Hallucinations. Delusions. Waking dreams. All symptoms of absolute madness.
And yet every time Mena pinched herself, the pain didn’t wake her.
This was really happening.
She blinked rapidly against misty-eyed gratitude as she looked at the two women occupying their own chaise longues, enjoying their second day of watching Madame Sandrine and her efficient minions fit Mena with a new wardrobe. If she were to paint them as they were now, she’d name the work Seraphim and Seductress.
Farah Leigh Blackwell, Countess Northwalk, perched on Mena’s right, a study of feminine, angelic English gentility. Her ivory muslin and lace gown played with the few gold strands in her white-blond coiffure as she sipped tea from a delicate cup. One would never at all suppose that she was the wife of the most notorious Blackheart of Ben More, king of the London Underworld.
On Mena’s left, Millicent LeCour draped her scarlet-clad body across her chaise like a luscious libertine, twirling an ebony ringlet about her finger. She narrowed catlike midnight eyes in assessment and bit through a soft truffle, rolling it in her mouth with sensual enjoyment.
“I know you’re self-conscious about the breadth of your shoulders, dear, but if you roll them forward like you’re doing now, you convey submission and doubt. You’ve a lovely, statuesque figure and must use it to your advantage. Throw your shoulders back and roll them down from your neck, like you have angel wings you need to stow.” Unfolding her legs, Millie stood to demonstrate her instruction, her posture the very image of confidence and authority. “And another thing, keep your chin parallel to the floor. Look anywhere you must if you can’t meet someone’s eye, but whatever you do, don’t drop your chin.”
Lessons in comportment from the most famous actress on the London stage; Mena could scarce believe it. She did her best to imitate Millie’s posture of regal grace and checked her progress in the mirrors surrounding the dais upon which she stood.
Her shoulders were the solid picture of dignity, wide and imposing. Her bosom thrust proudly aloft, although it was crushed into her new corset to make it appear smaller, pressed against the plain, elegant black buttons of her green and gold plaid day dress, the perfect uniform for her new position as governess.
It was her features that killed the effect.
Mena’s tongue touched the healing split in her lip and she realized the swelling had gone down dramatically in the three days since she’d been rescued from Belle Glen. Her eye had blackened and swelled until she couldn’t see from it. But she’d applied cold compresses provided by Lady Northwalk, and finally her features were beginning to look like her own again. Though the color from both bruises remained angry.
Much like the man who’d put them there.
Millicent LeCour’s fiancé, Christopher Argent, had snapped Mr. Burn’s neck easy-as-you-please. Mena wondered if the actress knew what her intended was capable of. She must, for one only had to gaze upon Argent to ascertain that he was a lethal man. The arctic chill in his ice-blue eyes only melted for the actress and her cherubic son, Jakub. Mena would be ever grateful to the man, as he’d pulled Mr. Burns off her unconscious body, saving her from the indignities the monster had intended to inflict.
Mena felt as though she should be horrified at having witnessed the ending of a life. But she was glad, grateful even, that Burns was no longer able to torment the helpless. And more thankful, still, that these two women had taken her under their respective wings, going so far as to pay for a new trousseau made by the most sought-after seamstress in all of London, as well as a bevy of undergarments, shoes, and haberdashery.
She suspected that Madame Sandrine was in the employ, as well as a tenant, of Dorian Blackwell, and thereby likely used to keeping secrets.
“There you have it,” Millie encouraged. “I think that captures the effect precisely. No one would dare to doubt your confidence and authority.”
“I’ve never had any authority … or much in the way of confidence, for that matter.”
“That’s why it’s called acting,” Millicent prompted, moving to make way for Madame Sandrine as the tiny, dark-haired Frenchwoman bustled in with a basketful of frippery. Setting it down, the seamstress bent to check the hem of the final dress to be added to Mena’s new trousseau. “And I’ve found that, frequently, whatever you convey you can trick yourself into believing.”
