Claimed by the Laird
Claimed by the Laird
Nicola Cornick
He will expose her as the criminal he seeks, or seduce her as the woman he desires…An old maid—that's all Lady Christina McMorlan, daughter to the Duke of Forres, is to society now that she's past thirty. She hosts her father's parties and cares for her siblings, knowing she'll never have her own home and family.She has no time to pine, however. By night, she's The Lady, head of a notorious whiskey-smuggling gang that supports her impoverished clan. They're always one step ahead of the revenue man - until Lucas Black shows up.Rejecting his title and the proper society that disparaged his mother, Lucas earns his living running a successful gambling house. He's also a spy, charged with bringing down the Forres Gang. He thinks The Lady's just a bored society spinster. She thinks he's a lost child playing at rebellion.And when the truth comes out, it's not just their love on the line…
He will expose her as the criminal he seeks, or seduce her as the woman he desires…
An old maid—that’s all Lady Christina McMorlan, daughter to the Duke of Forres, is to society now that she’s past thirty. She hosts her father’s parties and cares for her siblings, knowing she’ll never have her own home and family. She has no time to pine, however. By night, she’s The Lady, head of a notorious whiskey-smuggling gang that supports her impoverished clan. They’re always one step ahead of the revenue man—until Lucas Black shows up.
Rejecting his title and the proper society that disparaged his mother, Lucas earns his living running a successful gambling house. He’s also a spy, charged with bringing down the Forres Gang. He thinks The Lady’s just a bored society spinster. She thinks he’s a lost child playing at rebellion. And when the truth comes out, it’s not just their love on the line….
Nicola Cornick’s novels have received acclaim the world over
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Award-nominated Cornick deftly steeps her latest intriguingly complex Regency historical in a beguiling blend of danger and desire.’ —Booklist on Unmasked
Don’t miss Nicola’sScandalous Women of the Tonseries, available now!
WHISPER OF SCANDAL
ONE WICKED SIN
MISTRESS BY MIDNIGHT
NOTORIOUS
DESIRED
FOR BIDDEN
Also available fromNicola Cornick
THE LADY AND THE LAIRD
ONE NIGHT WITH THE LAIRD
DECEIVED
LORD OF SCANDAL
UNMASKED
THE CONFESSIONS OF A DUCHESS
THE SCANDALS OF AN INNOCENT
THE UNDOING OF A LADY
DAUNTSEY PARK: THE LAST RAKE IN LONDON
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Claimed by theLaird
Nicola Cornick
www.mirabooks.co.uk (http://www.mirabooks.co.uk)
Dear Reader, (#ulink_3e34aac2-bbcc-5b92-87ee-b20a596de4f3)
Welcome to Claimed by the Laird, Book Three in the Scottish Brides series! This is Christina’s story. Christina has always been in the shadow of her younger sisters, but now she is swept up into a shocking upstairs-downstairs whirlwind romance—with the new footman at Kilmory Castle!
Lucas Ross is a very unusual footman indeed. Tall, dark and handsome, Lucas is surely too commanding to be a servant, and his affair with Lady Christina MacMorlan is bound to cause scandal. But Lucas has other, secret reasons for being at Kilmory and, when they are revealed, can their love survive the ensuing disgrace?
Like the other books in the Scottish Brides series, Claimed by the Laird is inspired by real-life events. I thoroughly enjoyed researching the background of whisky smuggling in the Scottish Highlands!
I have loved writing all the books in this series and would like to thank all my readers very much for their wonderful support through so many writing years.
Happy reading!
To Andrew, my own hero,
who was there at the beginning.
With my thanks and all my love.
Contents
Cover (#u2608b1ab-6d27-5c81-b6a0-c8152a9e4f40)
Back Cover Text (#uc63397d8-ec16-5701-a39b-f0b2c334b0d3)
Praise (#u12fcfa6b-0283-535d-bfbe-0bb497fb9b22)
Dear Reader (#ue75c06a9-71e3-5b75-98da-50791898a886)
Dedication (#u9fcd8682-3116-5bd4-9bf7-c08bb1ef7ef5)
PROLOGUE (#uad6c08c9-7c17-5cce-a2ef-76b6e1a844b7)
CHAPTER ONE (#ue83d2327-5cb1-57d3-8313-858cdc9d10e7)
CHAPTER TWO (#udefa468b-2f6f-54f8-940f-803b79e773b9)
CHAPTER THREE (#uacfa6970-0d67-5d40-a459-586954087612)
CHAPTER FOUR (#uba5bb4f0-776f-59ff-8b30-61de7aaf03bd)
CHAPTER FIVE (#u5a421d9d-9b7e-5776-8b53-ee14a162d81c)
CHAPTER SIX (#uc34a2786-fd62-5824-9524-82d95bbdf1da)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FOURTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIFTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIXTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
PROLOGUE (#ulink_e6913c19-f54f-56fe-9e2c-9c300ef0b44f)
Edinburgh, April 1817
“I DON’T KNOW why I am helping you,” Jack Rutherford said.
Lucas Black laughed. “Because my club serves the best brandy in Edinburgh?” He topped up his friend’s glass.
“It does,” Jack allowed. “But that isn’t the reason.”
“Because you owe me money?”
The cards lay abandoned on the cherrywood table between them. This was one of the club’s private rooms and empty but for the two of them. Beyond the door lay the gambling hell’s main salon, packed tonight with a clientele representing the richest men in Edinburgh society. Lucas cared nothing for a man’s antecedents, but he did care that his guests could pay their debts. He was in a position to be selective. An invitation to The Chequers was one of the most sought-after privileges in Scottish society.
Jack took out his pocketbook. “Twenty-five guineas, wasn’t it?” he said.
Lucas waved the debt away. “I’d rather have your help.”
His friend was frowning, watching the brandy swirl in his glass. He did not reply.
“A conflict of loyalties?” Lucas asked. He and Jack were business partners; they had helped each other out of more difficult situations than Lucas could remember. Which made it interesting that this time Jack was refusing to commit himself.
“Hardly that.” Jack glanced up. “I have little time for my father-in-law,” he said. “He tried to push both my wife and my sister-in-law into the sort of marriages that could have damaged them irreparably. People think him charmingly eccentric, but that is too kind a judgment.” He shifted in his chair. “No, it’s the element of deception that concerns me. I thought you were the sort of man who would walk in and state his terms rather than masquerading as a servant to spy on people.”
“I am the sort of man who prefers a direct approach,” Lucas agreed, adding drily, “but can you imagine what would happen if I walked into Kilmory Castle and said that I suspected someone there of killing my brother and I had come to find the culprit and bring him to justice? They would throw me out—or have me clapped in bedlam.”
He stopped. His dry tone had masked all kinds of emotions, but Jack had not been fooled. Lucas saw the sympathy in his eyes.
“I’m sorry about Peter,” Jack said, a depth of sincerity in his voice that Lucas could not doubt. “I understand that you want to know what happened—”
Lucas cut him off with a sharp gesture. “I want justice,” he said through his teeth. “It was no accident.”
He could see that Jack was struggling for a response.
Don’t, Lucas thought viciously. Don’t say that you understand how I feel. Don’t tell me that Peter’s death was investigated, that if others could not find a culprit, neither will I.
Rage and frustration welled up within him and he clenched his fists. He had met his half brother only once as an adult after years of estrangement. They had laid a foundation that they had both hoped would develop into a strong bond. And then Peter had died, robbing them of that chance and that future. He had been nineteen years old, no more than a boy.
When his half brother had first written to say that he was coming to Scotland and wanted to meet, Lucas had ignored the letter. He had had no contact with his family since his mother’s death and had wanted none. His childhood memories of life in Russia were not happy ones.
You’re a bastard and your mother is a whore, the other children had whispered to him, the ugliness of the words so incongruous amidst the opulent beauty of his stepfather’s palace.
Bastard, bastard...
The taunt echoed in his head and he pushed it away, shutting it out, closing down the emotion, the response, as he had done since the time the words first had a meaning for him. His parentage did not matter. In fact, he was grateful for those taunts because in the end they had given him the incentive he needed to prove himself. He had worked tirelessly to build a business empire that would give him wealth and influence to outstrip anything his family possessed. His hatred of his relatives had inspired him.
Then Peter had come and all that had changed. He could still see his half brother standing on the doorstep of his house in Charlotte Square, a tall, lanky youth who had not yet fully grown into his own skin but whose bearing showed the man he would one day become. Peter was hunched against the wind that whistled down from where Edinburgh Castle stood stark against a cold blue autumn sky.
“Dear God, but this country is cold!” His brother had walked straight in without invitation. He had spoken in Russian, and had embraced Lucas, who had stood there in astonished silence. Very few things had the power to surprise him; Peter had achieved that within five seconds.
“I wrote!” Peter had said enthusiastically.
“I know,” Lucas had said. “I did not reply.”
But there had been no resisting Peter, who cloaked a steely determination behind an irrepressible spirit that reminded Lucas of a puppy. Lucas recognized the determination because he had it, too, and he could not withstand his brother’s affection. They spent a riotous fortnight together in Edinburgh; Peter got gloriously drunk and Lucas had to rescue him from the tollbooth where he had been locked up in order to sober up; Peter threw himself into the social round of parties and balls and dinners—as a Russian prince he was much celebrated. Peter’s tutor, a long-suffering fellow who was trying to escort the boy and three companions around Europe, also insisted that they attend the talks and exhibitions for which Edinburgh’s academia was famous. Peter slipped out of one lecture halfway through to visit a brothel. Lucas had to rescue him from there, as well.
After two weeks, Peter and his companions had set off for the Highlands.
“I must see Fingal’s Cave!” Peter had exclaimed. “So wild, so romantic.” He had written after the boat trip to the island of Staffa, waxing lyrical about its beauty and telling Lucas that they were visiting Ardnamurchan on their way south. He wanted to see the most westerly point on the British mainland.
Then the news had come of his death. His body had been found by the side of a coastal track at Kilmory, a village at the end of the Ardnamurchan Peninsula. He and his companions had dined the previous night at Kilmory Castle with the Duke of Forres and his family. After that Peter had apparently returned to the Kilmory Inn, only to go out later, alone. No one knew why or whom he was meeting, but his body was found the following morning, half-clothed. He had been beaten and robbed. Robbery and murder were unusual in the Highlands despite the wild reputation of the land and its people, but that was no consolation to Lucas, who had lost the half brother he had barely had chance to know.
The fall of logs in the grate recalled him to the room and he realized that Jack was speaking. He forced down his grief and anger and tried to listen.
“I truly believe that Lord Sidmouth is using you for his own ends, Lucas,” Jack was saying carefully. There was something in his eyes that was almost but not quite pity. “He’s using your grief to manipulate you.”
Lucas shook his head stubbornly. “I offered to help Sidmouth of my own free will,” he said, “in return for information and resources.”
After Peter’s death, the home secretary had sent men from London to try to find his murderer, but they had drawn a blank. Lord Sidmouth was certain that the case was connected to the illegal trade in whisky distilling with which the Highlands were rife. It was his contention that Peter had inadvertently stumbled over the notorious Kilmory smuggling gang and had been killed to ensure his silence. Lucas had no reason to doubt the home secretary’s assessment and he had a burning desire to avenge himself on the gang of thugs who had taken Peter’s life.
“I know it’s a long shot,” he said, “but maybe I can discover something that those fools from London could not. If the whisky smugglers were responsible for Peter’s death, then I have a better chance of learning of it than Sidmouth’s men had, and to do that I cannot approach Kilmory openly.” He fixed his gaze on the fire. It burned low in the grate, filling the room with heat and light. Yet Lucas felt cold inside. He could not remember the last time he had felt warm, could not remember if he had ever felt warm, not inside, where it mattered.
He was the illegitimate son of a Scottish laird and a Russian princess, the product of a night of youthful passion when his father had been traveling through Russia. His birth had scandalized Russian society and disgraced his mother. She had made an unhappy dynastic marriage five years later to a man who had been prepared to overlook her sullied reputation because he was dazzled by her dowry.
Lucas had gone with his mother when she had married, but he had been a changeling, unwelcome in his stepfather’s house, keenly aware of the difference between him and other children. His grandfather had asked Czarina Catherine to legitimize him, but that had made matters worse rather than better. His cousins and his stepfather still called him a bastard; his mother still had such grief and shame in her eyes when she looked at him. Peter had been the only one unaware of the dark shadow cast by Lucas’s existence. He was little more than a baby, open, trusting and loving.
His little brother, his life snuffed out by a stranger in a strange land. The coldness swept through him again and with it an ice-cold determination to discover the truth.
“Peter deserves justice,” he repeated. “I can’t just let it go, Jack. He was the only family I had left.”
“No, he was not,” Jack corrected. “Stop feeling sorry for yourself. What about your aunt?”
Lucas smiled reluctantly. “All right, I’ll give you that.” His father’s sister was a force of nature. She had come into his life when he was living rough on the streets of Edinburgh. Even though he had told her to leave him alone, she had refused to abandon him. He had been a sullen, ungrateful youth, eaten up with bitterness of his father’s family, but she had driven a coach and horses through his resentment. She had forced him to pull himself up out of the gutter and he loved her fiercely for it. She was the only woman he did love, the only one he could imagine loving.
There was silence in the room. “You never speak of your father,” Jack said after a moment.
Lucas shrugged. There was discomfort in it. He could feel the tension knotting his shoulders again. “There’s nothing to say about him.”
“He left you his estate at the Black Strath,” Jack said. “That must count for something.”
To Lucas, it counted for absolutely nothing. He could feel the anger and hatred stir within him. These days he seemed to be angry all the time: angry that Peter had died, angry that no one had been brought to justice for it, angry that no one really cared. Jack was right; he knew that Lord Sidmouth was using him. Sidmouth wanted to bring an end to the whisky-smuggling gangs who ran rings around his excise officers. He wanted the members identified and jailed. Peter’s death was a convenient means by which to engage Lucas’s help. But that did not matter if they both got what they wanted.
“I’ve always wondered why your mother waited so long to tell you about your inheritance,” Jack said. “Your father died when you were only a baby.”
“I think she was afraid,” Lucas said slowly. He could still remember the clutch of his mother’s fingers, clammy and cold, and see the desperation in her eyes.
Don’t blame your father, his mother had said. He was a good man. I loved him.
But Lucas had blamed Niall Sutherland. He had never forgiven his father for abandoning his mother, for his cowardice and weakness. Their romance had been secret, her pregnancy only discovered months after Sutherland had left. Although Princess Irina had written to tell him, he had never returned to Russia. Lucas felt nothing but contempt for him for condemning Irina to the shame and stigma of bearing an illegitimate child, and Lucas to the endless taunts and mockery that went with bastardy. If he had anything to be grateful to his father for, it was that his example had taught Lucas to be the opposite of him: hard, ruthless and strong.
Jack was watching him. Lucas took a mouthful of brandy. It tasted bitter and he put the glass down abruptly.
“She was unhappy,” he said. “I think she was afraid I would leave her and go to Scotland to claim my inheritance. Even as a child I was headstrong.” He smiled ruefully. “She was wrong, of course. I would never have left her.”
“But you went when she died,” Jack said.
“There was nothing to keep me in Russia then.” Lucas crossed to the fireplace, tossing a couple of logs onto the glowing embers. There was a hiss and a flare of flame. “My stepfather had me horsewhipped from the house on the day she died.” He kept his voice level, even though in his memory he could still feel the bite of the whip through the thin material of his shirt, hear the sound as it ripped, feel the sting across his back. His chest felt tight as he remembered the black panic as the thongs snaked about his neck, choking him. He had fled to Scotland only to find that the trustees of his father’s estate were unimpressed by a fifteen-year-old boy who had no means of proving his claim.
He shook his head sharply to dispel the memories of the past. His aunt had ensured that he received his estate, but he was no laird; he had rented out the Black Strath ever since he had come into his inheritance. His interest was in business, not the land.
“Peter hero-worshipped you,” Jack said. “Evidently his father was unable to poison his mind against you.”
Lucas smiled reluctantly. “Peter had a loving spirit,” he said. “He was like our mother.”
Jack nodded. “I understand.” He corrected himself. “That is, I understand that you feel the need to bring his murderer to justice.” He let out his breath on a long sigh. “You will make a spectacularly poor footman, by the way.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” Lucas said. “I can work hard.”
“You can’t take orders,” Jack said, draining his glass. “You are accustomed to giving them.”
“You don’t think that I fit the advertisement?” Lucas sat, and tapped the newspaper that was folded on the table in front of them. He read aloud, “‘Footman required at Kilmory Castle. Must be diligent, reliable, well trained and deferential.’”
“You are an impressive fail on almost all counts,” Jack said.
Lucas laughed. “I won’t get you to write my references, then.” He picked up one of the playing cards, toying with it, turning it idly between his fingers.
“Tell me more about the household,” he said. “So that I am prepared.”
“I’ve never been to Kilmory,” Jack said, “but I understand it to be a fourteenth-century castle that has no proper plumbing or heating, so it is probably as uncomfortable as hell. The duke prefers it, though.” He shrugged. “He always gets his own way.”
“Do any of the family live with the duke at Kilmory?” Lucas asked. He knew that some of the MacMorlan clan had been there when Peter had died. Sidmouth had told him.
“There’s a houseful at the moment,” Jack said. He ticked them off on his fingers. “You’ll be tripping over them at every turn. Angus and Gertrude are staying there at present—that’s Mairi’s ghastly elder brother, the Marquess of Semple, and his even more horrible wife. He is heir to the title and full of self-importance. I believe they have their daughter, Allegra, with them.”
Lucas grimaced. “And I’m supposed to wait on these people?”
“Your choice,” Jack said unsympathetically.
“Hmm. Who else?”
“Lachlan.” Jack grinned. “The younger brother. He is an utter waste of space. His wife left him some months ago and he has taken to drink for comfort.”
Lucas gave a soundless whistle. “Never a good solution.” He raised his glass in ironic toast. “Is there anyone else?”
“No,” Jack said. “Yes.” He corrected himself quickly. “There’s Christina, the eldest daughter.” He frowned slightly. “We always forget Christina.”
“Why?” Lucas said.
“Because...” Jack paused. “She’s easy to overlook,” he said after a moment. He sounded slightly shamefaced. “Christina’s self-effacing, the old spinsterish sister. No one notices her.”
Lucas found that hard to believe when both Lucy and her sister Mairi MacMorlan, Jack’s wife, were stunningly pretty, diamonds of the first order. He felt an odd, protective pang of pity for the colorless Lady Christina, living in their shadow, the duke’s unmarried daughter.
He let the playing card slip from between his fingers and it glided down to rest on the carpet.
There was a discreet knock at the door, and Lucas’s manager, Duncan Liddell, stuck his head around.
“Table four,” Duncan said. “Lord Ainsley. Can’t pay his debts. Or won’t pay. Not sure which.” He was a man of few words.
Lucas nodded and got to his feet. It happened occasionally when sprigs of the nobility had a little too much to drink and felt they were entitled to play for free. A few discreet words in the gentleman’s ear usually sorted the matter out.
“I’ll leave you to it,” Jack said. He stood up, too, and shook Lucas’s hand. “Best of luck. I hope you find out the truth.” He hesitated. “I don’t care what happens to the rest of them,” he said, “but don’t hurt Christina, or Mairi will have my balls for helping you.”
Lucas grinned. “I know your wife is a crack shot. I wouldn’t want to get on the wrong side of her.” He sobered. “You have my word, Jack. I’ve no quarrel with any of Forres clan. I doubt I will have much to do with them. All I want is to infiltrate the whisky gang and find out what really happened to Peter.”
As he followed Duncan into the salon, Lucas caught sight of the playing card resting under the table. He bent to pick it up. It was the jack of diamonds. He laid it on top of the pack. It seemed appropriate for the bastard son of a laird and a princess who had made his own fortune and was as hard as the diamonds themselves.
CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_be5238f4-adad-528c-b2ef-69e4dcfa1154)
Ardnamurchan, Scottish Highlands, May 1817
IT WAS NOT the way Lucas was meant to die, blindfolded, tied up, on his knees in a smugglers’ cave, with the pungent smell of rotting fish in his nose and the roar of the sea in his ears as it crashed onto the rocks several hundred feet below.
One minute he had been strolling along the cliffs in the evening twilight to stretch his legs after an interminable journey from Edinburgh, the next this nightmare of ambush and capture. He had heard that the Highlands in May were very pleasant, but he had been mistaken in that. The Highlands in May was no place to be if there was a knife at your throat.
He had been careless. The thought made him angry. Lord Sidmouth would be so proud of him, he thought savagely. His spy caught by the very men he had come to investigate. But he had been tired and the last thing he had been expecting was to stumble on the whisky smugglers moving their cargo. He wondered if this was why Peter had died. He wondered if his brother, too, had seen something he should not, had stumbled disastrously into a situation he could not control. The irony would be if he discovered the truth so quickly, so easily, and then did not live to prove it.
The smugglers were arguing. Their Scots accents were so thick Lucas found it hard to understand some of them, but the general thrust of the conversation was not in the least difficult to follow.
“I say we throw him over the cliff, no questions asked.”
“I say we let him go. He’s seen nothing—”
“It’s too dangerous. He could be a spy. I say he dies.”
“And I say we wait for the lady. She will know what to do.”
There was a short, angry pause.
“I told you not to send for her.” The first man swore. “Damn it to hell, you know what she will say.”
“She doesn’t like unnecessary bloodshed.” The second man sounded as though he was quoting. Lucas could not help but wonder if the shedding of his blood would nevertheless be deemed necessary.
Lucas kept silent. He was cold, wet, tired to his bones and starving hungry.
Who was the lady? Some ruffian as brutal as her trade?
Sidmouth had briefed him on the illegal Highland whisky trade. The government in London demanded that every Highlander who distilled whisky should pay tax on it. The Highlanders declined. The government sent excise officers to hunt the smugglers down, which was no doubt why this gang suspected him of being a spy. Which he was. A very incompetent one.
Damnation.
Lucas remembered the whisky he had tasted on the back streets of Edinburgh. They called it the Uisge Beatha in Gaelic, the water of life, but he had thought it was rougher than a badger’s backside.
A faint drift of a salt-laden breeze stirred the noisome press of air in the cave, and the smugglers fell silent. It was a wary silence. Lucas felt the hair on the back of his neck rise and his skin prickle. He found he was holding his breath.
The air shifted as someone walked past him. The lady. She had arrived. Lucas had heard no footsteps. Nor could he see anything from behind the blindfold. The material was thick and coarse. He was wrapped in darkness. Yet he could feel her presence. She was close.
He tried to rise to his feet and immediately one of the smugglers placed an ungentle hand on his shoulder and forced him back down on his knees.
“Evening, ma’am.” The tone of the men’s voices had changed. There was respect in their muttered greeting and a note of caution. Lucas realized that they were on their guard. They could not predict her reactions. And in their uncertainty lay his hope. Suddenly the moment was on a knife’s edge between life and death.
“Gentlemen.”
Lucas’s heart was beating violently against his ribs. All his senses were straining. One word from her and he would be dead. A knife between the ribs, quick, lethal. He fought back the suffocating fear that beat down on his mind. He had nothing in particular to live for, but no particular wish to die, either.
He sensed the lady was very close to him now. He could hear the shift and slip of a material that sounded rich and fine, like silk or velvet, and then he caught the most elusive of scents, a fragrance of bluebells—very sweet, very innocent. The incongruity of it almost made him smile. The infamous leader of a band of criminal renegades and she smelled of spring flowers.
Someone kicked him hard in the ribs, and the thought disintegrated in a blaze of pain. Lucas toppled onto his side under the force of the blow. They were crowding in on him now like a pack of wolves. He could sense their malevolence. There was another blow, and then another. He twisted and rolled in a vain attempt to avoid them, hampered by his bound wrists, blinded, utterly at their mercy. He was too proud to beg a pack of ruffians to spare his life. Perhaps that was a weakness that would kill him but he did not care.
“Stop.”
It only took the one word from her to halt them. She spoke sharply and with such an edge of authority that they all fell back. For a moment Lucas could focus on nothing but the hot flare of pain in his ribs. Then as it dulled to an ache, he drew in a labored breath.
