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Bewitching & His Secret Agenda: A 2-in-1 Collection (Harlequin Bestselling Author Collection) - Softcover

Neggers, Carla; Andrews, Beth

 
9780373180769: Bewitching & His Secret Agenda: A 2-in-1 Collection (Harlequin Bestselling Author Collection)
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0373180764 ISBN 13: 9780373180769
Verlag: Harlequin Bestselling Author Collection, 2013

Inhaltsangabe

Star-crossed

Hannah understood what it meant to be a Marsh. She belonged on the coast of Maine in her little house on Marsh Point. Her family was fiercely loyal to each other, and to the memory of their ancestor, Priscilla Marsh, who'd been wrongfully executed three hundred years ago. And Hannah knew her enemies— Judge Cotton Harling, who'd sentenced Priscilla to death, and every Harling since.

At least, she'd understood all of that until she met Win Harling. The handsome, urban businessman was everything Hannah didn't want, and yet somehow, he was everything she needed. But he was a Harling, and she was a Marsh. Three hundred years of history said they could never have a future.

Unless they could make a little history of their own.…

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Über die Autorinnen und Autoren

Carla Neggers is the New York Times bestselling author of the Sharpe and Donovan series featuring Boston-based FBI agents Emma Sharpe and Colin Donovan and the Swift River Valley series set in small-town New England. With many bestsellers to her credit, Carla and her husband divide their time between their hilltop home in Vermont, their kids' places in Boston and various inns, hotels and hideaways on their travels, frequently to Ireland. Learn more at CarlaNeggers.com.

Beth Andrews is a Romance Writers of America RITA® Award and Golden Heart Winner. She lives in Northwestern Pennsylvania with her husband and three children. When not writing, Beth loves to cook, make bead jewelry and, of course, curl up with a good book. For more information about Beth or her upcoming books, please visit her Website at: www.bethandrews.net

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The pinks and oranges of dawn sparkled on the bay beyond Marsh Point, off a stretch of southern Maine that was still quiet, still undiscovered by tourists. Hannah Marsh stood on a boulder above the rocky coastline. The wind blew raw and cold, although the calendar said spring had arrived. In defiance of the weather, daffodils bloomed in the little garden outside her cottage.

In Boston the tulips would be out, perhaps even a few leaves budded. It wouldn't be so bad.

"You're going," a gruff voice said behind her.

She turned and smiled at Thackeray Marsh, aged seventy-nine, owner of Marsh Point, fellow historian and her cousin several times removed. He was a stout, fair-skinned, fair-haired man, although not as fair as herself, and kept in shape with dawn and dusk walks along a loop-shaped route that took in most of Marsh Point.

"I have no choice," Hannah said. "Most of the documents I need to examine are in Boston, and anything new on Priscilla Marsh will be there. It's where she lived and died, Thackeray. I have to go."

He snorted. "The Harlings catch you, they'll string you up."

"You said yourself there's only one Harling left in Boston, and he's even older than you are. I'll be fine."

Her elderly cousin squinted his emerald eyes at her. He was wearing an old tweed jacket patched at the elbows and rubber boots that had to be older than she was. His frugality, Hannah had learned in her five years in Maine, was legendary in the region.

"The Harlings and the Marshes haven't had much of anything to do with each other in a hundred years," he said. "Why rock the boat?"

"I'm not rocking the boat. I'm going on a perfectly ordinary, honorable research expedition." She tried not to sound defensive or impatient, but she had gone over her position—over and over it—with Cousin Thackeray. "It's not as if Priscilla Marsh died yesterday, you know."

Judge Cotton Harling had sentenced Priscilla Marsh to death by hanging three hundred years ago. Hannah hoped to have her biography of her ancestor in bookstores by the anniversary of the execution. Not only would it be good business, but it would pay a nice tribute to a woman who had defied the restrictions of Puritan America—of the Harlings of Boston.

And paid the price, of course. Hannah couldn't forget that.

The wind picked up, and she hugged her oversize sweatshirt closer to her body. Her long, fine, straight blond hair was, fortunately, held back in a hastily tied ponytail. Otherwise it would have tangled badly. Cousin Thackeray barely seemed to notice the cold.