“Millie’s right, dear.” Farah abandoned her tea to a side table and stood to join her friend. “Often we must seem to have confidence, and in doing so it tends to appear.” Her clear gray eyes inspected Mena’s face with just the right mix of sympathy and encouragement.
“Your wounds will heal,” Millie reassured her. “They already look much better. I think we’ve concocted a brilliant story with which to explain them.”
“A brilliant story all around, I’d wager,” Farah agreed. “And this position is not forever. Dorian has already started on your emancipation from the insanity verdict, though the process is infuriatingly slow.”
“Let’s go over the lines again.” Though she had the demeanor of a seductress, Millicent LeCour possessed the single-minded work ethic of an officer drilling a regiment. “What is your new name?”
Mena took a deep breath, trying to be certain everything was stored correctly in her memory to match the entirely new persona Dorian Blackwell had created for her. “My name is Miss Philomena Lockhart.”
“And where are you from?”
“From Bournemouth in Dorset originally, but these past four years from London, where I was employed as a governess.”
“I still think we should change her name entirely,” Farah suggested. “What about something rather common like Jane, Ann, or Mary?”
Millicent shook her head emphatically. “She doesn’t look like any of those women, and I know that it’s easier to keep track of a lie if there is a shred of truth to it. She’ll answer to the name Philomena because it is her own. And it’s common enough. We selected Bournemouth because it’s near Hampshire, where she was raised, and she’s familiar with the town and can call it to memory if need be.”
Farah considered this, tapping a finger to the divot in her chin before declaring, “You’re right, of course.”
Miss LeCour’s ringlets bounced around her startlingly lovely face when her notice snapped back to Mena. “Whom did you work for in London?”
“T-the Whitehalls, a shipping magnate and his wife.”
“Their names?”
“George and Francesca.”
“Who were their children?”
“Sebastian, who is off to Eton, and Clara, who is now engaged.”
“Engaged to whom?”
Mena stalled, her eyes widening, then she winced as the bruise around her eye twinged with the movement. “I—I don’t remember going over that.”
“That’s because we didn’t.” The actress selected another truffle with the patient consideration of a chess master. “I was demonstrating that you’re sometimes going to have to improvise. Just say the first plausible thing that happens to appear in your head.”
“My head seems to be frighteningly empty of late.” Mena sighed.
Farah made a sympathetic noise. “You’ve been under a lot of strain. Millie, perhaps she needs a break.”
“No.” Mena shook her head, receiving a sharp look from Madame Sandrine. Remembering herself, she stood as still as could be. “No, I’ll try harder.”
“What is Clara’s fiancé’s name?” Millie pressed.
“Um—George?” She plucked the first name that arrived in her head.
“That’s her papa’s name,” Madame Sandrine corrected from below her in her thickly accented voice.
A hopeless sound bubbled into her throat; even the seamstress was better at this than she. “I’ve always been a terrible liar,” Mena fretted, pressing a hand to her forehead. “Never mind an actress! I’m never going to be able to pull this off.”
“Nonsense!” Millie planted fists on her perfect hips draped with crimson silk. “You are strong, Mena. This is going to be nothing at all compared to what you’ve already survived.”
No one had ever called her strong before. In fact, she’d been berated for being such a mouse. Perhaps strength wasn’t so much her virtue as survival. And she had survived, hadn’t she? Because of the kindness of these exceptional women.
A sudden rush of gratitude filled Mena until her throat swelled with emotion. “I—I don’t know how I’ll ever be able to thank you both for what you’ve done. Not just the rescue, but the clothes, the new life, securing me employment. I only hope I don’t let you down, that I can remember all we’ve concocted here and do it justice.”
Millie tossed her curls, eyes snapping with sparks. “I wish you didn’t have to use it. That we needn’t send you far away. But your husband and his parents are on a rampage to find you. Lord, they’re such—”
Farah put a staying hand on her friend’s arm. “You’re going to do just fine,” she encouraged.