“Here...”
She was helping him to sit; his back was against the wall of the cave. It was cold and damp, but the solid rock helped to steady him. Her touch was gentle but firm. He sensed she was between him and the men, shielding him, protecting him. He felt a wave of shame that he could not defend himself and a fierce, hot tug of emotion toward her that he did not understand.
The silence in the cave was absolute, but the atmosphere still simmered with violence. Lucas could feel it in every cell of his body. He could sense, too, some ripple of feeling in her that belied her confidence.
Fear? No. She was not afraid of these braggarts and bullies.
Revulsion.
Lucas’s heart bounded. Extraordinary as it was, he sensed in her a hatred of brutality.
The smugglers’ words made sense now. This was why the more bloodthirsty amongst them had not wanted her to know of his capture.
They were afraid she would save him.
He felt as close to her as though he could read her thoughts, closer, as though he shared the sensations and emotions that drove her.
He had never felt like this before. He hated the intimacy of the feeling and he hated that he did not understand why he felt it. Most of all he hated his own powerlessness.
“Begging your pardon, ma’am.” One of the men sounded abashed, like a naughty schoolboy, but there was rebellion beneath his brusque apology. “We caught him on the track above the bothy. He was following us—”
“Spying,” one of the others put in.
“We need to get rid of him.” There was a rumble of agreement.
“Over the cliff,” the first man said. “Now.”
“Is that so?” Unlike the men, her voice held no trace of a Scots accent. It was low and smooth, as rich and soothing as honey. She truly was a lady born and bred.
“Stand back.” There was a rustle of skirts as she shifted beside him. Lucas could not rise as he was once again pinned by the large boot of one of the men, which was lodged in his aching ribs. The boot pressed harder and he sucked in his breath on another wave of pain.
“If you could restrain your tendency toward violence, please.” She sounded weary now but the boot eased its pressure a little.
Her hand was beneath Lucas’s chin. He imagined she was turning his face to the light. She wore no gloves; her skin was soft and her fingers felt gentle against the roughness of his stubble. For a moment they brushed his cheek in a sweet caress. Lucas felt a shiver down his spine of something that was not fear. He fought it back angrily. His life was on the line and all he could think about was her touch.
Get hold of yourself, Lucas.
“What sort of a spy would be caught so easily?” There was mockery in her voice.
“A bad one,” one of the men said dourly.
“Or an innocent traveler,” the woman said. Her tone was sharp. Her hand fell. Lucas sensed she was sitting back on her heels.
“Innocent or not, the sea is the place for him,” the man growled. He seemed to be the spokesman. The others were content to let him talk. “It’s the only thing to do, ma’am.”
“Nonsense.” She sounded angry now. “Our quarrel is not with the likes of him and you know it.”
“And you know he’s a danger to us.” The man was curt. “We’ve no choice.” He was standing his ground and the others supported him. Lucas could smell their stubbornness and their fear. It was in the air and on their unwashed bodies as they pressed closer. They wanted him dead.
He knew the woman could feel it, too. One false step and they would both be in trouble. It was extraordinary to sense with absolute certainty that she was on his side.
“No one will know,” the man said. “Who’s to miss him?”
“Only he can tell us that.” Her voice betrayed no feelings, nothing of the quick, careful calculation Lucas could sense behind the words. “Perhaps it’s time to learn a little more about him.” Her hand touched Lucas’s arm, conveying a warning even as her tone warmed into mockery again. “What’s your name, handsome?”
“Lucas,” he said. He was aware that as repartee went it was far from sparkling.
One of the men laughed. “We could spoil his pretty face. That would teach him a lesson.”
“Don’t you dare,” the woman said. Her voice was light. “I need something nice to look at around here.” Her words were dismissive, as though he counted for nothing. Lucas hated being treated so casually, but he could see how clever she was. She made him seem unimportant, no threat.
“What’s your other name?” she said.
Lucas cleared his throat. “Lucas Ross, ma’am,” he said. “At your service.” It was only half a lie.
“Your speech is as pretty as your looks.” Her voice was cool. “What are you doing in Kilmory, Lucas Ross?”
“I’m after a job,” Lucas said. “At the castle. Footman. I’ve come from Edinburgh.”
“Fancy city manners,” one of the smugglers said, and it was not a compliment.
“I want to be a butler one day,” Lucas said.
“Let us hope you live long enough to achieve your ambition.” The lady sounded dry. “Where are you staying?”
“At the inn in the village,” Lucas said. “I booked a room and ordered supper. The landlord will notice if I don’t return.”
“Tom McArdle won’t give us any trouble.” Another of the smugglers spoke this time. “Very likely he’ll dispose of your belongings for us. Where do you think he gets his whisky from, laddie?”
The others gave a low rumble of laughter. They were closing in again now, going for the kill. Lucas knew he had not made a strong enough case to be allowed to live. There would be no loving wife to miss him, no parents and no siblings. He should have invented a few and told an affecting story of how they depended on him. His lips twisted into a bitter parody of a smile.
“We’re wasting time.” One of the men hauled him to his feet.
“Wait.” The woman spoke again, the sharpness of authority back in her voice. “You are too hasty, my friend. Another body around here will bring the gaugers back down on us faster than a sniff of the peat-reek, and the dragoons with them. Have you forgotten that it is only a six-month since the last time?”
Another body...
Lucas felt his blood run cold. She was speaking of Peter.
The silence prickled with tension. Lucas waited, all his muscles wound up tight. He heard the shift and mutter of the men all around him.
“That was nothing to do with us.” The leader sounded defiant. “We know nothing of it.”
“Whether it was your doing or not,” the woman said patiently, “two bodies draw unwanted attention. Do you understand me? Besides, if Mr. Ross here has applied to work at the castle, too many people will know who he is. We cannot take the risk.”
“Be damned to it.” The man’s patience was exhausted. “I say he dies and the others stand with me. We can get rid of the body so they’ll never find it.”
“Enough!” Lucas heard her move, heard the unmistakable click of a pistol being cocked, heard the intake of breath as the men froze into immobility. He felt a shiver of fear, for her, not for himself. Absurd, extraordinary, but the bond between them seemed tighter still.
“You are dangerous fools,” she said. She still spoke quietly, but with an undertone of iron. “Do you really want to take this risk? Do you want to throw away all your profits because of some poor benighted city boy who gets lost in the Highlands? Think again, my friends, before it is too late.”
Once again Lucas found himself holding his breath. Violence bred violence, and she was taking a terrible risk to save his life. There were at least four of them. They could overpower her easily enough. One bullet was all she had to stand between him and death.
Time spun out. He felt each second pass.
Then everything changed. Lucas felt it first in the uneasy shift and shuffle of the smugglers’ feet, then in the muttered words he could not catch, then finally in the easing of the tension. It was the money, he thought, as much as the show of force, that had changed their minds.
“She’s right.” One of the men spoke grudgingly. “Think how much we made on the last few barrels. We don’t want the gaugers sniffing around again...”
There was a mutter of agreement, surly, resigned. Someone sighed as though the denial of his right to mete out a violent death was particularly disappointing.
Relief whipped through Lucas; his legs shook. If they made him walk now, he would not need to pretend to weakness. He felt the lady’s relief, too, though she masked it well.
“Bring him.” Her voice told Lucas that she had walked away as though she had already taken their capitulation for granted.
“My lady—” It was the spokesman, fighting a rearguard action. Then, correcting himself, “Ma’am—”
“Yes?” Her voice was light and cold. “If you still have concerns about my clemency, then console yourself with the thought that we will know exactly where to find him if he is foolish enough to say a word about tonight.” She turned back to Lucas. “No loose words in the inn after a few drams, Mr. Ross,” she said. “And no misplaced thoughts of spilling what you know to the authorities. A fine fool you would appear telling such a cock-and-bull story. My advice is that you should give up on the job at the castle, hurry home to Edinburgh and forget all about us.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Lucas said again. He caught the bluebell fragrance again, sweet, stirring his senses. There was no way he was going to forget her. He willed his body not to harden into arousal. Christ. Who was this woman who could do this to him when he could not even see her?
“Bring him,” she repeated. Her tone was autocratic and this time no one argued.
The men half carried, half pulled Lucas as he stumbled to the mouth of the cave. Outside it was full night, the darkness pressing against his blindfold. The cold air was like a slap in his face, fresh and sharp with the sting of the sea. The sound of the waves was suddenly loud, boiling on the rocks below. He sensed that he was very close to the edge of the cliff.
“Untie him.” She was taking no chances that when her back was turned they would throw him over the edge. He knew it and the men knew it, too.
Someone was fumbling behind him to undo the ties that held his wrists, swearing all the while because they could not see what they were doing. He was free; he flexed his hands, feeling the pain of the blood returning.
“Remember what I told you,” she said.
“Thank you, ma’am,” Lucas said.
The blindfold fell from his eyes.
It took him a second to adjust to the darkness. There was no moon tonight, and the light of the stars was dim and pale, no more than a glitter on the sea. Lucas looked down and felt a clutch of fear. He was within two feet of the edge of the cliff; a step forward and he would have fallen. He could feel the small stones slipping beneath the soles of his boots. For a second he felt light-headed and nauseous, repressing the panicked reaction to scrabble backward for a safer foothold. He forced himself to keep still, slowing his breathing, fixing his gaze on the dark horizon until the world steadied around him.
The whisky smugglers were gone, melting into the shadows as swiftly and silently as they had appeared. Perhaps they were still watching him. He knew that the only thing he could do was to return to the inn and behave as any other man might do when he had had a narrow escape. That probably meant getting drunk on bad whisky. And remembering to keep his mouth shut about what had happened to him.
He turned his back on the vertiginous drop and started to climb up the cliff face. It was tough going. The rough stems of heather scored his palms. Loose rock slid and slithered beneath his feet where the dry peat soil crumbled. It took him a good ten minutes to reach the path at the top where he turned inland toward the faint light in the distance where the village huddled. He was cold and damp and bruised, but he was damned grateful to be alive. The air seemed sweeter, the light and shadows sharper, the hoot of the owl clearer than ever before. Even the persistent ache in his ribs was welcome as a measure of the fact he was still alive.
It was as he came to the edge of the village, past the kirk sheltering behind its low moss-covered wall, that those instincts that had failed him earlier in the evening blazed into life and told him that he was not alone. He stopped in the shadow of the churchyard yew and waited. His skin prickled, the wind breathing gooseflesh down his spine.
She was here. He could sense it.
A second later he felt the cold caress of the pistol on the side of his throat.
“Remember what I told you. Go back to Edinburgh, city boy. There’s nothing for you here.” Her whisper was fierce.
Lucas did the one thing he was certain she would not be expecting. He spun to face her, catching her wrist so tightly that she gasped and dropped the pistol with a clatter at his feet. He kicked it aside, pulling her hard against his body, his arms going about her cruelly tight. The shadows were so thick here that he could see nothing of her face, but he could hear the quick catch of her breathing and feel the rise and fall of her breasts against his chest.
It felt astonishing to hold her in his arms, this woman who had saved his life. The blood surged through his veins, bringing with it instant arousal. Everything that had passed between them that evening fused in that moment into a blaze of lust as scorching as a heath fire.
Lucas brought one hand up to push back the hood of her velvet cloak. The material was rough against his palm, the friction delicious. Uncovered, her hair was dark in the faint moonlight, a satin-soft cascade as it tumbled through his fingers. He ran his thumb along the line of her jaw, tipping up her chin so that her mouth met his.
She made a startled sound in her throat that had Lucas’s body hardening still further, and then her lips parted beneath the insistent pressure of his. She responded hesitantly at first, then sweetly, passionately, with a lack of artifice that shook him to the core. Her body softened and yielded to his and the kiss spun away into a different realm entirely, a place of heat and need. This was new, and dangerously seductive; Lucas had always had iron control, but now he felt the danger of losing it completely.
Under his fingertips he could feel both delicacy and strength in the exquisite lines of her jaw and neck, and when he dropped his hand to the warm hollow at the base of her throat her pulse beat frantically beneath his touch. It dimly occurred to him that he had no idea what she looked like or even how old she was, nor anything else about her. He could have been kissing a woman old enough to be his grandmother, and in that moment he was not sure he cared. Kissing her was the most explosively pleasurable experience he had ever known.
He pressed his lips to the line of her neck and then the curve of her shoulder, pushing aside her cloak and the flimsy layers of silk he could feel below it so that he could trace the line of her collarbone with his tongue. She gave a little gasp, and he felt her knees weaken so he pulled her down to where the heather made a soft bed beneath them. There he kissed her again, deep, slow kisses this time; kisses that made time stand still. He was aware of nothing but the intimate tangle of her tongue with his, the heat of her body, the smoothness of her skin beneath his fingertips.
Overhead the stars spun in their courses and the moon had risen higher, but it was a mere sliver, too pale to lift the shadows. Lucas did not care that he could not see her. She was the only thing that was real to him, a creature of quicksilver and darkness. He slid his hand into her bodice and felt the curve of her bare breast warm against his palm. She arched upward, pressing herself into his hand. Her responsiveness had his cock hardening to almost unbearable proportions. He rubbed his thumb across her nipple and heard her gasp. The silk and lace of her bodice felt crisp and expensive, but beneath it her skin felt richer still, soft and sleek to the touch, her body a sensual paradise a man could lose himself in.
The church clock chimed the hour loudly, the ten long strokes vibrating through him and breaking the moment. He felt her go still in his arms, and then she scrambled up, pulling her cloak about her.
“Wait,” Lucas said, catching her hand. He could feel her trembling, and the sense of her vulnerability and need made him want to wrench her back into his arms again and finish what they had started. His senses were full of the taste and the touch of her, and he did not want to let her go. “I haven’t thanked you for saving my life,” he said.
She paused. “I think you have done far more than thank me,” she said. Her tone was dry. She had herself back under control now. Her voice betrayed nothing.
“When will I see you again?” Lucas asked.
“You won’t.” She sounded amused. “Good night, Mr. Ross.”
For a second she was a darker shadow against the darkness, and then she was gone. The night was empty and still again. Lucas leaned his back against the churchyard wall and waited for the near-intolerable ache in his body to ease. He had come shockingly close to making love with a woman he did not know and had never seen. The mere thought of it caused his body to harden again. At this rate the walk back to the inn was going to be a long and uncomfortable one, but he could not regret it. It had been quite a night.
Ten minutes later Lucas was back in the village main street and stumbling into the Kilmory Inn. The landlord cast him a curious glance as he pushed open the door of the taproom. Lucas wondered what he must look like with his clothes filthy and torn. There were marks on his wrists, too, where the rope had bitten. The smugglers had not been gentle.
“A drink, sir?” The landlord was smooth but his gaze was sharp. “Get lost on your evening stroll, did you?”
Lucas nodded, sliding onto a hard wooden chair in a corner by the fire. His bruised ribs protested the lack of comfort but he did not think they were broken. He could not risk consulting a doctor, and since he was masquerading as a footman he could not afford one anyway. He was simply going to have to wait for the bruises to fade.
In his pocket was the pistol. Like a rather deadlier version of Cinderella his mystery woman had left it behind when she had run away, which suggested that she had not been as in control of her emotions as she had wanted to appear. That gave Lucas more than a little satisfaction. He decided to have a look at it later in the privacy of his chamber.
He cast a covert glance around the taproom. It was almost full. Three men were playing cribbage in the opposite corner, leaning over the board, wrapped up in the game. No one was watching him—or so it appeared. But word would go around about the smooth fellow from Edinburgh who had come for a job at the castle and had accidentally fallen foul of the local smuggling gang. Small communities like this one were close and loyal. Everyone would know about the whisky distilling.
The landlord pushed a glass toward him across the table. It tasted of smoke and peat, almost strong enough to choke him. Lucas could see the gleam of amusement in the man’s eyes. Perhaps he thought him a Sassenach, an English foreigner who could not hold his drink. Or perhaps his accent tagged him as a Lowlander. There was no love lost between the Highlanders and their compatriots to the south. Truth was he was a fusion of races and a mixture of languages. His mother had been an educated woman who had taught him to speak both French and English faultlessly. When he had been thrown out of his stepfather’s palace and come to Scotland looking for his inheritance, he had quickly adopted the accent of the streets so that he did not stand out. When he had started to profit in business and made his first fortune, he had shed the streets and readopted the faultless English of his childhood.
He sat quietly, thinking, whilst the noise of the taproom washed over him. The taste of the whisky was mellowing on his tongue and he felt a pleasant lethargy start to slide through him. Contrary to his previous experience, the whisky tasted delicious, warm and deep, once he had got used to the fact that it was strong enough to take the top of his head off. The Kilmory distiller was clearly very talented.
He leaned an elbow on the table, staring into the deep golden liquid. It swirled like magic, like a witch’s spell. This was the whisky’s skill, he thought; it could make you forget, ease you away from all kinds of raw memories and soothe the pain of the past. But tonight, here in Kilmory, he felt the shadow of the past standing right at his shoulder. It was here that Peter had died. He had stayed with his friends in this very inn, had dined at the castle and had walked on the same cliffs.
Lucas thought about the whisky-smuggling gang. He had heard the men deny any involvement in Peter’s death, but he did not believe the word of a bunch of criminal thugs. They would have dispatched him swiftly enough had the lady not saved his life, and it was the obvious explanation.
Still, he knew the key to discovering the truth was finding the woman he had met tonight. He would never be able to identify the individual members of the gang, but she was a different matter. He could find her and she would lead him to the others. He could then betray them to Sidmouth.
He thought about what he had learned of her. He thought of her touch, of the rich, sensual rub of her velvet cloak and the scent of her perfume. He thought of her kiss, of the heat and the sweetness of it and the blinding sense of recognition he had felt. The memory of it still disturbed him. If he were a fanciful man, he would have called it love at first sight.
He was not a fanciful man.
It had been lust.
The other stuff, the sense of intimacy, of understanding, was no more than a trick of the senses. He had been fighting for his life and she had helped him. It had been relief and gratitude that had touched him, nothing more.
It seemed that “the lady” was precisely that, an aristocrat. She had spoken with an aristocrat’s confidence and authority. Lucas had heard one of the men address her as “my lady” before he had quickly corrected himself. There were not many ladies to the square mile around here. Inescapable logic suggested that she must be related to the Duke of Forres and be a resident at Kilmory Castle.
The landlord brought him his supper at last, a plate of fragrant mutton pie with steaming vegetables, which Lucas fell upon with all the enthusiasm of a man who had just cheated death. As he ate, Lucas thought about what Jack had told him about the duke’s female relatives. There was Lady Semple, the wife of the duke’s heir. It seemed unlikely that she would be involved with a gang of outlaws but perhaps her daughter might be. He needed to find out more about Lady Allegra. Then there was Lady Christina MacMorlan, the self-effacing spinster who kept house for her father and was eclipsed by her two beautiful younger siblings. The thought of her as the pistol-wielding leader of a band of outlaws was mind-boggling.
On the other hand, there was no better cover for the pistol-wielding leader of a band of outlaws than being the self-effacing daughter of a duke.
But he was getting ahead of himself. There might be other possibilities. The first thing he needed to do was obtain the job at the castle. His lady smuggler had told him to go back to Edinburgh, but he had absolutely no intention of doing so. Tomorrow he would present himself at Kilmory Castle as a candidate for the post of footman as though nothing had happened. It would be a test of his acting abilities. He was not good at taking orders, so it would also be a test of his tolerance. He loathed the aristocracy with their opulent lifestyle and their sense of entitlement. A position of servitude in a ducal house was the worst possible match for him.
He smiled faintly. It was a small price to pay to find out the truth about his brother. If it also meant that he found his lady smuggler as well, then so much the better. He knew that he would recognize her again. One touch, a hint of her fragrance, would be sufficient.
If she really was the duke’s daughter, then he had no sympathy for her. Either she was a spoiled little rich girl playing at being a smuggler for some excitement, or she was a cunning, deceitful criminal. Or perhaps she was both. Lucas did not really care about her motives. He could remember what it felt like to steal food in order to survive, to beg and thieve and fight simply to stay alive. He had no time for those who had every privilege and still behaved like delinquents.
In the privacy of his chamber, a tiny little box of a room tucked under the inn’s eaves where he was too tall to stand upright beneath the sloping ceiling, he finally took out the pistol and examined it. It was a fine piece of workmanship, expensive, made entirely of brass and beautifully engraved. Lucas suspected it had been made in the late eighteenth century and that it would not look out of place in an aristocrat’s collection. He tucked it away at the bottom of his bag, then lay down to sleep. The inn was noisy, but he could sleep anywhere, another legacy of the years he had spent on the streets, seizing rest when and where he could, always half-awake to trouble. Tonight, though, he found it more difficult than usual. He thought he might be haunted by memories of Peter, but instead he slept in snatches of dreams, and always through them there was a woman running away, a woman he yearned for, a woman whose face he could not see.
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_d38bc7a9-14f0-57e6-b8b0-f4406008547d)
CHRISTINA PUSHED OPEN the wooden picket gate that separated the grounds of Kilmory Castle from the road beyond. A path in the shadow of the high estate wall led past the neat row of gardeners’ cottages, shadowed by a tall stand of pines whose fallen needles were soft beneath her shoes. On the other side of the pines, a vast expanse of lawn, dotted with cedars, bordered the rose garden and led to a flight of steps up to the terrace. Christina walked slowly, unhurriedly. She had told her family that she was taking a stroll after dinner, and though she had been gone some time, they would not suspect anything. They never did.
Light glowed softly behind the castle windows. She did not particularly want to go back inside. She loved being out at night when the moon was high and the wind blew in the sea fret. She loved it more, perhaps, because ladies were not supposed to wander around alone after dark. She loved doing the unexpected because her days were governed by the expected.
Lucas Ross had been unexpected. She could still taste his kiss. She could still feel the touch of his hands on her body. His scent clung to her, not the cloying pomade and cologne some men wore, but a mixture of fresh air and forest and ocean. It seemed familiar, striking a chord in the region of her heart, making her shiver. Had it been that dangerous sense of recognition that had prompted her to behave with such reckless abandon? She did not know. All she knew was that she had almost made love with Lucas Ross and she could not quite believe what she had done.
Lucas was a servant. A footman, if his story was to be believed, but he had been far more than just a handsome face. He had been forceful, quick-witted and courageous. He had hidden his character well enough before the men and played the ignorant city boy, but she had known. Right from the moment she had first seen him, she had felt that he was different.
She had known that he was dangerous.
She shivered.
“Ma’am?” The door had opened and Galloway, the butler, was peering out, his face lined with worry. He had known where she had gone that night. All the servants knew. So did the entire village. Her involvement in whisky smuggling was the worst-kept secret in Kilmory. The only people who did not know were her own family, and that was because they knew nothing about who she really was and cared less.
“All’s well.”
The door yawned wider, yellow light spilling out into the night. It was time to become Lady Christina MacMorlan again.
Galloway locked and bolted the door behind her.
“Thank goodness you are back, ma’am.”
Christina paused to examine her reflection in the hall mirror. She did not look too bad; her hair looked a little windblown perhaps, and she had sand clinging to the hem of her velvet gown, but that was no surprise in this wild place. Her face was flushed and rosy. So was her throat. She remembered the delicious rub of Lucas’s stubble against her skin. Fortunately she could pretend that the high color was the result of a cold breeze. It would be more difficult to explain away the stinging pink of her lips and the way they were swollen from Lucas’s kisses. She prayed that the shadows in the hall would disguise much of the damage, since she would have a hard time explaining her exploits to her family. They saw her as passionless, almost sexless; efficient Christina who smoothed away all the little details of life that they did not want to trouble themselves with, a glorified housekeeper who kept home, family and clan together with never a word of complaint.
If only they knew.
For a moment she felt the echo of Lucas’s kiss through her blood again, his hand at her breast. It was a very long time since she had been kissed, touched. She had not wanted passion in her life. It belonged to the past, to a part of time that she had closed off and sworn never to think about again. Now, though, with the memory of Lucas’s touch, she felt restless, sleeping desire awakened again.
