“Ye were wrong,” Liam repeated, though he hadn’t wanted to say anything at all. Nay, he’d wished to be a ghost, an invisible specter who could play voyeur to her mysterious feminine nighttime rituals. But she’d have turned and found him eventually, and every moment that passed without a word between them became more dangerous to them both.
To her body. To his soul.
She was a goddess shrouded in silver beams. Naked beneath her wrapper, her lush form was perfectly outlined by the moonlight piercing the thin fabric.
Liam had known she was a voluptuous woman, had often speculated in his quiet moments about the body she might be hiding beneath her corset and many skirts. But nothing in his life could have prepared him for what he’d witnessed mere minutes ago before the debacle in the hallway. Her nude form would forever be the image branded on the inside of his eyelids. Her creamy shoulders glowing in the candlelight as her luxurious hair fell in loose waves down her back, vibrant as a sunset reflecting off a waterfall. He’d known her breasts were generous, but his palms itched at the memory of their ripe, rosy-tipped perfection, quivering with the force of her astonishment.
They’d even fill hands as large as his, maybe to overflowing. The thought caused his mouth to water and his eyes to close against the unadulterated lust that rocked him to his core.
It wasn’t fair. To see her thus was to be a damned soul given a glimpse of heaven. Forever denied. The cruelty of it was enough to break him.
“I know.” Her humble admission confused him for a moment, and he opened his eyes to see her lower her hands from her mouth to wrap them around her middle.
“I was wrong, unutterably wrong to keep Andrew’s secret from you. There is no excusing my decision, and—”
“Nay.” He lifted a hand to stop her and didn’t miss the way she flinched, even though the length of an entire room lay between them. The reflexive action set his teeth on edge. “I meant, ye were mistaken about … I did have a dog when I was a lad.”
Backlit by the moon as she was, Liam couldn’t make out her expression, though her bewilderment seemed as tangible as the floor beneath him.
“You did?” she asked.
“Aye.”
“And … you returned to my room to inform me of that?”
Liam hated the careful evenness in her voice. The uncertainty and apprehension his actions had stirred within her. He wanted that to cease, but it seemed everything he did exacerbated her fear of him.
“Aye,” he answered again.
“That I was wrong?”
“Aye. Nay. That is … not only that … I…” He sifted through thoughts as dark and muddled as the evening air. It seemed all the alcohol had gone to his head and all the blood had settled in his groin and nothing was working as it should.
“Then why else did you come, my laird?” she queried softly. “What are you doing here in the dark?”
“I…” He knew he owed both of them the answer to that question. After she’d stunned him by dressing him down in the middle of his own keep, he’d planted his boots firmly in the direction of his rooms at the opposite end of the long west wing. But, the farther his feet had carried him away from her, the colder he’d become. The heavier his burdens had weighed upon him, until his shoulders and neck felt as though they’d snap from the strain. So he’d turned around, not at all understanding his own actions, and stumbled back into her room.
The scent of lavender and roses had lingered in the air, and his knees had given out when he’d spied the drying bouquet of the flowers he’d sent her tied to a metal accent of her vanity. Dried but fragrant, displayed like a treasure.
He’d sat where he’d landed in the chair, knowing the husky register of her voice would soothe the restless beast inside of him. That her feminine presence would remind him that he was human. That he was capable of not just temper and fire and fury, but of amusement and tenderness and … whatever it was that expanded in his chest when she was nearby.
She seemed to be the soft place his thoughts landed whenever they would wander. Hers was the sweet voice he clung to when the demons of his past screamed in his head. When he thought of beauty, he saw her face. When he felt hard and cold as iron, it was the fantasy of her supple pliability that warmed his blood. She seemed to be the only being that could temper the flames of his rage.
What was he doing here in the dark? He knew not, only that he’d followed some kind of instinct to find her, like a wounded animal searching for a safe haven.
“His name was Brutus, and my father killed him.” The confession ripped from Liam’s lips before he could call it back, and hung in between them with a weighty vibration.
Her arms dropped to her sides, and Liam wondered if she realized that she’d taken a tentative step toward him.
“Your … dog?”
He nodded, abruptly feeling too raw and exposed to realize that she might not see the movement in the dark. He wanted to retreat from what he’d just told her, to draw back inside of himself. But the memories lived in there, and he didn’t want their company tonight.
Only hers.
“Why would your father do something so awful?” The curiosity in her voice was devoid of pity or censure, and so he was able to answer.
“Because Brutus was something I loved, and my father reveled in destroying anything I treasured, in denying me anything I wanted, and punishing me if I showed any weakness or attachment.”
