The Forest of Desire: Secret Lives, #1

By Fern Bailey

Avril dreams of romance and adventure, anything to relieve the boredom of life as a scullery maid. When a handsome young man begins working at the manor house and offers her the excitement she craves, she's ecstatic. However, she realises there's a whole lot more to him than first meets the eye. And when she finally discovers his secret, she must decide if she can give up all she knows, in order to be with him forever...

 

Paranormal romance

Complete story, no cliffhanger

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fern Bailey
• Release date: Jan 3, 2024
• ISBN: 9798201925215

Fern Bailey

Fern Bailey was born and raised in London and resides there today, where she writes sizzling hot romances about rule-breaking heroines and the men who love them...more specifically, she writes whenever her cat decides to stop napping on her keyboard.

Book preview

Chapter One

I had always been a dreamy type of girl. It was just a pity this wasn’t a desirable trait in a servant. The older I got, the more I filled out, and now I was considered rather shapely. With my looks and background, I could have been a lady’s maid, but in what felt like punishment for my indolent nature, I was relegated to the kitchens.

It was a job I hated, for it came with the suffocating heat of several fires going at once and the constant orders to do this, do that, go there, that were part and parcel of life as a scullery maid in a busy manor house.

Still, I couldn’t complain, not today, as the kitchen window afforded me a wonderful view of the young man chopping firewood in the yard. He looked around my age or perhaps a little older, but likely still in his early twenties. In any case, he was a stranger here; apparently a traveller who’d stopped at Worthington Hall to earn some coin along the way to wherever he was heading.

I’d seen him around the grounds a few times, doing odd jobs here and there, but this was the first time I’d seen him this close. Dark-haired and shirtless, he wore his trousers slung low on his hips, giving a tantalising promise of what lay beneath.

Cook called me a brazen lass but I didn’t care, not when faced with such a magnificent sight. The thought of being able to watch him from even closer compelled me to remove my mob cap and slip away from the kitchen and down the corridor leading to the yard.

Standing in the open doorway, my eyes were drawn to the sweat on his bare chest glinting in the morning sun, his powerful muscles rippling each time he hefted the axe above his head.

Thwack! went the axe, and another log cracked down the centre. With one hand resting loosely on the axe handle, he raised his head and met my gaze. I looked back boldly, not breaking eye contact. A slow smile spread across his face, then he returned to his work. If he was conscious of my staring, he didn’t react. He continued chopping with swift, methodical strokes, his expression one of single-minded focus.

The last of the logs now split, he grabbed an armful of them and approached the doorway. After a moment of exchanging teasing glances, I shifted to the side to allow him passage. He placed the logs in the woodpile just off the entrance to the kitchen, then began heading back.

As he brushed past me, I caught the scent of woodsmoke and the earthiness of the forest, along with something else – a strange flash of wildness, a suggestion of danger, that was so brief I dismissed it as a product of my overactive imagination.

He turned, and bracing an arm against the doorpost, leaned down, bringing his face close to mine.

‘I’m Macsen,’ he said, breath fanning my ear. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Avril.’ I could scarcely speak, my heart hammered so. Yes, I had imagined it. He was disarmingly handsome and friendly; I couldn’t help being charmed by him.

‘How old are you, Avril?’ he murmured, in a wonderfully lilting, melodious accent that sounded Welsh to my ears.

‘Old enough.’ I knew I was being saucy but I couldn’t resist. ‘Nineteen,’ I added, relenting.

‘Mm.’ He gave me an appraising glance, lingering just a little on my breasts. ‘How about you meet me in the old hayloft after you finish work this evening?’

I tilted my chin and raised my eyes to his, my blue meeting his golden brown. I met the challenge I found there, in eyes that promised so much. ‘What for?’

‘Avril!’ Cook yelled. ‘Get back in here and wash these pots, you lazy girl.’

Macsen reached forward and brushed a stray curl off my forehead. ‘Use your imagination,’ he whispered in my ear.