She repressed a shiver, turning away from the mirror, stripping off her gloves, removing her cloak.
“Is there a problem, Galloway?” she asked.
“Yes, my lady.” The butler was shaking, and Christina was suddenly and forcibly reminded of his increasing age and infirmity. That was why it was essential that they should recruit a quick, intelligent younger man as footman to be Galloway’s understudy. But not the man she had met tonight. Lucas Ross would have been ideal—strong, practical, clever—but she could not employ a man who had kissed her to within an inch of her life. Or one that would recognize her as the leader of the whisky gang—it could be disastrous.
“His Grace has lost his latest consignment of books from the Royal Society of Edinburgh,” Galloway said. “He has turned the library upside down looking for them and is quite beside himself.” A muffled crash from behind the library door gave emphasis to his words.
“I’ll find the books,” Christina said.
“Lady Semple went down to the kitchens to complain that dinner was burned,” Galloway continued, “and now Cook is threatening to leave and you know we cannot get good staff out here in the middle of nowhere—”
“I’ll smooth things over with Cook,” Christina said. “And I will speak to Lady Semple.” Her brother, the Marquess of Semple, and his wife, Gertrude, were the most demanding guests imaginable, always finding fault. They seemed to take pleasure in upsetting as many people as possible. It was the only sport they enjoyed.
“Lady Semple also mentioned that the water was cold again this morning, and Lord Semple complains of an icy draft in his bedroom,” Galloway said.
“I draw the line at any involvement in my brother’s marital affairs,” Christina said. Then, when Galloway looked at her, uncomprehending, “Never mind, Galloway. I suppose the stove went out again?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Galloway said. “It always blows out when there is a northwesterly.”
Christina gave a sharp sigh. Kilmory was a fourteenth-century castle with a heating system almost as old. It was utterly inadequate to meet the needs of guests like the Semples, who insisted on the best of everything. For the past three years her father, with typical eccentric stubbornness, had insisted on making his home at Kilmory rather than at his main seat at Forres. When she had asked him why, he had muttered something about the wild, west-coast scenery inspiring his academic studies.
“Lord Lachlan—” Here Galloway paused, his mouth creasing into disapproving lines.
“Foxed again?” Christina said sympathetically. “I shall go up and throw a pitcher of water over him, or if that fails I will shoot him.”
Galloway gave a thin smile. She was joking, but truth was it was a tempting option. Lachlan’s wife, Dulcibella, had left him six months earlier, and he had spent almost the entire time since in an alcoholic stupor. Christina was out of patience with him. There had been faults on both sides, but Lachlan had done nothing to try to heal the breach with his wife, who sat in her castle at Cardross telling anyone who would listen what a brute her husband had been to her.
Except...except that she couldn’t shoot Lachlan, because she had dropped her pistol. She had dropped it when Lucas had kissed her, and until now the memory of that kiss had sent it completely from her mind. She felt a sickening, sinking feeling. Lucas would not have forgotten. She was willing to bet that even now her beautiful engraved brass pistol was in his possession.
It was one more reason to be rid of him. If he dared show his face at Kilmory tomorrow—and somehow she suspected that Lucas Ross would dare a great deal—she would pack him off back to Edinburgh even if she had to put him in a coach herself.
Galloway was waiting, watching her. His eyes looked tired. She wanted to send him to his rooms to rest, but she knew he would refuse. There was always more work to do.
“Any other problems, Galloway?” Christina asked.
“No, ma’am,” the butler said gratefully.
Christina nodded. “You are interviewing for the new footman tomorrow,” she said. “I have had word that one of the candidates, Mr. Lucas Ross, is...unsuitable. I would ask that you do not offer him the job.”
A shade of hauteur came into Galloway’s manner. He stood up a little straighter. “Ma’am?”
Christina knew she was trespassing. The running of the servant’s hall was entirely the business of Galloway and the housekeeper, Mrs. Parmenter. By interfering she was implying that she thought them incompetent. At this rate Galloway would be the next to resign.
“I want to make sure that any new staff will fit in here at Kilmory,” she said carefully. “My father grows ever more eccentric, as you know, and I would not want anyone to upset the balance of his health.”
“His Grace need have nothing to do with a new footman.” Galloway was stiff with outrage at the thought of the duke lowering himself so far. “I am sure that you may trust my judgment in choosing the appropriate candidate, Lady Christina.”
“Of course,” Christina said, sighing. “I beg your pardon, Galloway.” She knew better than to press the matter now, with Galloway already standing on his dignity. Tomorrow she would make the point again and he would listen.
“Mr. Bevan requests a meeting tomorrow morning, ma’am,” Galloway said, referring to the duke’s land agent. “He says that there are a number of issues he needs to discuss with you.”
“I’ll see him at eleven o’clock,” Christina said. “In the study.”
Galloway nodded. The tension had eased from his face. “Thank you, my lady.” He took her cloak and gloves. “I will fetch the supper tray.”
The clock on the landing chimed ten-thirty with a delicate sweetness. They kept country hours at Kilmory Castle, with dinner at six. The duke preferred it. The ritual of the supper tray had been enshrined in family tradition since Christina’s childhood, after which everyone retired early. It gave Christina the perfect opportunity for smuggling business when everyone else was abed.
Christina smoothed the skirts of her velvet gown. She could not go into the drawing room with damp sand on her hem. Gertrude, gimlet eyed and sharp of tongue, would be sure to notice. She should have changed before she went out to meet the gang, but the message had been so urgent that she had not wanted to delay and give the men a chance to do something violent, something they might later regret.
She shuddered. She hated violence, hated the sudden, vicious cruelty of it and the pleasure men seemed to take in it sometimes. All her life she had been caring for people, nurturing them and protecting them, whether it was her younger siblings or the wider family or what was left of the Forres clan. It was the reason she had become involved with the Kilmory smugglers in the first place. She had seen the ruthless exploitation of the revenue officers, imposing exorbitant taxes on families who were already barely scraping a pittance from their lands. Such exploitation infuriated her, and she had been fired with the need to protect them. No one had listened to her conventional protests; she was a woman and women should not meddle in politics and economics, or so she had been told in the politest possible terms when she had written to the government to complain. She had seen that the case was hopeless and only direct action would succeed and so with her usual practicality she had set about organizing the smugglers into a ruthlessly efficient band who could run rings around the excisemen. It was her fault that occasionally these days they could be a little too ruthless.
The drawing room door opened and Gertrude swept out. Small and vigorous, Christina’s sister-in-law gave the impression of attacking anything and anyone who had the misfortune to get in her way. Behind her trailed Christina’s niece, Lady Allegra MacMorlan. Allegra, at eighteen, had all the MacMorlan good looks but drooped with boredom and lack of purpose. Gertrude spoke of marrying her daughter off during the Edinburgh winter season. Allegra showed as little interest in that ambition as she did in anything else. Christina wondered what it was Allegra did feel a passion for. She was sure there must be something.
“There you are!” Gertrude said disagreeably. “You look as though you have been pulled backward through a hedge.” Her sharp gaze traveled over her sister-in-law, itemizing the damage done by the sand, the wind and Lucas’s kisses. “In fact, you look quite absurdly wild, considering that you have only been strolling in the gardens. This is why I never allow Allegra to walk anywhere at all. It is very damaging to the complexion.”
“Very true,” Christina said. “However, I am far too old to pay any consideration to such matters.”
“At your age, the damage is already done,” Gertrude agreed. “Now, I have a task for you. You need to sack the second housemaid. She has been making eyes at Lachlan and, given the parlous state of his marriage to Dulcibella, I do not doubt that with the least encouragement he will run off with her.”
“I’d rather sack Lachlan,” Christina said. “He is a great deal less use than Annie is. Where would I find another housemaid? It is difficult enough to get servants out here in the back of beyond.”
“You have a most inappropriate sense of humor, Christina,” Gertrude said frostily. “I quite despair of you.”
“I will speak to Annie,” Christina said with a sigh. “But I am sure that you are mistaken, Gertrude.”
Gertrude looked contemptuous. “You are as naive as Allegra,” she snapped. “You never see what is going on under your nose.”
“Apparently not,” Christina agreed smoothly. “Would you excuse me, Gertrude? I need to change out of these clothes before supper.”
The rattle of the approaching supper tray sent Gertrude back into the drawing room. Allegra slipped away upstairs ahead of Christina, fading into the shadows at the top of the stairs like a wraith. Christina followed her niece more slowly. At the top she paused beside the statue of Hermes that her father had brought back from his Grand Tour. She barely ever noticed it. All the MacMorlan castles were littered with statuary. Her father was a collector in many ways—works of art, academic papers and classical sculpture. Hermes had been a part of the furniture for as long as Christina could remember, and not a part that she particularly admired. She found herself looking at the statue now, though, comparing the cold marble perfection of the high, slanting cheekbones and the sculpted power of the musculature with Lucas Ross’s living, breathing masculinity.
She felt heat uncurl low in her belly and turned away hastily, aware that Allegra had paused outside her room and was watching her. She was not sure what was showing on her face; hopefully not an expression that her niece would recognize or understand. As the door closed softly behind Allegra, Christina walked slowly past and into her own bedchamber. It looked as old and familiar as ever, yet she felt different, dissatisfied in a way she could not quite pinpoint, as though she was hankering after something she had forgotten she wanted. Once, a long time ago when she was a young girl, she had been wild. Wanton, Gertrude would have called it. No one had known; no one would even believe it to see the staid creature she had become.
Yet meeting Lucas had stirred those desires to life again, wicked, outrageous, delicious desires, desires she had denied herself because they belonged to a time in her life that had concluded now. For a moment she remembered that time and the way it had ended, and she felt the chill sweep through her and she shuddered. She would not open herself up to pain ever again, because next time that pain could destroy her.
CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_a99f652c-fe39-54d7-9a4e-8e160389313f)
THE INTERVIEW WAS progressing very much to Lucas’s satisfaction. Galloway, the butler, seemed quietly impressed by his excellent references, his willingness to work hard and his respectful manners. Mrs. Parmenter, the housekeeper, seemed to admire his powerful physique. Lucas had caught her staring at his calves and hoped it was only to assess how good he would look in formal livery. He was not sure her interest was impersonal, though. Mrs. Parmenter had a gleam in her eyes that was quite at odds with the respectable image of the traditional housekeeper.
There had been a couple of other candidates for the job, but he was convinced that he had the edge over them. Whether he could do all the work was another matter. He had had no idea that the role of footman was so complex. He had thought that all they did was adorn the back of a carriage, looking pretty, and run off with the lady of the house if they got the opportunity. It seemed he was very much mistaken. Fetching the coal, polishing the silver, cleaning boots and shoes, drawing the curtains, helping to serve the dinner—all those tasks would be a part of his job. It sounded fairly tedious but nothing he could not manage if he rose at five in the morning and retired at midnight.
“Are you experienced in folding a napkin into the shape of a water lily?” Mrs. Parmenter inquired.
“I am afraid not, ma’am,” Lucas replied. The sorts of talents he possessed were of absolutely no use to him here. He had a flair for winning at cards, for example, and had made his first fortune at the gaming tables. He had made a second fortune through investment in a shipbuilding company that Jack Rutherford had established. He had other businesses, other investments. He had no skill in folding napkins.
Mrs. Parmenter’s face fell. “But you are accustomed to serving dinner?” she pressed. “You are trained in the correct etiquette?”
“Of course, ma’am,” Lucas said smoothly, in answer to the second question, at least. His etiquette had been learned in his stepfather’s palace, although he had never been the one serving the dinner. In some ways his had been a gilded existence. But the trouble with gilt was that it tended to rub away leaving something ugly beneath.
Galloway shifted in his chair. It seemed that he had heard enough to be satisfied with Lucas’s credentials and was moving on to give him some background on the establishment at Kilmory. Lucas listened attentively.
“We are a small establishment here despite being a ducal household,” Galloway was saying. “Over the past few years His Grace has preferred to make his home here rather than at his main seat in Forres. It is smaller and also—”
“Cozier,” Mrs. Parmenter intervened, shooting the butler a quick glance. “Kilmory is more...comfortable.”
Lucas hoped he did not look as incredulous as he felt. If Kilmory was more comfortable than Forres then Forres must be practically uninhabitable. From what he had seen, half of Kilmory Castle was a ruin and the other half was medieval; a squat, ugly edifice that felt as though it had barely changed for centuries. Scotland had many beautiful castles. This was not one of them. Jack had been right about that.
What Jack had not known, though, was how much of a home Kilmory seemed to be. It had a welcoming warmth about it that was more important than superficial elegance. The room in which they were sitting, for example, probably the second-best drawing room, had charm in the slightly rickety chairs with their faded cushions. There was a vase of flowers bright on the mantel and several magazines and papers tossed carelessly on the table. Lucas read them upside down—the Caledonian Mercury from three weeks before, the Lady’s Monthly Museum, the Edinburgh Review.
He wondered if it was in fact financial considerations that had led the duke to close Forres Castle. Kilmory would be cheaper to run. But that would be at odds with the reputation of the Duke of Forres as the richest peer in Scotland. Even so, it was worth investigation. A man would often pretend to riches when he lacked them, and it would be useful to know the truth of Forres’s financial affairs in case he, too, were involved in the whisky trade.
“It is Lady Christina MacMorlan who runs the estate on behalf of her father,” Mrs. Parmenter said. “In practical terms, she is the head of the household.”
Lady Christina.
Lucas felt a flicker of elemental awareness along his skin. Christina MacMorlan. Was she the woman he had met the previous night? It was becoming increasingly likely. A woman who was capable of running an estate would have all the skill, efficiency and contacts to operate a whisky-smuggling ring. And if Mrs. Parmenter was right, then Lady Christina might not only run Kilmory but she might also have knowledge of what had happened to Peter. Lucas felt his pulse speed up and schooled his expression to polite indifference.
“It is the land agent who runs the estate,” Galloway corrected. “It would not be appropriate for her ladyship to work.”
Mrs. Parmenter gave a snort, quickly smothered. It was quite clear whom she thought did all the hard work at Kilmory. Lucas’s interest in Christina MacMorlan sharpened.
“Speaking of work,” Galloway added, with a repressive glance at the housekeeper, “we would require you to turn your hand to almost any task were you to come to work at Kilmory, Mr. Ross. Some footmen have ideas of what is beneath their station.” His tone made it clear that such militant modern views were quite distasteful to him. “We are too small a staff here to tolerate such vanity.”
“I would be happy to help with any task, Mr. Galloway,” Lucas said.
Galloway nodded. He studied the papers lying on the table in front of him, frowning as though something was troubling him. Lucas was puzzled, but he couldn’t work out what was holding Galloway back.
“Your testimonials are impeccable.” The butler said slowly. “You are entirely suitable for the post.”
Lucas inclined his head. Sidmouth’s clerks had indeed done a good job in concocting a set of references that were strong and convincing without gushing too much.
“Excuse me,” Galloway said abruptly. He gathered up his papers and strode from the room. Lucas caught Mrs. Parmenter’s look. She smiled automatically at him, but there was uneasiness in her eyes. They chatted for a while about Edinburgh, where the housekeeper had relatives, but it was clear that she was distracted. After a couple of minutes she, too, excused herself hurriedly and went out.
Left alone, Lucas waited a moment and then stood up and trod cautiously across to the desk. The drawers were packed with account books for Kilmory going back several years. He did not bother to sift through them. He doubted that Lady Christina kept the recipe for distilling the peat-reek handily in her desk, still less anything that might link her and the whisky gang to Peter’s death. If he was caught poking around the house at this stage it would look as though he was a thief and he would be thrown out.
He returned to his seat, stretching his long legs out in front of him, sitting back and allowing himself to appreciate the room’s warmth and comfort. It felt very unlike the town house he possessed in Edinburgh. That was no more than a set of rooms, expensive rooms, elegant rooms, but with no character or heart. The very untidiness and lived-in quality of Kilmory attracted him, though he felt disconcerted to realize it. He had never in his life wanted somewhere that was more than simply a roof over his head.
Ten minutes passed. A suspicion started to seed itself in Lucas’s mind. He was almost certain that Lady Christina MacMorlan was a step ahead of him. She had warned him off the previous night, but he suspected that she had also taken the precaution of warning Galloway not to employ him.
He got up and crossed quietly to the door. Mrs. Parmenter had left it ajar and Lucas pressed his ear to the gap. He could hear the faint sound of voices out in the hall. Galloway was speaking, urgent, agitated.
“Lady Christina, I must protest. There is nothing in Mr. Ross’s application to suggest that he would be unsuitable for the job. On the contrary, he seems precisely the man we are looking for. I do not understand your objections, ma’am. You must see that I am in a dilemma—”
“I understand very well the difficulties of attracting suitable staff to Kilmory.” Another voice, female, crisp, edged with authority. Lucas tried to work out if this was the woman from the previous night. He strained closer to the open door.
“In this instance I must ask you to accept my assurance, Galloway,” he heard Lady Christina say. “I do not want Mr. Ross employed at Kilmory. I am sorry if that poses problems for you. Thomas Wallace will do the job just as well and his family needs the money. We must let Mr. Ross go.”
The dust motes stirred, dancing in the shaft of sunlight from the window. Lucas stepped back hastily from the door as someone walked past. He caught a quick flash of damson muslin and a faint breath of perfume. It was the scent of bluebells. Recognition slammed through him and he only just managed not to push open the door and confront her.
By the time that Galloway and Mrs. Parmenter reentered the room, he had resumed his seat and turned a blandly innocent face toward them.
Galloway closed the door with a snap. Color high, he held out a hand to shake Lucas’s. “Thank you, Mr. Ross,” he said. “That will be all.”
“Oh,” Lucas said. Then, feigning a note of perplexity, “I was hoping to hear the outcome of my interview immediately...” He broke off. Galloway was looking as stiff as an old soldier. Mrs. Parmenter looked flustered and upset.
“Would you like me to wait for word at the Kilmory Inn?” Lucas asked.
“That won’t be necessary, Mr. Ross.” Galloway was shepherding him toward the door. “Thank you for your application. We are sorry that you have not been successful and we wish you well in the future.” He sounded as though the words were stuck in his throat.
Score two to Lady Christina MacMorlan. Lucas’s lips twisted into a rueful smile. She had trounced him last night and now she thought she was rid of him for good. He needed to raise his game.
Galloway escorted him out onto the front steps with the air of a man seeing him safely off the premises. It was a glorious early-summer day, the sky a radiant, cloudless blue, the wind from the sea carrying a hint of salt and with it the soapy scent of gorse. Across Kilmory’s beautiful sweep of lawn, Lucas could see three figures standing in the shade of a vast cedar tree. One, gray-haired, slight and leaning heavily on a stick, he thought must be the Duke of Forres himself. He looked small, diminished in some way by his age. Lucas could see why it was his daughter who had a firm hand on the running of the estate.
The other two figures were women, one fair and slender, very young, the other woman older, tall and elegant in a gown of damson muslin. She had seen him and there was an air of sudden stillness about her as though she was holding her breath.
Lucas glanced at Galloway, who was waiting with an attitude of polite impatience to close the door behind him.
Without hesitation he set off across the broad swathe of grass to confront Lady Christina MacMorlan. Since he had nothing to lose, he might as well try blackmail.
CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_2956482d-1ec2-5ad6-b896-139e117c4add)
“WHO THE DEVIL is that?” Allegra asked.
Christina had been listening vaguely to her father’s plans for a twenty-foot-high Italianate fountain in the middle of the lawn whilst simultaneously wondering what she might spare from the dairy to take on her visit to Mrs. McAlpine in the village that afternoon. The poor woman had just given birth to her sixth child—all boys—and her husband had died in a storm that had taken his fishing boat only eight weeks before. When Allegra stopped walking abruptly and stood staring across the grass toward the castle entrance, she practically tripped over her.
“Language, Allegra,” Christina said automatically. She had known that having Lachlan around with his blunt conversation would be a bad influence. Gertrude would have the vapors if she heard her daughter speaking like an Edinburgh dandy. And that was another problem; Christina had no idea what she was going to do with Lachlan. He needed a swift kick up the backside to send him back to his wife instead of sulking here at Kilmory.
“Ladies do not use that phrase,” she said. “It is shockingly vulgar.”
“They use it when they see a sight like that,” Allegra said. “Who is he?”
Following her niece’s pointing finger, another sin against etiquette that Christina simply did not have the energy to correct, she saw the tall figure of a man framed in the castle doorway.
Lucas Ross.
Her heart began to race. Her breath felt tight in her chest. Suddenly the sun was too hot and too bright.
“Damnation,” she said involuntarily.
Allegra giggled. “Aunt Christina! How shockingly vulgar.”
“Sometimes,” Christina said, “ladylike language simply isn’t forceful enough to express one’s feeling.”
And staring at a man might also be improper, she thought, but there were times when it was impossible to resist. No man had the right to be as indecently handsome as Lucas Ross.
In the half-light of the smugglers’ cave the night before, Lucas had looked spectacular enough with his strongly marked black brows, his firm cleft chin and tumbled black hair. There was something about him, an air of arrogant distinction that was innate but powerful, setting him apart from most other men. He had height and a broad-shouldered physique that exuded masculinity of the type Christina had never come across in the airless ballrooms or rarefied libraries of Edinburgh’s academia. Her sisters’ husbands both had something of that charisma and intensity. Christina remembered that she had looked at Lucy and Mairi and felt more than a little jealous of them. But now she thought that such ruthlessness, such uncompromising strength in a man would be too much to handle.
It seemed ludicrous that Lucas Ross was a servant. He was too tough, too in control to be at the beck and call of others. She pictured him more as a soldier, or a sailor, an adventurer, someone who gave orders rather than took them. He was a man born to lead, not follow. But she was being fanciful. A man could not choose his station in life, nor could he necessarily change it.
A shiver skittered down her spine. Lucas had descended the castle steps and was striding across the lawn toward them. He looked very purposeful, and she suddenly felt a desperate urge to run away. It was ridiculous, but even so the panic clogged her throat. He had not followed her instructions from the previous night. That should have told her something about the man he was and she should have thought twice before refusing to allow Galloway to appoint him.
Well, it was done now, and Lucas would simply have to accept it. She was the Duke of Forres’s daughter and she did not expect to be confronted by a servant or be required to justify her decisions. All the same, as Lucas approached the three of them, the breath caught in her throat and she had to stop herself from pressing a hand against her bodice where her heart was tripping crazily, as though she had run too far, too fast.
Suddenly Lucas was standing directly in front of her. His physical presence was so powerful that Christina took a step back even though there was nothing remotely threatening in his manner. Their eyes met. His were so brown they were almost black, dark as a winter’s night beneath those straight black brows, his expression impossible to read. The rest of his face was equally daunting. There was no warmth or softness in it. It was all hard angles and darkness. He held Christina’s gaze; she tried to look away and found that she could not. She was floored by the same physical awareness, fiercely intense, that had possessed her the previous night.
Then it was over, as though it had never been, and he bowed most elegantly.
“Lady Christina?” he said. His tone was deferential, in contradiction to the expression in his eyes, which was anything but respectful. “My name is Lucas Ross. I do not believe we have met, unless you have the advantage of me....” He let the words hang for a moment and Christina’s heart gave a wayward thump.
He had recognized her. He knew she was the woman he had kissed the previous night.
She straightened her spine. “No,” she said coldly. “I have not had that pleasure, Mr. Ross.”
A spark of amusement gleamed in Lucas’s eyes as though he was remembering just how pleasurable it had been, how she had melted in his arms, her lips opening beneath his as he had kissed her with heat and skill and passion. She felt a flash of that same sensual heat low in her belly. Damn him. The only thing she could do now was to act the aristocratic lady, disdainful, dismissive—even if cold was the very last thing she was feeling.
“This is very irregular,” she said. “In what way may I help you, Mr. Ross?”
Lucas smiled, quick, appreciative. It transformed his whole face, giving it warmth for one brief moment.
“I applied for the footman’s post,” he said. “Unfortunately my application was not successful. I wondered if you would be good enough as to explain why?”
