The Pure Romance Collection 1 (eBook)

Barbara Cartland (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2025 | 1. Auflage
2500 Seiten
Barbara Cartland eBooks Ltd (Verlag)
978-0-00-085147-5 (ISBN)

Infos

The Pure Romance Collection 1 - Barbara Cartland

Ten enchanting love stories from the world's best-loved romance author

Lose yourself in the irresistible world of Barbara Cartland - where honour, passion and destiny entwine.
This exclusive anthology of ten full-length novels brings together some of her most captivating tales of love and adventure.

From dazzling Regency ballrooms and Victorian drawing rooms to the moors of Scotland and the glittering salons of Paris, each story follows a courageous young woman who dares to follow her heart - and discovers that love can conquer all.

Elegant, heart-warming and deeply romantic, these timeless stories celebrate the ideals of innocence, courage and devotion that made Barbara Cartland the bestselling romance writer of all time.

⭐ Perfect for fans of Bridgerton, Jane Austen, and clean historical romance
⭐ Includes 10 complete novels - beautifully formatted for Kindle
⭐ #EscapeYourDay to a world of pure romance and unforgettable love

Textauszug

CHAPTER TEN

They came for her at midnight. The door of her cell crashed open and Anita came in with two of the other wives.

“The Sultan is wakeful,” Anita said. “He will have you now.”

The other women took hold of Rowena and began to forcibly dress her in a magnificent wedding costume. Then they arranged her hair in an elaborate style. She sat there listlessly, unable to fight them. What did anything matter now?

She was marched through more corridors that grew increasingly luxurious, so she guessed they were getting closer to the Sultan’s apartments. Then she was thrust into a room hung with drapes of crimson satin.

Tiger skins lay on the floor. On the walls were swords which bore dark stains, perhaps the dried blood of enemies. The atmosphere was one of magnificent savagery.

In the centre was a massive bed, covered with heavy crimson embroidered satin. On it was lying the Sultan, fully attired in his glittering robes and huge, bejewelled turban.

As Rowena came to stand in the middle of the floor, he turned his head to regard her lazily.

Then he rose from the bed and began to walk around her. He went round again and again while Rowena stood there, listless, broken-hearted.

“Tomorrow – we marry,” he said, “if you please me tonight. If not – I give you to my guards.”

Rowena set her chin, refusing to be intimidated by these words, although they sent a chill of terror through her. The Sultan was still walking around her.

“You’re too thin,” he said at last.

“Then why did you bother with me?” she asked tiredly.

He thrust his face into hers, and now she could tell that his breath was as foetid as she had known in would be.

“Because you defied me,” he said viciously. “When you came to see me with the English Duke, and I had to give you a chair because you refused to be subservient, as a woman should.”

“That?” Briefly astonishment forced her out of her listlessness. “But it was such a tiny incident – ”

“I was forced to yield. I was forced to yield. That was the moment I decided to have you. From now on you will obey me. You will ask my permission to breathe. Whatever you want, you will come before me and beg for it, and if it is my pleasure I will grant it. You will rue the day you shamed me before my people.”

After the brief moment of life, she had sunk back into grief.

Oh Mark, Mark!

“Did you hear me?” he hissed.

She turned dead eyes on him.

“Did you hear me?” he shrieked.

Then she spoke.

“You’re a fool,” she said.

“What?”

“You’re a fool, a silly little man without dignity. The worst you can do to me has already been done, and I don’t fear you. But you should be afraid, because if you touch me, I will kill you.”

“You?” he scoffed. “And how will you do that?”

“I will curse you. I will lay a spell on you that no man has ever recovered from. Every breath you take will be cursed.”

She didn’t know where the words came from. It was as though they poured out of her without her volition. She no longer seemed to be herself, but some other creature, who had suffered so much that she was now beyond suffering.

“If you touch me,” she said, “you will be dead within a month, and nobody will know how you died.”

He tried to laugh, but the sound stuck in his throat.

“Do you think I am afraid of you?” he quavered.

“Yes, you are afraid of me. And you are right to be afraid.”

He tried to pull himself together. “I will have you arrested – ”

“No,” said a quiet voice behind him. “You won’t.”

Mark stood there, hatred and vengeance in his eyes.

A cry of love and joy broke from Rowena. It was impossible, and yet it had happened.

He had come for her.

The Sultan looked from one to the other, and a deep terror seemed to come over him. The words died in his mouth and he couldn’t move. It was as though he really believed Rowena was a witch who had conjured up her rescuer by a dark spell.

