Free The Rebel Captain's Royalist Bride by Anne Herries

what it was about the Royalist girl with the bold eyes that had driven deep into his mind, reaching beneath the barrier he had built to keep out the pain.
    He’d thought after his sweet Jane died he would be immune to a woman’s wiles, but for some reason Mistress Babette had pricked him into constant awareness. She was the kind of woman that aroused a man’s senses, but it was not entirely that... No, there was a spark of pride in her eyes and humour, a spirit that had not been crushed by her uncle’s strict rules.
    Despite himself, James liked the way she had stood up to him in the woods, the way she matched him in thought and did not turn down her eyes as most women. There was no false modesty about her; she was prepared to speak out in defence of her beliefs, even though she knew his were opposite.
    She was an industrious, thoughtful young woman, eager to work and help her aunt in the house. Her garden was much as Jane’s garden had been when he’d first met and wooed her after his return from college. They had known each other as children, but it was only on his return from Cambridge that he’d known he wished to wed her. His delight and joy when she promised to be his wife and the promise of their first kiss had been all he’d needed. Jane had wanted to wait until her seventeenth birthday to wed and he had given way to her pleading for a little time, but a week before the wedding she’d taken sick of a fever and died. He’d been with her at the end, holding her hand, trying to give her his strength to pull her through the terrible sickness. As she faded, the life slowly ebbing from her, she’d wept and apologised for not marrying him three months earlier.
    ‘Please do not,’ he begged, emotion clogging his throat as he looked down at her beloved face. She was his dear friend, the companion of his childhood years, now grown up and beautiful, and he had longed to make her happy.
    Her passing had seemed to take all the joy from his life. For weeks he hardly spoke to another person. Life passed him by and he had nothing to live for—and then someone told him that the King had tried to arrest five members of Parliament, all of them good honest men whose only crime was to speak out against unfair laws. Having been the victim of some of King Charles’s taxes—and knowing that a dear friend of his father had been unfairly convicted by the Star Chamber of being a traitor and sent to the Tower to die, when all he had done was to campaign for fairer taxes—James was immediately on the side of Parliament. How could the good citizens and farmers of England accept the rule of a tyrant?
    James Colby was not of the Puritan faith. He believed in God and he disliked Catholic idolatry, but he loved beauty in all things. A beautiful garden, a lovely woman, a pretty gown trimmed with precious lace—or a valuable book bound in fine-tooled leather, silver and gold, pearls and rare jewels, the scent of a woman’s hair... Mistress Babette smelled like honey and flowers.
    The thought brought a smile to his lips and he chuckled as he thought of the way her eyes had taken fire when he’d accused her of being a witch. He had been unfair when he berated her for meeting a lover, for he would swear she was innocent, untouched. The smile left his eyes, because he was certain she was hiding something from him.
    Why had she been out late at night? And then, in the woods, there had been something guilty about her. She was entitled to pick herbs and berries, but that mushroom...he knew it to be poisonous and so did she. So who had picked it? Her servant? Perhaps that bit was true, but surely he would have asked her...unless he was waiting for her while she spoke to someone else?
    She’d told him that she was picking herbs to make a potion to help a friend, and he was inclined to believe her—but who was that friend? Why should she have looked guilty if she had no secret to protect?
    Had she been meeting someone in the wood and if not a