“The appointment of servants is Mr. Galloway’s job, Mr. Ross,” Christina said. “You would need to apply to him for an explanation. Now if you will excuse me—”
“But you were the one who refused to offer me the post,” Lucas said. “I heard you tell Mr. Galloway not to appoint me.”
There was a sharp silence, during which Christina ran through any number of unladylike epithets in her head. She had not realized that they had been overheard.
“I am sorry, Mr. Ross,” she said eventually. “I am not in the habit of explaining my decisions to anyone.”
The quizzical lift of Lucas’s brows was very close to mockery. “I see,” he said, and Christina blushed to realize quite how arrogant she had sounded. “But how am I to improve if you will not tell me the areas in which I am lacking?”
Galloway came puffing up at that moment. “Mr. Ross! How dare you approach Lady Christina in such a ramshackle manner?”
“I meant no disrespect,” Lucas Ross said. His gaze had not moved from Christina, and she felt her face heat. “I merely asked to know the reasons why my application was rejected. Do I not deserve that?” He spoke directly to Christina so that only she could see the hidden amusement in his eyes. She felt trapped, flustered. Lucas knew perfectly well why she had rejected him and she had a disturbing feeling that unless she changed her mind he would be quite prepared to share the reason with everyone. Allegra was looking from one to the other with speculation. Even the duke was looking mildly interested. As for Galloway, he was avid to know her reasons since she had refused to give him any.
She was not sure which was worse, the fact that Lucas could expose her as a whisky smuggler or the fact that he could disclose that the previous night he had tumbled her in the heather. The first might land her in jail and the second would ruin her reputation.
She was trapped.
“I expect,” Allegra drawled, unexpectedly coming to her rescue, “that Aunt Christina rejected your application because you are too handsome, Mr. Ross.” Her blue MacMorlan gaze was drifting over Lucas with undisguised appreciation. “My poor aunt has to consider the smooth running of the household, you know. Your looks would cause havoc below stairs and scandal above.”
“Allegra!” Christina snapped, torn between relief and embarrassment at her niece’s intervention.
“What?” There was a hint of childish petulance in the way that Allegra shrugged one slender shoulder. “You know it’s true.”
Lucas smiled easily. He addressed Christina rather than Allegra. “It has always been a terrible disadvantage to me to look like this, I confess.”
Christina was almost tempted into an answering smile by his dry tone. “I am sure that your plight garners a great deal of sympathy, Mr. Ross,” she said, equally drily. “It must be a terrible burden to be cursed with such good looks.”
Appreciation sparked in Lucas’s eyes. “Oh, it is. But I scarcely think that is the reason you dismissed me, Lady Christina. Do tell us your real explanation or I shall be obliged to speculate.”
Christina took a deep breath. That was a clear threat and she was not going to be intimidated. Lucas Ross needed to understand that he could not expect to blackmail her into giving him a job.
“I think that would be a mistake, Mr. Ross,” she said. “Think carefully before you say something you might regret.”
Lucas’s eyes danced, daring her to call his bluff. “Are you afraid of the truth, Lady Christina? Do you not want it to come out?”
The man was a scoundrel. He deserved all that was coming to him.
“Well,” Christina said, injecting what she hoped was sincere regret into her tone, “I was thinking only of protecting your reputation, Mr. Ross, but as you are so monstrous persistent I can see that nothing but the truth will suffice.” She took a deep breath. “I am afraid that there was a problem with one of your references.”
She could see that Lucas had not been expecting this. A shade of wariness had come into his expression. Good. He was far too sure of himself.
“I was hoping not to have to raise this,” Christina said, warming to her theme. “I imagine it is an uncomfortable topic for you, Mr. Ross....” She risked another glance at Lucas and saw that he was watching her with so much wicked amusement in those dark eyes now that she almost forgot what she was saying.
“On the contrary, Lady Christina,” he murmured, “you find me positively agog to hear what you have to say.”
“I am a little acquainted with one of your previous employers, Sir Geoffrey MacIntyre,” Christina said. “Your reference from him was most generous—positively glowing. However—” she gave Lucas a look of limpid innocence “—I understood from him when we met last winter in Edinburgh that he had in fact sacked his footman for gross impropriety. I am therefore obliged to doubt the veracity of your references, Mr. Ross.”
For a second Lucas looked completely taken aback and it gave her the most immense satisfaction. Then his lips twitched. “I do believe you are accusing me of faking my testimonials,” he said.
“I would do nothing so crude as to accuse you of fraud,” Christina corrected. “I merely point out that this raised some concerns in my mind.”
“What sort of impropriety?” Allegra piped up. She was looking enthralled. “Did you run off with Lady MacIntyre, Mr. Ross? How wicked of you!”
“I am sure that Lady Christina will tell us precisely what impropriety I have committed,” Lucas murmured. His gaze challenged her. “Well, Lady Christina?”
“I am afraid it was financial impropriety,” Christina said solemnly. “I am sorry, Mr. Ross—” She flicked him a sympathetic look. “I imagine this is very difficult for you.”
“It is not what I expected, certainly,” Lucas said. “However I am afraid there has been a misunderstanding. I have never been accused of financial impropriety in my life. Perhaps you have confused me with another of Sir Geoffrey’s footmen?”
“I doubt I could ever confuse you with anyone, Mr. Ross,” Christina said, with perfect truth. “You have made sure of that.”
Again she saw that flash of amusement in his eyes. “I am flattered to think so,” he said.
“You should not be flattered,” Christina said. “I hope you will understand, however, that no amount of...persuasion...will convince me to change my mind.”
Their eyes met, cool blue and unreadable black. Christina could feel her heart racing. Then Lucas inclined his head. “I apologize,” he said. “It was a misjudgment on my part.” His tone had changed. It was respectful, practical. “I can offer other testimonials. The Duchess of Strathspey will vouch for me. She knows me well and will assure you of my honesty.”
Christina raised her brows. “Are you giving me orders now, Mr. Ross?”
Lucas smiled again. It was difficult to resist that smile. It was so wicked it made her feel quite hot all over.
“Merely a suggestion,” he murmured.
Then, unexpectedly, the duke spoke. Christina had almost forgotten that he was there. He had been staring vacantly out across the gardens as though his mind had been fixed on his latest academic project or ridiculous architectural design, but now his pale blue gaze swung back to focus on her. He smiled benignly.
“Hemmings and Grant need help in the gardens, my dear. Some sort of assistant, an under gardener, what?” He turned to Lucas. “You’d be ideal, young fellow. Since my daughter don’t seem to want you in the house, you’d be better off outside.”
“Papa!” Christina was mortified, torn between fury that her father was undermining her and embarrassment that he made Lucas sound of no more account than the horses in the stables.
“Thank you, Your Grace.” Lucas accepted swiftly, undermining her further. “I would be delighted to accept.”
“Good, good,” the duke said absentmindedly. “You’ll find Hemmings in the hothouses. He’ll tell you what to do.”
“Papa,” Christina said again. “You cannot simply appoint Mr. Ross as under gardener on a whim!”
The duke turned his pale blue myopic eyes on her. “Why not? It’s my garden.” He sounded like a spoiled child.
Christina repressed another sharp retort. It was only her father’s estate when he decided on impulse that he wanted to do something. The rest of the time, when he was closeted with his academic papers, it was very much her responsibility.
“I know that both Mr. Hemmings and Mr. Grant are elderly and need some assistance in the gardens,” she said carefully. “But Mr. Ross applied for a job as a footman. He is not qualified—”
“He looks qualified to me,” the duke said irritably. “How difficult can it be?”
“I am most grateful, Your Grace,” Lucas said, ignoring Christina’s fierce frown. “I am very eager to acquire a job at Kilmory and am happy to take whatever is on offer.”
“Splendid, splendid,” the duke said, beaming again. He slapped Lucas on the shoulder and strolled off toward the house.
Christina shut her mouth with a snap. She could see Lucas’s lips twitching as he tried not to laugh. She was neatly outmaneuvered.
“Well, then,” she said, masking her irritation. “As the duke quite rightly said, you will find Mr. Hemmings in the glasshouse, Mr. Ross. He will give you instructions on your work and find you a place to live. The outdoor servants have accommodation in the stables cottages, but they take their meals in the servants’ hall.” She waved a dismissive hand. “Mr. Galloway can advise you on anything else you need to know. Galloway—” she turned to the butler “—pray send to Strathspey Castle to request a reference for Mr. Ross from the Duchess of Strathspey.”
“Ma’am.” The butler bowed, stiff and proper again. His tightly pursed expression suggested that he absolutely deplored this turn of events. Christina shared his feelings but she knew there was no point in objecting. The duke liked to think that he was head of the household and could be very stubborn when contradicted.
“Thank you, my lady,” Lucas said. “Mr. Galloway.”
“How diverting this has been,” Allegra said. “Welcome to Kilmory, Mr. Ross.”
“Allegra,” Christina said, her patience hanging by the thinnest thread, “is it not time for your pianoforte practice? Mr. Ross—” she turned to Lucas “—a word, if you please.”
Allegra gave an exaggerated sigh and strolled off across the grass with one last, provocative glance over her shoulder at Lucas, who ignored her. His gaze was fixed firmly on Christina. She had never in her life been the focus of so much masculine attention. It unnerved her; her mouth dried.
“More mutual blackmail, Lady Christina?” Lucas asked lazily, when everyone was safely out of earshot. His voice was low and intimate. “Financial irregularities...most imaginative. I do congratulate you.”
“Let me offer you some advice, Mr. Ross,” Christina said briskly. “Last night I gave advice and you chose to ignore it. This time I suggest you think very carefully before you do the same. If you do not wish your time at Kilmory to be cut short, I counsel you not to put a foot wrong. You will behave with absolute decorum. Is that clear?”
“As crystal,” Lucas said.
“You will not speak of last night,” Christina continued.
“What aspect of last night?” Lucas queried.
“Any aspect of it,” Christina said shortly. “We will never mention it again. And,” she added, “I would like my pistol back, if you please.”
“Of course, ma’am,” Lucas said.
“Thank you,” Christina said. “Good day to you, Mr. Ross.”
She did not look back as she walked across the lawn to the house but she was certain that Lucas was watching her.
Trouble, trouble, trouble.
She did not need a crystal ball to see that Lucas Ross was very bad news indeed. She was not entirely sure what he was—other than dangerous—but she had a bad feeling that she was going to find out.
* * *
LUCAS RELEASED THE breath he had been holding in a long, silent sigh.
So that was what his lady smuggler looked like. He had known from the moment she had walked past him in the castle that she was the woman he had met the previous night. As soon as he was close to her, the recognition, the awareness between them, snapped into life.
He watched Christina walk away across the lawn. She did not look back. Lucas grinned. Of course she did not, although he was willing to wager that she burned to turn around and check if he was watching her.
He was. He could not take his eyes off her. He watched her all the way to the house. She did not hurry, but she did tilt her parasol back to block his view of her face. He would swear that was deliberate and nothing to do with the angle of the sun. The parasol was made of spotted damson muslin and trimmed with lace to match her gown. It looked frivolous but she was not a frivolous woman. Everything about her, from her height to her authoritative manner spoke of cool, calm competence.
He estimated that she was about a half dozen years older than he, not a grandmother, but not a debutante, either. He could see now why people might overlook her, because most people judged on appearance and Christina MacMorlan did nothing to enhance hers. Her hair was shades of brown, coiled into a no-nonsense bun in the nape of her neck. She dressed plainly. A man could make the mistake of thinking her features were unremarkable. Yet Lucas could see they were not. Her skin was flawless, pale cream and pink rose, a true Scottish complexion, scattered with endearing freckles. Her blue eyes had a sleepy gaze that was both misleading and sensual. When she had looked him in the eyes he had felt the impact like a punch through his whole body. But it was her mouth that was so potent, full and lush, reminding Lucas of her kisses. He shifted slightly. He found Christina MacMorlan ridiculously seductive and he was quite at a loss as to why that should be the case. But it might be useful. Christina’s was quite evidently the hand that steered the Kilmory estate whilst her father dabbled in whatever outlandish project took his fancy on any particular day. She was also the leader of the whisky smugglers, and he was convinced now that they had had a direct involvement in Peter’s death.
Over to the west, beyond the clipped hedges of the parterre, he could see the Duke of Forres wandering through the rose garden. He appeared to be talking to the plants, which was a curious thing to do. Lucas watched as the duke strolled over to the sundial in the middle of the garden and leaned over to check the time. It was quite clear that the man was an eccentric, in a world of his own. Lucas thought it unlikely that the duke was aware of anything that went on in his household, let alone that his eldest daughter ran a smuggling gang.
He had been lucky that the duke had offered him the job. Lady Christina certainly would not have yielded to his blackmail. The minute he had applied a little pressure she had come back with plenty more of her own. It was an unfortunate coincidence that Sidmouth’s clerk had given him Sir Geoffrey MacIntyre as a reference when Lady Christina was acquainted with the man. But actually he doubted everything that Christina had said and suspected she had made up the entire tale of financial impropriety simply to be rid of him.
His lips twisted in wry appreciation. It would not do to underestimate Lady Christina MacMorlan. She was strong, determined and clever, more than a match for him.
She would be entirely capable of covering up a murder.
He had to remember that and not let the fierce attraction he had to Christina MacMorlan cloud his judgment.
He watched the front door close behind her. He was forgotten. A small smile touched his lips at the lordly way in which the duke’s daughter had dismissed him. It would be useful if she considered him beneath her notice. Servants were meant to be invisible; he could go about his investigation whilst remaining unobserved.
Beyond the tall pine trees that bordered the terrace he could see the corner of a building and the glitter of the sun on long glass windows. That must be the hothouse where he would find Hemmings, the head gardener. Being outside, laboring in a physical job was far preferable to him than being indoors, catering to the whims of the nobility. Lucas straightened and squared his shoulders. It was time he got to work.
CHAPTER FIVE (#ulink_24220717-9133-520e-ae9e-4ea5c0c901ca)
DAMNATION.
Christina loved her father, but there were times when she could happily wring his neck, and this was one of them. She closed the door of her private parlor behind her with exaggerated calm and sank down into her favorite armchair. For a moment she closed her eyes and breathed deeply, inhaling the scents of wax polish and roses mingled with the faint smell of dust and the ashes in the grate. It was quiet, reassuring. For a little while she felt soothed, comfort flowing through her and easing her tense muscles. Then she remembered Lucas’s smile—and the fact that he was now a member of the staff at Kilmory Castle, which was precisely the outcome she had not wanted.
She opened her eyes and blinked, rubbing her forehead where the beginnings of a headache stirred. She told herself that it did not matter; Lucas was clearly very keen to have a job at Kilmory. He would do nothing to put that at risk.
She was a fool to think he’d risk his future by kissing her again. Lucas Ross was a great deal younger than she was and sinfully handsome. Of course he would not be attracted to an old maid. Their passionate encounter the night before had been driven by a wild relief and the vivid excitement of being alive. Now, in the cold light of day, everything was different, and she should welcome that because lust, passion, held no place in her life.
There were no mirrors in her parlor. In fact, when they had moved to Kilmory Castle, she had removed several of the ancient speckled pier glasses from the walls because she did not want to see her reflection forever staring back at her. She knew what she looked like: a thirty-three-year-old spinster in elegant but not particularly modish gowns whose hair was neither auburn nor brown nor blond but some sort of mixture of all three, whose eyes were pale blue and fanned by fine lines that grew less fine and more deep as the years passed, whose complexion had lost its youthful sparkle and whose chin was already showing signs of sagging. In fact, everything was showing signs of sagging, as it did with age. She had no illusions, and before the previous night she had had no desire to look any different. Her appearance had been almost irrelevant to her. Her sisters were the beautiful ones.
Now, though, Lucas’s youth and vitality made her keenly aware of the passing years. She felt old and faded, and ashamed of feeling so fierce an attraction to him. She knew that her late mother’s dearest friend, Lady Kenton, would laugh at her for such scruples. Lady Kenton firmly believed that a view was there to be admired. But Christina did not want to feel anything for Lucas. She did not want to feel anything for any man. It was too risky. She, who took risks with her life and her personal safety every day when it came to outwitting the revenue officers, was too scared to risk her heart again.
A politely deferential knock at the door roused her. It must be Mr. Bevan, the land agent, early for their meeting. But before Christina could call him in, the door opened and Galloway poked his head in.
“I beg your pardon, ma’am, but Mr. Eyre is here to see you.”
Christina felt a sharp stab of alarm. Mr. Eyre was the exciseman, the government’s tax collector, who hounded the local families mercilessly for every last penny they owed. Possessed of a zealous desire to drain every drop of revenue from Kilmory’s farmers and villagers, he had threatened to arrest the illegal whisky distillers and see them hang.
“Please tell Mr. Eyre that I have an appointment in ten minutes and cannot spare him the time—” she began, only for Eyre to shoulder his way past Galloway and barge into the room.
“This won’t take long, Lady Christina.” He was a big man, florid, with small gray eyes in a fleshy face. His gaze darted about the room as though checking to see that she had not concealed an illegal whisky still beneath the table. “Still consorting with criminals and smugglers, I hear.”
“I beg your pardon?” Christina’s voice dripped ice.
Eyre, however, was not a man to be intimidated. He thrust his hands into his pockets and rocked back on his heels, smiling. “I saw you entering Mrs. Keen’s cottage yesterday. Her son was arrested for illegal distilling back last year—”
“Which is one of the reasons why I visit her.” Christina did not trouble to hide her dislike. “She is an elderly woman, in poor health, alone in the world, who has little income and who has been persecuted unforgivably by the authorities.”
Eyre snapped his fingers. “She should not have harbored a known criminal, then.”
Christina could feel her temper rising. She knew that Eyre deliberately set out to anger her; he had been an enemy ever since she had written to Lord Sidmouth to complain about his methods and his corruption. It was always a struggle not to rise to his provocation.
“Was there a point to your visit, Mr. Eyre?” she inquired politely.
“Indeed.” The excise officer’s eyes gleamed. “I am here to introduce my nephew, Richard Bryson, my sister’s boy, who has come to help me hunt down the malefactors who plague our area. I am confident that with his help and the other resources granted to me by Lord Sidmouth, we shall soon have the Kilmory Gang behind bars.”
“How gratifying for you,” Christina said. She had not seen the younger man who was hovering in his uncle’s shadow, but now he came forward into the room and made a bow.
“At your service, Lady Christina.”
This was a very different man from his uncle. He was young, surely no more than twenty, slight and fair, with dreamy brown eyes and the hands of a musician. His bow was elegant; he could have stepped from an Edinburgh drawing room. His uncle was looking at him with ill-concealed contempt. Christina wondered how on earth the two of them could possibly work together and why a man like Richard Bryson would want to take on the dirty task of the excise officers. But perhaps he had no choice. She thought of Lucas Ross again and how inappropriate it was that he was a servant. A man had to earn a living, no matter how incongruous it might seem or how ill suited to it he might be.
“I wish you success in your career, Mr. Bryson,” she said. She gave his uncle a cool smile. “If you will excuse me...”
As Galloway ushered the gentlemen out, she wondered at Eyre. There was not a courteous bone in his body. His visit had been for quite another purpose, to warn her, perhaps, of his intent to increase his efforts at trapping the whisky smugglers. He suspected her of more than sympathy toward the smuggling gang.
Christina shivered. His visit had been a threat. Of that there was no doubt. She was going to have to be very careful indeed.
* * *
THE SUMMER LIGHT was fading as Lucas left the servants’ hall to stroll back to his tiny cottage in the castle grounds. Dinner had been delicious, a rich lamb stew with dumplings that had been just what he had needed after working up an appetite digging over the flower beds. He had been at Kilmory for three days and already he was settling in to the routine of his work. It was physically hard but not challenging in other ways; he simply had to keep his head down, watch, listen and not put a foot out of line.
The servants were wary of him. A stranger who looked and sounded as though he should be serving tea in an Edinburgh drawing room rather than digging up root crops in the Highlands was bound to be treated carefully. Word had gone round of his failure to obtain the footman’s post—a boy called Thomas Wallace looking shiny and scrubbed in his new livery was proudly sitting in the footman’s chair. There was a whiff of uncertainty about Lucas’s background that he chose not explain, though the reference from the Duchess of Strathspey that had arrived that afternoon had helped to soothe any concerns. Galloway at least was now treating him as though he was less likely to steal the silver.
Lucas was quite happy for people to think him dour and uncommunicative, though he had stayed to share the pot of tea after dinner when jackets were loosened and conversation warmed up a little. From this he had learned something of the family, which, whilst not directly useful to his work, was still interesting. Angus, the heir to the dukedom, was generally disliked as a bully. His wife, Gertrude, was actively hated for her interfering ways. Everyone shook their heads when Lachlan’s name was mentioned. He had a problem with drink, Lucas heard, and also with his wife, a she-devil called Dulcibella who held the purse strings and was shriller than a Glasgow costermonger. Mention of the duke made them smile with exasperation. But Christina was loved. Their affection for her was simple and powerful and it took Lucas aback. As he strolled back through the castle grounds he wondered what Christina had done to earn their loyalty.
When he reached the relative privacy of the gardeners’ cottages he took from his pocket the letter that Galloway had passed to him after dinner.
“From the Duchess of Strathspey herself,” Galloway had said, with a mixture of respect and disapproval, as though Lucas should have been far too lowly for a duchess to take notice of him.
Lucas let himself inside and unfolded the letter to read. He did not light a lamp; instead, he tilted it to catch the last flare of twilight.
“Lucas,” his aunt had written in her forthright manner.
What on earth is going on? I have written you a glowing reference—naturally—but would appreciate some sort of explanation of your new interest in horticulture. Have you lost all your money? Are you really working as an under gardener to the Duke of Forres? Could you not do better than that? Please try to remember you are my nephew—and a prince, for that matter—and aim a little higher.
She had signed off with her usual strong black flourish.
Lucas grinned. He had known that his aunt would not let him down. He knew she was no snob, either. And he did owe her an explanation.
He took out a pencil from his pocket and scrawled back:
Thank you, ma’am. I am in your debt, as always. Business brings me to Kilmory, but I find it more useful for the time being to keep that business a secret, hence the role of gardener. I can only hope that I do not inadvertently kill off the entire ducal flower garden in the process.
He signed it and placed it under the chipped enamel jug on the dresser. Tomorrow he would contrive an errand to Kilmory Village and find a carter to take it to Strathspey. He did not want to send it from the castle. That was too dangerous.
He went through to the inner of the cottage’s two rooms and threw himself down on the narrow iron bedstead. His aunt was no fool; she had known of Peter’s death and she would work out quickly enough what he was doing at Kilmory. She would not approve. He doubted she would give him away, but no doubt like Jack Rutherford she would also think it a fool’s errand, that because of his grief he was unable to accept Peter’s death and let the matter go.
The duchess would laugh to see him now, he thought as he stared up at the pallor of the whitewashed ceiling. His surroundings were neither princely nor palatial, two rooms, this one with a wooden chest and a heather-stuffed mattress and the other with a table, two chairs, a dresser and a few other sticks of furniture. Outside there was a stone sink for washing. It was a far cry indeed from his grandfather’s palace. Still, it was clean and dry. Someone had made nice curtains and matching patchwork cushions that sat rather daintily on the upright chairs. There were a couple of rag rugs on the flagstone floor. Lucas wondered who had gone to the trouble of furnishing the place, making it appear as though they cared enough for their servants to see them comfortable.
He thought of Christina MacMorlan. He had promised Jack that he would not involve her in this business but that was before he had learned that she was already involved up to her neck. And she had something he needed. Information.
He felt no stirring of conscience. Conscience was something that rarely troubled him. In general he was comfortable with the decisions he made and this was no exception.
It would not hurt to take advantage of Lady Christina’s attraction to him. She had been all that was starchy and proper on the surface, but even so she had not been quite able to hide the fact that she was drawn to him. That was good; he would exploit that attraction to learn what he could. He would use her.
He slept well that night.
CHAPTER SIX (#ulink_11743b3e-c16b-54e4-bf0a-ec81a4d3e074)
“I SAY,” LADY Allegra MacMorlan drawled, propping herself against the stone window embrasure in the parlor and gazing out at the garden, “what an absolutely splendid view.”
