The last time Mena had peered through the black mesh of this veil, she had been traversing the Bealach na Bà Pass toward Ravencroft. It had felt much like it did now, more a funereal veil than anything glamorous or stylish. Something behind which to hide her shame, her face, and her very self. Though she’d taken off the hat, a veil of secrecy had remained for her entire tenure at Ravencroft Keep. For the slightest, happiest time, even Mena had forgotten who she truly was.
The Lady Philomena St. Vincent, Viscountess Benchley.
Purported madwoman, and a ward of Belle Glen Asylum. Fugitive from the crown, her noble husband, and certain insanity. A woman she’d come to despise over the course of her enchanted autumn in Wester Ross. A weak-willed, soft-spoken ninny. A victim of violence. A perpetrator of silence. Ephemeral, unwanted, and thoroughly unhappy.
Mena Lockhart, on the other hand, had become more natural to her in the first five days than the viscountess had been in five years. As the spinster governess, she’d faced down multiple fears. She’d laughed, danced, scolded, healed, and imparted of her hard-won wisdom.
She’d even stood her ground in a quarrel with the Demon Highlander, and not only emerged the victor of their skirmish, but won his wounded heart.
Though, in doing so, she’d lost her own.
Her reflection in the train window showed no traces of the softness and contentment she’d cautiously begun to allow herself to feel whilst hiding in the Highlands. Her full lips drew into a line of prim restraint, her eyes became pinched and dull, her skin wan and pale rather than porcelain tinged with pink.
She’d retreated to a tiny, unoccupied box in a sparsely populated railcar to gather her thoughts. To brood, was more like it.
How in God’s name had she ever allowed herself to board a train back to London? Was she truly mad? Why had she not portended some rank and incurable illness, forcing everyone to leave her behind?
Partly, she admitted to herself, because she’d been pleasured into witless oblivion more times than a human being could possibly be expected to endure and still hold a thought in her head. The hour had struck half past two in the morning before Liam and she had stumbled into her room, and even then they hadn’t slept for some time. He’d thrown the drapes open wide and peeled her dress from her body with curious and infinite languor. He’d taken special care with her stockings, fingering the ribbons and garters and caressing them down her long, sturdy legs.
His rough fingers were infinitely gentle as he discovered every inch of her skin with patient and arousing caresses in the moonlight. They’d talked of amusing things while he undressed her. And insignificant things while she washed the runes and mist from his bare skin.
Then they said nothing at all when he pulled her above him and split her legs over his lean, sinuous hips. They’d communicated only in gasps and sighs as she’d ridden him with sensual rolls of her body. He’d palmed her breasts in his warm hands and said wicked things in his people’s native tongue while she pleasured herself upon his sleek and magnificent body. Then, when he could stand it no more, he’d dug his strong fingers into the flesh of her hips and driven upward until he’d bowed with such shocking pleasure, Mena had thought his back would break.
In the darkness, he’d held her close against his slowing heartbeat, and spoke of serious things, of his brothers and the fear her capture had caused him. Of his intentions to bring Hamish to London and have him face the military tribunal that was doubtless waiting for him. He’d told her stories of Collin Talmage, the Duke of Trenwyth. As Liam had been gaining glory on the battlefield, Trenwyth had been a secret agent, spilling blood in the dark. After Hamish’s presumed death, it turned out Trenwyth had made Liam aware of several war crimes he’d previously been ignorant of. His status as the Demon Highlander had shielded his brother from facing justice.
But justice awaited Hamish now, and it promised to be swift and merciless.
“How strange,” Mena had commented, while stroking her hands through the soft and sparse hair on Liam’s chest, enjoying the feel of his masculine skin. “That a duke like Trenwyth would be in such service to the crown. If I remember correctly, he’s something like seventeenth in line, practically a royal.”
“Trenwyth is no royal dandy. He’s one of the most dangerous men I’ve ever met, with a self-destructive streak twice as long as my own.”
“Oh, my.” Mena yawned.
“He was born a second or third son, though, and didn’t take on the mantle of duke until he’d already been in Her Majesty’s service for quite some time. I imagine Trenwyth spends little time in the field now, though, as he lost his hand on a cover mission to Afghanistan.”
