Liam had gone to Andrew’s room in the morning and had done what he could to make things right before he left on business that very afternoon. He and his son had traded apologies, something that may have never been done in the Ravencroft household for generations.
He’d left feeling both heavier and more hopeful than he had in a lifetime, and the conflicting emotions set him more on edge than ever.
It took the entire train journey from Strathcarron to Dingwall for Liam to decide upon the woman he’d use to fuck the memory of Philomena Lockhart away. How would he ever make it through the tedium of the Agriculture Council of Highland Lairds as randy and distracted as a pubescent schoolboy? There was no concentrating on late-summer harvest reports, the sowing of winter crops, settling on export prices, or meeting with the Fraser’s French cousins to purchase next year’s oak sherry casks if he couldn’t get his runaway libido under control.
’Twas the reason he left Ravencroft two days early; it would take that long in bed, at least, to erase the memory of her incomparable body, of her slick desire on his skin.
Mary Munroe flung her door open before he had the chance to knock. Her lovely face alight with a welcoming smile, she fanned herself coquettishly and gave him a saucy wink.
“Well, if it isna the Demon Highlander, himself, come to take my virtue.” Twirling a dark ringlet around her finger, Mary laughed at her own joke. It had been many years since Mary Monroe had been a virgin, or virtuous for that matter.
She was the most expensive courtesan in the Highlands. It was rumored she stayed in Dingwall because the lord of Tulloch Castle kept her in these lavish apartments.
But as long as she was at his leisure, she could keep her own appointments, as well.
Mary Munroe only held in reserve the most exclusive clientele, and Liam was lucky enough to be counted among their few numbers. He not only enjoyed her dexterity, he enjoyed her company. He could say that about very few people.
She gave a delighted squeal as he crowded her into her apartments, slammed the door, shoved her against the garishly papered wall, and kissed her.
This was what he wanted, was it not? A bout of hot, sweaty, desperate fucking. She’d let him take his fill. She’d done it before. But even as she bloomed for him, swirling her tongue inside his mouth with expert skill, he suddenly knew hers were not the lips he craved. Her breasts beneath his searching hands felt small and unexciting.
Liam’s body was hard and ready, had been since the night before. So why did he have to close his eyes and picture Mena in order to make the idea of bedding one of the most beautiful women in Scotland seem more than passing attractive?
She broke the kiss with no small amount of reluctance and studied him with eyes the color of his rich whisky. “All right, Laird Mackenzie, who is she?”
He stepped back as she pushed at his jacket.
“Who?” He kept the question deceptively mild, as he ran a frustrated hand over the hair he’d tied back for his journey.
“The woman ye’ve come to me to forget.” She raised a knowing eyebrow at him and sashayed down the hall, her voluminous bustled skirts trailing after her.
Mena’s back also arched just thus, and Liam knew she didn’t have to employ a bustle to achieve the shape that Miss Munroe and so many women paid good money for. Mena’s arse was a thing of beauty. If he could just mold his hands around it, he’d die a happy man.
He scowled, exasperated by the unbidden direction of his thoughts. He followed the courtesan into her receiving room, and grabbed her from behind, turning her to face him. “Doona talk nonsense, woman.”
A painted lip tilted up. “I’m skilled in many things, my laird, but nonsense is not one of them. If ye want a stupid whore, ye’ll have to look elsewhere.”
“It’s not yer sense I’m paying ye for, lass, now take this off.” His fingers went to the laces of her dress.
She covered his big hands with her dainty ones, and Liam had a hard time meeting the understanding that lurked in her eyes. “I’ve known ye a long time, Liam Mackenzie. And I’ve wanted ye since before ye came to me, back when ye were still faithful to yer mad wife.”
“Careful, lass,” he warned, pulling his hands from hers.
“Ye wanted me, too, wanted me something fierce if I remember correctly.” She turned and moved deeper into her sumptuous parlor, draping herself across a soft green chaise that matched the extravagant gold drapes. Even the room was decorated to make her look more fetching. The colors illuminating her own dusky shades and contrasting with the dark bronze of her dress.
Flicking her fan a few times, she made her loose ringlets flutter with a practiced grace. “I knew that when ye finally gave in to come and take me, it would be the kind of encounter that would require recovery. As usual, I was right. I didna walk the same for a week.” Her face glowed with the fond memory.
So why were they wasting time? “Get naked and I’ll no let yer feet touch the ground for days.”
She shook her head, her eyes glimmering with regret and a fond sort of pity. “Nay. If ye’re not already in love with whoever she is, ye’re nigh to falling. I’d have ye off one time and then ye’d be so full of shame and regret that ye’d leave. I doona want us to part like that.”
