Brides of Montclair

"I won't lose you now!" said Cam in a voice ragged with emotion. The moon moved across the sky from behind the sheltering trees, and suddenly the two of them were enveloped in moonlight. "I love you, and yet I know I have no right to speak to you of this. I'm not free. I'm engaged-" "Oh, Cam, don't!" she begged. "It cannot be. It is too late. There is no way-" A tremor coursed through her - a premonition of danger. This was madness, she knew. The...

"Sara! You must come out! You're wanted downstairs right away," Lucie hissed through the keyhole on the locked bedroom door. "Stepmama is furious and Father has sent word that he's coming home early from the Exchange. She says he's in a rage over what you've done!" "I haven't done anything! It's not my fault if those two hotheads decide to fight a duel!" came her sister's indignant voice from the other side of the door. "Oh, Sara, please!" Lucie pleaded....

Blythe gazed into his eyes. It seemed as if she were looking into his very soul. Could she read genuine repentance there...or just regret that he had brought shame to himself, disgraced his family? Suddenly, she knew. This was the real Malcolm - before the War, before Rose died, before his life became a wasteland. She saw the Malcolm who remained uncorrupted - gentle, intelligent, gallant before tragedy and loss took their bitter toll. Could she help...

"Even while Randall was speaking, it was Pietro I saw, the tenderness in his dark eyes looking at me, the caress in his soft voice. In Randall's voice there was not a shred of emotion; nor was there any in his expression. How should I respond? What should I say? I knew this was the hardest decision I would ever have to make. Either choice would demand a different price. Was I prepared to pay it? Was love enough in the one to bridge all the other differences...

"Why, Cara, why did you do it?" "Maybe no one wants to see me as I really am. Maybe in this family it isn't all right to be different. And I am different, Kitty, whether anyone wants to admit it or not." "But, Cara, - it just seems like tonight you set out deliberately to cause trouble." "Even you don't understand, do you, Kitty?" "I do, I mean I'm trying to. You're my twin, I want to understand!" "Yes, I know we're twins, but who am I?" demanded...

"Have you any plans for the rest of the day?" he asked. "Plans?" she echoed. "Whatever they were, cancel them." He grinned. Crystal nodded, dazed, knowing somehow that if he had proposed a trip to Mars she would have been helpless to refuse. She had come to Virginia to work, not to fall in love - certainly not with someone like Kip Montrose. Both Kip and his ancestral mansion, Montclair, had captured her imagination. The history of the house intrigued...

"Niki's heart was thrumming as the taxi stopped with a jerk in front of the gray, stone building behind tall, black iron gates. On a metal plaque was engraved Les Soeurs de Merci. Niki thrust several franc notes staring through the rungs of the gate. Years ago another young woman - perhaps her mother - had stood in the same place, a baby in her arms, the child she was going to give up. What emotions had run through her heart?" Niki had come to France...