"Hannah, the Harlings resent that we won't let them forget it was a Harling who had Priscilla hanged. We, of course, say they shouldn't ever forget. The feud has been going on like this for three hundred years."

She refused to let his dark mood dampen her enthusiasm for what was, after all, a necessary trip—and no doubt would prove boring and routine, involving nothing more than musty books and documents and hours and hours in badly lit archives.

He made her trip sound like some kind of espionage assignment. "At least," her cousin went on, "don't let anyone in Boston know you're a Marsh. It's just too dangerous. If Jonathan Harling finds out—"

"That's the name of the last Harling in Boston?"

Cousin Thackeray nodded somberly. "Jonathan Win-throp Harling."

She grinned. "I look at it this way. What could one little old man who happens to be a Harling do to me?"

J. Winthrop Harling climbed the sloping lawn of the golddomed Massachusetts State House above Boston Common with a sense of purpose. He had come to look at the statue of the infamous Priscilla Marsh. Her tragic death three hundred years ago at the hands of a Harling still colored his family's reputation. It was a part of what being a Harling in Boston was all about.

The wind off the harbor was brisk, even chilly, but he didn't feel it, though he was only wearing the dark gray suit he'd worn to the office.

Although he'd been born and raised in New York and had lived in Boston only a year, he was a stereotypical Harling in one sense: he made one hell of a lot of money. Sometimes the size of his income, his growing net worth, staggered him. But the Harlings had always been good at making money.

Priscilla Marsh's smooth marble face stared at him in the waning sunlight. She looked very young and very wronged, more innocent, no doubt, than she had been in fact. The sculptor had managed to capture the legendary beauty of her hair, supposedly an unusual shock of pale blond, fine and very straight. She had been hanged on the orders of Cotton Harling when she was just thirty years old.

"Good going, Cotton," Win muttered.

But had she lived and died an ordinary life, Pris-cilla Marsh would never have inspired an oft-quoted Longfellow poem or a famous 1952 play. Nor would her statue have stood on the lawn of the Massachusetts State House, either.

Win brushed his fingers across the cool stone hair and felt the tragedy of the young Puritan's death. She had been dead less than a day when evidence of her innocence had arrived. Priscilla Marsh hadn't been teaching the young ladies of her neighborhood witchcraft, but how to cure earaches.

Her death should have been a lesson to future Har-lings.

A lesson in patience, humility, faith in one's fellow human beings. A warning against arrogance and pride. Against believing in one's own infallibility.

But, Win thought, it hadn't.

Hannah arrived in Boston without incident and set up housekeeping in a cramped apartment on Beacon Hill. She had traded with a friend, who would get two weeks in Hannah's Maine cottage come summer. The friend, a teacher, was off to Paris with her French class. Things, Hannah decided, were just meant to work out.

Her first stop, bright and early the next morning, was the New England Athenaeum on Beacon Street, across from the Boston Public Garden. It was a private library, supported by just four hundred members and founded in 1892 by, of course, a Harling.

Hannah indicated she was a professional historian and would like to use the library, a renowned repository of New England historical documents.

Preston Fowler, the director, a formal man who appeared to be in his mid-fifties, informed her that the New England Athenaeum was a private institution. Accordingly, she would be permitted into its stacks and rare book room only when she had exhausted all other possibilities and could prove it was the only place that had what she needed. And even then she would be carefully watched.

Hannah resisted the impulse to tell him other private institutions had opened their doors to her in her career. Arguing wouldn't get her anywhere. She needed something that would work. She sighed and said, "But Uncle Jonathan said I wouldn't have any trouble with you."

"Who?" Preston Fowler asked sharply.

"My uncle." She paused more for dramatic effect than to reconsider what she was doing. Then she added, "Jonathan Winthrop Harling."

Fowler cleared his throat, and Hannah was amused at how rigid his spine went. Ahh, the Harling factor. "You—your name is…?"

"Hannah," she said, not feeling even a twinge of guilt. "Hannah Harling."

Win settled back in his soft leather chair and took the call from the elderly uncle whose name he bore. "Hey, there, Uncle Jonathan, what's up?"

Jonathan Harling, who had just turned eighty, got straight to the point....

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Verlag
Harlequin Bestselling Author Collection
Erscheinungsdatum
2013
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0373180764
ISBN 13 
9780373180769
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
480
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
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