“Tell me,” he asked acerbically, “does fortune-telling pay as much as prostitution?”
“Don’t be cruel because I’m right,” she said sharply.
He glared at her, and she gave as well as she got.
“Sit down, my laird, and have a drink,” she invited. “Ye can tell me about her.”
“No, thank ye.” He was wary of drink at the moment.
“Tea then.” She motioned toward the set at her elbow and Liam acquiesced, settling himself in the lone high-backed leather chair next to the fire, the only furnishing obviously placed for a male visitor.
She poured silently and he watched her, his insides churning with need, disappointment, and, if he was honest, a great deal of relief.
He took the delicate ivory china cup from her when she handed it across the small table, and tried his best not to drink the brew in one sip. He’d never been much for tea, or comfortable with breakable things in his hands.
She was regarding him with shrewd affection when he looked up. “I like that I can never quite figure ye out,” she said. “Ye are Lieutenant Colonel Mackenzie, the Demon Highlander. Ye dash toward the fray, ye charge into the most dangerous situations with not even a blink. But caring for a woman … that will frighten ye enough to run?”
Liam said nothing, setting his tea down. It wasn’t merely Mena he’d run from. It was himself. The mortification caused by the admissions he’d given her in the dark. He’d shared some of his own secrets with her. Imparted his pain. Unleashed the force of his need …
And it had frightened her.
So he’d promised to leave her be, but even as he’d said it he knew he’d been lying. There was no leaving her alone. Miss Lockhart had somehow become a part of him.
“Is it love?” Mary asked gently.
“It’s … complicated.”
“Love is always complicated, darling.” She laughed. “That’s why I do what I do instead of falling for someone who deserves it. Complications are tedious, unless they’re happening to someone else, of course.”
Liam thought it was her casual attitude toward the situation that allowed him to admit to her what he not only feared, but suspected.
“She doesna want the Demon Highlander.”
“You have a great many other titles,” she reminded him wryly.
“She doesna seem to be interested in those, either.” A fact he found he admired about Mena, though he’d gladly use them to get what he wanted from her if he thought it would help.
The woman shrugged. “Then be Liam Mackenzie,” she said simply. “The man.”
“I … doona ken who that is.”
“If she’s a good woman, she’ll help you find out.”
He could only shake his head as his heart became heavier and heavier in his chest. “She’s been mistreated and she knows I’m a violent man. She’s terrified of me…”
“And yet?” Mary prompted.
“She yelled at me,” he said incredulously. “It’s been decades since anyone dared … she told me I couldna issue her orders, and that she was a woman with free and independent will. She called me an overbearing brute.”
“Oh, Lord.” She hid a laughing smile behind her fan. “What did ye say to that?”
“I kissed her. And she kissed me back.”
“Marry her, Liam,” she ordered, snapping the lace fan closed. “As soon as you can. Tomorrow if possible.”
“She’d not have me,” he said, rather dazedly.
“Doona be ridiculous, any woman would have you.” Mary regarded him curiously over a sip of her tea.
“Not her. She has secrets, painful ones. She avoids me, I think. But sometimes … she looks at me like…” Like she desired him. Like she understood him.
“Every woman has her secrets.” With an impatient sigh, Mary set her teacup next to his none too gently and rapped him on the knuckles with her closed fan to get his attention. “It still shocks me that this comes as a surprise to most men, adorable idiots that ye are, but doona ye ken a woman who is not after you for yer title and yer fortune needs to be wooed?”
“Wooed?” The word tasted as foreign in his mouth as the idea was to his thoughts. “Ye mean, gifts and jewelry—”
“Nay, dammit.” She pressed a beleaguered and dramatic hand to her forehead. “The most precious thing you can give a woman, a worthy woman, is intimacy, time, truth, safety, and friendship.”
“Friendship?” He lifted his own hand to his temple, pressing at the place where his head was starting to pound.
“Talk to her. Know her and let her know ye, as well. Intimacy is not only in the bedroom, ye know. To love each other, ye must first like each other. Do ye like her?”
Liam considered that. He liked the way she treated and talked with his children. He liked the way that, for such a practical woman, she was rather idealistic. He liked the way she ate, with as much relish as manners. He liked how she did her hair and the way she wrinkled her nose, the books she read, even the ones he didn’t understand. He liked that he could spill his secrets to her in the dark, and she never shamed him. That she treated him with sympathy that never smacked of pity.
He liked what his heart did when he heard the clip of her shoes against the floors of his keep. In fact, he couldn’t think of one thing that he didn’t like about her.
Her secrets, he supposed. Whatever put the shadows behind her eyes and caused her to fear him.