She made a sympathetic noise in the back of her throat, and it washed over Liam like a balm over a smarting burn.
“My father wanted to break me down so that he could craft and fabricate me into his likeness. He wanted a cohort to his evil. A maniacal copy of his cruelty. I never stopped fighting him, but in some ways, I fear, he succeeded in making me like him. A very large, very strong, very violent man. Of all the lashes he dealt me, and all the bones he broke, it was the loss of Brutus that caused me the most pain.” Christ, why was he saying this? He was a man not only grown but aged, and he buried such things in the darkness of decades past and swept them beneath greater atrocities. Maybe it was the drink that loosened his tongue, the night, or the moon, or some sort of feminine magic that pulled the narrative from his throat. A panicked part of him wanted to stop, and something else pressed him forward, the part that sensed the burden begin to lift from his shoulders with a spoken revelation.
Mena ventured even closer, gliding over the carpets with a tentative sensuality that Liam wasn’t certain he knew how to process. He almost wanted her to stay where she was, safe out of arm’s reach. But to be approached by her was as miraculous as the proverbial lamb with the lion.
“The scars on your back … they were inflicted before the military. By your own father?”
“Most of them,” he answered honestly, simultaneously dreading and resigning himself to her pity.
She showed him neither, though she paused and gave an audible swallow. “Would you permit me to ask you something?” she inquired.
She could say whatever she wanted if she’d only keep using that voice, the one that reached for him through the shades and memories to caress the tension from his muscle, sinew, and bone.
When he didn’t answer she proceeded anyway. “If your father’s treachery caused you such a wound, would you then hurt Andrew in the same fashion?”
He stiffened. “Nay, lass, doona ye ken I’m trying to protect him from such a loss? I had Brutus less than year before he was … slaughtered in front of my eyes. What if my son had such an attachment for ten or fifteen years, and then the wee beastie died or ran away? Is it not kinder of me to circumvent the pain of that altogether?”
“Wasn’t it Lord Tennyson who first said that ‘it is better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all’?” Slowly, his governess lowered her frame onto the dainty bench of her vanity. She was within an arm’s reach now, and Liam kept his hands fisted in his lap.
“I doona know, lass. I’ve never read much poetry.”
“Well, that must be remedied.” She sighed softly and leaned toward him in the darkness. “The point you make is frankly absolute nonsense, and yet I feel as though I am finally beginning to understand you, Laird Ravencroft.” The whisper of a smile warmed her voice and Liam thought that if he sat very still he could feel that warmth radiating from her skin, though she didn’t touch him.
Liam’s brows drew together as he tried to figure whether her words pleased or offended him.
“You know that I’m acquainted with Farah Blackwell, the Countess Northwalk,” she continued.
“Aye.”
“Well, I will confess that she has taken me into her confidence, and I know that she is not only an association, but your sister-in-law. You see, I understood your father to be a vicious man before I came here, because Farah told me that he paid to have your brother, his own son, beaten to death by the guards at Newgate Prison where he was wrongly incarcerated.”
She’d uncovered another guilt he carried locked beneath his ribs. Something he should have been able to stop, somehow, had he acted sooner. Had he become the Demon Highlander back when Dougan Mackenzie, the boy who had become Dorian Blackwell, had needed him, might he have saved his brother from becoming the Blackheart of Ben More?
“I felt so much sorrow for your brother all those years ago.” Mena’s voice caught for a moment before she cleared the emotion from it. “I mourn for all of the ill-treated and illegitimate children of Hamish Mackenzie and men like him. But what I realize now is if that was the awful fate of the unwanted boy, what must it have been like for the child who had to reside with such a man?”
No one, not even Liam, himself, had thought of it in those terms before. He’d always mourned for the countless victims of his father. Never had he thought to count himself among their ranks. He’d been the heir apparent. The legitimate issue who at least had inherited a castle, fertile land, a title, and a business, one he’d built from failing to thriving. He’d always thought that of all Hamish Mackenzie’s offspring, he’d received the most reparation, and therefore had little entitlement to his pain.
Liam raked his hands through his hair before returning them to his lap, finding it impossible to lift his gaze. For the first time since he’d been a child he felt brittle. Breakable. As though he were stretched out on the rack and the last turn of the screws would tear his limbs apart.
“I hated my father,” Liam admitted. “I promised to never become like him and yet, though I’ve never laid a hand on my son in anger, he still wishes me dead.”
The whisper of her touch caressed him before her hand rested tentatively in his open palm. Again he had to close his eyes because, even in the dimness, the moon illuminated too much.
