Triumph in Arms

286 Pages·2016·1.02 MB·English

by  Blake Jennifer

Read what the critics are saying about Jennifer Blake’s bestselling
Masters at Arms series
“The sexually charged chemistry between the two strong protagonists, danger
and an overview of New Orleans and Mexico make this a fantastic and deeply
touching love story.”
—An RT Book Reviews Top Pick!
“Beguiling, sexy heroes…Well done, Ms. Blake!”
—The Romance Reader’s Connection
“Be sure to read this series. No one portrays it better than Jennifer Blake. She
has rightly earned the admiration and respect of her readers. They know there is
a world of enjoyment waiting within the pages of her books.”
—A Romance Review
“The pride and care [Blake] takes in her creations shine through. While books in
her new series stand alone, fans of historical romance will enjoy reading the
whole series.”
—Romance Reviews Today
“Multi-award-winning author Jennifer Blake returns [with the] Masters at Arms
series: set in nineteenth-century New Orleans, when honor was still decided with
crossed swords and first blood. And a delightful return it is…”
—Historical Romance Writers
“Blake evokes the aura of New Orleans to perfection…”
—RT Book Reviews
“Blake adds another memorable book to her Maîtres d’Armes series…a fine
overview of the art of fencing and duels, she brings together a noble, honorable
hero and a heroine bent on revenge in a compassionate, sensual and emotionally
intense love story.”
—RT Book Reviews on Guarded Heart, winner of the Reviewer’s Choice Award
for Best American Historical Romance
“Guarded Heart is a boundlessly exciting and adventuresome tale…surely to be
one of the best historical romances I will read this year.”
—Romance Junkies
“A brilliant addition to Jennifer Blake’s Maîtres d’Armes books…It is one of the
most romantic books I’ve read. Fans of historical romance will not want to miss
it.”
—A Romance Review on Rogue’s Salute
“Dawn Encounter is one of those books that once put down, you can’t wait to
pick back up and read more. There is hot, sexual chemistry between Caid and
Lisette that spices up almost every page…I can’t wait to read the sequel!”
—Romance Reader at Heart
“With a hero worthy of our dreams and a heroine women can relate to, this new
masterpiece is a boon to Blake fans everywhere. Blake’s anticipated return to the
historical romance proves to be well worth the wait.”
—A Romance Review on Challenge to Honor
Also available from
JENNIFER BLAKE
The Masters at Arms
GALLANT MATCH
GUARDED HEART
ROGUE’S SALUTE
DAWN ENCOUNTER
CHALLENGE TO HONOR
Louisiana Gentlemen
WADE
CLAY
ROAN
LUKE
KANE
GARDEN OF SCANDAL
Watch for Jennifer’s brand-new trilogy set in the sexy and scandalous court of
Henry VII
BY HIS MAJESTY’S GRACE
Coming in 2011
Available in paperback from MIRA Books
JENNIFER BLAKE
TRIUMPH IN ARMS
For my readers around the world who appreciate the
romantic gesture, the passion and promise of love
unrequited, the mystery of human relationships,
and the olden days when such things mattered.
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Author’s Note
Acknowledgments
Prologue
New Orleans, Louisiana
April 1847
C
hristien Lenoir waited with his thumbs in his waistcoat pockets and his back
propped against a Doric column of the Théâtre d’Orléans’s arcaded entrance.
Tension sang along his nerve endings. The lady should appear at any moment. A
single glimpse was all he required; it would decide whether he proceeded or
called a halt.
Around him the crème de la crème of the Vieux Carré streamed from the
theater, pouring out into the damp night. Family groups, courting couples trailed
by their duennas, widows and gentlemen on the town, they moved in a murmur
of animated conversation and hummed snatches of the music just heard in
L’elisir d’amore. The flickering gaslights mounted above the arched theater
entrance cast a yellow-orange glow over the opera crowd, glinting on jewels,
shimmering on silks, satins and velvets, turning white linen a sickly hue. In the
street beyond the wide banquette, it reflected with a glasslike sheen from the wet
carriages as swearing drivers jockeyed for position, preparing to take up their
owners. Rain had passed over during the performance, leaving puddles between
the paving stones that rose in glittering wavelets as horses’ hooves and carriage
wheels splashed through them.
Abruptly, Christien straightened. There she was, Madame Reine Marie
Cassard Pingre, just emerging into the lamplight’s glow. Her young daughter
walked beside her. They came closer, passing where Christien stood, so near he
could hear the silken whisper of the lady’s petticoats, catch a delicate wafting of
roses and lavender. Face set, looking neither left nor right, she seemed intent on
reaching the near corner where the rue d’Orleans crossed rue Royale.
She was beautiful, he saw, as all things unattainable are beautiful. Following
her with narrowed eyes, Christien felt a prickling at the back of his neck not
unlike the warning when he faced an adversary of unknown skill, uncalculated
power.
The mother and child he watched were strikingly similar. Bright hair, light
brown touched with gold, curled in fine tendrils around their faces. Though the
lady’s tresses crowned the top of her head in an intricate arrangement nestled
with pink camellias, the child’s drifted around her in the night wind in fine
intimation of how her mother’s might appear if released from its pins. Wide-
spaced eyes, delicately molded noses and determined chins marked them both.
Their slender forms, encased in the lavender-gray silk of demi-mourning, were
made to appear fashionably fragile and elegant by some modiste’s clever fingers.
The affection between them was plain to see as the lady glanced down at the
child, no more than four or five years old, whose small, glove-encased hand
rested in hers.
Christien’s every sense took on a razor-sharp edge. The streetlamps seemed
brighter, the night air fresher, the murmur of the crowd around him like a roar.
His heartbeat increased in tempo while a piercing ache of need spread from its
heated center.
It stunned him, that sudden hunger of the heart. As a maître d’armes, one of
the infamous fencing masters of New Orleans, his days were devoted to
masculine pursuits. Little time was left for feminine company and none at all for
respectable females. He had schooled himself to do without such tender
influences, seldom allowed them to cross his mind, never permitted them to hold
his thoughts or his desires hostage. He was immune, or so he’d felt, to the coup
de foudre, that thunderclap of infatuation that made fools of other men.
He had not taken an attraction to his quarry into account. Nor had he
considered how long he had been alone. It could be a dangerous oversight.
Mere lust was not the difficulty, though he could not take his eyes from the
lady, felt suddenly parched for the taste of her, the feel of her skin against his.
Rather, it was a near-desperate urge to stand beside mother and daughter, to walk
homeward with them, protect them and, yes, claim them as his own and be
claimed by them.
Christien swallowed on the tightness that invaded his throat. He understood
to a nicety who the mother and daughter were, knew their status in the haut ton