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Her father had coaxed her outside by telling her the horses she loved needed attention. And that had worked to get her out a bit. Slowly, albeit listlessly, she began to eat, talk, walk, but she felt as though all joy in life had been snatched away.
She got to her feet and touched the tree before turning towards home. She loved the quiet solitude of her beloved Devon landscape. It was like a tonic that soothed her. Johnny had never quite been at home in the country. He was too restless.
She crossed the open field with slow, long strides and felt the overgrown grass brush against the thin material of her stockings at her ankles and calves. The day had been touched with scudding clouds, and they hovered with the tease of rain.
It was still mid-afternoon, and yet, because of the overcast sky, it appeared later. Jenny’s gaze swept upwards, and she made the decision to take the shortcut across Farmer Cubbins’ field. She reached the roadside fence, picked up her skirts, climbed nimbly up, sat on the aged wood stocks, and then pushed herself forward onto the country dirt road.
She had been so engrossed with getting her skirts past the splintered rail and her feet over the ditch that lined the road that she hadn’t noticed the rider coming around the bend.
Her sudden descent onto the road caused the horse to rear and champ at his bit. This startled Jenny, and before she knew what had happened, she had released a screech, stepped forcefully backward, and landed herself in the very ditch she had tried to avoid.
~ One ~
A LOW, STRONG MALE voice cursed beneath his breath as Jenny tried to recoup and get to her feet.
As she pressed her hands into the earth and tried to straighten, she heard him dismount and within an instant felt herself pulled up into a standing position, though she wasn’t sure her shoes were touching the earth.
A pair of startlingly blue eyes glared angrily down into her own, and the voice said in a tone that made her open her eyes wide, “Well, well, at least it’s a pretty wench that’s detained me.”
He sounded as though he were some huge giant about to eat her, and without another word, and before she realized what he was doing, that was what he did.
Jenny found herself being ruthlessly kissed! In that moment, with this stranger’s lips on hers, she was almost too shocked to react, but she was just a bit aware of a tingling sensation that journeyed through her body.
At length her mind returned to her and she made an effort to resist by putting her hands to his chest and pushing hard. This, however, did not budge him. He seemed to hold her in a vice-like grip. She should have been afraid but was too astonished to consider that.
She was, however, furious at his daring, and when he put his head back to look at her and laugh, she felt something of her old self return. The old, vibrant Jenny would never stand for such treatment!
As he got into position, obviously meaning to kiss her again, she reacted and, feeling both outrage and anger, formulated a quick plan.
She immediately relaxed in his arms and allowed the scoundrel to believe he had conquered her. As she expected, his grip eased up.
Jenny had just enough time to bring her booted foot into position and then thrust it hard and forcefully into his shin.
She felt a great deal of satisfaction as he cried out in pain and paused only briefly to wag her finger and tell him, “Fie, sir—fie!” Then she ran. She held her skirts in hand and put the road behind her as fast as she could, only stopping when she sighted the green lawns of her home, Ashley Grange.
Once on her own estate, she leaned up against a tree and, breathing hard, hurriedly glanced behind her. Thanking providence her assailant had not deemed it worth his trouble to pursue, she sucked in a long, delicious breath of air and then proceeded to the house. Oddly enough, her anger abated and just a touch of amusement tickled her senses as she thought of the way he’d reached for his injured leg. Ha, served him right.
A white witch caught between two powerful forces—her parents’ plans for her future—must find her own way. Enjoy this sneak preview of
Lady X (unedited)
Prologue
EXERILLA RADLEY SHIVERED from her dip in the ocean and stood in the wet sand as she shook herself off. She took a few steps further up the sandy slope to where she had dropped her colorful beach towel, snapped it in the wind, and began drying herself off.
She squeezed water out of her long black hair and shook it around herself as she looked up at the only home she had ever known.
Spanish red tiles made up its many-tiered roof. A soft peach pastel colored the stucco exterior walls. Lush landscaping that used palms and other tropical plants made her home look as though it belonged in the tropics, instead of Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina.
Everything about the house was invitingly warm, and Exerilla smiled. She loved this home and was glad that it stood magnificent and strong against all storms. And it did.
Nothing could touch it, because her mother, a powerful white witch, had enacted a protection spell right into its frame when it was being built.
Her life was taking a turn, and it felt so exciting. She had graduated from UNC just days before, and summer had not even really begun, but she knew that it would all be over way too soon.
X sighed; yup, too soon she would leave everything familiar and safe and head for New York to do her graduate work at Columbia. That in itself was major. She had always been a homebody. Now here she was going off and away, to of all places New York City.
As she picked up her clogs and headed up the sandy slope for the long wide aisle of private boardwalk that led to the upper deck of her home, she suddenly stopped and listened.