“Your father was unspeakably cruel to you, and I am so very sorry for it.” Her fingers curled around his hand and exerted a soft, comforting pressure. Her voice warmed the chilly evening. “If I know one thing, Andrew is your son. Hot-blooded and hardheaded, but tender for all that. I think he speaks from a place of injury rather than conviction.”
“How do I tell him that Gavin was right? That I stayed away because, even though my father is dead, through me he somehow seems able to destroy everything or everyone in my path…” An aching void opened up in Liam’s chest that stole his breath. One by one, he allowed his fingers to curl around hers.
“I became the Demon Highlander for them, ye ken? Not for the glory of the empire. Or the Mackenzie clan. Not to make a name or fortune for myself. Ye see, as a young man, I always thought if I died at war, if I left this world a hero, my children would remember me fondly. Not only that, their futures in society would be secure. ’Tis why I always led the charge, why I jumped into the most dangerous circumstances without a thought. Every mission, every battle, I expected to be my last. I think Andrew and I both anticipated that I would be nothing but a distant memory for him, not an ill-tempered man he’d have to live with. Someone he’d wished had never come home…”
“He didn’t mean what he said,” she crooned to him.
“He’s within his right to,” Liam murmured, troubled and yet transfixed by the soft, small hand tucked into his.
“No he isn’t.” She tightened her hold again, and oddly enough he felt a little bit of the pressure in his chest ease so he could take a deep breath. “He loves you. It’s why he’s so angry. He wants you to love him. He wants you to teach him. I think he needs to know that he can be difficult and you will not abandon him.”
Liam clung to her, his only salvation in the crashing and eddying tides of emotion he never allowed himself to examine. “What if it’s too late?” His fear amalgamated into something solid. Tangible. And once he’d given it voice, it grew with enough force to crush him.
“I’m not of the opinion that anything with Andrew was broken tonight that cannot be repaired as swiftly and thoroughly as my door can.” She’d pushed a bit of cheek into her voice; to lighten the moment, he assumed.
Despite that, shame weighted down the edges of Liam’s mouth as he thought of the physical force he’d used against her door. The only illusion she had of safety. “I shouldna have acted so barbaric. I doona want ye to fear me, lass. I’ll have the door fixed in the morning.”
She was silent for a breathless moment. “Think no more of it,” she said. “We’ll hopefully both wipe it from our memory and move forward.”
Liam hoped like hell she’d be able to, though he knew he’d be tormented by the memory of her sumptuous flesh for countless days to come. His eyes had adjusted to the lack of light, and whatever the shadows concealed, his recollection of her perfection filled in the spaces.
“I know this is a sore subject between us,” she ventured. “It’s only that I don’t know what Lord Thorne said to make you think I’d allow him into my room, but I want to assure you that I have no intentions toward your brother, and wouldn’t dream of conducting myself in a manner that—”
“I knew Gavin wasna in yer room,” Liam assured her. “He wouldna dare. I forbade him from bothering ye further, and he left.”
“Forbade?” Liam could tell she didn’t like the word by the perplexed lethargy with which she said it. “If the earl went home, then who did you think…?” It took her mind two very quick seconds to put it all together and snatch her hand out of his. “You came to my bedroom looking for … Andrew? You kicked the door in because you thought your son was in here with me in the middle of the night?” She’d moved past perplexed to mystified, and Liam had to sort through his Scotch-muddled thoughts for something to say.
“Oh, my God.” She stood and turned away from him, retreating a few paces and wrapping her arms back around her middle in that protective gesture.
The loss of her comforting touch drove Liam to his feet. “Rhianna said ye’d both gone upstairs to bed at the same time. The two of ye had been avoiding me for days. When ye werena sneaking away together ye were whispering secrets. I didna ken at the time that it was regarding a wee beastie.”
She slowly twisted to face him, and Liam was glad he couldn’t see whatever awful emotion her gaze contained. “So you thought I … Lord, I can’t even say it.” Her hand flew to her forehead and dragged across it as though to wipe away the offending thought.
Liam groped for something, anything that might make her understand. “Andrew’s sullen moods have driven away every governess he’s ever had, and suddenly he started treating ye like ye’d hung the moon.”
“It’s called fondness,” she hissed. “Affection. We can feel that, you know, without it being some kind of perversion.”
“I ken that.” He took a step toward her, and again she retreated. “But he’s a handsome lad on the cusp of manhood who thinks of little else but women, and ye’re young and damned desirable. Ye canna blame me for suspecting—”
“You had to feel a little more than suspicion to kick my bloody door in!”
