. Even you, if my information is correct, are due to inherit an original English land grant and title one day.”
“It will be quite some time before I inherit, m’lord. My cousin, Thomas Dunham, eighth lord of Wyndsong Island, is in excellent health, God be praised! I have no desire to be settled at this point in my life.” He paused a moment, and then continued: “America must have a market for her goods, and England gives us that market, as well as the necessities and luxuries our society requires.
“We have already rid ourselves of the French by purchasing the vast Louisiana Territory, but in doing so we New Englanders have allowed ourselves to be outnumbered by a group of enthusiastic young hotheads who, having grown up on exaggerated tales of how we whupped the English in ’76, are now spoiling for a fight.
“As a man of business, I disapprove of war. Oh, I can make a great deal of money running your blockade, but in the end we both lose for we cannot get enough ships through the blockades to satisfy the demands on either side. Right now there is cotton rotting on the docks of Savannah and Charleston that your factories desperately need. Your weavers are working only three days each week, and you have riots by the unemployed. The situation in both our countries is appalling.”
Henry Temple nodded agreement, but Jared Dunham had not finished.
“Yes, Lord Palmerston,” he went on, “America and England need each other very much, and those of us who see it clearly will work with you—secretly—to help destroy our common enemy, Bonaparte! We want no foreigners in our government, and you English cannot fight a war on two continents right now.”
“However, I am instructed by Mr. John Quincy Adams to tell you that your Orders in Council forbidding America’s trade with other countries unless we first stop in England or another British
port must be canceled. It is a supreme piece of arrogance! We are a free nation, sir!”
Henry Temple, Lord Palmerston, sighed. The Orders in Council had been an extremely high-handed and desperate move by the English Parliament. “I am doing what I can,” he replied, “but we also have our share of hotheads in both Commons and Lords. Most of them have never held a sword or a pistol or seen battle, but all are more knowledgeable than either you or I. They
still
think of your victory over us as cheeky colonial luck. Until these gentlemen can be convinced that our fortunes are bound together, I, too, will have a rough road to travel.”