The Lord's Inconvenient Vow

Her finger rested below the word ‘love’ and he took her hand, raising it to press a kiss to the heart of her palm.

‘I didn’t think about it at the time. I only felt...unnerved and as usual I did my foolish best not to consider why. But, yes, I put those words on Leila’s lips because I needed to hear them, Sam. Even if it was only in my mind. They were true for me even if I was too great an idiot to realise it. Rafe told me the Desert Boy books were one long love letter and he was right. They were always my love letters to you, Sam.’

Sam touched his cheek and smiled and his world filled once more.

‘I’m glad you wrote them, Edge. Because it was only ever you, my one and only love.’

* * *

If you enjoyed this story

be sure to read the other books in

The Sinful Sinclairs miniseries

The Earl’s Irresistible Challenge

The Rake’s Enticing Proposal

And why not check out Lara Temple’s

Wild Lords and Innocent Ladies miniseries?

Starting with

Lord Hunter’s Cinderella Heiress

Keep reading for an excerpt from The Princess’s Secret Longing by Carol Townend.

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The Princess’s Secret Longing

by Carol Townend

Chapter One

1396—the Alhambra Palace in the Emirate of Granada

Princess Alba lay in the dark, an unfamiliar noise had dragged her from her dreams. She turned restlessly, unable to work out what had woken her. All she could hear was a trill of birdsong. In her mind’s eye, she saw birds flying over lawns and terraces and flitting in and out of shrubs in the wilderness beyond the palace wall. They sounded happy. Free!

A lantern glowed softly in a niche, casting a gentle light on the sleeping forms of Alba’s sisters, Princess Leonor and Princess Constanza. Their black hair was loosely tied back for sleep, just like hers, and their eyelashes lay like dark crescents against their cheeks. Princess Alba and her sisters were triplets, identical triplets.

Alba yawned and, as she looked at her sisters, she was gripped by an odd fancy. It was as though she was looking at other versions of herself, versions which had yet to waken. Irritated, she brushed the thought aside. Her sisters’ features might mirror hers, but their characters—oh, so very different.

The bedchamber shutters were closed, and it was so early that nothing was visible through the star-shaped patterns cut into the wood. The Princesses hadn’t been long in their father’s favourite palace—only a few days—but already Alba knew that in daytime the piercings in the shutters turned bright sunlight into starry splashes on the floor tiles.

There it was again! That mysterious noise. Alba sat up. What could it be? The cry of a hawk? No, that was no hawk. That was surely—a baby.

Her breath stopped. Could it really be a baby? Whose could it be? It couldn’t belong to her father the Sultan, may God exalt him. The Sultan had only sired three children, Alba and her sisters. Sultan Tariq’s unfulfilled wish for other children—more precisely, for a son—was well known.

Alba scrambled to the window. Kneeling on a cushion, for the window was low and the floor hard, she shoved at the shutter and strained to hear more. She’d spent most of her life far away in Salobreña Castle and not once had she held a baby. A pang shot through her, violent and intense. If there was a baby in the palace, she must see it. Hold it.

Loath to wake her sisters, Alba snatched up a robe and veil and was dressed in no time. She took the lantern to light her way, crept softly downstairs and slipped out of the tower.

The stars were fading, the sky was turning pearly grey and the air was pleasantly cool.

Ahead of her, paths ran this way and that. Buildings were visible as black shapes at the end of the paths. So many walls and towers. Alba had yet to learn the layout of the grounds, but in this instance, it didn’t matter. That sound, the faintest of whimpers, was her guide. There was a baby in the palace!

Stepping on to the lawn, Alba sped past a hissing fountain. She entered a small grove of trees and was greeted by the heady scent of oranges. A section of the palace wall lay on her left hand and light glowed briefly from a guardhouse at the top. Her father the Sultan had many guards.