“I still say you can stay with us,” Millie offered. “Christopher shot a member of your family to save my life. Our home in Belgravia would be the last place in London anyone would look for you.”
Mena’s eyes stung again at the unlimited generosity of these women. “You can’t know how much your offer means to me, but the police do know that I confessed my family’s crimes to save yours. Chief Inspector Morley knows that we are close, I feel that I would be putting your fiancé’s new career in danger.”
Millie’s frown conveyed her frustration, but she didn’t argue the point. Christopher Argent had once been the highest-paid assassin in the empire. Now, because of his love for Millie, he was trying a career in law enforcement on for size. Considering what had happened with Mr. Burns, Mena wondered if the big man was suited to the job.
“We all agree that getting you out of London will be safer for you should your husband or agents of the crown come looking for you here,” Farah reminded them gently. “And arrangements have been solidified in Scotland. Lord Ravencroft has already said he would meet your train tomorrow afternoon.”
The bottom dropped out of Mena’s chest, sending her heart plummeting into her stomach. She still wasn’t certain how she’d gone from being a viscountess, to a prisoner at Belle Glen, and then a phony spinster governess in such a short time.
Madame Sandrine stood, the seamstress’s eyes wide with disbelief. “You are going to work for the Demon Highlander?”
“T-the what?” Mena gasped, unable to keep a telling tremor out of her voice. “The who?”
Farah winced, which did little to allay Mena’s growing panic.
Madame Sandrine hurried on, her face luminous with ill-omened dramatics. “They say that the Marquess of Ravencroft went to the crossroads to make a deal with a demon so that he will never die in battle. He is known to charge cannon and rifles head-on, and the bullets and cannonballs curve around him as if he were not there. He has killed so many men that there is a mountain of bones in hell named after him. The most violent man alive, is he. It is said he can murder you with only a touch of—”
“Madame Sandrine,” Farah said sharply. “That’s quite enough.”
“A … mountain of bones?” Mena stared at the two rather guilty-looking women with pure disbelief. “Just where are you sending me?”
Farah stepped forward carefully. “You of all people know how the papers sensationalize these things. Yes, Lord Ravencroft was a soldier some twenty years, and was commended for his uncommon bravery in Asia and the Indies. His children are nearly grown, which means he’s a much older man now. He’s retired from the army life, and committed to being nothing more than a father and a farmer. I assure you, there’s nothing to be frightened of.”
But Mena was frightened. Her stomach roiled and her legs wanted to give out. What if she’d been tossed from the pot into the flames? What if Farah’s perspective was skewed by her own circumstances? She was married to the Blackheart of Ben More, after all. He was king of the London Underworld because he’d won the Underworld war by washing the streets of East London with rivers of blood. When one was married to such a lethal man, who would think twice about sending someone to … “The—the most violent man alive?” she finished aloud as a shudder of anxiety stole her breath and a tic began to seize in her eyebrow. Mena sank to her knees on the dais, gasping for air. “I don’t think I can do this.”
Farah sank next to her and rubbed a warm hand across her back. “Mena … I know you don’t know me very well, but I’m your friend. I wouldn’t send you to him if I thought you’d be in danger.”
Mena just shook her head, unable to form words around her pounding heart and the heavy lump of fear threatening to choke her.
Farah took something out of her skirt pocket and gave it to Mena. A letter with a broken wax seal. “Read this,” Farah prompted. “And then make your final decision. Know that in giving you this letter, I’m entrusting you with information that not many are privy to.”
Millie sat on Mena’s other side and took her hand. “I’ve learned something about being in a desperate situation that may help you.”
Mena stared at the letter and focused on regaining her breath. The thick paper had Farah’s name on it, scrawled in substantial, heavy masculine script. The letters were the precise same height and width. All lined up like little soldiers.
“What is that?” she whispered.
“Sometimes.” Millie’s usually cheerful voice was low and grave. “When in a predicament like yours, the safest place to be is at the side of a violent man.”