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Nicola Cornick
He will expose her as the criminal he seeks, or seduce her as the woman he desires…An old maid—that's all Lady Christina McMorlan, daughter to the Duke of Forres, is to society now that she's past thirty. She hosts her father's parties and cares for her siblings, knowing she'll never have her own home and family.She has no time to pine, however. By night, she's The Lady, head of a notorious whiskey-smuggling gang that supports her impoverished clan. They're always one step ahead of the revenue man - until Lucas Black shows up.Rejecting his title and the proper society that disparaged his mother, Lucas earns his living running a successful gambling house. He's also a spy, charged with bringing down the Forres Gang. He thinks The Lady's just a bored society spinster. She thinks he's a lost child playing at rebellion.And when the truth comes out, it's not just their love on the line…
He will expose her as the criminal he seeks, or seduce her as the woman he desires…
An old maid—that’s all Lady Christina McMorlan, daughter to the Duke of Forres, is to society now that she’s past thirty. She hosts her father’s parties and cares for her siblings, knowing she’ll never have her own home and family. She has no time to pine, however. By night, she’s The Lady, head of a notorious whiskey-smuggling gang that supports her impoverished clan. They’re always one step ahead of the revenue man—until Lucas Black shows up.
Rejecting his title and the proper society that disparaged his mother, Lucas earns his living running a successful gambling house. He’s also a spy, charged with bringing down the Forres Gang. He thinks The Lady’s just a bored society spinster. She thinks he’s a lost child playing at rebellion. And when the truth comes out, it’s not just their love on the line….
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Claimed by theLaird
Nicola Cornick
www.mirabooks.co.uk (http://www.mirabooks.co.uk)
Dear Reader, (#ulink_3e34aac2-bbcc-5b92-87ee-b20a596de4f3)
Welcome to Claimed by the Laird, Book Three in the Scottish Brides series! This is Christina’s story. Christina has always been in the shadow of her younger sisters, but now she is swept up into a shocking upstairs-downstairs whirlwind romance—with the new footman at Kilmory Castle!
Lucas Ross is a very unusual footman indeed. Tall, dark and handsome, Lucas is surely too commanding to be a servant, and his affair with Lady Christina MacMorlan is bound to cause scandal. But Lucas has other, secret reasons for being at Kilmory and, when they are revealed, can their love survive the ensuing disgrace?
Like the other books in the Scottish Brides series, Claimed by the Laird is inspired by real-life events. I thoroughly enjoyed researching the background of whisky smuggling in the Scottish Highlands!
I have loved writing all the books in this series and would like to thank all my readers very much for their wonderful support through so many writing years.
Happy reading!
To Andrew, my own hero,
who was there at the beginning.
With my thanks and all my love.
Contents
Cover (#u2608b1ab-6d27-5c81-b6a0-c8152a9e4f40)
Back Cover Text (#uc63397d8-ec16-5701-a39b-f0b2c334b0d3)
Praise (#u12fcfa6b-0283-535d-bfbe-0bb497fb9b22)
Dear Reader (#ue75c06a9-71e3-5b75-98da-50791898a886)
Dedication (#u9fcd8682-3116-5bd4-9bf7-c08bb1ef7ef5)
PROLOGUE (#uad6c08c9-7c17-5cce-a2ef-76b6e1a844b7)
CHAPTER ONE (#ue83d2327-5cb1-57d3-8313-858cdc9d10e7)
CHAPTER TWO (#udefa468b-2f6f-54f8-940f-803b79e773b9)
CHAPTER THREE (#uacfa6970-0d67-5d40-a459-586954087612)
CHAPTER FOUR (#uba5bb4f0-776f-59ff-8b30-61de7aaf03bd)
CHAPTER FIVE (#u5a421d9d-9b7e-5776-8b53-ee14a162d81c)
CHAPTER SIX (#uc34a2786-fd62-5824-9524-82d95bbdf1da)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FOURTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIFTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIXTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
PROLOGUE (#ulink_e6913c19-f54f-56fe-9e2c-9c300ef0b44f)
Edinburgh, April 1817
“I DON’T KNOW why I am helping you,” Jack Rutherford said.
Lucas Black laughed. “Because my club serves the best brandy in Edinburgh?” He topped up his friend’s glass.
“It does,” Jack allowed. “But that isn’t the reason.”
“Because you owe me money?”
The cards lay abandoned on the cherrywood table between them. This was one of the club’s private rooms and empty but for the two of them. Beyond the door lay the gambling hell’s main salon, packed tonight with a clientele representing the richest men in Edinburgh society. Lucas cared nothing for a man’s antecedents, but he did care that his guests could pay their debts. He was in a position to be selective. An invitation to The Chequers was one of the most sought-after privileges in Scottish society.
Jack took out his pocketbook. “Twenty-five guineas, wasn’t it?” he said.
Lucas waved the debt away. “I’d rather have your help.”
His friend was frowning, watching the brandy swirl in his glass. He did not reply.
“A conflict of loyalties?” Lucas asked. He and Jack were business partners; they had helped each other out of more difficult situations than Lucas could remember. Which made it interesting that this time Jack was refusing to commit himself.
“Hardly that.” Jack glanced up. “I have little time for my father-in-law,” he said. “He tried to push both my wife and my sister-in-law into the sort of marriages that could have damaged them irreparably. People think him charmingly eccentric, but that is too kind a judgment.” He shifted in his chair. “No, it’s the element of deception that concerns me. I thought you were the sort of man who would walk in and state his terms rather than masquerading as a servant to spy on people.”
“I am the sort of man who prefers a direct approach,” Lucas agreed, adding drily, “but can you imagine what would happen if I walked into Kilmory Castle and said that I suspected someone there of killing my brother and I had come to find the culprit and bring him to justice? They would throw me out—or have me clapped in bedlam.”
He stopped. His dry tone had masked all kinds of emotions, but Jack had not been fooled. Lucas saw the sympathy in his eyes.
“I’m sorry about Peter,” Jack said, a depth of sincerity in his voice that Lucas could not doubt. “I understand that you want to know what happened—”
Lucas cut him off with a sharp gesture. “I want justice,” he said through his teeth. “It was no accident.”
He could see that Jack was struggling for a response.
Don’t, Lucas thought viciously. Don’t say that you understand how I feel. Don’t tell me that Peter’s death was investigated, that if others could not find a culprit, neither will I.
Rage and frustration welled up within him and he clenched his fists. He had met his half brother only once as an adult after years of estrangement. They had laid a foundation that they had both hoped would develop into a strong bond. And then Peter had died, robbing them of that chance and that future. He had been nineteen years old, no more than a boy.
When his half brother had first written to say that he was coming to Scotland and wanted to meet, Lucas had ignored the letter. He had had no contact with his family since his mother’s death and had wanted none. His childhood memories of life in Russia were not happy ones.
You’re a bastard and your mother is a whore, the other children had whispered to him, the ugliness of the words so incongruous amidst the opulent beauty of his stepfather’s palace.
Bastard, bastard...
The taunt echoed in his head and he pushed it away, shutting it out, closing down the emotion, the response, as he had done since the time the words first had a meaning for him. His parentage did not matter. In fact, he was grateful for those taunts because in the end they had given him the incentive he needed to prove himself. He had worked tirelessly to build a business empire that would give him wealth and influence to outstrip anything his family possessed. His hatred of his relatives had inspired him.
Then Peter had come and all that had changed. He could still see his half brother standing on the doorstep of his house in Charlotte Square, a tall, lanky youth who had not yet fully grown into his own skin but whose bearing showed the man he would one day become. Peter was hunched against the wind that whistled down from where Edinburgh Castle stood stark against a cold blue autumn sky.
“Dear God, but this country is cold!” His brother had walked straight in without invitation. He had spoken in Russian, and had embraced Lucas, who had stood there in astonished silence. Very few things had the power to surprise him; Peter had achieved that within five seconds.
“I wrote!” Peter had said enthusiastically.
“I know,” Lucas had said. “I did not reply.”
But there had been no resisting Peter, who cloaked a steely determination behind an irrepressible spirit that reminded Lucas of a puppy. Lucas recognized the determination because he had it, too, and he could not withstand his brother’s affection. They spent a riotous fortnight together in Edinburgh; Peter got gloriously drunk and Lucas had to rescue him from the tollbooth where he had been locked up in order to sober up; Peter threw himself into the social round of parties and balls and dinners—as a Russian prince he was much celebrated. Peter’s tutor, a long-suffering fellow who was trying to escort the boy and three companions around Europe, also insisted that they attend the talks and exhibitions for which Edinburgh’s academia was famous. Peter slipped out of one lecture halfway through to visit a brothel. Lucas had to rescue him from there, as well.
After two weeks, Peter and his companions had set off for the Highlands.
“I must see Fingal’s Cave!” Peter had exclaimed. “So wild, so romantic.” He had written after the boat trip to the island of Staffa, waxing lyrical about its beauty and telling Lucas that they were visiting Ardnamurchan on their way south. He wanted to see the most westerly point on the British mainland.
Then the news had come of his death. His body had been found by the side of a coastal track at Kilmory, a village at the end of the Ardnamurchan Peninsula. He and his companions had dined the previous night at Kilmory Castle with the Duke of Forres and his family. After that Peter had apparently returned to the Kilmory Inn, only to go out later, alone. No one knew why or whom he was meeting, but his body was found the following morning, half-clothed. He had been beaten and robbed. Robbery and murder were unusual in the Highlands despite the wild reputation of the land and its people, but that was no consolation to Lucas, who had lost the half brother he had barely had chance to know.
The fall of logs in the grate recalled him to the room and he realized that Jack was speaking. He forced down his grief and anger and tried to listen.
“I truly believe that Lord Sidmouth is using you for his own ends, Lucas,” Jack was saying carefully. There was something in his eyes that was almost but not quite pity. “He’s using your grief to manipulate you.”
Lucas shook his head stubbornly. “I offered to help Sidmouth of my own free will,” he said, “in return for information and resources.”
After Peter’s death, the home secretary had sent men from London to try to find his murderer, but they had drawn a blank. Lord Sidmouth was certain that the case was connected to the illegal trade in whisky distilling with which the Highlands were rife. It was his contention that Peter had inadvertently stumbled over the notorious Kilmory smuggling gang and had been killed to ensure his silence. Lucas had no reason to doubt the home secretary’s assessment and he had a burning desire to avenge himself on the gang of thugs who had taken Peter’s life.
“I know it’s a long shot,” he said, “but maybe I can discover something that those fools from London could not. If the whisky smugglers were responsible for Peter’s death, then I have a better chance of learning of it than Sidmouth’s men had, and to do that I cannot approach Kilmory openly.” He fixed his gaze on the fire. It burned low in the grate, filling the room with heat and light. Yet Lucas felt cold inside. He could not remember the last time he had felt warm, could not remember if he had ever felt warm, not inside, where it mattered.
He was the illegitimate son of a Scottish laird and a Russian princess, the product of a night of youthful passion when his father had been traveling through Russia. His birth had scandalized Russian society and disgraced his mother. She had made an unhappy dynastic marriage five years later to a man who had been prepared to overlook her sullied reputation because he was dazzled by her dowry.
Lucas had gone with his mother when she had married, but he had been a changeling, unwelcome in his stepfather’s house, keenly aware of the difference between him and other children. His grandfather had asked Czarina Catherine to legitimize him, but that had made matters worse rather than better. His cousins and his stepfather still called him a bastard; his mother still had such grief and shame in her eyes when she looked at him. Peter had been the only one unaware of the dark shadow cast by Lucas’s existence. He was little more than a baby, open, trusting and loving.
His little brother, his life snuffed out by a stranger in a strange land. The coldness swept through him again and with it an ice-cold determination to discover the truth.
“Peter deserves justice,” he repeated. “I can’t just let it go, Jack. He was the only family I had left.”
“No, he was not,” Jack corrected. “Stop feeling sorry for yourself. What about your aunt?”
Lucas smiled reluctantly. “All right, I’ll give you that.” His father’s sister was a force of nature. She had come into his life when he was living rough on the streets of Edinburgh. Even though he had told her to leave him alone, she had refused to abandon him. He had been a sullen, ungrateful youth, eaten up with bitterness of his father’s family, but she had driven a coach and horses through his resentment. She had forced him to pull himself up out of the gutter and he loved her fiercely for it. She was the only woman he did love, the only one he could imagine loving.
There was silence in the room. “You never speak of your father,” Jack said after a moment.
Lucas shrugged. There was discomfort in it. He could feel the tension knotting his shoulders again. “There’s nothing to say about him.”
“He left you his estate at the Black Strath,” Jack said. “That must count for something.”
To Lucas, it counted for absolutely nothing. He could feel the anger and hatred stir within him. These days he seemed to be angry all the time: angry that Peter had died, angry that no one had been brought to justice for it, angry that no one really cared. Jack was right; he knew that Lord Sidmouth was using him. Sidmouth wanted to bring an end to the whisky-smuggling gangs who ran rings around his excise officers. He wanted the members identified and jailed. Peter’s death was a convenient means by which to engage Lucas’s help. But that did not matter if they both got what they wanted.
“I’ve always wondered why your mother waited so long to tell you about your inheritance,” Jack said. “Your father died when you were only a baby.”
“I think she was afraid,” Lucas said slowly. He could still remember the clutch of his mother’s fingers, clammy and cold, and see the desperation in her eyes.
Don’t blame your father, his mother had said. He was a good man. I loved him.
But Lucas had blamed Niall Sutherland. He had never forgiven his father for abandoning his mother, for his cowardice and weakness. Their romance had been secret, her pregnancy only discovered months after Sutherland had left. Although Princess Irina had written to tell him, he had never returned to Russia. Lucas felt nothing but contempt for him for condemning Irina to the shame and stigma of bearing an illegitimate child, and Lucas to the endless taunts and mockery that went with bastardy. If he had anything to be grateful to his father for, it was that his example had taught Lucas to be the opposite of him: hard, ruthless and strong.
Jack was watching him. Lucas took a mouthful of brandy. It tasted bitter and he put the glass down abruptly.
“She was unhappy,” he said. “I think she was afraid I would leave her and go to Scotland to claim my inheritance. Even as a child I was headstrong.” He smiled ruefully. “She was wrong, of course. I would never have left her.”
“But you went when she died,” Jack said.
“There was nothing to keep me in Russia then.” Lucas crossed to the fireplace, tossing a couple of logs onto the glowing embers. There was a hiss and a flare of flame. “My stepfather had me horsewhipped from the house on the day she died.” He kept his voice level, even though in his memory he could still feel the bite of the whip through the thin material of his shirt, hear the sound as it ripped, feel the sting across his back. His chest felt tight as he remembered the black panic as the thongs snaked about his neck, choking him. He had fled to Scotland only to find that the trustees of his father’s estate were unimpressed by a fifteen-year-old boy who had no means of proving his claim.
He shook his head sharply to dispel the memories of the past. His aunt had ensured that he received his estate, but he was no laird; he had rented out the Black Strath ever since he had come into his inheritance. His interest was in business, not the land.
“Peter hero-worshipped you,” Jack said. “Evidently his father was unable to poison his mind against you.”
Lucas smiled reluctantly. “Peter had a loving spirit,” he said. “He was like our mother.”
Jack nodded. “I understand.” He corrected himself. “That is, I understand that you feel the need to bring his murderer to justice.” He let out his breath on a long sigh. “You will make a spectacularly poor footman, by the way.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” Lucas said. “I can work hard.”
“You can’t take orders,” Jack said, draining his glass. “You are accustomed to giving them.”
“You don’t think that I fit the advertisement?” Lucas sat, and tapped the newspaper that was folded on the table in front of them. He read aloud, “‘Footman required at Kilmory Castle. Must be diligent, reliable, well trained and deferential.’”
“You are an impressive fail on almost all counts,” Jack said.
Lucas laughed. “I won’t get you to write my references, then.” He picked up one of the playing cards, toying with it, turning it idly between his fingers.
“Tell me more about the household,” he said. “So that I am prepared.”
“I’ve never been to Kilmory,” Jack said, “but I understand it to be a fourteenth-century castle that has no proper plumbing or heating, so it is probably as uncomfortable as hell. The duke prefers it, though.” He shrugged. “He always gets his own way.”
“Do any of the family live with the duke at Kilmory?” Lucas asked. He knew that some of the MacMorlan clan had been there when Peter had died. Sidmouth had told him.
“There’s a houseful at the moment,” Jack said. He ticked them off on his fingers. “You’ll be tripping over them at every turn. Angus and Gertrude are staying there at present—that’s Mairi’s ghastly elder brother, the Marquess of Semple, and his even more horrible wife. He is heir to the title and full of self-importance. I believe they have their daughter, Allegra, with them.”
Lucas grimaced. “And I’m supposed to wait on these people?”
“Your choice,” Jack said unsympathetically.
“Hmm. Who else?”
“Lachlan.” Jack grinned. “The younger brother. He is an utter waste of space. His wife left him some months ago and he has taken to drink for comfort.”
Lucas gave a soundless whistle. “Never a good solution.” He raised his glass in ironic toast. “Is there anyone else?”
“No,” Jack said. “Yes.” He corrected himself quickly. “There’s Christina, the eldest daughter.” He frowned slightly. “We always forget Christina.”
“Why?” Lucas said.
“Because...” Jack paused. “She’s easy to overlook,” he said after a moment. He sounded slightly shamefaced. “Christina’s self-effacing, the old spinsterish sister. No one notices her.”
Lucas found that hard to believe when both Lucy and her sister Mairi MacMorlan, Jack’s wife, were stunningly pretty, diamonds of the first order. He felt an odd, protective pang of pity for the colorless Lady Christina, living in their shadow, the duke’s unmarried daughter.
He let the playing card slip from between his fingers and it glided down to rest on the carpet.
There was a discreet knock at the door, and Lucas’s manager, Duncan Liddell, stuck his head around.
“Table four,” Duncan said. “Lord Ainsley. Can’t pay his debts. Or won’t pay. Not sure which.” He was a man of few words.
Lucas nodded and got to his feet. It happened occasionally when sprigs of the nobility had a little too much to drink and felt they were entitled to play for free. A few discreet words in the gentleman’s ear usually sorted the matter out.
“I’ll leave you to it,” Jack said. He stood up, too, and shook Lucas’s hand. “Best of luck. I hope you find out the truth.” He hesitated. “I don’t care what happens to the rest of them,” he said, “but don’t hurt Christina, or Mairi will have my balls for helping you.”
Lucas grinned. “I know your wife is a crack shot. I wouldn’t want to get on the wrong side of her.” He sobered. “You have my word, Jack. I’ve no quarrel with any of Forres clan. I doubt I will have much to do with them. All I want is to infiltrate the whisky gang and find out what really happened to Peter.”
As he followed Duncan into the salon, Lucas caught sight of the playing card resting under the table. He bent to pick it up. It was the jack of diamonds. He laid it on top of the pack. It seemed appropriate for the bastard son of a laird and a princess who had made his own fortune and was as hard as the diamonds themselves.
CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_be5238f4-adad-528c-b2ef-69e4dcfa1154)
Ardnamurchan, Scottish Highlands, May 1817
IT WAS NOT the way Lucas was meant to die, blindfolded, tied up, on his knees in a smugglers’ cave, with the pungent smell of rotting fish in his nose and the roar of the sea in his ears as it crashed onto the rocks several hundred feet below.
One minute he had been strolling along the cliffs in the evening twilight to stretch his legs after an interminable journey from Edinburgh, the next this nightmare of ambush and capture. He had heard that the Highlands in May were very pleasant, but he had been mistaken in that. The Highlands in May was no place to be if there was a knife at your throat.
He had been careless. The thought made him angry. Lord Sidmouth would be so proud of him, he thought savagely. His spy caught by the very men he had come to investigate. But he had been tired and the last thing he had been expecting was to stumble on the whisky smugglers moving their cargo. He wondered if this was why Peter had died. He wondered if his brother, too, had seen something he should not, had stumbled disastrously into a situation he could not control. The irony would be if he discovered the truth so quickly, so easily, and then did not live to prove it.
The smugglers were arguing. Their Scots accents were so thick Lucas found it hard to understand some of them, but the general thrust of the conversation was not in the least difficult to follow.
“I say we throw him over the cliff, no questions asked.”
“I say we let him go. He’s seen nothing—”
“It’s too dangerous. He could be a spy. I say he dies.”
“And I say we wait for the lady. She will know what to do.”
There was a short, angry pause.
“I told you not to send for her.” The first man swore. “Damn it to hell, you know what she will say.”
“She doesn’t like unnecessary bloodshed.” The second man sounded as though he was quoting. Lucas could not help but wonder if the shedding of his blood would nevertheless be deemed necessary.
Lucas kept silent. He was cold, wet, tired to his bones and starving hungry.
Who was the lady? Some ruffian as brutal as her trade?
Sidmouth had briefed him on the illegal Highland whisky trade. The government in London demanded that every Highlander who distilled whisky should pay tax on it. The Highlanders declined. The government sent excise officers to hunt the smugglers down, which was no doubt why this gang suspected him of being a spy. Which he was. A very incompetent one.
Damnation.
Lucas remembered the whisky he had tasted on the back streets of Edinburgh. They called it the Uisge Beatha in Gaelic, the water of life, but he had thought it was rougher than a badger’s backside.
A faint drift of a salt-laden breeze stirred the noisome press of air in the cave, and the smugglers fell silent. It was a wary silence. Lucas felt the hair on the back of his neck rise and his skin prickle. He found he was holding his breath.
The air shifted as someone walked past him. The lady. She had arrived. Lucas had heard no footsteps. Nor could he see anything from behind the blindfold. The material was thick and coarse. He was wrapped in darkness. Yet he could feel her presence. She was close.
He tried to rise to his feet and immediately one of the smugglers placed an ungentle hand on his shoulder and forced him back down on his knees.
“Evening, ma’am.” The tone of the men’s voices had changed. There was respect in their muttered greeting and a note of caution. Lucas realized that they were on their guard. They could not predict her reactions. And in their uncertainty lay his hope. Suddenly the moment was on a knife’s edge between life and death.
“Gentlemen.”
Lucas’s heart was beating violently against his ribs. All his senses were straining. One word from her and he would be dead. A knife between the ribs, quick, lethal. He fought back the suffocating fear that beat down on his mind. He had nothing in particular to live for, but no particular wish to die, either.
He sensed the lady was very close to him now. He could hear the shift and slip of a material that sounded rich and fine, like silk or velvet, and then he caught the most elusive of scents, a fragrance of bluebells—very sweet, very innocent. The incongruity of it almost made him smile. The infamous leader of a band of criminal renegades and she smelled of spring flowers.
Someone kicked him hard in the ribs, and the thought disintegrated in a blaze of pain. Lucas toppled onto his side under the force of the blow. They were crowding in on him now like a pack of wolves. He could sense their malevolence. There was another blow, and then another. He twisted and rolled in a vain attempt to avoid them, hampered by his bound wrists, blinded, utterly at their mercy. He was too proud to beg a pack of ruffians to spare his life. Perhaps that was a weakness that would kill him but he did not care.
“Stop.”
It only took the one word from her to halt them. She spoke sharply and with such an edge of authority that they all fell back. For a moment Lucas could focus on nothing but the hot flare of pain in his ribs. Then as it dulled to an ache, he drew in a labored breath.
“Here...”
She was helping him to sit; his back was against the wall of the cave. It was cold and damp, but the solid rock helped to steady him. Her touch was gentle but firm. He sensed she was between him and the men, shielding him, protecting him. He felt a wave of shame that he could not defend himself and a fierce, hot tug of emotion toward her that he did not understand.
The silence in the cave was absolute, but the atmosphere still simmered with violence. Lucas could feel it in every cell of his body. He could sense, too, some ripple of feeling in her that belied her confidence.
Fear? No. She was not afraid of these braggarts and bullies.
Revulsion.
Lucas’s heart bounded. Extraordinary as it was, he sensed in her a hatred of brutality.
The smugglers’ words made sense now. This was why the more bloodthirsty amongst them had not wanted her to know of his capture.