“Aye,” he admitted. “I like her.”
“Then ye must go to her, claim her, right away.” She stood, as though ready to shoo him from her house.
“Ye make it sound so easy.” He stood as well, feeling large and encumbered in her dainty room.
“Nothing worthwhile is easy,” she quipped. “Ye helped to dismantle the East India Company. Ye’ve stormed castles and replaced entire regimes. Should she resist ye, lay siege to her defenses and scale her walls, Lieutenant Colonel, it’s not as if ye doona ken how to do that.”
That drew a dry sound of amusement from him. “I canna go now, I have a weeklong summit to reside over here in Dingwall. It’s an obligation to my kin and clan I canna ignore.”
“Then ye have a week to figure out how ye’re going to win her heart, Laird Mackenzie, I suggest ye use it wisely.”
* * *
Russell had been right about the rain, Mena thought as she stood on the roof of Ravencroft Keep’s northwest parapet and surveyed the festivities below her. The chilly October breeze whispered of moisture, but not a drop had fallen.
The Mackenzie laird had returned from Dingwall two days ago and, it seemed, had brought most of the Highlands home with him for the Samhain celebration. Mena hadn’t the opportunity to see or speak to Ravencroft alone as he was always surrounded by guests or on some errand or another. Today he’d taken the children and the visiting lairds Monroe and Fraser with their families to the village of Fearnloch, leaving Mena to her own devices.
She’d spent the day helping poor harried Jani and the housekeeper, Mrs. Grady, with menial tasks to ease the burden of the household staff. Soon, though, she found herself more in the way than accommodating, and she sought a moment of solitude before the commencement of the evening’s revelry.
Ravencroft had come alive with Highlanders, rustic and noble alike. Many of them slept indoors in any one of the lavish guest rooms, but more still pitched grand and colorful tents on the grounds, heating them with pungent peat fires and enough Scotch and ale to drown an entire ship of pirates.
Mena had Jani familiarize her with the plaids and flags proudly displayed on the tents and tartans of the people. Guests from the neighboring MacDonnell and MacBean clans feasted with the MacKinnon of Skye and the MacNeil of the Outer Hebrides. Campbells threaded among them, as did a few Ross and Frasier clansmen, as well.
Mena didn’t own a Halloween costume, but she did don her black cloak with the fox-fur collar for the occasion, and settled it over her finest green silk dress.
With its looming red stone grandeur, extensive grounds, and spires that pierced the gothic gray skies, Ravencroft Keep was the perfect setting for the macabre holiday. Though, from what Mena could see from her vantage, the costumed carousers were much too cheerful to be considered ghoulish in the least.
Mena had been afraid of heights, once upon a time, but locked away in her tiny white room in Belle Glen, she’d gained more than a passing appreciation for the open sky. She’d yearned for it in the cruel hours of darkness. During times she’d been confined alone for the entirety of the day, she’d watched the sun move a tiny circle across the floor from a little porthole window that was too high to see out of. Those days she’d yearned for the beauty of a sunset, or a glimpse of a moonlit night.
Now Mena breathed in the fragrant evening air as she watched the sun dip below the trees and the isles beyond, wishing she could be the raven she’d spied soaring over the fires that dotted the autumn terrain of Wester Ross. Starting in the east, the sky had become black, the closest stars appearing as pinpricks on the eternal canvas of the Highland firmament. As she followed the arc of the dusky sky to the west, Mena observed the ribbon of azure still illuminating the horizon above the shadow of the Hebrides. The stars had only become a suggestion of light and Mena planned on remaining until the night sky shimmered with constellations as she’d only seen it do here in the Highlands.
The trees and stones of the keep sheltered those below from the biting wind, but where she stood on the balustrade, it teased wisps of her hair and the hem of her dress. Feeling silly and fanciful, Mena held open the seams of her cloak and let the breezes billow it out from her spread arms, imagining that she truly had wings.
The bitter chill sent a delicious thrill through her, and Mena let out a delighted gasp as she looked below her, the dizzying height intensifying her reckless sensation of freedom. If her body couldn’t fly, at least her soul might, and she released it into the wind with a contented sigh.
Once the cold turned from invigorating to uncomfortable, she lowered herself to perch on the waist-high stone wall and play voyeur to the night.
The crash of the heavy tower door against the stone wall nearly shocked her out of her skin, and she almost flung herself backward onto the parapet’s walkway.
Mena’s heart threatened to leap out of her chest as Ravencroft stood framed by the stone arch, his shoulders heaving as though he’d run a great distance. He looked like some pagan deity, long ebony hair loose around his wide shoulders, but for two braids swinging from right above his temple. A linen shirt, dark vest, and kilt peeked from where his own cloak parted.