Dear Lady Northwalk,
This correspondence is meant to inform you and Dorian that I have retired from military duty to Ravencroft Keep to oversee clan farms, tenements, and to run the distillery.
As you may know, I have been this past decade a widower, and my children little better than orphans, as I have spent the preponderance of their lives abroad in Her Majesty’s service.
In my absence, their education has been disastrously neglected.
When a soldier is fortunate enough to reach the age I have, he collects many regrets. Mine are not confined to the atrocities of war, but also to what I have abandoned. Not only in regard to my children, but also to your husband. My own brother.
I have no right to do so, but I wonder if I may call upon your gentle will for a boon.
I am not a man used to prevailing upon the kindness of others. However, as an unrefined soldier, I am ill-equipped to prepare my children for the world in which they will be expected to reside as the heirs of a marquess. Rhianna is due for a season, and Andrew wishes to go away to university when he is of age. They’re in need of an exceedingly experienced governess and tutor. I would ask that you find one, not for my benefit, but for theirs. They deserve the very best in civilized education. No matter the cost. Inform her that her relocation expenses will be included, and she can have any salary you deem satisfactory.
I will owe you a debt of gratitude for your assistance.
Please extend your husband my regards.
Yours in gratitude,
Lt. Col. William Grant Ruaridh Mackenzie. Marquess Ravencroft.
Bealach na Bà Pass, Wester Ross, Scotland, Autumn 1878
Mena considered it a kindness on God’s part that the brougham carriage wheel had waited to noisily fracture until they’d crested the treacherous road through the Highland mountains and angled west on the verdant peninsula toward Ravencroft Keep. Had it broken earlier, the carriage would surely have shattered upon the black stones scattered about the moss-covered valley floor.
The kind driver in full livery, Kenneth Mackenzie was his name, had been the only one to meet her at the Strathcarron rail station. Mena never could have guessed the elderly man would climb the switchbacks of the Bealach na Bà Pass with the alacrity of a man chased by Death.
After a cursory inspection of the broken wheel, the driver had muttered something to her in an unintelligible form of English, unhitched one of the four horses from the wagon, and gone for help straightaway, leaving Mena with only three horses and the approaching storm for company. That had been—Mena checked her new pocket watch—more than an hour past now, and the torrential rain had begun to obscure the view by which she’d been captivated in her time alone.
The topography of the Highlands tantalized her until she’d quite forgotten about her tossing stomach caused by the vigorous climb up the switchbacks and the ensuing fear for life and limb.
Mena had seen beautiful countryside before, having been raised in the bucolic paradise of Hampshire. Wester Ross was nothing like the tranquil, organized fields and pastures of South England. Something feral and untamed breathed life into this place. An air of prehistoric mysticism lingered in the very stones. She could sense it as potently as the cling of brine in the air caused by water stirred by the storm, or the last fragrant gasp of the heather and thistle as autumn encroached. Moss and lush vegetation clung to the dark rock and soil, painting the landscape every conceivable spectrum of green.
But now low, rolling clouds climbed the black stone peaks like inevitable conquerors, hiding the tops of the Hebrides from view. Even the rain was different in this place. Unlike the gray storms of London, the moisture didn’t fall from the lofty heavens. It crept upon her with the chill of uncovered secrets, surrounding her in a heavy mist tossed about by unruly winds.
She shivered, even in her dress of heavy wool and the blanket the footman had found for her beneath the seat. The cold here reached through her clothing and her flesh, cloying around her bones and causing them to quake.
It wasn’t an ice bath. And so she could endure.
Though she wasn’t certain for how much longer. What if something had happened to poor old Kenneth Mackenzie in this weather? It was barely possible to see much more than ten paces away, and over terrain like this, one could easily end up in a bog somewhere, or stumble down a ravine.
A sound like the muffled beating of her accelerating heart pounded at the earth, and Mena leaned against the window in time to see several mounted Highlanders melt out of the mists like the specters of Jacobite warriors who had roamed these very moors a hundred years past.