Liam said nothing. At first because no one ever dared to interrupt him, and then because he couldn’t ever remember hearing her curse. The lass was right, of course, he’d been quite a bit more than suspicious.
He’d been jealous.
“I should leave,” she whispered, her hand still resting on her forehead as though she were now afraid her mind would escape her if she let it.
Liam pinched the bridge of his own nose. He was turning a misunderstanding into a catastrophe. “Nay, I’ll go, we’ll discuss this in the morning.” They’d sort out the mess when he was thinking more clearly. Every emotion he had simmered right below the surface of his skin, some that he battled constantly such as lust, anger, need, and regret. Others he’d buried with his father, and he should wait until the light of day to sort through them.
And then there were these new foreign ones which needed to be inspected. Softer, tender, almost …
“No,” she lamented, bringing his attention snapping back to her. “There’s no discussing this. I have to depart first thing. I cannot stay here any longer. Not now.”
Alarm seized him. “Ye mean, leave Ravencroft?”
“Yes, I mean leave Ravencroft.” She hurried to her wardrobe with stilting, uncertain steps, blindly reached in, and yanked down an armful of clothing. It was too dark for either of them to truly ascertain what color they were, but she didn’t seem to care as she flung open the trunk at the foot of her bed and began to shove them in.
When she looked as though she’d return for more, Liam placed his body in her path. “Ye’re staying,” he ordered.
She stepped around him. “If your opinion of me is so low that you think I could take advantage of a child, this will never work. I’ll find a different situation.”
“I was…” He didn’t want to say wrong, though he knew it to be the appropriate word. He trailed her to the wardrobe wondering how he’d managed to halt armies in their tracks, but this one wee governess refused to cooperate. “Ye’re not leaving.” He tried a command, which in his book was a bit higher than an order. That ought to work.
“But I must.” She hurried away from him, thrusting her second armful into the trunk.
He shut the wardrobe and advanced on her. “I willna allow it,” he threatened. “Ye’ll remain here in my employ, and that is my final word on the matter.”
She whirled around and stomped in his direction until they met in the center of the room beneath the silver gaze of the moonlight streaming through her window. She could have been the goddess Danu, her red hair billowing around her, her robe flowing with the force of her truncated movements.
“Don’t you think for one minute that you can order me about like one of your subordinates.” She spoke slowly, enunciating her indignant words with abject clarity. “You may be a Highland laird, and you may be a marquess, but that doesn’t give you one ounce of dominion over me, Liam Mackenzie.” Her breasts heaved with her increasingly forceful breaths. Her voice shook with anger and her pale jade eyes flashed silver with wrath and moonlight.
Something about her temper gave Liam the most excruciating erection he’d ever had. He stepped forward, wanting to reach for her, but for every move he made to close in, she took a step back.
“I might be afraid of you,” she confessed, her voice losing some of its fervency as he stalked her in the dark. “But mark me, I’ll never cower to another man. I am my own self. I am a woman with free and independent will. I deserve to live for no one’s whims and pleasures but my own, and I don’t have to follow your commands.” Her back found the wall, and suddenly there was nowhere to go. Liam knew it. And so did the lass.
“Do what you will, you high-handed, imperious, overbearing brute, but if I want to leave, you’ll not sto—”
Liam cut off her words with his mouth.
It was a movement born of panic and instinct. He hadn’t been thinking. He just … couldn’t bear to hear her say that she was leaving one more fucking time.
He’d kissed her before, and still he hadn’t been prepared for the complexity of sweetness that he found on her lips. It inflamed him. It humbled him. It held him in a thrall he knew full well he’d never escape. So here he stood, a willing slave to his own desire. A helpless victim of the debilitating lust that flared in his loins and boiled through his blood. He was hard as a diamond, the cords and sinew at his hips rolling forward to press against the softness of her belly.
Liam would never have enough of her, not if he fused their mouths for an eternity. Each drugging sweep of their lips only intensified his hunger. Nibbling at her lower lip, he sampled the flavor of her skin, then licked at the seam of her full mouth, silently requesting admittance into the honeyed heat he was certain to find inside.
He swallowed her shocked gasp and plundered her with his tongue as though she were a lifelong conquest. Digging his fingers into her ribs to keep from taking what she did not offer him, he deepened the kiss, using his tongue to convey what he could not find the words to say.
She wasn’t the only one who was afraid. Liam was terrified.
Of losing her.
Of loving her.
And at this moment, he was in mortal danger of both.