They were afraid she would save him.
He felt as close to her as though he could read her thoughts, closer, as though he shared the sensations and emotions that drove her.
He had never felt like this before. He hated the intimacy of the feeling and he hated that he did not understand why he felt it. Most of all he hated his own powerlessness.
“Begging your pardon, ma’am.” One of the men sounded abashed, like a naughty schoolboy, but there was rebellion beneath his brusque apology. “We caught him on the track above the bothy. He was following us—”
“Spying,” one of the others put in.
“We need to get rid of him.” There was a rumble of agreement.
“Over the cliff,” the first man said. “Now.”
“Is that so?” Unlike the men, her voice held no trace of a Scots accent. It was low and smooth, as rich and soothing as honey. She truly was a lady born and bred.
“Stand back.” There was a rustle of skirts as she shifted beside him. Lucas could not rise as he was once again pinned by the large boot of one of the men, which was lodged in his aching ribs. The boot pressed harder and he sucked in his breath on another wave of pain.
“If you could restrain your tendency toward violence, please.” She sounded weary now but the boot eased its pressure a little.
Her hand was beneath Lucas’s chin. He imagined she was turning his face to the light. She wore no gloves; her skin was soft and her fingers felt gentle against the roughness of his stubble. For a moment they brushed his cheek in a sweet caress. Lucas felt a shiver down his spine of something that was not fear. He fought it back angrily. His life was on the line and all he could think about was her touch.
Get hold of yourself, Lucas.
“What sort of a spy would be caught so easily?” There was mockery in her voice.
“A bad one,” one of the men said dourly.
“Or an innocent traveler,” the woman said. Her tone was sharp. Her hand fell. Lucas sensed she was sitting back on her heels.
“Innocent or not, the sea is the place for him,” the man growled. He seemed to be the spokesman. The others were content to let him talk. “It’s the only thing to do, ma’am.”
“Nonsense.” She sounded angry now. “Our quarrel is not with the likes of him and you know it.”
“And you know he’s a danger to us.” The man was curt. “We’ve no choice.” He was standing his ground and the others supported him. Lucas could smell their stubbornness and their fear. It was in the air and on their unwashed bodies as they pressed closer. They wanted him dead.
He knew the woman could feel it, too. One false step and they would both be in trouble. It was extraordinary to sense with absolute certainty that she was on his side.
“No one will know,” the man said. “Who’s to miss him?”
“Only he can tell us that.” Her voice betrayed no feelings, nothing of the quick, careful calculation Lucas could sense behind the words. “Perhaps it’s time to learn a little more about him.” Her hand touched Lucas’s arm, conveying a warning even as her tone warmed into mockery again. “What’s your name, handsome?”
“Lucas,” he said. He was aware that as repartee went it was far from sparkling.
One of the men laughed. “We could spoil his pretty face. That would teach him a lesson.”
“Don’t you dare,” the woman said. Her voice was light. “I need something nice to look at around here.” Her words were dismissive, as though he counted for nothing. Lucas hated being treated so casually, but he could see how clever she was. She made him seem unimportant, no threat.
“What’s your other name?” she said.
Lucas cleared his throat. “Lucas Ross, ma’am,” he said. “At your service.” It was only half a lie.
“Your speech is as pretty as your looks.” Her voice was cool. “What are you doing in Kilmory, Lucas Ross?”
“I’m after a job,” Lucas said. “At the castle. Footman. I’ve come from Edinburgh.”
“Fancy city manners,” one of the smugglers said, and it was not a compliment.
“I want to be a butler one day,” Lucas said.
“Let us hope you live long enough to achieve your ambition.” The lady sounded dry. “Where are you staying?”
“At the inn in the village,” Lucas said. “I booked a room and ordered supper. The landlord will notice if I don’t return.”
“Tom McArdle won’t give us any trouble.” Another of the smugglers spoke this time. “Very likely he’ll dispose of your belongings for us. Where do you think he gets his whisky from, laddie?”
The others gave a low rumble of laughter. They were closing in again now, going for the kill. Lucas knew he had not made a strong enough case to be allowed to live. There would be no loving wife to miss him, no parents and no siblings. He should have invented a few and told an affecting story of how they depended on him. His lips twisted into a bitter parody of a smile.
“We’re wasting time.” One of the men hauled him to his feet.
“Wait.” The woman spoke again, the sharpness of authority back in her voice. “You are too hasty, my friend. Another body around here will bring the gaugers back down on us faster than a sniff of the peat-reek, and the dragoons with them. Have you forgotten that it is only a six-month since the last time?”
Another body...
Lucas felt his blood run cold. She was speaking of Peter.
The silence prickled with tension. Lucas waited, all his muscles wound up tight. He heard the shift and mutter of the men all around him.
“That was nothing to do with us.” The leader sounded defiant. “We know nothing of it.”
“Whether it was your doing or not,” the woman said patiently, “two bodies draw unwanted attention. Do you understand me? Besides, if Mr. Ross here has applied to work at the castle, too many people will know who he is. We cannot take the risk.”
“Be damned to it.” The man’s patience was exhausted. “I say he dies and the others stand with me. We can get rid of the body so they’ll never find it.”
“Enough!” Lucas heard her move, heard the unmistakable click of a pistol being cocked, heard the intake of breath as the men froze into immobility. He felt a shiver of fear, for her, not for himself. Absurd, extraordinary, but the bond between them seemed tighter still.
“You are dangerous fools,” she said. She still spoke quietly, but with an undertone of iron. “Do you really want to take this risk? Do you want to throw away all your profits because of some poor benighted city boy who gets lost in the Highlands? Think again, my friends, before it is too late.”
Once again Lucas found himself holding his breath. Violence bred violence, and she was taking a terrible risk to save his life. There were at least four of them. They could overpower her easily enough. One bullet was all she had to stand between him and death.
Time spun out. He felt each second pass.
Then everything changed. Lucas felt it first in the uneasy shift and shuffle of the smugglers’ feet, then in the muttered words he could not catch, then finally in the easing of the tension. It was the money, he thought, as much as the show of force, that had changed their minds.
“She’s right.” One of the men spoke grudgingly. “Think how much we made on the last few barrels. We don’t want the gaugers sniffing around again...”
There was a mutter of agreement, surly, resigned. Someone sighed as though the denial of his right to mete out a violent death was particularly disappointing.
Relief whipped through Lucas; his legs shook. If they made him walk now, he would not need to pretend to weakness. He felt the lady’s relief, too, though she masked it well.
“Bring him.” Her voice told Lucas that she had walked away as though she had already taken their capitulation for granted.
“My lady—” It was the spokesman, fighting a rearguard action. Then, correcting himself, “Ma’am—”
“Yes?” Her voice was light and cold. “If you still have concerns about my clemency, then console yourself with the thought that we will know exactly where to find him if he is foolish enough to say a word about tonight.” She turned back to Lucas. “No loose words in the inn after a few drams, Mr. Ross,” she said. “And no misplaced thoughts of spilling what you know to the authorities. A fine fool you would appear telling such a cock-and-bull story. My advice is that you should give up on the job at the castle, hurry home to Edinburgh and forget all about us.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Lucas said again. He caught the bluebell fragrance again, sweet, stirring his senses. There was no way he was going to forget her. He willed his body not to harden into arousal. Christ. Who was this woman who could do this to him when he could not even see her?
“Bring him,” she repeated. Her tone was autocratic and this time no one argued.
The men half carried, half pulled Lucas as he stumbled to the mouth of the cave. Outside it was full night, the darkness pressing against his blindfold. The cold air was like a slap in his face, fresh and sharp with the sting of the sea. The sound of the waves was suddenly loud, boiling on the rocks below. He sensed that he was very close to the edge of the cliff.
“Untie him.” She was taking no chances that when her back was turned they would throw him over the edge. He knew it and the men knew it, too.
Someone was fumbling behind him to undo the ties that held his wrists, swearing all the while because they could not see what they were doing. He was free; he flexed his hands, feeling the pain of the blood returning.
“Remember what I told you,” she said.
“Thank you, ma’am,” Lucas said.
The blindfold fell from his eyes.
It took him a second to adjust to the darkness. There was no moon tonight, and the light of the stars was dim and pale, no more than a glitter on the sea. Lucas looked down and felt a clutch of fear. He was within two feet of the edge of the cliff; a step forward and he would have fallen. He could feel the small stones slipping beneath the soles of his boots. For a second he felt light-headed and nauseous, repressing the panicked reaction to scrabble backward for a safer foothold. He forced himself to keep still, slowing his breathing, fixing his gaze on the dark horizon until the world steadied around him.
The whisky smugglers were gone, melting into the shadows as swiftly and silently as they had appeared. Perhaps they were still watching him. He knew that the only thing he could do was to return to the inn and behave as any other man might do when he had had a narrow escape. That probably meant getting drunk on bad whisky. And remembering to keep his mouth shut about what had happened to him.
He turned his back on the vertiginous drop and started to climb up the cliff face. It was tough going. The rough stems of heather scored his palms. Loose rock slid and slithered beneath his feet where the dry peat soil crumbled. It took him a good ten minutes to reach the path at the top where he turned inland toward the faint light in the distance where the village huddled. He was cold and damp and bruised, but he was damned grateful to be alive. The air seemed sweeter, the light and shadows sharper, the hoot of the owl clearer than ever before. Even the persistent ache in his ribs was welcome as a measure of the fact he was still alive.
It was as he came to the edge of the village, past the kirk sheltering behind its low moss-covered wall, that those instincts that had failed him earlier in the evening blazed into life and told him that he was not alone. He stopped in the shadow of the churchyard yew and waited. His skin prickled, the wind breathing gooseflesh down his spine.
She was here. He could sense it.
A second later he felt the cold caress of the pistol on the side of his throat.
“Remember what I told you. Go back to Edinburgh, city boy. There’s nothing for you here.” Her whisper was fierce.
Lucas did the one thing he was certain she would not be expecting. He spun to face her, catching her wrist so tightly that she gasped and dropped the pistol with a clatter at his feet. He kicked it aside, pulling her hard against his body, his arms going about her cruelly tight. The shadows were so thick here that he could see nothing of her face, but he could hear the quick catch of her breathing and feel the rise and fall of her breasts against his chest.
It felt astonishing to hold her in his arms, this woman who had saved his life. The blood surged through his veins, bringing with it instant arousal. Everything that had passed between them that evening fused in that moment into a blaze of lust as scorching as a heath fire.
Lucas brought one hand up to push back the hood of her velvet cloak. The material was rough against his palm, the friction delicious. Uncovered, her hair was dark in the faint moonlight, a satin-soft cascade as it tumbled through his fingers. He ran his thumb along the line of her jaw, tipping up her chin so that her mouth met his.
She made a startled sound in her throat that had Lucas’s body hardening still further, and then her lips parted beneath the insistent pressure of his. She responded hesitantly at first, then sweetly, passionately, with a lack of artifice that shook him to the core. Her body softened and yielded to his and the kiss spun away into a different realm entirely, a place of heat and need. This was new, and dangerously seductive; Lucas had always had iron control, but now he felt the danger of losing it completely.
Under his fingertips he could feel both delicacy and strength in the exquisite lines of her jaw and neck, and when he dropped his hand to the warm hollow at the base of her throat her pulse beat frantically beneath his touch. It dimly occurred to him that he had no idea what she looked like or even how old she was, nor anything else about her. He could have been kissing a woman old enough to be his grandmother, and in that moment he was not sure he cared. Kissing her was the most explosively pleasurable experience he had ever known.
He pressed his lips to the line of her neck and then the curve of her shoulder, pushing aside her cloak and the flimsy layers of silk he could feel below it so that he could trace the line of her collarbone with his tongue. She gave a little gasp, and he felt her knees weaken so he pulled her down to where the heather made a soft bed beneath them. There he kissed her again, deep, slow kisses this time; kisses that made time stand still. He was aware of nothing but the intimate tangle of her tongue with his, the heat of her body, the smoothness of her skin beneath his fingertips.
Overhead the stars spun in their courses and the moon had risen higher, but it was a mere sliver, too pale to lift the shadows. Lucas did not care that he could not see her. She was the only thing that was real to him, a creature of quicksilver and darkness. He slid his hand into her bodice and felt the curve of her bare breast warm against his palm. She arched upward, pressing herself into his hand. Her responsiveness had his cock hardening to almost unbearable proportions. He rubbed his thumb across her nipple and heard her gasp. The silk and lace of her bodice felt crisp and expensive, but beneath it her skin felt richer still, soft and sleek to the touch, her body a sensual paradise a man could lose himself in.
The church clock chimed the hour loudly, the ten long strokes vibrating through him and breaking the moment. He felt her go still in his arms, and then she scrambled up, pulling her cloak about her.
“Wait,” Lucas said, catching her hand. He could feel her trembling, and the sense of her vulnerability and need made him want to wrench her back into his arms again and finish what they had started. His senses were full of the taste and the touch of her, and he did not want to let her go. “I haven’t thanked you for saving my life,” he said.
She paused. “I think you have done far more than thank me,” she said. Her tone was dry. She had herself back under control now. Her voice betrayed nothing.
“When will I see you again?” Lucas asked.
“You won’t.” She sounded amused. “Good night, Mr. Ross.”
For a second she was a darker shadow against the darkness, and then she was gone. The night was empty and still again. Lucas leaned his back against the churchyard wall and waited for the near-intolerable ache in his body to ease. He had come shockingly close to making love with a woman he did not know and had never seen. The mere thought of it caused his body to harden again. At this rate the walk back to the inn was going to be a long and uncomfortable one, but he could not regret it. It had been quite a night.
Ten minutes later Lucas was back in the village main street and stumbling into the Kilmory Inn. The landlord cast him a curious glance as he pushed open the door of the taproom. Lucas wondered what he must look like with his clothes filthy and torn. There were marks on his wrists, too, where the rope had bitten. The smugglers had not been gentle.
“A drink, sir?” The landlord was smooth but his gaze was sharp. “Get lost on your evening stroll, did you?”
Lucas nodded, sliding onto a hard wooden chair in a corner by the fire. His bruised ribs protested the lack of comfort but he did not think they were broken. He could not risk consulting a doctor, and since he was masquerading as a footman he could not afford one anyway. He was simply going to have to wait for the bruises to fade.
In his pocket was the pistol. Like a rather deadlier version of Cinderella his mystery woman had left it behind when she had run away, which suggested that she had not been as in control of her emotions as she had wanted to appear. That gave Lucas more than a little satisfaction. He decided to have a look at it later in the privacy of his chamber.
He cast a covert glance around the taproom. It was almost full. Three men were playing cribbage in the opposite corner, leaning over the board, wrapped up in the game. No one was watching him—or so it appeared. But word would go around about the smooth fellow from Edinburgh who had come for a job at the castle and had accidentally fallen foul of the local smuggling gang. Small communities like this one were close and loyal. Everyone would know about the whisky distilling.
The landlord pushed a glass toward him across the table. It tasted of smoke and peat, almost strong enough to choke him. Lucas could see the gleam of amusement in the man’s eyes. Perhaps he thought him a Sassenach, an English foreigner who could not hold his drink. Or perhaps his accent tagged him as a Lowlander. There was no love lost between the Highlanders and their compatriots to the south. Truth was he was a fusion of races and a mixture of languages. His mother had been an educated woman who had taught him to speak both French and English faultlessly. When he had been thrown out of his stepfather’s palace and come to Scotland looking for his inheritance, he had quickly adopted the accent of the streets so that he did not stand out. When he had started to profit in business and made his first fortune, he had shed the streets and readopted the faultless English of his childhood.
He sat quietly, thinking, whilst the noise of the taproom washed over him. The taste of the whisky was mellowing on his tongue and he felt a pleasant lethargy start to slide through him. Contrary to his previous experience, the whisky tasted delicious, warm and deep, once he had got used to the fact that it was strong enough to take the top of his head off. The Kilmory distiller was clearly very talented.
He leaned an elbow on the table, staring into the deep golden liquid. It swirled like magic, like a witch’s spell. This was the whisky’s skill, he thought; it could make you forget, ease you away from all kinds of raw memories and soothe the pain of the past. But tonight, here in Kilmory, he felt the shadow of the past standing right at his shoulder. It was here that Peter had died. He had stayed with his friends in this very inn, had dined at the castle and had walked on the same cliffs.
Lucas thought about the whisky-smuggling gang. He had heard the men deny any involvement in Peter’s death, but he did not believe the word of a bunch of criminal thugs. They would have dispatched him swiftly enough had the lady not saved his life, and it was the obvious explanation.
Still, he knew the key to discovering the truth was finding the woman he had met tonight. He would never be able to identify the individual members of the gang, but she was a different matter. He could find her and she would lead him to the others. He could then betray them to Sidmouth.
He thought about what he had learned of her. He thought of her touch, of the rich, sensual rub of her velvet cloak and the scent of her perfume. He thought of her kiss, of the heat and the sweetness of it and the blinding sense of recognition he had felt. The memory of it still disturbed him. If he were a fanciful man, he would have called it love at first sight.
He was not a fanciful man.
It had been lust.
The other stuff, the sense of intimacy, of understanding, was no more than a trick of the senses. He had been fighting for his life and she had helped him. It had been relief and gratitude that had touched him, nothing more.
It seemed that “the lady” was precisely that, an aristocrat. She had spoken with an aristocrat’s confidence and authority. Lucas had heard one of the men address her as “my lady” before he had quickly corrected himself. There were not many ladies to the square mile around here. Inescapable logic suggested that she must be related to the Duke of Forres and be a resident at Kilmory Castle.
The landlord brought him his supper at last, a plate of fragrant mutton pie with steaming vegetables, which Lucas fell upon with all the enthusiasm of a man who had just cheated death. As he ate, Lucas thought about what Jack had told him about the duke’s female relatives. There was Lady Semple, the wife of the duke’s heir. It seemed unlikely that she would be involved with a gang of outlaws but perhaps her daughter might be. He needed to find out more about Lady Allegra. Then there was Lady Christina MacMorlan, the self-effacing spinster who kept house for her father and was eclipsed by her two beautiful younger siblings. The thought of her as the pistol-wielding leader of a band of outlaws was mind-boggling.
On the other hand, there was no better cover for the pistol-wielding leader of a band of outlaws than being the self-effacing daughter of a duke.
But he was getting ahead of himself. There might be other possibilities. The first thing he needed to do was obtain the job at the castle. His lady smuggler had told him to go back to Edinburgh, but he had absolutely no intention of doing so. Tomorrow he would present himself at Kilmory Castle as a candidate for the post of footman as though nothing had happened. It would be a test of his acting abilities. He was not good at taking orders, so it would also be a test of his tolerance. He loathed the aristocracy with their opulent lifestyle and their sense of entitlement. A position of servitude in a ducal house was the worst possible match for him.
He smiled faintly. It was a small price to pay to find out the truth about his brother. If it also meant that he found his lady smuggler as well, then so much the better. He knew that he would recognize her again. One touch, a hint of her fragrance, would be sufficient.
If she really was the duke’s daughter, then he had no sympathy for her. Either she was a spoiled little rich girl playing at being a smuggler for some excitement, or she was a cunning, deceitful criminal. Or perhaps she was both. Lucas did not really care about her motives. He could remember what it felt like to steal food in order to survive, to beg and thieve and fight simply to stay alive. He had no time for those who had every privilege and still behaved like delinquents.
In the privacy of his chamber, a tiny little box of a room tucked under the inn’s eaves where he was too tall to stand upright beneath the sloping ceiling, he finally took out the pistol and examined it. It was a fine piece of workmanship, expensive, made entirely of brass and beautifully engraved. Lucas suspected it had been made in the late eighteenth century and that it would not look out of place in an aristocrat’s collection. He tucked it away at the bottom of his bag, then lay down to sleep. The inn was noisy, but he could sleep anywhere, another legacy of the years he had spent on the streets, seizing rest when and where he could, always half-awake to trouble. Tonight, though, he found it more difficult than usual. He thought he might be haunted by memories of Peter, but instead he slept in snatches of dreams, and always through them there was a woman running away, a woman he yearned for, a woman whose face he could not see.
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_d38bc7a9-14f0-57e6-b8b0-f4406008547d)
CHRISTINA PUSHED OPEN the wooden picket gate that separated the grounds of Kilmory Castle from the road beyond. A path in the shadow of the high estate wall led past the neat row of gardeners’ cottages, shadowed by a tall stand of pines whose fallen needles were soft beneath her shoes. On the other side of the pines, a vast expanse of lawn, dotted with cedars, bordered the rose garden and led to a flight of steps up to the terrace. Christina walked slowly, unhurriedly. She had told her family that she was taking a stroll after dinner, and though she had been gone some time, they would not suspect anything. They never did.
Light glowed softly behind the castle windows. She did not particularly want to go back inside. She loved being out at night when the moon was high and the wind blew in the sea fret. She loved it more, perhaps, because ladies were not supposed to wander around alone after dark. She loved doing the unexpected because her days were governed by the expected.
Lucas Ross had been unexpected. She could still taste his kiss. She could still feel the touch of his hands on her body. His scent clung to her, not the cloying pomade and cologne some men wore, but a mixture of fresh air and forest and ocean. It seemed familiar, striking a chord in the region of her heart, making her shiver. Had it been that dangerous sense of recognition that had prompted her to behave with such reckless abandon? She did not know. All she knew was that she had almost made love with Lucas Ross and she could not quite believe what she had done.
Lucas was a servant. A footman, if his story was to be believed, but he had been far more than just a handsome face. He had been forceful, quick-witted and courageous. He had hidden his character well enough before the men and played the ignorant city boy, but she had known. Right from the moment she had first seen him, she had felt that he was different.
She had known that he was dangerous.
She shivered.
“Ma’am?” The door had opened and Galloway, the butler, was peering out, his face lined with worry. He had known where she had gone that night. All the servants knew. So did the entire village. Her involvement in whisky smuggling was the worst-kept secret in Kilmory. The only people who did not know were her own family, and that was because they knew nothing about who she really was and cared less.
“All’s well.”
The door yawned wider, yellow light spilling out into the night. It was time to become Lady Christina MacMorlan again.
Galloway locked and bolted the door behind her.
“Thank goodness you are back, ma’am.”
Christina paused to examine her reflection in the hall mirror. She did not look too bad; her hair looked a little windblown perhaps, and she had sand clinging to the hem of her velvet gown, but that was no surprise in this wild place. Her face was flushed and rosy. So was her throat. She remembered the delicious rub of Lucas’s stubble against her skin. Fortunately she could pretend that the high color was the result of a cold breeze. It would be more difficult to explain away the stinging pink of her lips and the way they were swollen from Lucas’s kisses. She prayed that the shadows in the hall would disguise much of the damage, since she would have a hard time explaining her exploits to her family. They saw her as passionless, almost sexless; efficient Christina who smoothed away all the little details of life that they did not want to trouble themselves with, a glorified housekeeper who kept home, family and clan together with never a word of complaint.
If only they knew.
For a moment she felt the echo of Lucas’s kiss through her blood again, his hand at her breast. It was a very long time since she had been kissed, touched. She had not wanted passion in her life. It belonged to the past, to a part of time that she had closed off and sworn never to think about again. Now, though, with the memory of Lucas’s touch, she felt restless, sleeping desire awakened again.
She repressed a shiver, turning away from the mirror, stripping off her gloves, removing her cloak.
“Is there a problem, Galloway?” she asked.
“Yes, my lady.” The butler was shaking, and Christina was suddenly and forcibly reminded of his increasing age and infirmity. That was why it was essential that they should recruit a quick, intelligent younger man as footman to be Galloway’s understudy. But not the man she had met tonight. Lucas Ross would have been ideal—strong, practical, clever—but she could not employ a man who had kissed her to within an inch of her life. Or one that would recognize her as the leader of the whisky gang—it could be disastrous.
“His Grace has lost his latest consignment of books from the Royal Society of Edinburgh,” Galloway said. “He has turned the library upside down looking for them and is quite beside himself.” A muffled crash from behind the library door gave emphasis to his words.
“I’ll find the books,” Christina said.