Her breath caught at the sight of them. Heavy cloaks protected brawny shoulders, though their knees remained bared to the elements by matching blue, green, and gold kilts. They reined their horses to a walk and lurked closer to the carriage, letting the mist unveil them to her wide gaze.
Mena was suddenly aware of how very alone and vulnerable she was. Chances were, she told herself, this was the help Kenneth Mackenzie had sent for, but she didn’t see the driver among the mounted Highlanders.
She counted seven, each one burlier—and filthier—than the last. On the other hand, they could be brigands. Highwaymen, rapists, murderers …
Oh, dear God.
They circled the carriage, all peering inside the rain-streaked windows with not a little curiosity, speaking the lyrical language of the Highlands. She understood it to be Scots Gaelic, though she comprehended not a word.
Then she saw him.
Her mouth became dry as the desert, and a tremor that had nothing to do with the cold rippled through her.
Though he wore a soiled kilt and loose linen shirt beneath his drenched cloak, he sat astride a black Shire steed with the bearing of a king. Dark waves of hair hung long and heavy with moisture down his back, and menace rolled off the mountains of his shoulders in palpable waves.
Whoever he was, he was their undeniable leader. She saw it in the way they looked to him, in the deference they used when speaking. If not by birth, then by physical laws of nature, surely. As the largest, the strongest, and the most fearsome of them all, he towered above the brawny men as he scowled through the window at her.
Even through the mesh of her hat’s veil, and the black soot streaked across his features, Mena could see the tension in his strong jaw. The aggression etched into the grooves of his fierce, deep-set eyes. Viewed through the chaotic tracks of rain upon the window, he could have been a savage Pict warrior, bred not only to survive in this beautiful and brutal part of the world, but to conquer it.
Mena gasped at the shocking flash of muscled thigh bared to her as he dismounted, and despaired that even afoot, his astounding height and breadth diminished not at all.
Dear Lord, he was coming closer. He meant to reach for the door.
Lunging forward, she threw the lock and extracted the skeleton key just as his big hand turned the latch.
Their eyes met.
And the rain disappeared. As did everything and everyone else.
Mena knew that there were moments in one’s life as significant as an epoch. Existence, as a result, was split into a before, and an after, and whatever was left as a consequence of that moment illuminated who someone really was. It laid one open, exposing the most vulnerable part of one’s self for honest and brutal inspection, and the acceptance that inexorable change has been wrought. She’d lived long enough to experience a few of these. Her mother’s death when Mena was only nine, her first real taste of tragedy. The first time she galloped on a horse on her father’s farm, and experienced true freedom. Her first kiss. The horror of her wedding night. The moment she was told she’d never be a mother.
So she recognized this as one such moment.
The leviathan on the other side of the now seemingly inadequate barrier of the window was not the only one conducting the inspection.
What Mena saw in the striations of amber and ebony in the Highlander’s eyes alternately terrified and fascinated her. Here was a man capable of inconceivable violence. And yet … a weary sorrow lurked behind the incredulity and subsequent exasperation in his glare. He might even be attractive beneath all that soot and filth, but in the feral and weathered way the Highlands, themselves, were appealing.
Mena blinked, berating herself for noticing such a thing of her probably robber-highwayman-rapist-assassin, and the spell was broken.
“Open the door,” he commanded in a deep and booming brogue.
“No,” Mena answered, before remembering her manners. “No, thank you.”
* * *
They called him the Demon Highlander.
