Bewitching: His Secret Agenda Read online

  STAR-CROSSED

  Hannah understood what it meant to be a Marsh. She belonged on the coast of Maine in her little house on Marsh Point. Her family was fiercely loyal to each other, and to the memory of their ancestor, Priscilla Marsh, who’d been wrongfully executed three hundred years ago. And Hannah knew her enemies—Judge Cotton Harling, who’d sentenced Priscilla to death, and every Harling since.

  At least, she’d understood all of that until she met Win Harling. The handsome, urban businessman was everything Hannah didn’t want, and yet somehow, he was everything she needed. But he was a Harling, and she was a Marsh. Three hundred years of history said they could never have a future.

  Unless they could make a little history of their own....

  BONUS BOOK INCLUDED IN THIS VOLUME!

  His Secret Agenda by Beth Andrews

  Dean can’t fall for Allie Martin. Because when she finds out he’s not the laid-back cowboy bartender she hired but a P.I., he’ll not only have compromised his case and his career, but his chance to be with Allie.

  Praise for New York Times bestselling author

  Carla Neggers

  “Carla Neggers is one of the most distinctive, talented writers of our genre.”

  —# 1 New York Times bestselling author

  Debbie Macomber

  “A writer at the absolute top of her craft.”

  —Providence Journal

  “Well-drawn characters, complex plotting and plenty of wry humor are the hallmarks of Neggers’s books.”

  —RT Book Reviews

  Praise for Beth Andrews

  “Ms. Andrews can take any story line and make it unforgettable. Her characters are so strong and powerful and unique.”

  —Fresh Fiction

  “Andrews’ story contains well-drawn characters that readers will surely root for. Both Allison and Dean are flawed—and that only makes them more appealing.”

  —RT Book Reviews on His Secret Agenda

  CARLA NEGGERS

  is a New York Times bestselling author of more than sixty novels, novellas and short stories. Her work has been translated into twenty-four languages and sold in more than thirty countries. Ever since she first climbed a tree with a pad and pen at age eleven, Carla has drawn on her keen sense of adventure and love of a good story in creating her plots and characters. A distinguished member of the writing community, she is a popular speaker around the country as well as a founding member of the New England Chapter of Romance Writers of America, past president of Novelists, Inc., and past vice president of International Thriller Writers.

  An avid traveler, Carla enjoys exploring new places and has a special fondness for Ireland, but she always appreciates coming home to her small town in Vermont and to her family homestead on the western edge of the Quabbin Reservoir in rural Massachusetts. She and her husband, Joe, live in a house they bought as a fixer-upper on a hilltop not far from picturesque Quechee Gorge. “I look out at a sugar maple much like the one I used to climb as a kid,” Carla says. “It’s inspiring. Every story I write is its own adventure!”

  BETH ANDREWS

  Romance Writers of America RITA® Award winner Beth Andrews saw a big dream come true when she sold her first book to the Harlequin Superromance line. Beth and her two teenage daughters outnumber…oops…live with her husband in northwestern Pennsylvania. When not writing, Beth can be found texting her son at college, video-chatting with her son at college or, her son’s favorite, sending him money. Learn more about Beth and her books by visiting her website, www.bethandrews.net.

  New York Times Bestselling Author

  Bewitching

  Dear Reader,

  Can you believe it’s been more than 300 years since the Salem witch trials? I don’t know anyone who isn’t fascinated by them, including me. Bewitching might be inspired by that dark period in colonial America, but the story is just plain fun. My determined heroine, Hannah Marsh, sets out for Boston to prove that her ancestor was not a witch. The cramped Beacon Hill apartment where she stays is also inspired by real life—the Beacon Hill apartment where my husband and I lived when we first married. I promise you, though, that wasn’t 300 years ago!

  Joe and I have long since departed our basement apartment for a hilltop house in Vermont, but Boston is still “my” city, the setting for more books since Bewitching was first published. Emma Sharpe, an art crimes expert in my Sharpe and Donovan series, is part of a special FBI unit based in Boston, and Phoebe O’Dunn meets her swashbuckler at a Boston masquerade ball in That Night on Thistle Lane, the second book in my Swift River Valley series.

  Read on to find out how a bewitching heroine casts a spell over her hero….

  Take care,

  Carla

  BEWITCHING

  New York Times Bestselling Author

  Carla Neggers

  Contents

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER ONE

  THE PINKS AND ORANGES of dawn sparkled on the bay beyond Marsh Point, off a stretch of southern Maine that was still quiet, still undiscovered by tourists. Hannah Marsh stood on a boulder above the rocky coastline. The wind blew raw and cold, although the calendar said spring had arrived. In defiance of the weather, daffodils bloomed in the little garden outside her cottage.

  In Boston the tulips would be out, perhaps even a few leaves budded. It wouldn’t be so bad.

  “You’re going,” a gruff voice said behind her.

  She turned and smiled at Thackeray Marsh, aged seventy-nine, owner of Marsh Point, fellow historian and her cousin several times removed. He was a stout, fair-skinned, fair-haired man, although not as fair as herself, and kept in shape with dawn and dusk walks along a loop-shaped route that took in most of Marsh Point.