“Poor soul,” Mena murmured. “Did Hamish have anything to do with it?”
“I imagine Thorne and I are about to find out.”
Though Liam was the Marquess of Ravencroft, Laird of the clan Mackenzie, and a retired lieutenant colonel, Gavin St. James, the Earl of Thorne, acted as local magistrate, and so they were both to transport Hamish as their prisoner in the morning.
Exhausted beyond physical comprehension, Mena must have fallen asleep before the part where Liam had mentioned he intended for his children, and thereby, Mena, to accompany him on the journey.
It wasn’t until an ecstatic Rhianna had accosted her in her bed, where she’d awoken alone with pillars of late-morning sun slanting in through her open windows, that she’d found out the panic-inducing news.
The dear girl exuberantly informed her that her father had accepted their grandmother’s request for them to join her in London for a few small soirees before she would whisk them off to spend Christmas in Paris and celebrate the New Year in Florence.
Mena’s reaction had been the antithesis of Rhianna’s exaltation. Nausea had risen above a haze of denial choking off her throat. The suffocating steel band of dread, of which she’d thought herself rid, had clamped back around her rib cage.
She’d barely had time to don her robe before Jani arrived with a bevy of maids to pack her things and help her dress.
Mena had penned a frantic plea for help to Farah Blackwell, Lady Northwalk, and thrust it into Jani’s hands, begging him to have it delivered to the telegraph office in Strathcarron. She’d paid him a full week’s wages, and he’d scampered off to comply.
She’d gone in search of Liam, but he and Gavin had taken Hamish to the station early to secure a locked car and spare the children the traumatic verity of his tragic return and, even worse, his eventual fate.
They’d lost him already, it wouldn’t do to see the creature he’d become.
Before she’d quite gathered her wits, Mena had quickly cleaned and dressed, the children were gathered, and they bundled into a carriage that raced down the Bealach na Bà at a dizzying and at times stomach-dropping pace.
Liam had met them at the train station, and Mena’s fraying composure faltered at the knee-weakening sight of him. His welcoming smile never reached his haunted eyes. Though his hand had covertly found hers as they’d made their way to the private car, and he pressed his palm against hers with a meaningful deference. Whether he gave reassurance or sought it, Mena couldn’t be certain. Either way, it only served to fuel her dread.
Jani had been there, assuring her the telegram had been delivered to London posthaste.
The news did little to uncurl the fingers of dread threatening to squeeze her heart into stillness, which would be preferable to these constant, breathless palpitations of anxiety.
She’d done what she could to keep her growing panic from the Mackenzies and Jani. Much of the journey was spent indulging the children with descriptions of London.
Barraged with endless questions, Liam did take the time to tell her about their town house off Oxford Street overlooking Hyde Park.
“I want to go to the marina to look at warships.” Andrew’s blue eyes had gleamed with relish. “And to see the Egyptian exhibit at the British Museum!”
“I want to attend a real opera, and a ballet, and a play at Covent Gardens. Oh! And then one at Vauxhall Gardens! And we have to go to a real Russian tearoom; and a Turkish bath, they’re all the rage, Father.”
“And I am going to try my hand at gambling,” Andrew speculated.
“You most certainly will not,” Mena indignantly chimed in.
“Why not?” Andrew threw his father a plaintive look. “’Tis a gentlemanly pursuit,” he argued as he drew his wiry frame to a more erect posture, trying to take advantage of every inch that he’d sprouted in the past few months.
“Sorry, son,” Liam rumbled as he shook his head and hid a smile.
“They willna let a whelp like ye in the clubs, ye have to be a man first.” Rhianna elbowed him in the ribs. “Like Jani.”
“I am thinking that even I am too young to attend,” Jani had said, more solemn and serious today than his usual jolly self.
Andrew huffed indignantly. “I’ll likely be an old man the next time we get to visit London … if we keep up this rate.” He eyed his father accusingly, but the point was lost by the well-timed crack in his pubescent voice.
“We’ll have to supplement your wardrobes if you have such lofty goals for the city.” Mena’d considered, momentarily forgetting herself.
“Och.” Liam grimaced. “And how much is that going to cost me?”