Over the course of the previous two decades, Liam Mackenzie had led a number of Her Majesty’s infantry, cavalry, and artillery units. He’d stormed countless mobs during the Indian Mutiny and made his fame when the so-called Indian Rebellion had been crushed. He’d facilitated the disbandment of the East India Company with espionage, assassination, and outright warfare, painting the jungles with blood until the crown seized the regime. He led the charge against Chinese cannon in the second Opium War, leaping from his horse over cannonfire and slicing through Asian artillery. He’d secretly conducted rescue missions to Abyssinia and Ashanti, leaving no trace of himself but for a mountain of bodies in his wake. He’d trained killers and killed traitors. He’d toppled dynasties and executed tyrants. He was William Grant Ruaridh Mackenzie, lieutenant colonel of Her Majesty’s Royal Secret Highland Watch, Marquess Ravencroft, and ninth laird and thane of clan Mackenzie of Wester Ross. A high agent of the crown and a leader of men was he.
When he gave an order, it was obeyed by patrician and plebian alike. Most often without question.
He had no time for this. A fire had somehow ignited in the east fields this morning and his men were exhausted from frantically fighting it. The rain had been a blessing, one that had saved their winter crops. When Kenneth had ridden up and explained their predicament with the carriage, they’d raced five miles through the sac-shriveling autumn rain to save her pretty hide.
Had she really just locked him out of his own carriage and then disobeyed his command with a polite no, thank you?
If he’d have been himself, he’d have ripped the door off its hinges and yanked her to attention, taking her to task for her insolence.
He should do it now, lest his men think him weak.
Then again, perhaps not, lest his men think him brutal.
He never knew anymore. These Mackenzie were farmers, not soldiers, and the regulations that had regimented his life didn’t apply here at Ravencroft.
More’s the pity.
When their eyes had met, he’d felt the earth shift beneath him in a way he’d never experienced before. Not with the unstable feeling of a peat bog or slick silt beneath his boots, but exactly the opposite. As if the land might alter and align to please the cosmos, clicking into place with prophetic finality.
Something about the bruised look glowing from the softness of her vibrant green irises, the only thing about her he could see with any clarity, seemed to have stolen his wits from him.
It was bloody unsettling. Infuriating, even.
He jiggled the handle of the carriage door. “Open up, lass,” he hissed through his teeth.
The infernal woman shook her head demurely, her lips quivering behind the heavy veil she wore. Leaning up, she unlatched the small half-window used for ventilation above the larger window and spoke through it in a perfect, cultured British accent.
“I’d rather not, thank you.”
Liam’s knuckles cracked as he tightened his fist.
“I think we’ve frightened the wee lassie,” Liam’s steward, Russell Mackenzie, said in their native Gaelic. “We look a sight after the day we’ve had.”
Liam glanced at his soot-laden steward, then down at his soiled and drenched clothing. “Och, aye,” he agreed. Then turned back to the woman. “If ye’ll come with us, we’ll take ye to Ravencroft Keep and get ye out of the storm. We can send for yer things once ye’re safe.”
She glanced nervously at the men surrounding the carriage, and Liam thought he caught sight of a wound or a split in her lip when she turned her head. He couldn’t be certain. He couldn’t see inside as well as he wanted to. And Lord, it irritated him how badly he desired to uncover the rest of her features and perceive if they were as striking as her lovely eyes.
“I do appreciate your kind offer, sir, but I’ll wait for someone from the Ravencroft household to collect me. They should be along any moment.”
That elicited a rumble of amusement from his clansmen.
It occurred to Liam that he couldn’t remember the last time he’d been thanked so often in one conversation. Or denied.
“That’d be us, lassie.” Thomas Campbell, a bear of a man, gestured to Liam. “And this here be the marquess, himself, isna that right, Laird?”
“Aye.” Liam nodded, expecting her to open the door now that that had been cleared up.
Instead of the deference he anticipated, one skeptical brow dropped over her right eye as she took in his appearance. “I think not.”
The laughter came louder this time, and Liam set his teeth. “I am Liam Mackenzie, Marquess Ravencroft, laird and thane of the Mackenzie of Wester Ross.”
Her tongue snaked out to test what he now knew to be a split in her lip as she seemed to work a problem out beneath that troubled brow.
Liam shifted restlessly, testing the strength of the latch as her eyes brightened with an idea.
