Welcome back to my First Kiss Friday blog! Today’s returning guest is my dear friend Ruth A. Casie who has an excerpt from her novel A Legacy of Lies that releases June 27th. We hope you enjoy this first kiss scene. Take it away, Ruth!
In A Legacy of Lies, Clara Whitmore serves as the companion to the Dowager Duchess of Hartleigh. When the new Duke of Hartleigh, Nathaniel Draycott, arrives to take possession of the ancient estate, Clara is determined not to trust him.
Nathaniel has spent his life uncovering the truth for others. Clara has spent hers hiding secrets that could destroy her future.
As mysteries surrounding Hartleigh Hall deepen, attraction becomes increasingly difficult to resist.
In this scene, a storm rages outside while an even more dangerous storm unfolds between them.
The house knows what the heart refuses to confess.
First Kiss Excerpt
He rose, restless. The fire snapped low. Hartleigh still held its secrets, and she was one of them. The ledger, the figures, the night itself, nothing could contain his thoughts. Every rule he had lived by bent beneath the memory of her gaze.
A faint sound carried through the passage, soft fabric against stone, a step no servant would dare make at this hour. He knew the sound of Eleanor’s rooms. This came from the opposite passage. He caught the movement before sense could stop him, took up the candle, and stepped into the corridor.
At the turning, light wavered, and she was there. Shawl drawn tight, steps careful, eyes lifted as if she, too, had been called by the same restlessness that plagued him. For a heartbeat, neither moved. The silence between them held the same charged breath as the moment before a storm. She felt the pull of that stillness, the dangerous awareness of him as man rather than master of the house. This should have been a courtesy exchange, nothing more. She did not step back.
“Miss Whitmore.” His voice was low, roughened. “You would keep your secrets even from me?”
Her chin rose, fragile defiance in the tilt of it. “And you would take them from me without asking?”
The truth of it struck harder than he’d intended. She was right, but her courage undid him.
She turned from him, a small motion, yet it loosened inside him. Her hair brushed the line of her neck, a single dark strand escaping its pins, and a very disciplined thought fractured.
He caught her arm, not roughly, but with certainty of a man who could no longer pretend indifference. She gasped, her shawl slipping. Candlelight touched her throat, the fine tremor of her pulse, the parted curve of her lips.
The sight hollowed him. He felt the heat rise, not from anger but from a hunger too long contained. He knew he should release her. He did not. He could not.
He kissed her, swift, fierce, and unmeasured, the storm of restraint breaking in one breath.
Her lips met his with shock, then softened, the moment caught between defiance and surrender. Her hands found the folds of his coat, clutching for balance as much as for need. The taste of her undid every wall he had built.
The house disappeared. Only her breath filled the space, uneven and alive, her body trembling against his.
He pressed her back a step. Her shoulders met the wall. He held her close, not to trap her but to keep the world from intruding. He wanted to devour her, yet even desire bowed to care.
Her lips parted. She gave him that, and the kiss deepened. Slow now, reverent, the fury gentling into an ache.
When he finally tore his mouth from hers, his breath came ragged. Her eyes, still closed, fluttered open, dazed and luminous.
“Clara,” he whispered. Her name trembled between vow and warning.
She drew a ragged breath. Her fingers still clutched his coat as though she could not remember how to release it.
That undid him more than the kiss.
Slowly, painfully, he let her go. Not because he wished to, but because if he did not stop now, he would never stop at all.
❧ ❦ ❧
Clara leaned against the wall, shawl fallen, body trembling, breath ragged. Nothing, not the storm, not the shadows, not her own fear, had prepared her for this. Nothing would ever be the same.
She made her way to Eleanor’s door on unsteady legs and slipped inside. The room lay in darkness, the hush before morning. She pressed her palm to the panel as it closed and stood still, lips burning, heart in flight.
Something in her had shifted, and she could not shift it back. The truth struck like light through stained glass, beautiful and shattering. One kiss had undone her, and she could not imagine a life where she did not want another.
She touched her mouth, her breath still shallow. For one suspended heartbeat, there was only warmth and light and him.
As the silence gathered, memory found a voice.
Money, Clara. Bring it to me, or your duke learns the truth of his companion.
The echo struck harder now than it had in the hall. She could never tell him. To confess would be to lose him. To remain silent was to lose herself. She sank to the edge of the bed and whispered into the quiet, “The house knows.” The words tasted like dread. How long before his silence joined the walls in condemning her?
❧══════════ ❦ ══════════❧
A Legacy of Lies
Book 1 – The Hartleigh Inheritance
By Ruth A. Casie
Some legacies are claimed. Others are survived.
When Nathaniel Draycott inherits the Hartleigh title in name but not in blood, he expects ledgers, land, and the quiet burden of stewardship. What he finds instead is a house that resists accounting, an estate that balances on paper while something beneath it remains unclaimed.
Clara Whitmore has built her life on discipline and silence, serving at Eleanor’s side in a house that watches as closely as any living thing. She knows every passage, every locked room, and every rule that keeps her past buried. What she does not expect is the new duke’s gaze, precise, persistent, and far too perceptive.
As Nathaniel begins to uncover discrepancies between Hartleigh’s records and its reality, Clara becomes both his most valuable guide and the one person he cannot safely trust. Each corridor they share tightens the web of suspicion and attraction neither can afford. A storm-lit encounter shatters their restraint, binding them in a secret neither can name without consequence.
But Hartleigh keeps its own accounts. Missing jewels, a sealed inheritance, and a shadow from Clara’s past threaten to destroy more than reputation. To survive, Nathaniel must learn whether the woman who moves unseen through the house is its greatest danger, or the only one who can help him uncover the truth.
In a place where lineage is uncertain and every silence carries consequences, desire may prove the most perilous revelation of all.
A Legacy of Lies is a gothic romance of buried secrets, haunted inheritance, found courage, and a love that refuses to be silenced.
Welcome to Hartleigh Hall…
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Legacy-Lies-Historical-Hartleigh-Inheritance-ebook/dp/B0H37SQ5Q4
Universal Link: https://books2read.com/HI-LegacyofLies
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/252819794-a-legacy-of-lies
About the Author:
USA Today Bestselling Author Ruth A. Casie writes historical romance filled with emotional depth, compelling characters, and stories where love is earned, tested, and ultimately triumphant.
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