Onyx eyes gleamed at her, lit from below by the growing number of fires. His heavy boots made gravelly sounds as he stalked closer.
She should stand and curtsy, or turn and flee, but the abject relief in his eyes held her quite transfixed.
“I saw yer shadow on the roof,” he said as though out of breath. “Holding yer cloak out like ye meant to fly away, and I thought—”
Mena gasped and berated herself for her utter stupidity. She hadn’t expected anyone to see her up here as the eastern sky behind her was dark. Apparently she’d still cast some sort of shadow, and anyone looking up at just the right moment might be worried that she’d fall from the roof.
Or jump, as the previous Lady Ravencroft had done.
Liam was out of breath now because he’d raced from the grounds below up to the towers to save her life.
“My Laird Ravencroft, I’m so very sorry,” she began earnestly. “I didn’t at all mean to cause you distress, you must believe me … I would never … that is … I wasn’t thinking…”
He stopped an arm’s length from where she sat, twisting to face him. Shadows played off his flexing jaw as his gaze touched her from the top of her hair all the way down to the hem of her skirts as they rippled beneath her swinging feet from where she perched.
“Please forgive me,” she begged, searching his savage features for a sense of how angry she’d made him.
To her utter astonishment, his expression relaxed and his shoulders sagged, though the intensity never left his dark eyes.
“Lass, I’d forgive ye just about anything in that dress.”
Flushing, Mena pulled the edges of her cloak around her, sinking her neck into the fur collar and covering the deep cleft of her décolletage.
The laird frowned, but said nothing.
Unable to look at him and still maintain her breath, Mena turned back to the tableau beneath them, a pang of happiness tugging at her heart when she spied Andrew romping about the grounds with little Rune yapping at his heels.
“May I join ye?” Ravencroft murmured from beside her, his breath a warm puff of white against the growing chill of the evening.
“It’s your castle,” she replied. She wished he wouldn’t, and yet she didn’t want him to leave. The last time she’d been alone with him she’d allowed him the most illicit liberties. Liam Mackenzie turned her into someone who was not herself. Every moment in his presence was fraught with intensity and heart-stopping emotion.
Mena didn’t watch as he kicked his leg over the wall, and then the other, settling in next to her close enough that her shoulder pressed against his arm. She’d have to scoot away from him in order to maintain a respectable distance, and though the rules of conduct dictated that she should, it would still be unaccountably rude.
Either way she couldn’t win, and Mena had the distinct impression that he’d put her in that position on purpose.
Glancing at him sharply from under her lashes, she found she could not look away. What must it be like, she wondered, to sit atop such a grand castle and lord over all that was below him? Every soul in the village, every grain in the field, every beast in the pasture all relied upon his land, his will, his honor, and his word. No wonder Ravencroft surveyed the scene with a look of fierce possession, as stolid and stony as a gargoyle, and every bit as formidable.
“This must be how the world looked in the beginning,” he observed in a voice as smooth as silk and hard as iron.
She knew exactly what he meant. What had life been like when the pleasures of night and the seduction of fire could culminate in orgiastic revelry that wasn’t impeded by the structures of society?
“Perhaps this is what it will look like at the end,” she hypothesized, feeling strangely reckless as though the spirit of the holiday was somehow contagious.
“What are ye doing up here, Miss Lockhart?” he asked, without looking down at her. “Why are ye not with the others at the feast?”
Just as quickly as heat had abandoned her face, it crept back from beneath her cloak. “You’ll think me ridiculous.”
“Never.” The sound escaped on an exhale of his, too soft to be a word, too deep to be a sigh.
“I find myself here often,” she confessed. “One of my favorite things in the world is to watch day turn into night. First the brilliance of the sunset, then the quiet blues of twilight, and then this final moment.” She tilted her head back to look above her, feeling the muscles in her throat slightly stretch in a pleasant way. “It’s as though the sky disappears and some sort of heavenly curtain is pulled back, unveiling the stars. Some people find the night sky melancholy, but I’ve always thought of the stars as familiar as old friends, always right where they’re supposed to be. It gives me a sense of the same, I think.” Mena lowered her chin, and glanced to the side where Ravencroft stared at her neck with the oddest of expressions before he lifted his unreadable eyes to hers.
“I told you.” She lowered her lashes, feeling self-conscious and very small next to him. “It’s silly. Tedious, even.”
“Nay, I ken just what ye mean, lass.” Ravencroft leaned forward, his own neck arched to turn his face to the sky. “I feel as though I’ve been everywhere in this world. There were days at war, or on a ship, where I would think that maybe home was nothing more than a memory, or a dream. I would wake at night afraid that I’d forgotten where I hied from or who I truly was. I thought I’d lose Liam Mackenzie to the Demon Highlander. It was then I began to study the constellations.”