“Do you happen to have any proof of your lordship or nobility?” she suggested, blinking pleased, expectant eyes at him as though she’d offered some sort of foolproof plan. “A signet ring, perhaps, or a seal of—”
“The fact that I havena torn this carriage apart with my bare hands is proof enough of my nobility,” he growled through lips drawn tight over his teeth. “Now open the bloody door.”
“I’m sorry, but no.” She shut the window.
His men’s chuckles came to an abrupt stop when he whirled to glare at them. Facing her again, he knocked on the window this time, careful not to break it, and she opened it as primly as any English valet.
“Is there something else?” she queried.
“Aye!” Russell Mackenzie hooted before Liam had a chance to finish his intake of breath. “How do ye know he’s not the Mackenzie laird?”
Liam would have growled in kind at Russell, but he had to admit it was a good question.
“Because the marquess is the father of two children nearly grown and lately from a decades-long career in the army. By now he’s got to be a retired older man, not this … this … strapping sort of…” The lady flicked those long lashes at him in another nervous gesture before finishing. “Not him.”
Something Liam had thought long dead rose from the ever-still, ever-dark place within him. Some strange pride belonging to adolescents and young bucks during mating season. At forty, he’d never expected to experience it again. He fended off overt sexual advances regularly, from beautiful women. Younger women. But this veiled lass’s insinuation of virility nearly had him flushing like an untried whelp.
Goddammit, was this going to become an issue?
“Coax her out of there, Liam,” Russell urged, again in Gaelic, though his voice still conveyed amusement. “It’s colder than a witch’s tits in a brass corset out here.”
Liam took a bracing breath. “What would it take to get ye to Ravencroft Keep?” he asked as though speaking to a simple child.
“Well…” She hesitated, glancing at each of his men, then back to him. “Since you asked, I would pay you, of course, if I could prevail upon you … gentlemen … to perhaps secure the wheel?”
All four mounted Mackenzies and two Campbells exploded into booming spasms of mirth, which drew a frown from the woman. Even Liam had to bite his lip to repress a smile, and he didn’t miss how his new governess watched the movement with an arrested expression.
“That’s what it takes, does it?” Thomas Campbell chortled whilst wringing the rain from his cap.
“Just slip the wheel back onto the carriage and off ye go!” Russell laughed hard enough to startle his horse into a prance.
“As a matter of fact, yes,” she huffed.
Highlanders were a jolly lot, but it had been a long time since he’d heard his men laugh quite so heartily. They jibed him in their native tongue.
Ye should send her back. She’s not too bright.
Maybe ye could keep her as a mistress, instead, she’s entertaining as well as pretty.
Bemused, Liam squinted at her indistinguishable expression through her veil. She did seem rather young judging by her voice and what little of her features he could make out. He wondered why Farah Blackwell had selected her, specifically, to send for the position. Had he not been clear enough in his specifications?
The lass waited with a long-suffering air for the joviality to die before she spoke again. “Do forgive me, sirs, if I’m mistaken, but I inspected the wheel a little earlier, before it started to rain, and it seemed to me a simple fix if you could use your cumulative strength.”
“Well, lassie, do educate us on how simple it would be.” Russell wiped either a raindrop or a tear of mirth from his ruddy cheek. “We just pop the wheel back on the axle and hold it with what, a prayer?”
Now it was she who smiled. “Well … no.” She dragged the word in a protracted manner then pointed out of the window with a long, elegant finger. “Upon assessment, you’ll find the wheel and axle both in excellent repair. If you gentlemen would look to that two-parted hub there, its principal features are these two linchpins.” She rose on her knees to slide her arm out of the window and point downward toward the problem. “They’ve both been sheared at the top here, you see, which is why the wheel came loose.”
Every Highlander, including Liam, stared at her for a full silent minute, all traces of mockery vanished. Partly because of what she said, and partly because her body was now pressed against the larger window of the carriage.