  “I have no choice,” Hannah said. “Most of the documents I need to examine are in Boston, and anything new on Priscilla Marsh will be there. It’s where she lived and died, Thackeray. I have to go.”

  He snorted. “The Harlings catch you, they’ll string you up.”

  “You said yourself there’s only one Harling left in Boston, and he’s even older than you are. I’ll be fine.”

  Her elderly cousin squinted his emerald eyes at her. He was wearing an old tweed jacket patched at the elbows and rubber boots that had to be older than she was. His frugality, Hannah had learned in her five years in Maine, was legendary in the region.

  “The Harlings and the Marshes haven’t had much of anything to do with each other in a hundred years,” he said. “Why rock the boat?”

  “I’m not rocking the boat. I’m going on a perfectly ordinary, honorable research expedition.” She tried not to sound defensive or impatient, but she had gone over her position—over and over it—with Cousin Thackeray. “It’s not as if Priscilla Marsh died yesterday, you know.”

  Judge Cotton Harling had sentenced Priscilla Marsh to death by hanging three hundred years ago. Hannah hoped to have her biography of her ancestor in bookstores by the anniversary of the execut
ion. Not only would it be good business, but it would pay a nice tribute to a woman who had defied the restrictions of Puritan America—of the Harlings of Boston.

  And paid the price, of course. Hannah couldn’t forget that.

  The wind picked up, and she hugged her oversize sweatshirt closer to her body. Her long, fine, straight blond hair was, fortunately, held back in a hastily tied ponytail. Otherwise it would have tangled badly. Cousin Thackeray barely seemed to notice the cold.

  “Hannah, the Harlings resent that we won’t let them forget it was a Harling who had Priscilla hanged. We, of course, say they shouldn’t ever forget. The feud has been going on like this for three hundred years.”

  She refused to let his dark mood dampen her enthusiasm for what was, after all, a necessary trip—and no doubt would prove boring and routine, involving nothing more than musty books and documents and hours and hours in badly lit archives.

  He made her trip sound like some kind of espionage assignment. “At least,” her cousin went on, “don’t let anyone in Boston know you’re a Marsh. It’s just too dangerous. If Jonathan Harling finds out—”

  “That’s the name of the last Harling in Boston?”

  Cousin Thackeray nodded somberly. “Jonathan Winthrop Harling.”

  She grinned. “I look at it this way. What could one little old man who happens to be a Harling do to me?”

  * * *

  J. WINTHROP HARLING climbed the sloping lawn of the gold-domed Massachusetts State House above Boston Common with a sense of purpose. He had come to look at the statue of the infamous Priscilla Marsh. Her tragic death three hundred years ago at the hands of a Harling still colored his family’s reputation. It was a part of what being a Harling in Boston was all about.

  The wind off the harbor was brisk, even chilly, but he didn’t feel it, though he was only wearing the dark gray suit he’d worn to the office.

  Although he’d been born and raised in New York and had lived in Boston only a year, he was a stereotypical Harling in one sense: he made one hell of a lot of money. Sometimes the size of his income, his growing net worth, staggered him. But the Harlings had always been good at making money.

  Priscilla Marsh’s smooth marble face stared at him in the waning sunlight. She looked very young and very wronged, more innocent, no doubt, than she had been in fact. The sculptor had managed to capture the legendary beauty of her hair, supposedly an unusual shock of pale blond, fine and very straight. She had been hanged on the orders of Cotton Harling when she was just thirty years old.

  “Good going, Cotton,” Win muttered.

  But had she lived and died an ordinary life, Priscilla Marsh would never have inspired an oft-quoted Longfellow poem or a famous 1952 play. Nor would her statue have stood on the lawn of the Massachusetts State House, either.

  Win brushed his fingers across the cool stone hair and felt the tragedy of the young Puritan’s death. She had been dead less than a day when evidence of her innocence had arrived. Priscilla Marsh hadn’t been teaching the young ladies of her neighborhood witchcraft, but how to cure earaches.

  Her death should have been a lesson to future Harlings.

  A lesson in patience, humility, faith in one’s fellow human beings. A warning against arrogance and pride. Against believing in one’s own infallibility.

  But, Win thought, it hadn’t.

  * * *

  HANNAH ARRIVED IN Boston without incident and set up housekeeping in a cramped apartment on Beacon Hill. She had traded with a friend, who would get two weeks in Hannah’s Maine cottage come summer. The friend, a teacher, was off to Paris with her French class. Things, Hannah decided, were just meant to work out.

  Her first stop, bright and early the next morning, was the New England Athenaeum on Beacon Street, across from the Boston Public Garden. It was a private library, supported by just four hundred members and founded in 1892 by, of course, a Harling.

  Hannah indicated she was a professional historian and would like to use the library, a renowned repository of New England historical documents.

  Preston Fowler, the director, a formal man who appeared to be in his mid-fifties, informed her that the New England Athenaeum was a private institution. Accordingly, she would be permitted into its stacks and rare book room only when she had exhausted all other possibilities and could prove it was the only place that had what she needed. And even then she would be carefully watched.