“Lady Semple went down to the kitchens to complain that dinner was burned,” Galloway continued, “and now Cook is threatening to leave and you know we cannot get good staff out here in the middle of nowhere—”
“I’ll smooth things over with Cook,” Christina said. “And I will speak to Lady Semple.” Her brother, the Marquess of Semple, and his wife, Gertrude, were the most demanding guests imaginable, always finding fault. They seemed to take pleasure in upsetting as many people as possible. It was the only sport they enjoyed.
“Lady Semple also mentioned that the water was cold again this morning, and Lord Semple complains of an icy draft in his bedroom,” Galloway said.
“I draw the line at any involvement in my brother’s marital affairs,” Christina said. Then, when Galloway looked at her, uncomprehending, “Never mind, Galloway. I suppose the stove went out again?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Galloway said. “It always blows out when there is a northwesterly.”
Christina gave a sharp sigh. Kilmory was a fourteenth-century castle with a heating system almost as old. It was utterly inadequate to meet the needs of guests like the Semples, who insisted on the best of everything. For the past three years her father, with typical eccentric stubbornness, had insisted on making his home at Kilmory rather than at his main seat at Forres. When she had asked him why, he had muttered something about the wild, west-coast scenery inspiring his academic studies.
“Lord Lachlan—” Here Galloway paused, his mouth creasing into disapproving lines.
“Foxed again?” Christina said sympathetically. “I shall go up and throw a pitcher of water over him, or if that fails I will shoot him.”
Galloway gave a thin smile. She was joking, but truth was it was a tempting option. Lachlan’s wife, Dulcibella, had left him six months earlier, and he had spent almost the entire time since in an alcoholic stupor. Christina was out of patience with him. There had been faults on both sides, but Lachlan had done nothing to try to heal the breach with his wife, who sat in her castle at Cardross telling anyone who would listen what a brute her husband had been to her.
Except...except that she couldn’t shoot Lachlan, because she had dropped her pistol. She had dropped it when Lucas had kissed her, and until now the memory of that kiss had sent it completely from her mind. She felt a sickening, sinking feeling. Lucas would not have forgotten. She was willing to bet that even now her beautiful engraved brass pistol was in his possession.
It was one more reason to be rid of him. If he dared show his face at Kilmory tomorrow—and somehow she suspected that Lucas Ross would dare a great deal—she would pack him off back to Edinburgh even if she had to put him in a coach herself.
Galloway was waiting, watching her. His eyes looked tired. She wanted to send him to his rooms to rest, but she knew he would refuse. There was always more work to do.
“Any other problems, Galloway?” Christina asked.
“No, ma’am,” the butler said gratefully.
Christina nodded. “You are interviewing for the new footman tomorrow,” she said. “I have had word that one of the candidates, Mr. Lucas Ross, is...unsuitable. I would ask that you do not offer him the job.”
A shade of hauteur came into Galloway’s manner. He stood up a little straighter. “Ma’am?”
Christina knew she was trespassing. The running of the servant’s hall was entirely the business of Galloway and the housekeeper, Mrs. Parmenter. By interfering she was implying that she thought them incompetent. At this rate Galloway would be the next to resign.
“I want to make sure that any new staff will fit in here at Kilmory,” she said carefully. “My father grows ever more eccentric, as you know, and I would not want anyone to upset the balance of his health.”
“His Grace need have nothing to do with a new footman.” Galloway was stiff with outrage at the thought of the duke lowering himself so far. “I am sure that you may trust my judgment in choosing the appropriate candidate, Lady Christina.”
“Of course,” Christina said, sighing. “I beg your pardon, Galloway.” She knew better than to press the matter now, with Galloway already standing on his dignity. Tomorrow she would make the point again and he would listen.
“Mr. Bevan requests a meeting tomorrow morning, ma’am,” Galloway said, referring to the duke’s land agent. “He says that there are a number of issues he needs to discuss with you.”
“I’ll see him at eleven o’clock,” Christina said. “In the study.”
Galloway nodded. The tension had eased from his face. “Thank you, my lady.” He took her cloak and gloves. “I will fetch the supper tray.”
The clock on the landing chimed ten-thirty with a delicate sweetness. They kept country hours at Kilmory Castle, with dinner at six. The duke preferred it. The ritual of the supper tray had been enshrined in family tradition since Christina’s childhood, after which everyone retired early. It gave Christina the perfect opportunity for smuggling business when everyone else was abed.
Christina smoothed the skirts of her velvet gown. She could not go into the drawing room with damp sand on her hem. Gertrude, gimlet eyed and sharp of tongue, would be sure to notice. She should have changed before she went out to meet the gang, but the message had been so urgent that she had not wanted to delay and give the men a chance to do something violent, something they might later regret.
She shuddered. She hated violence, hated the sudden, vicious cruelty of it and the pleasure men seemed to take in it sometimes. All her life she had been caring for people, nurturing them and protecting them, whether it was her younger siblings or the wider family or what was left of the Forres clan. It was the reason she had become involved with the Kilmory smugglers in the first place. She had seen the ruthless exploitation of the revenue officers, imposing exorbitant taxes on families who were already barely scraping a pittance from their lands. Such exploitation infuriated her, and she had been fired with the need to protect them. No one had listened to her conventional protests; she was a woman and women should not meddle in politics and economics, or so she had been told in the politest possible terms when she had written to the government to complain. She had seen that the case was hopeless and only direct action would succeed and so with her usual practicality she had set about organizing the smugglers into a ruthlessly efficient band who could run rings around the excisemen. It was her fault that occasionally these days they could be a little too ruthless.
The drawing room door opened and Gertrude swept out. Small and vigorous, Christina’s sister-in-law gave the impression of attacking anything and anyone who had the misfortune to get in her way. Behind her trailed Christina’s niece, Lady Allegra MacMorlan. Allegra, at eighteen, had all the MacMorlan good looks but drooped with boredom and lack of purpose. Gertrude spoke of marrying her daughter off during the Edinburgh winter season. Allegra showed as little interest in that ambition as she did in anything else. Christina wondered what it was Allegra did feel a passion for. She was sure there must be something.
“There you are!” Gertrude said disagreeably. “You look as though you have been pulled backward through a hedge.” Her sharp gaze traveled over her sister-in-law, itemizing the damage done by the sand, the wind and Lucas’s kisses. “In fact, you look quite absurdly wild, considering that you have only been strolling in the gardens. This is why I never allow Allegra to walk anywhere at all. It is very damaging to the complexion.”
“Very true,” Christina said. “However, I am far too old to pay any consideration to such matters.”
“At your age, the damage is already done,” Gertrude agreed. “Now, I have a task for you. You need to sack the second housemaid. She has been making eyes at Lachlan and, given the parlous state of his marriage to Dulcibella, I do not doubt that with the least encouragement he will run off with her.”
“I’d rather sack Lachlan,” Christina said. “He is a great deal less use than Annie is. Where would I find another housemaid? It is difficult enough to get servants out here in the back of beyond.”
“You have a most inappropriate sense of humor, Christina,” Gertrude said frostily. “I quite despair of you.”
“I will speak to Annie,” Christina said with a sigh. “But I am sure that you are mistaken, Gertrude.”
Gertrude looked contemptuous. “You are as naive as Allegra,” she snapped. “You never see what is going on under your nose.”
“Apparently not,” Christina agreed smoothly. “Would you excuse me, Gertrude? I need to change out of these clothes before supper.”
The rattle of the approaching supper tray sent Gertrude back into the drawing room. Allegra slipped away upstairs ahead of Christina, fading into the shadows at the top of the stairs like a wraith. Christina followed her niece more slowly. At the top she paused beside the statue of Hermes that her father had brought back from his Grand Tour. She barely ever noticed it. All the MacMorlan castles were littered with statuary. Her father was a collector in many ways—works of art, academic papers and classical sculpture. Hermes had been a part of the furniture for as long as Christina could remember, and not a part that she particularly admired. She found herself looking at the statue now, though, comparing the cold marble perfection of the high, slanting cheekbones and the sculpted power of the musculature with Lucas Ross’s living, breathing masculinity.
She felt heat uncurl low in her belly and turned away hastily, aware that Allegra had paused outside her room and was watching her. She was not sure what was showing on her face; hopefully not an expression that her niece would recognize or understand. As the door closed softly behind Allegra, Christina walked slowly past and into her own bedchamber. It looked as old and familiar as ever, yet she felt different, dissatisfied in a way she could not quite pinpoint, as though she was hankering after something she had forgotten she wanted. Once, a long time ago when she was a young girl, she had been wild. Wanton, Gertrude would have called it. No one had known; no one would even believe it to see the staid creature she had become.
Yet meeting Lucas had stirred those desires to life again, wicked, outrageous, delicious desires, desires she had denied herself because they belonged to a time in her life that had concluded now. For a moment she remembered that time and the way it had ended, and she felt the chill sweep through her and she shuddered. She would not open herself up to pain ever again, because next time that pain could destroy her.
CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_a99f652c-fe39-54d7-9a4e-8e160389313f)
THE INTERVIEW WAS progressing very much to Lucas’s satisfaction. Galloway, the butler, seemed quietly impressed by his excellent references, his willingness to work hard and his respectful manners. Mrs. Parmenter, the housekeeper, seemed to admire his powerful physique. Lucas had caught her staring at his calves and hoped it was only to assess how good he would look in formal livery. He was not sure her interest was impersonal, though. Mrs. Parmenter had a gleam in her eyes that was quite at odds with the respectable image of the traditional housekeeper.
There had been a couple of other candidates for the job, but he was convinced that he had the edge over them. Whether he could do all the work was another matter. He had had no idea that the role of footman was so complex. He had thought that all they did was adorn the back of a carriage, looking pretty, and run off with the lady of the house if they got the opportunity. It seemed he was very much mistaken. Fetching the coal, polishing the silver, cleaning boots and shoes, drawing the curtains, helping to serve the dinner—all those tasks would be a part of his job. It sounded fairly tedious but nothing he could not manage if he rose at five in the morning and retired at midnight.
“Are you experienced in folding a napkin into the shape of a water lily?” Mrs. Parmenter inquired.
“I am afraid not, ma’am,” Lucas replied. The sorts of talents he possessed were of absolutely no use to him here. He had a flair for winning at cards, for example, and had made his first fortune at the gaming tables. He had made a second fortune through investment in a shipbuilding company that Jack Rutherford had established. He had other businesses, other investments. He had no skill in folding napkins.
Mrs. Parmenter’s face fell. “But you are accustomed to serving dinner?” she pressed. “You are trained in the correct etiquette?”
“Of course, ma’am,” Lucas said smoothly, in answer to the second question, at least. His etiquette had been learned in his stepfather’s palace, although he had never been the one serving the dinner. In some ways his had been a gilded existence. But the trouble with gilt was that it tended to rub away leaving something ugly beneath.
Galloway shifted in his chair. It seemed that he had heard enough to be satisfied with Lucas’s credentials and was moving on to give him some background on the establishment at Kilmory. Lucas listened attentively.
“We are a small establishment here despite being a ducal household,” Galloway was saying. “Over the past few years His Grace has preferred to make his home here rather than at his main seat in Forres. It is smaller and also—”
“Cozier,” Mrs. Parmenter intervened, shooting the butler a quick glance. “Kilmory is more...comfortable.”
Lucas hoped he did not look as incredulous as he felt. If Kilmory was more comfortable than Forres then Forres must be practically uninhabitable. From what he had seen, half of Kilmory Castle was a ruin and the other half was medieval; a squat, ugly edifice that felt as though it had barely changed for centuries. Scotland had many beautiful castles. This was not one of them. Jack had been right about that.
What Jack had not known, though, was how much of a home Kilmory seemed to be. It had a welcoming warmth about it that was more important than superficial elegance. The room in which they were sitting, for example, probably the second-best drawing room, had charm in the slightly rickety chairs with their faded cushions. There was a vase of flowers bright on the mantel and several magazines and papers tossed carelessly on the table. Lucas read them upside down—the Caledonian Mercury from three weeks before, the Lady’s Monthly Museum, the Edinburgh Review.
He wondered if it was in fact financial considerations that had led the duke to close Forres Castle. Kilmory would be cheaper to run. But that would be at odds with the reputation of the Duke of Forres as the richest peer in Scotland. Even so, it was worth investigation. A man would often pretend to riches when he lacked them, and it would be useful to know the truth of Forres’s financial affairs in case he, too, were involved in the whisky trade.
“It is Lady Christina MacMorlan who runs the estate on behalf of her father,” Mrs. Parmenter said. “In practical terms, she is the head of the household.”
Lady Christina.
Lucas felt a flicker of elemental awareness along his skin. Christina MacMorlan. Was she the woman he had met the previous night? It was becoming increasingly likely. A woman who was capable of running an estate would have all the skill, efficiency and contacts to operate a whisky-smuggling ring. And if Mrs. Parmenter was right, then Lady Christina might not only run Kilmory but she might also have knowledge of what had happened to Peter. Lucas felt his pulse speed up and schooled his expression to polite indifference.
“It is the land agent who runs the estate,” Galloway corrected. “It would not be appropriate for her ladyship to work.”
Mrs. Parmenter gave a snort, quickly smothered. It was quite clear whom she thought did all the hard work at Kilmory. Lucas’s interest in Christina MacMorlan sharpened.
“Speaking of work,” Galloway added, with a repressive glance at the housekeeper, “we would require you to turn your hand to almost any task were you to come to work at Kilmory, Mr. Ross. Some footmen have ideas of what is beneath their station.” His tone made it clear that such militant modern views were quite distasteful to him. “We are too small a staff here to tolerate such vanity.”
“I would be happy to help with any task, Mr. Galloway,” Lucas said.
Galloway nodded. He studied the papers lying on the table in front of him, frowning as though something was troubling him. Lucas was puzzled, but he couldn’t work out what was holding Galloway back.
“Your testimonials are impeccable.” The butler said slowly. “You are entirely suitable for the post.”
Lucas inclined his head. Sidmouth’s clerks had indeed done a good job in concocting a set of references that were strong and convincing without gushing too much.
“Excuse me,” Galloway said abruptly. He gathered up his papers and strode from the room. Lucas caught Mrs. Parmenter’s look. She smiled automatically at him, but there was uneasiness in her eyes. They chatted for a while about Edinburgh, where the housekeeper had relatives, but it was clear that she was distracted. After a couple of minutes she, too, excused herself hurriedly and went out.
Left alone, Lucas waited a moment and then stood up and trod cautiously across to the desk. The drawers were packed with account books for Kilmory going back several years. He did not bother to sift through them. He doubted that Lady Christina kept the recipe for distilling the peat-reek handily in her desk, still less anything that might link her and the whisky gang to Peter’s death. If he was caught poking around the house at this stage it would look as though he was a thief and he would be thrown out.
He returned to his seat, stretching his long legs out in front of him, sitting back and allowing himself to appreciate the room’s warmth and comfort. It felt very unlike the town house he possessed in Edinburgh. That was no more than a set of rooms, expensive rooms, elegant rooms, but with no character or heart. The very untidiness and lived-in quality of Kilmory attracted him, though he felt disconcerted to realize it. He had never in his life wanted somewhere that was more than simply a roof over his head.
Ten minutes passed. A suspicion started to seed itself in Lucas’s mind. He was almost certain that Lady Christina MacMorlan was a step ahead of him. She had warned him off the previous night, but he suspected that she had also taken the precaution of warning Galloway not to employ him.
He got up and crossed quietly to the door. Mrs. Parmenter had left it ajar and Lucas pressed his ear to the gap. He could hear the faint sound of voices out in the hall. Galloway was speaking, urgent, agitated.
“Lady Christina, I must protest. There is nothing in Mr. Ross’s application to suggest that he would be unsuitable for the job. On the contrary, he seems precisely the man we are looking for. I do not understand your objections, ma’am. You must see that I am in a dilemma—”
“I understand very well the difficulties of attracting suitable staff to Kilmory.” Another voice, female, crisp, edged with authority. Lucas tried to work out if this was the woman from the previous night. He strained closer to the open door.
“In this instance I must ask you to accept my assurance, Galloway,” he heard Lady Christina say. “I do not want Mr. Ross employed at Kilmory. I am sorry if that poses problems for you. Thomas Wallace will do the job just as well and his family needs the money. We must let Mr. Ross go.”
The dust motes stirred, dancing in the shaft of sunlight from the window. Lucas stepped back hastily from the door as someone walked past. He caught a quick flash of damson muslin and a faint breath of perfume. It was the scent of bluebells. Recognition slammed through him and he only just managed not to push open the door and confront her.
By the time that Galloway and Mrs. Parmenter reentered the room, he had resumed his seat and turned a blandly innocent face toward them.
Galloway closed the door with a snap. Color high, he held out a hand to shake Lucas’s. “Thank you, Mr. Ross,” he said. “That will be all.”
“Oh,” Lucas said. Then, feigning a note of perplexity, “I was hoping to hear the outcome of my interview immediately...” He broke off. Galloway was looking as stiff as an old soldier. Mrs. Parmenter looked flustered and upset.
“Would you like me to wait for word at the Kilmory Inn?” Lucas asked.
“That won’t be necessary, Mr. Ross.” Galloway was shepherding him toward the door. “Thank you for your application. We are sorry that you have not been successful and we wish you well in the future.” He sounded as though the words were stuck in his throat.
Score two to Lady Christina MacMorlan. Lucas’s lips twisted into a rueful smile. She had trounced him last night and now she thought she was rid of him for good. He needed to raise his game.
Galloway escorted him out onto the front steps with the air of a man seeing him safely off the premises. It was a glorious early-summer day, the sky a radiant, cloudless blue, the wind from the sea carrying a hint of salt and with it the soapy scent of gorse. Across Kilmory’s beautiful sweep of lawn, Lucas could see three figures standing in the shade of a vast cedar tree. One, gray-haired, slight and leaning heavily on a stick, he thought must be the Duke of Forres himself. He looked small, diminished in some way by his age. Lucas could see why it was his daughter who had a firm hand on the running of the estate.
The other two figures were women, one fair and slender, very young, the other woman older, tall and elegant in a gown of damson muslin. She had seen him and there was an air of sudden stillness about her as though she was holding her breath.
Lucas glanced at Galloway, who was waiting with an attitude of polite impatience to close the door behind him.
Without hesitation he set off across the broad swathe of grass to confront Lady Christina MacMorlan. Since he had nothing to lose, he might as well try blackmail.
CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_2956482d-1ec2-5ad6-b896-139e117c4add)
“WHO THE DEVIL is that?” Allegra asked.
Christina had been listening vaguely to her father’s plans for a twenty-foot-high Italianate fountain in the middle of the lawn whilst simultaneously wondering what she might spare from the dairy to take on her visit to Mrs. McAlpine in the village that afternoon. The poor woman had just given birth to her sixth child—all boys—and her husband had died in a storm that had taken his fishing boat only eight weeks before. When Allegra stopped walking abruptly and stood staring across the grass toward the castle entrance, she practically tripped over her.
“Language, Allegra,” Christina said automatically. She had known that having Lachlan around with his blunt conversation would be a bad influence. Gertrude would have the vapors if she heard her daughter speaking like an Edinburgh dandy. And that was another problem; Christina had no idea what she was going to do with Lachlan. He needed a swift kick up the backside to send him back to his wife instead of sulking here at Kilmory.
“Ladies do not use that phrase,” she said. “It is shockingly vulgar.”
“They use it when they see a sight like that,” Allegra said. “Who is he?”
Following her niece’s pointing finger, another sin against etiquette that Christina simply did not have the energy to correct, she saw the tall figure of a man framed in the castle doorway.
Lucas Ross.
Her heart began to race. Her breath felt tight in her chest. Suddenly the sun was too hot and too bright.
“Damnation,” she said involuntarily.
Allegra giggled. “Aunt Christina! How shockingly vulgar.”
“Sometimes,” Christina said, “ladylike language simply isn’t forceful enough to express one’s feeling.”
And staring at a man might also be improper, she thought, but there were times when it was impossible to resist. No man had the right to be as indecently handsome as Lucas Ross.
In the half-light of the smugglers’ cave the night before, Lucas had looked spectacular enough with his strongly marked black brows, his firm cleft chin and tumbled black hair. There was something about him, an air of arrogant distinction that was innate but powerful, setting him apart from most other men. He had height and a broad-shouldered physique that exuded masculinity of the type Christina had never come across in the airless ballrooms or rarefied libraries of Edinburgh’s academia. Her sisters’ husbands both had something of that charisma and intensity. Christina remembered that she had looked at Lucy and Mairi and felt more than a little jealous of them. But now she thought that such ruthlessness, such uncompromising strength in a man would be too much to handle.
It seemed ludicrous that Lucas Ross was a servant. He was too tough, too in control to be at the beck and call of others. She pictured him more as a soldier, or a sailor, an adventurer, someone who gave orders rather than took them. He was a man born to lead, not follow. But she was being fanciful. A man could not choose his station in life, nor could he necessarily change it.
A shiver skittered down her spine. Lucas had descended the castle steps and was striding across the lawn toward them. He looked very purposeful, and she suddenly felt a desperate urge to run away. It was ridiculous, but even so the panic clogged her throat. He had not followed her instructions from the previous night. That should have told her something about the man he was and she should have thought twice before refusing to allow Galloway to appoint him.
Well, it was done now, and Lucas would simply have to accept it. She was the Duke of Forres’s daughter and she did not expect to be confronted by a servant or be required to justify her decisions. All the same, as Lucas approached the three of them, the breath caught in her throat and she had to stop herself from pressing a hand against her bodice where her heart was tripping crazily, as though she had run too far, too fast.
Suddenly Lucas was standing directly in front of her. His physical presence was so powerful that Christina took a step back even though there was nothing remotely threatening in his manner. Their eyes met. His were so brown they were almost black, dark as a winter’s night beneath those straight black brows, his expression impossible to read. The rest of his face was equally daunting. There was no warmth or softness in it. It was all hard angles and darkness. He held Christina’s gaze; she tried to look away and found that she could not. She was floored by the same physical awareness, fiercely intense, that had possessed her the previous night.
Then it was over, as though it had never been, and he bowed most elegantly.
“Lady Christina?” he said. His tone was deferential, in contradiction to the expression in his eyes, which was anything but respectful. “My name is Lucas Ross. I do not believe we have met, unless you have the advantage of me....” He let the words hang for a moment and Christina’s heart gave a wayward thump.
He had recognized her. He knew she was the woman he had kissed the previous night.
She straightened her spine. “No,” she said coldly. “I have not had that pleasure, Mr. Ross.”
A spark of amusement gleamed in Lucas’s eyes as though he was remembering just how pleasurable it had been, how she had melted in his arms, her lips opening beneath his as he had kissed her with heat and skill and passion. She felt a flash of that same sensual heat low in her belly. Damn him. The only thing she could do now was to act the aristocratic lady, disdainful, dismissive—even if cold was the very last thing she was feeling.
“This is very irregular,” she said. “In what way may I help you, Mr. Ross?”
Lucas smiled, quick, appreciative. It transformed his whole face, giving it warmth for one brief moment.
“I applied for the footman’s post,” he said. “Unfortunately my application was not successful. I wondered if you would be good enough as to explain why?”
“The appointment of servants is Mr. Galloway’s job, Mr. Ross,” Christina said. “You would need to apply to him for an explanation. Now if you will excuse me—”
“But you were the one who refused to offer me the post,” Lucas said. “I heard you tell Mr. Galloway not to appoint me.”
There was a sharp silence, during which Christina ran through any number of unladylike epithets in her head. She had not realized that they had been overheard.
“I am sorry, Mr. Ross,” she said eventually. “I am not in the habit of explaining my decisions to anyone.”
The quizzical lift of Lucas’s brows was very close to mockery. “I see,” he said, and Christina blushed to realize quite how arrogant she had sounded. “But how am I to improve if you will not tell me the areas in which I am lacking?”
Galloway came puffing up at that moment. “Mr. Ross! How dare you approach Lady Christina in such a ramshackle manner?”