Even through her dyed burgundy wool dress, every man could see she had the figure a lusty Highlander dreamed about at night. She should have looked ridiculous, arm and eyes half out a tiny window. But Liam burned with shame, and quite a few other confusing emotions, when he found himself as slack-jawed as the rest of his men.
Christ, were those breasts real, or were they the creations of some newfangled English contraption?
In that moment, he’d have given his eye to find out. And just as abruptly, he wanted to burn the eyes out of every man who ogled her.
“Well,” he snarled at them. “Check the bloody wheel.”
It was Russell who dismounted and jogged close to inspect her assessment. “I’ll be buggered if she isna right,” he muttered to Liam, who stood wondering how in the hell a young gentlewoman, one with breasts like that, would know about carriage mechanics.
“But, lass, we’ve no linchpin lying around out here on the Bealach na Bà.” Russell looked to her as though she might come up with a magical answer for that, too.
“Now that we know the problem,” Liam said very evenly, “I would ask ye to again consider riding with me the scant five miles to Ravencroft Keep.” His reasons for wanting her on his horse had become much more opaque, but mostly he wanted her away from that fucking window and the wide, lusty gazes of his men.
Her expression actually brightened. “There’s really no need.” She then addressed Russell, his round, freckled face, ruddy cheeks, and perpetually jolly expression obviously more favorable. “Mightn’t you borrow a linchpin from one of the other wheels, as they all have two? That should hold for a scant five miles without incident and then more extensive repairs can be made at the keep.” At least she pulled her arm back into the carriage with her, which angled her body away from the window.
Liam wasn’t quite sure if he should thank God or curse Him.
Russell considered her words. “We’d need something to secure it with.” He rubbed at his russet beard with a thoughtful hand, then winked at her. “Braw as we are, we canna work a linchpin with our bare fingers.”
“I’ve my tool bag.” Thomas Campbell’s son, Kevin, dismounted and reached into his saddlebags, extracting a leather case.
Liam held up a hand. “It would be easier to deliver ye to Ravencroft and then repair this without the extra weight,” he said through clenched teeth.
She gasped, and every married man made a noise of either warning or panic.
“I meant of the bloody trunks lashed to the top of the carriage!” His famously short temper was fraying rapidly. Liam gestured to his horse, Magnus, and held his hand out to her as though the carriage walls didn’t separate them. “Please, lass.”
She regarded his outstretched palm for an indecisive moment with such intensity that Liam glanced down at it to see what the bloody issue was. He found nothing but his hand. Callused, square, and unsightly scarred, but nothing extraordinary, except perhaps the size, but there was fuck-all he could do about that.
They weren’t like the hands of any marquess she’d have met before. They both knew it.
“I can’t … I’m afraid.”
Liam regarded her for another tense moment as no one moved whilst waiting for his say-so. He’d at first thought her words had been I can’t, I’m afraid. An expression of polite regret. But upon closer scrutiny, he didn’t wonder if the meaning was entirely different. An admission.
I can’t. I’m afraid.
Somehow, the ball of frustration in his chest released only slightly. Though something else took its place. Maybe a bit of disappointment? He’d seen that look before in a woman’s eyes, the innate suspicion mixed with placating caution. His mother had worn that look around his father.
He glanced back down at his hands. Could she somehow see the blood that stained them? Could she sense the cruelty bred into his black soul? Did she know the vile and unholy urges that, even now, coursed through the very fibers of his muscle?
She was right to fear him.
“All right, lads.” Liam inhaled a weary breath and took post by the axle to lift the heaviest part whilst someone affixed the wheel back in place. “Let’s get this over with.”
He felt her gaze on him as they lifted the carriage and patched it. He couldn’t figure out why he was so full of this awareness, but something about her watching him grunt and strain and sweat was damnably erotic.
He didn’t allow himself to look at her, though, even when the deed was done. Instead, he swung onto Magnus’s back and kicked him into a gallop, leaving one of the others to drive the coach back to Ravencroft.
He needed a bath and a change. If she wanted a proper marquess, she was about to meet one.