  Hannah resisted the impulse to tell him other private institutions had opened their doors to her in her career. Arguing wouldn’t get her anywhere. She needed something that would work. She sighed and said, “But Uncle Jonathan said I wouldn’t have any trouble with you.”

  “Who?” Preston Fowler asked sharply.

  “My uncle.” She paused more for dramatic effect than to reconsider what she was doing. Then she added, “Jonathan Winthrop Harling.”

  Fowler cleared his throat, and Hannah was amused at how rigid his spine went. Ahh, the Harling factor. “You—your name is...?”

  “Hannah,” she said, not feeling even a twinge of guilt. “Hannah Harling.”

  * * *

  WIN SETTLED BACK in his soft leather chair and took the call from the elderly uncle whose name he bore. “Hey, there, Uncle Jonathan, what’s up?”

  Jonathan Harling, who had just turned eighty, got straight to the point. “You going to the New England Athenaeum dinner on Saturday?”

  “Wild horses couldn’t drag me. Why?”

  “Friend of mine says he saw a Harling on the guest list.”

  “Well, it wasn’t me,” Win said emphatically. “I haven’t even been inside that snooty old place. Your friend must have been mistaken. What about you? You aren’t going, are you?”

  Uncle Jonathan grunted. “Some of us don’t have unlimited budgets, you know.”

  “I would be happy to buy you a ticket—”

  “Damned if I’ll accept charity from my own nephew!” the old man bellowed hotly. “Why don’t you go, meet a nice woman who’ll inspire you to part with some of that booty of yours? How much you worth these days? A million? Ten? More?”

  Win laughed. “It’s more fun to keep you guessing.”

  Still grumbling, his uncle hung up. Win turned his chair so that he could see the spectacular view of Boston Harbor from his fourteenth-floor window. He watched a few planes take off from Logan Airport across the water. It was a clear, warm, beautiful May afternoon, the kind that made him wonder if he shouldn’t call up the New England Athenaeum and get a ticket to its fund-raising dinner, just to see who showed up.

  But meeting women was not a problem for him. Contrary to his uncle’s belief, Win did not live the life of a monk. No, he had no trouble at all finding women to go out on the town with him, occasionally to share his bed. It was finding the right woman....

  “Romantic nonsense,” he muttered.

  * * *

  BY HER FOURTH DAY in Boston, Hannah had settled into a pleasant routine of research. Preston Fowler himself had invited her to the New England Athenaeum’s fund-raising dinner and she’d accepted, despite the rather steep price. But she was supposed to be a Harling and therefore have money. Besides, Fowler himself had begun to help her ferret out information on the Harlings; she had told him she was researching one of her ancestors, Cotton Harling. No point in stirring up trouble by mentioning Priscilla Marsh or the truth about her own identity. She was enjoying the perks of being a Harling.

  “Is this your first trip to Boston?” Fowler asked on a cool, rainy morning. He had brought a couple of books to the second-floor table he had reserved for her at a window overlooking the Public Garden.

  “Yes,” Hannah lied, not without regret. He was being helpful, after all.

  “Are you a member of the New York Harlings?”

  The New York Harlings? Fowler�
��s eagerness was impossible to miss—the New York Harlings must be rich, she thought—but she had never heard of them. She would have to remember to ask Cousin Thackeray, who still didn’t know she was running around Boston claiming to be a Harling. But he had been the one to tell her not to reveal she was a Marsh.

  She shook her head. “The Ohio Harlings.”

  “I see,” the New England Athenaeum’s director said. He was dressed in a Brooks Brothers suit today, a white on white shirt, wing tip shoes. There was never a hair out of place.

  Hannah had invested in a couple of Harling-like outfits in an hour of rushing around on Newbury Street. Now she was afraid to dig out her charge-card receipts to see how much she’d spent. Would the IRS accept them as a business deduction? Preston Fowler would never believe she was a Harling if she kept showing up in her collection of jeans and vintage T-shirts. Once or twice she might get away with it, but not every day.

  As for any real Harlings...well, there was only one in Boston, and she wasn’t worried about him. Jonathan Winthrop Harling would be old, knobby-kneed and nasal-voiced, with a wardrobe of worn tweeds and holey deck shoes that he would be too cheap to replace. He would have bony hands with a slight tremble, and he’d wear thick glasses with finger smudges on the lenses.

  She had him all pictured.

  Fowler told her about a painting at the Museum of Fine Arts that she must see, a portrait of Benjamin Harling, the eighteenth-century shipbuilder. Hannah promised to have a look.

  Finally he left.

  She resumed her scan of a late-nineteenth-century newspaper account of a fistfight between some Harling or other and Andrew Marsh, Cousin Thackeray’s grandfather. It involved their divergent opinions about the Longfellow poem on Priscilla Marsh, the Harling insisting it clearly romanticized her, the Marsh insisting it did not. A big mess.

  Half paying attention, Hannah suddenly sat up straight. “What’s this?”