“I meant no disrespect,” Lucas Ross said. His gaze had not moved from Christina, and she felt her face heat. “I merely asked to know the reasons why my application was rejected. Do I not deserve that?” He spoke directly to Christina so that only she could see the hidden amusement in his eyes. She felt trapped, flustered. Lucas knew perfectly well why she had rejected him and she had a disturbing feeling that unless she changed her mind he would be quite prepared to share the reason with everyone. Allegra was looking from one to the other with speculation. Even the duke was looking mildly interested. As for Galloway, he was avid to know her reasons since she had refused to give him any.
She was not sure which was worse, the fact that Lucas could expose her as a whisky smuggler or the fact that he could disclose that the previous night he had tumbled her in the heather. The first might land her in jail and the second would ruin her reputation.
She was trapped.
“I expect,” Allegra drawled, unexpectedly coming to her rescue, “that Aunt Christina rejected your application because you are too handsome, Mr. Ross.” Her blue MacMorlan gaze was drifting over Lucas with undisguised appreciation. “My poor aunt has to consider the smooth running of the household, you know. Your looks would cause havoc below stairs and scandal above.”
“Allegra!” Christina snapped, torn between relief and embarrassment at her niece’s intervention.
“What?” There was a hint of childish petulance in the way that Allegra shrugged one slender shoulder. “You know it’s true.”
Lucas smiled easily. He addressed Christina rather than Allegra. “It has always been a terrible disadvantage to me to look like this, I confess.”
Christina was almost tempted into an answering smile by his dry tone. “I am sure that your plight garners a great deal of sympathy, Mr. Ross,” she said, equally drily. “It must be a terrible burden to be cursed with such good looks.”
Appreciation sparked in Lucas’s eyes. “Oh, it is. But I scarcely think that is the reason you dismissed me, Lady Christina. Do tell us your real explanation or I shall be obliged to speculate.”
Christina took a deep breath. That was a clear threat and she was not going to be intimidated. Lucas Ross needed to understand that he could not expect to blackmail her into giving him a job.
“I think that would be a mistake, Mr. Ross,” she said. “Think carefully before you say something you might regret.”
Lucas’s eyes danced, daring her to call his bluff. “Are you afraid of the truth, Lady Christina? Do you not want it to come out?”
The man was a scoundrel. He deserved all that was coming to him.
“Well,” Christina said, injecting what she hoped was sincere regret into her tone, “I was thinking only of protecting your reputation, Mr. Ross, but as you are so monstrous persistent I can see that nothing but the truth will suffice.” She took a deep breath. “I am afraid that there was a problem with one of your references.”
She could see that Lucas had not been expecting this. A shade of wariness had come into his expression. Good. He was far too sure of himself.
“I was hoping not to have to raise this,” Christina said, warming to her theme. “I imagine it is an uncomfortable topic for you, Mr. Ross....” She risked another glance at Lucas and saw that he was watching her with so much wicked amusement in those dark eyes now that she almost forgot what she was saying.
“On the contrary, Lady Christina,” he murmured, “you find me positively agog to hear what you have to say.”
“I am a little acquainted with one of your previous employers, Sir Geoffrey MacIntyre,” Christina said. “Your reference from him was most generous—positively glowing. However—” she gave Lucas a look of limpid innocence “—I understood from him when we met last winter in Edinburgh that he had in fact sacked his footman for gross impropriety. I am therefore obliged to doubt the veracity of your references, Mr. Ross.”
For a second Lucas looked completely taken aback and it gave her the most immense satisfaction. Then his lips twitched. “I do believe you are accusing me of faking my testimonials,” he said.
“I would do nothing so crude as to accuse you of fraud,” Christina corrected. “I merely point out that this raised some concerns in my mind.”
“What sort of impropriety?” Allegra piped up. She was looking enthralled. “Did you run off with Lady MacIntyre, Mr. Ross? How wicked of you!”
“I am sure that Lady Christina will tell us precisely what impropriety I have committed,” Lucas murmured. His gaze challenged her. “Well, Lady Christina?”
“I am afraid it was financial impropriety,” Christina said solemnly. “I am sorry, Mr. Ross—” She flicked him a sympathetic look. “I imagine this is very difficult for you.”
“It is not what I expected, certainly,” Lucas said. “However I am afraid there has been a misunderstanding. I have never been accused of financial impropriety in my life. Perhaps you have confused me with another of Sir Geoffrey’s footmen?”
“I doubt I could ever confuse you with anyone, Mr. Ross,” Christina said, with perfect truth. “You have made sure of that.”
Again she saw that flash of amusement in his eyes. “I am flattered to think so,” he said.
“You should not be flattered,” Christina said. “I hope you will understand, however, that no amount of...persuasion...will convince me to change my mind.”
Their eyes met, cool blue and unreadable black. Christina could feel her heart racing. Then Lucas inclined his head. “I apologize,” he said. “It was a misjudgment on my part.” His tone had changed. It was respectful, practical. “I can offer other testimonials. The Duchess of Strathspey will vouch for me. She knows me well and will assure you of my honesty.”
Christina raised her brows. “Are you giving me orders now, Mr. Ross?”
Lucas smiled again. It was difficult to resist that smile. It was so wicked it made her feel quite hot all over.
“Merely a suggestion,” he murmured.
Then, unexpectedly, the duke spoke. Christina had almost forgotten that he was there. He had been staring vacantly out across the gardens as though his mind had been fixed on his latest academic project or ridiculous architectural design, but now his pale blue gaze swung back to focus on her. He smiled benignly.
“Hemmings and Grant need help in the gardens, my dear. Some sort of assistant, an under gardener, what?” He turned to Lucas. “You’d be ideal, young fellow. Since my daughter don’t seem to want you in the house, you’d be better off outside.”
“Papa!” Christina was mortified, torn between fury that her father was undermining her and embarrassment that he made Lucas sound of no more account than the horses in the stables.
“Thank you, Your Grace.” Lucas accepted swiftly, undermining her further. “I would be delighted to accept.”
“Good, good,” the duke said absentmindedly. “You’ll find Hemmings in the hothouses. He’ll tell you what to do.”
“Papa,” Christina said again. “You cannot simply appoint Mr. Ross as under gardener on a whim!”
The duke turned his pale blue myopic eyes on her. “Why not? It’s my garden.” He sounded like a spoiled child.
Christina repressed another sharp retort. It was only her father’s estate when he decided on impulse that he wanted to do something. The rest of the time, when he was closeted with his academic papers, it was very much her responsibility.
“I know that both Mr. Hemmings and Mr. Grant are elderly and need some assistance in the gardens,” she said carefully. “But Mr. Ross applied for a job as a footman. He is not qualified—”
“He looks qualified to me,” the duke said irritably. “How difficult can it be?”
“I am most grateful, Your Grace,” Lucas said, ignoring Christina’s fierce frown. “I am very eager to acquire a job at Kilmory and am happy to take whatever is on offer.”
“Splendid, splendid,” the duke said, beaming again. He slapped Lucas on the shoulder and strolled off toward the house.
Christina shut her mouth with a snap. She could see Lucas’s lips twitching as he tried not to laugh. She was neatly outmaneuvered.
“Well, then,” she said, masking her irritation. “As the duke quite rightly said, you will find Mr. Hemmings in the glasshouse, Mr. Ross. He will give you instructions on your work and find you a place to live. The outdoor servants have accommodation in the stables cottages, but they take their meals in the servants’ hall.” She waved a dismissive hand. “Mr. Galloway can advise you on anything else you need to know. Galloway—” she turned to the butler “—pray send to Strathspey Castle to request a reference for Mr. Ross from the Duchess of Strathspey.”
“Ma’am.” The butler bowed, stiff and proper again. His tightly pursed expression suggested that he absolutely deplored this turn of events. Christina shared his feelings but she knew there was no point in objecting. The duke liked to think that he was head of the household and could be very stubborn when contradicted.
“Thank you, my lady,” Lucas said. “Mr. Galloway.”
“How diverting this has been,” Allegra said. “Welcome to Kilmory, Mr. Ross.”
“Allegra,” Christina said, her patience hanging by the thinnest thread, “is it not time for your pianoforte practice? Mr. Ross—” she turned to Lucas “—a word, if you please.”
Allegra gave an exaggerated sigh and strolled off across the grass with one last, provocative glance over her shoulder at Lucas, who ignored her. His gaze was fixed firmly on Christina. She had never in her life been the focus of so much masculine attention. It unnerved her; her mouth dried.
“More mutual blackmail, Lady Christina?” Lucas asked lazily, when everyone was safely out of earshot. His voice was low and intimate. “Financial irregularities...most imaginative. I do congratulate you.”
“Let me offer you some advice, Mr. Ross,” Christina said briskly. “Last night I gave advice and you chose to ignore it. This time I suggest you think very carefully before you do the same. If you do not wish your time at Kilmory to be cut short, I counsel you not to put a foot wrong. You will behave with absolute decorum. Is that clear?”
“As crystal,” Lucas said.
“You will not speak of last night,” Christina continued.
“What aspect of last night?” Lucas queried.
“Any aspect of it,” Christina said shortly. “We will never mention it again. And,” she added, “I would like my pistol back, if you please.”
“Of course, ma’am,” Lucas said.
“Thank you,” Christina said. “Good day to you, Mr. Ross.”
She did not look back as she walked across the lawn to the house but she was certain that Lucas was watching her.
Trouble, trouble, trouble.
She did not need a crystal ball to see that Lucas Ross was very bad news indeed. She was not entirely sure what he was—other than dangerous—but she had a bad feeling that she was going to find out.
* * *
LUCAS RELEASED THE breath he had been holding in a long, silent sigh.
So that was what his lady smuggler looked like. He had known from the moment she had walked past him in the castle that she was the woman he had met the previous night. As soon as he was close to her, the recognition, the awareness between them, snapped into life.
He watched Christina walk away across the lawn. She did not look back. Lucas grinned. Of course she did not, although he was willing to wager that she burned to turn around and check if he was watching her.
He was. He could not take his eyes off her. He watched her all the way to the house. She did not hurry, but she did tilt her parasol back to block his view of her face. He would swear that was deliberate and nothing to do with the angle of the sun. The parasol was made of spotted damson muslin and trimmed with lace to match her gown. It looked frivolous but she was not a frivolous woman. Everything about her, from her height to her authoritative manner spoke of cool, calm competence.
He estimated that she was about a half dozen years older than he, not a grandmother, but not a debutante, either. He could see now why people might overlook her, because most people judged on appearance and Christina MacMorlan did nothing to enhance hers. Her hair was shades of brown, coiled into a no-nonsense bun in the nape of her neck. She dressed plainly. A man could make the mistake of thinking her features were unremarkable. Yet Lucas could see they were not. Her skin was flawless, pale cream and pink rose, a true Scottish complexion, scattered with endearing freckles. Her blue eyes had a sleepy gaze that was both misleading and sensual. When she had looked him in the eyes he had felt the impact like a punch through his whole body. But it was her mouth that was so potent, full and lush, reminding Lucas of her kisses. He shifted slightly. He found Christina MacMorlan ridiculously seductive and he was quite at a loss as to why that should be the case. But it might be useful. Christina’s was quite evidently the hand that steered the Kilmory estate whilst her father dabbled in whatever outlandish project took his fancy on any particular day. She was also the leader of the whisky smugglers, and he was convinced now that they had had a direct involvement in Peter’s death.
Over to the west, beyond the clipped hedges of the parterre, he could see the Duke of Forres wandering through the rose garden. He appeared to be talking to the plants, which was a curious thing to do. Lucas watched as the duke strolled over to the sundial in the middle of the garden and leaned over to check the time. It was quite clear that the man was an eccentric, in a world of his own. Lucas thought it unlikely that the duke was aware of anything that went on in his household, let alone that his eldest daughter ran a smuggling gang.
He had been lucky that the duke had offered him the job. Lady Christina certainly would not have yielded to his blackmail. The minute he had applied a little pressure she had come back with plenty more of her own. It was an unfortunate coincidence that Sidmouth’s clerk had given him Sir Geoffrey MacIntyre as a reference when Lady Christina was acquainted with the man. But actually he doubted everything that Christina had said and suspected she had made up the entire tale of financial impropriety simply to be rid of him.
His lips twisted in wry appreciation. It would not do to underestimate Lady Christina MacMorlan. She was strong, determined and clever, more than a match for him.
She would be entirely capable of covering up a murder.
He had to remember that and not let the fierce attraction he had to Christina MacMorlan cloud his judgment.
He watched the front door close behind her. He was forgotten. A small smile touched his lips at the lordly way in which the duke’s daughter had dismissed him. It would be useful if she considered him beneath her notice. Servants were meant to be invisible; he could go about his investigation whilst remaining unobserved.
Beyond the tall pine trees that bordered the terrace he could see the corner of a building and the glitter of the sun on long glass windows. That must be the hothouse where he would find Hemmings, the head gardener. Being outside, laboring in a physical job was far preferable to him than being indoors, catering to the whims of the nobility. Lucas straightened and squared his shoulders. It was time he got to work.
CHAPTER FIVE (#ulink_24220717-9133-520e-ae9e-4ea5c0c901ca)
DAMNATION.
Christina loved her father, but there were times when she could happily wring his neck, and this was one of them. She closed the door of her private parlor behind her with exaggerated calm and sank down into her favorite armchair. For a moment she closed her eyes and breathed deeply, inhaling the scents of wax polish and roses mingled with the faint smell of dust and the ashes in the grate. It was quiet, reassuring. For a little while she felt soothed, comfort flowing through her and easing her tense muscles. Then she remembered Lucas’s smile—and the fact that he was now a member of the staff at Kilmory Castle, which was precisely the outcome she had not wanted.
She opened her eyes and blinked, rubbing her forehead where the beginnings of a headache stirred. She told herself that it did not matter; Lucas was clearly very keen to have a job at Kilmory. He would do nothing to put that at risk.
She was a fool to think he’d risk his future by kissing her again. Lucas Ross was a great deal younger than she was and sinfully handsome. Of course he would not be attracted to an old maid. Their passionate encounter the night before had been driven by a wild relief and the vivid excitement of being alive. Now, in the cold light of day, everything was different, and she should welcome that because lust, passion, held no place in her life.
There were no mirrors in her parlor. In fact, when they had moved to Kilmory Castle, she had removed several of the ancient speckled pier glasses from the walls because she did not want to see her reflection forever staring back at her. She knew what she looked like: a thirty-three-year-old spinster in elegant but not particularly modish gowns whose hair was neither auburn nor brown nor blond but some sort of mixture of all three, whose eyes were pale blue and fanned by fine lines that grew less fine and more deep as the years passed, whose complexion had lost its youthful sparkle and whose chin was already showing signs of sagging. In fact, everything was showing signs of sagging, as it did with age. She had no illusions, and before the previous night she had had no desire to look any different. Her appearance had been almost irrelevant to her. Her sisters were the beautiful ones.
Now, though, Lucas’s youth and vitality made her keenly aware of the passing years. She felt old and faded, and ashamed of feeling so fierce an attraction to him. She knew that her late mother’s dearest friend, Lady Kenton, would laugh at her for such scruples. Lady Kenton firmly believed that a view was there to be admired. But Christina did not want to feel anything for Lucas. She did not want to feel anything for any man. It was too risky. She, who took risks with her life and her personal safety every day when it came to outwitting the revenue officers, was too scared to risk her heart again.
A politely deferential knock at the door roused her. It must be Mr. Bevan, the land agent, early for their meeting. But before Christina could call him in, the door opened and Galloway poked his head in.
“I beg your pardon, ma’am, but Mr. Eyre is here to see you.”
Christina felt a sharp stab of alarm. Mr. Eyre was the exciseman, the government’s tax collector, who hounded the local families mercilessly for every last penny they owed. Possessed of a zealous desire to drain every drop of revenue from Kilmory’s farmers and villagers, he had threatened to arrest the illegal whisky distillers and see them hang.
“Please tell Mr. Eyre that I have an appointment in ten minutes and cannot spare him the time—” she began, only for Eyre to shoulder his way past Galloway and barge into the room.
“This won’t take long, Lady Christina.” He was a big man, florid, with small gray eyes in a fleshy face. His gaze darted about the room as though checking to see that she had not concealed an illegal whisky still beneath the table. “Still consorting with criminals and smugglers, I hear.”
“I beg your pardon?” Christina’s voice dripped ice.
Eyre, however, was not a man to be intimidated. He thrust his hands into his pockets and rocked back on his heels, smiling. “I saw you entering Mrs. Keen’s cottage yesterday. Her son was arrested for illegal distilling back last year—”
“Which is one of the reasons why I visit her.” Christina did not trouble to hide her dislike. “She is an elderly woman, in poor health, alone in the world, who has little income and who has been persecuted unforgivably by the authorities.”
Eyre snapped his fingers. “She should not have harbored a known criminal, then.”
Christina could feel her temper rising. She knew that Eyre deliberately set out to anger her; he had been an enemy ever since she had written to Lord Sidmouth to complain about his methods and his corruption. It was always a struggle not to rise to his provocation.
“Was there a point to your visit, Mr. Eyre?” she inquired politely.
“Indeed.” The excise officer’s eyes gleamed. “I am here to introduce my nephew, Richard Bryson, my sister’s boy, who has come to help me hunt down the malefactors who plague our area. I am confident that with his help and the other resources granted to me by Lord Sidmouth, we shall soon have the Kilmory Gang behind bars.”
“How gratifying for you,” Christina said. She had not seen the younger man who was hovering in his uncle’s shadow, but now he came forward into the room and made a bow.
“At your service, Lady Christina.”
This was a very different man from his uncle. He was young, surely no more than twenty, slight and fair, with dreamy brown eyes and the hands of a musician. His bow was elegant; he could have stepped from an Edinburgh drawing room. His uncle was looking at him with ill-concealed contempt. Christina wondered how on earth the two of them could possibly work together and why a man like Richard Bryson would want to take on the dirty task of the excise officers. But perhaps he had no choice. She thought of Lucas Ross again and how inappropriate it was that he was a servant. A man had to earn a living, no matter how incongruous it might seem or how ill suited to it he might be.
“I wish you success in your career, Mr. Bryson,” she said. She gave his uncle a cool smile. “If you will excuse me...”
As Galloway ushered the gentlemen out, she wondered at Eyre. There was not a courteous bone in his body. His visit had been for quite another purpose, to warn her, perhaps, of his intent to increase his efforts at trapping the whisky smugglers. He suspected her of more than sympathy toward the smuggling gang.
Christina shivered. His visit had been a threat. Of that there was no doubt. She was going to have to be very careful indeed.
* * *
THE SUMMER LIGHT was fading as Lucas left the servants’ hall to stroll back to his tiny cottage in the castle grounds. Dinner had been delicious, a rich lamb stew with dumplings that had been just what he had needed after working up an appetite digging over the flower beds. He had been at Kilmory for three days and already he was settling in to the routine of his work. It was physically hard but not challenging in other ways; he simply had to keep his head down, watch, listen and not put a foot out of line.
The servants were wary of him. A stranger who looked and sounded as though he should be serving tea in an Edinburgh drawing room rather than digging up root crops in the Highlands was bound to be treated carefully. Word had gone round of his failure to obtain the footman’s post—a boy called Thomas Wallace looking shiny and scrubbed in his new livery was proudly sitting in the footman’s chair. There was a whiff of uncertainty about Lucas’s background that he chose not explain, though the reference from the Duchess of Strathspey that had arrived that afternoon had helped to soothe any concerns. Galloway at least was now treating him as though he was less likely to steal the silver.
Lucas was quite happy for people to think him dour and uncommunicative, though he had stayed to share the pot of tea after dinner when jackets were loosened and conversation warmed up a little. From this he had learned something of the family, which, whilst not directly useful to his work, was still interesting. Angus, the heir to the dukedom, was generally disliked as a bully. His wife, Gertrude, was actively hated for her interfering ways. Everyone shook their heads when Lachlan’s name was mentioned. He had a problem with drink, Lucas heard, and also with his wife, a she-devil called Dulcibella who held the purse strings and was shriller than a Glasgow costermonger. Mention of the duke made them smile with exasperation. But Christina was loved. Their affection for her was simple and powerful and it took Lucas aback. As he strolled back through the castle grounds he wondered what Christina had done to earn their loyalty.
When he reached the relative privacy of the gardeners’ cottages he took from his pocket the letter that Galloway had passed to him after dinner.
“From the Duchess of Strathspey herself,” Galloway had said, with a mixture of respect and disapproval, as though Lucas should have been far too lowly for a duchess to take notice of him.
Lucas let himself inside and unfolded the letter to read. He did not light a lamp; instead, he tilted it to catch the last flare of twilight.
“Lucas,” his aunt had written in her forthright manner.
What on earth is going on? I have written you a glowing reference—naturally—but would appreciate some sort of explanation of your new interest in horticulture. Have you lost all your money? Are you really working as an under gardener to the Duke of Forres? Could you not do better than that? Please try to remember you are my nephew—and a prince, for that matter—and aim a little higher.
She had signed off with her usual strong black flourish.
Lucas grinned. He had known that his aunt would not let him down. He knew she was no snob, either. And he did owe her an explanation.
He took out a pencil from his pocket and scrawled back:
Thank you, ma’am. I am in your debt, as always. Business brings me to Kilmory, but I find it more useful for the time being to keep that business a secret, hence the role of gardener. I can only hope that I do not inadvertently kill off the entire ducal flower garden in the process.
He signed it and placed it under the chipped enamel jug on the dresser. Tomorrow he would contrive an errand to Kilmory Village and find a carter to take it to Strathspey. He did not want to send it from the castle. That was too dangerous.
He went through to the inner of the cottage’s two rooms and threw himself down on the narrow iron bedstead. His aunt was no fool; she had known of Peter’s death and she would work out quickly enough what he was doing at Kilmory. She would not approve. He doubted she would give him away, but no doubt like Jack Rutherford she would also think it a fool’s errand, that because of his grief he was unable to accept Peter’s death and let the matter go.
The duchess would laugh to see him now, he thought as he stared up at the pallor of the whitewashed ceiling. His surroundings were neither princely nor palatial, two rooms, this one with a wooden chest and a heather-stuffed mattress and the other with a table, two chairs, a dresser and a few other sticks of furniture. Outside there was a stone sink for washing. It was a far cry indeed from his grandfather’s palace. Still, it was clean and dry. Someone had made nice curtains and matching patchwork cushions that sat rather daintily on the upright chairs. There were a couple of rag rugs on the flagstone floor. Lucas wondered who had gone to the trouble of furnishing the place, making it appear as though they cared enough for their servants to see them comfortable.
He thought of Christina MacMorlan. He had promised Jack that he would not involve her in this business but that was before he had learned that she was already involved up to her neck. And she had something he needed. Information.
He felt no stirring of conscience. Conscience was something that rarely troubled him. In general he was comfortable with the decisions he made and this was no exception.
It would not hurt to take advantage of Lady Christina’s attraction to him. She had been all that was starchy and proper on the surface, but even so she had not been quite able to hide the fact that she was drawn to him. That was good; he would exploit that attraction to learn what he could. He would use her.
He slept well that night.
CHAPTER SIX (#ulink_11743b3e-c16b-54e4-bf0a-ec81a4d3e074)
“I SAY,” LADY Allegra MacMorlan drawled, propping herself against the stone window embrasure in the parlor and gazing out at the garden, “what an absolutely splendid view.”
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Nicola Cornick
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современная зарубежная литература
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: He will expose her as the criminal he seeks, or seduce her as the woman he desires…An old maid—that′s all Lady Christina McMorlan, daughter to the Duke of Forres, is to society now that she′s past thirty. She hosts her father′s parties and cares for her siblings, knowing she′ll never have her own home and family.She has no time to pine, however. By night, she′s The Lady, head of a notorious whiskey-smuggling gang that supports her impoverished clan. They′re always one step ahead of the revenue man – until Lucas Black shows up.Rejecting his title and the proper society that disparaged his mother, Lucas earns his living running a successful gambling house. He′s also a spy, charged with bringing down the Forres Gang. He thinks The Lady′s just a bored society spinster. She thinks he′s a lost child playing at rebellion.And when the truth comes out, it′s not just their love on the line…