Quick as a flash Mark yanked down one of the drapes and tore it into strips. Then he pulled off the Sultan’s magnificent robe, bound him hand and foot, and threw him onto the bed.

“How on earth did you get in here?” Rowena asked breathlessly.

“I had some help.” Mark indicated a man, also dressed as a palace servant who had entered behind him. “The Sultan murdered his family and this is his revenge.”

“But you promised to take me with you,” the man said urgently.

“And I’ll keep my word.”

Now Rowena noticed that Mark was dressed in servant’s clothes, and looked very like the other man. He held up the Sultan’s robe. “Put it on,” he told Rowena. “Hurry.”

“But nobody will think that I – ”

“They will if you cover your face with this piece of black silk that he wears over his face when he goes out.”

“Sometimes also he wears it indoors,” said the servant, “because he does not like people to see his despicable face.”

Swiftly Rowena donned the Sultan’s robe, and his great turban. With the black silk in place she might have passed for the Sultan from a distance.

“It’s lucky he’s such a tiny little fellow,” Mark observed. “Now let’s get out of here fast,” he said.

Rowena strode ahead. In front of her walked one servant, shouting the orders that made everyone fall to the ground and hide their faces. Behind him walked another servant, Mark, head down and silent.

Doors opened ahead of them, letting them through, but Rowena knew that this meant nothing unless they could get through the last door of all.

Finally they were at the great gates, and there, waiting, was a palanquin, the conveyance in which the Sultan was always carried among his people. It was like a box with open sides, on which hung silk curtains.

The gates were pulled open. The ‘sultan’ climbed into the palanquin, pulled the curtains tightly around so that ‘he’ was concealed. The two servants positioned themselves one in front of the palanquin, one behind. They bent and lifted it.

Then they marched out of the palace and were swallowed up in the darkness.

From this incident was born a legend. The next morning a pathetic, shrivelled creature was found in the Sultan’s bedroom in a catatonic state. He could neither speak nor move, and without his fine robes nobody knew who he was.

Some people claimed that he was the Sultan, and that the strange woman had been a witch who had stolen his soul, and then vanished into thin air, leaving her bridal garments in a heap on the floor.

But this nonsense was dismissed as superstition. The man was obviously an impostor, and as such he was thrown into a dungeon and left there.

The real truth, as everyone knew, was that the Sultan had mysteriously left his palace in a closed palanquin, accompanied only by two servants.

And none of them was ever seen again.

*

“You saved me, you saved me,” Rowena said over and over again.

Her heart was so full of joy and relief that almost no words would come.

They had stayed with the palanquin for a few hundred yards, then stopped by the sea wall, where a horse-drawn carriage was waiting. Rowena stepped out as the men tossed the palanquin over the wall into the water.

“Ready to go?” asked the coachman.

“Grandpapa!” she exclaimed in disbelieving delight.

The servant who had helped them jumped up beside him, while Mark got into the coach with Rowena, and immediately took her into his arms. They clung together, hearts full of joy.

“You saved me,” she repeated.

“Yes, I saved you,” he said exultantly, “and now you belong to me.”

“I thought I would never see you again,” she whispered. “I thought you’d given me up for dead.”

“I never believed that,” he said passionately. “If you were dead I would have known, for part of my heart would have died with you. I love you so.”

Then his lips were on hers in the kiss she had secretly longed for since they’d first known each other. Only now did she understand how much she had longed for it.

As the Duke kissed her and went on kissing her, she felt as if she was giving him her heart and soul. For a moment they were not two people but one.

“I have never been through such agony as when I first thought you had been drowned,” he said, “and then knew instead you had been taken prisoner.”

“How did you know?”

“The Sultan gave himself away by sending for me and pretending to great sympathy. Such ‘kindness’ from him wasn’t believable. All he wanted to do, of course, was show me your robe in order to convince me you were dead. I was sure the story was false, even before I recognised you.”

“You recognised me?”

“I caught a glimpse of your hair, and I knew that shining gold could only be you.”

“They said they’d kill you if I made a sound.”

“I guessed as much. But I knew it was you, and I swore I wouldn’t let him get away with it, although I couldn’t think how to rescue you. But I was given the answer when this man came after me. He promised his help if I would get him away from here. Your grandfather insisted on coming too. He said it was his job to rescue you more than mine. I said it was my job. We had quite an argument about it.

...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 16.10.2025
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Romane / Erzählungen
• ISBN-10: 0-00-085147-7 / 0000851477
• ISBN-13: 978-0-00-085147-5 / 9780000851475