With an arch smile, I turned and stepped into the kitchen corridor, adding an extra sway to my hips, conscious of his heated gaze on me.

Of course I would meet him there. But let him wonder and wait.

The entire day dragged so. The only thing that got me through my chores was the thought of meeting the young man in the old hayloft. And he had a name, now. Macsen. As I washed an endless stack of pots and pans and kneaded dough for biscuits, I repeated his name under my breath, loving the way the sound fell from my lips.

As usual, I was chastised throughout the day for not being quick enough, but Cook and everyone else just didn’t understand me. I wasn’t lazy, I was simply far away. When I was elbow-deep in soap suds scrubbing pots at the sink, I was actually standing on top of a sand dune, wearing a gauzy veil and being swept away by a mysterious, handsome sheikh on a fearsome black stallion. When I was peeling bucket after bucket of potatoes, I was discovering a lost temple somewhere in Asia, and being hailed as a distinguished explorer.

On my travels around the world I uncovered rare artefacts, skeletons of dragons, fabulous jewels, and ancient civilisations. Dashing, heroic gentlemen from all corners of the globe instantly became smitten with me and proposed marriage. Of course, I had to turn them all down because I was so busy with adventuring.

Cook yelling in my ear frequently brought me back to reality, but only for a short time. My daydreams were my only escape from the never-ending drudgery of that awful kitchen.

At last work was over though, and after supper was eaten and all the staff began making preparations for shutting up the house and retiring for the night, I pretended to be going up to bed along with everyone else.

Instead, I had a quick wash in my bedroom, changed out of my uniform and into a simple grey dress. The dress was plain, like all of my clothes, but the colour went well with my blue eyes.

My hair was another matter altogether; curling at the forehead, while the rest was slightly wavy and fell halfway down my back, and too dark to be called blonde, yet not dark enough to be considered true brown. Not knowing what to do with it, I combed it and simply left it loose, glad at least to be free of that horrid mob cap.

Worthington Hall was far better than many similar grand houses, in that we were treated well, despite the work being hard and the hours long. And we had proper bedrooms, unlike some houses I knew of, including the first one I’d been sent to.

The transition from my old life upstairs to my new life downstairs was a drastic change, and I’d never quite resigned myself to my fate. Each day was torment for me.

I’d never sneaked out at night before, and now I was half-regretting my decision to come up to my room first. It would have been easier and far less nerve-wracking to have slipped out and concealed myself somewhere on the grounds before the house was locked up for the night, but now I had no choice.

There were numerous copies made of certain keys to some of the seldom-used outer doors which were then passed around amongst the younger housemaids. I had never made use of mine before, however, since unlike the others, I had no sweetheart to slip away to see in secret.

Maybe that would change. Macsen’s gorgeous smile rose in my memory, and the way he had stared at me, making no secret of his interest. No, I was fooling myself. I knew what he wanted. And why not? Every day was a slog for me. An opportunity for a fling with a handsome man didn’t come along often, or in my case, not at all.

Even though I was considered pretty, no man had ever expressed serious interest in me, and despite feeling happy for my friends who were courting, I could only look on wistfully and listen to their gossip and whispered confessions about love.

Although Gwen’s detailed descriptions of being taken to bed by her lover made me blush, I always listened avidly, trying to learn all I could, since I had no mother to explain any of this to me.

When my friends teased me about love, I pretended I wasn’t interested, but in my secret heart I couldn’t help being curious and wanting to experience it for myself one day. Gwen assured me that men were in fact interested in me, only I never noticed them because I was in a world of my own. Or away with the fairies, as she put it.

And yet, however many secrets my friends shared with me now, eventually they would all pair off and I’d be left alone. With these thoughts uppermost in my mind, I decided I would go to meet him as agreed, but with my eyes wide open about what I was doing.

My hands were shaking and my heart was beating wildly, but I managed to make it out of the house without being spotted. Despite the moon, it was still eerie