“Did it help?” Mena wondered aloud.
He glanced down at her as though her question had pleased him. “Aye, it did. In a world where men paint the ground with blood, the stars gave me a reason to look up. They’re a map when ye’re lost, and points of light when all is dark. I ken why you think it makes them seem friendly.”
“Yes,” she agreed. “I suppose that they remind me that the world always turns. That things are constantly changing. This moment, every moment, whether good or terrible, will pass into oblivion and so I must live it. I must see it through. And, eventually, a new day will come again. Another chance for something better.”
Mena thought his face, turned down as it was, half to the light, and the other half to shadow, should remind her that she conversed with the Demon Highlander, the dangerous man she’d promised to avoid as much as possible.
But something about the arrangement of his features belied any of her reservations. His lips seemed fuller, drawn out of their hard line into something resembling a lazy half-smile. The tilt of his deep-set eyes and angle of the brow above wasn’t stern or scowling, as usual, but relaxed and at ease and, if her gaze didn’t deceive her, perhaps a bit unsure or—dare she think it?—shy.
He seemed younger like this, with his hair loose and his shoulders free of their customary tension. Mena thought that when he smiled, he must be the most handsome man God had ever molded of this earth.
She swallowed, doing her best to ignore the warmth beginning to glow deep in her belly, and lower.
“I think I’d be more comfortable in perpetual darkness,” he murmured.
“Why?”
His shoulders heaved with a weighty breath, pressing deeper against hers. “Do ye believe that the things we’ve done in the dark will be answered for in the light of day?”
“I certainly hope so.” She nodded.
He searched her face then, lifting a hand to draw away a tendril of hair the breeze had blown across her cheek. “Perhaps because ye have a clear conscience.”
“I don’t, I assure you.” She turned away from his fingers, unable to bear the sweet memory of his skin against hers. Unwilling to give words to the message in his eyes.
He dropped his hand to his lap. “Perhaps, then, because ye hope that someone answer for their crimes against ye.”
Tears burned behind her eyes, and Mena dipped her chin against her chest. It was the darkest desire in her heart. That her husband answer for all the times he’d caused her terror and pain.
How had he guessed?
“Because,” he answered gently, alarming her with the discovery she’d spoken the question out loud. “I ken what it’s like to fear the darkness, Mena, and to hate the man who beat that fear into me.”
Mena felt the rough pads of his fingers drift over her down-turned cheek. When he reached her chin, he gripped it softly between his thumb and forefinger, lifting her face toward his.
“I find myself in the middle of a dance I doona ken the steps to,” he admitted, his eyes gilded by an unholy light as they searched hers for something she could not give him. “When ye’re near me, I doona know what to say or how to act. I canna figure what platitudes to give ye. I never learned the soft words that would reach through the walls that ye’ve built around yer heart.”
Though she didn’t allow herself to blink, Mena could still feel tears gathering in her lashes. She needed him to stop. She should pull away. But God help her, she couldn’t tear her gaze from the abject beauty of his face.
“I doona know which urge to act upon and which to suppress, but I want ye with a strength that even the gods canna understand … even though I canna always tell if it’s fear or desire I see reflected in yer eyes.”
Because it was both, Mena knew. Fear of him. Fear of the desire she felt for him. Of the things she wanted to do again in the dark.
“It was written in those stars that we meet.” His voice gathered a tender fervency that unstitched something from inside Mena’s soul. “We are bound in some inescapable way, thee and me. I’ve known it since I first laid eyes on ye in that dress.”
Mena wanted to deny it. To shake her head and make him stop whatever it was he was about to say. But she knew she could not. Though her heart threatened to gallop away, her body was frozen in place. A captive of his warm, gentle hand.
“Don’t.” She whispered a tortured plea as she wrapped her fingers around his wrist, meaning to push his hand away. “It’s impossible.” She was married. She was a fugitive.
She was unworthy of a man such as this.
“It’s impossible to deny it, lass.” He smiled down at her, and Mena suddenly knew that one could feel the warm rays of the sun even in the dark of night. “Try as ye will to resist me, I’m after ye, Mena, and I willna claim ye until ye yield. But I’ll not stop until every last one of yer defenses are in ashes at my feet.”
Down below, a large horn blared loud and long enough to break the spell he’d cast over her.
“They’re calling for me, lass.” Before she could move, he brushed his lips against hers, then turned over the wall and leaped to his feet. “Ye will be, too, before I’m done with ye.”