“A small fortune, if I have anything to say about it.” She cast a wry glance at the marquess, and blanched as his dark eyes glimmered with hot reminders of their previous night.
As soon as the children had settled, Mena escaped them, finally struck with the idea to beg a need for fresh air, announcing that the rocking of the train caused her to feel unwell.
However, her only malady remained her ever-growing panic. Another lie, however inert, had fallen from her lips. She despised them, loathed herself for telling them, and detested the need for her dishonesty.
Cursing her fear-driven weakness, Mena remained with her forehead pressed to the cool window and watched the fields of the Scottish Lowlands give way to Northern England.
Mena’s thoughts flew faster, trying to keep ahead of the train. If she could ferret out every possible contingency, and formulate a plan to avoid discovery, she might make it to Paris with her guise intact.
God, how she wanted to tell him. Most especially after last night. His secret had been revealed to her and she’d not only understood it, but she accepted his intentions as noble, if his actions had not been.
Hamish had been right about one thing, sometimes great men did evil things.
Even in the name of good.
She’d come close to confiding her own secret so many times the night before, but had decided to leave it to the light of day. The right moment had never truly presented itself. And she hadn’t the opportunity this morning.
But what could she do? There was a chance Liam would forgive her if she confessed, but to do so now would be out of the question.
What if his famous temper got the better of him? What if he cast her out, or worse, handed her over to the authorities?
She simply couldn’t risk it.
The tiny striations of her veil felt gritty against her forehead, but it did let the coolness of the glass temper the flush of panic heating her face. With Farah’s and Millie’s help, she just might avoid detection altogether.
Her husband, Gordon, and his parents ran in completely different circles than the Marquess Ravencroft and his former mother-in-law. Lower circles, to be sure. Even as a viscountess, Mena never had the opportunity to meet Lady Eloise Gleason.
As a high-ranking military officer, a national hero, and the carrier of a very ancient title, no one would dare to close a door to Ravencroft. In fact, when word reached London that he’d arrived, invitations would inundate his household with startling alacrity.
But Liam Mackenzie attended the parlors of such lofty people as His Grace, Collin Talmage, the Duke of Trenwyth, and even His Grace, Lord Grosvenor, the Duke of Westminster upon occasion.
This time of year, the St. Vincents would undoubtedly have retired to their home in Hampshire for a country Christmas like a great deal of the ton was wont to do. They’d filter back to the capital for the New Year and the season, but it didn’t seem like the Mackenzie family planned to linger in London for that long before moving on to the Continent.
As a lowly governess, she would not be included at any social event the marquess attended, as Rhianna was not out in society until she was presented to the queen next year. Excluding a few shopping and sightseeing outings, there was really no call for her to leave the house.
She could wear very unremarkable clothing and perhaps hide the color of her hair under a few bonnets, and if heaven was on her side, she’d avoid recognition.
If it wasn’t … well, it didn’t bear thinking about.
“I know what ye’re afraid of.” Liam’s dark voice echoed off the wood of the tiny compartment.
Mena jumped from her seat and whirled around, wondering just how a man so large could sneak up on her like that.
Today he looked every inch the English marquess. Polished black knee boots complemented his dark gray wool breeches and waistcoat, making the stark white of his shirt all the more dramatic. A silver-gray cravat tied loosely at his chin belied his inherent distaste for English clothing. His hair was bound in an ebony queue gleaming against the white of his shirt and caused his rawboned features to stand out in stark contrast to the implied gentility of his attire.
No one wore their hair long these days, and Mena imagined no one would dare mention that to the marquess.
His uncultured appeal stole her breath, even now, and she found her gloved hand clutching at her own lace cravat as she struggled to reply.
“What—what makes you think I’m afraid?”
One dubious brow lifted, but he said nothing as he stepped forward and slid the silent door to the passenger compartment closed and locked them inside, pulling the blinds down over the window to the cramped hall.
Mena found herself drawn into the circle of his arms, sheltered by his massive shoulders, and she couldn’t help but wonder how he could fit through the cramped walkways of the train. His heart thumped a strong rhythm against her ear and his arms settled around her shoulders, cocooning her in his masculine warmth and unfathomable strength.
She leaned on him heavily, breathing in the scent of starch from his laundered clothing, the cedar soap he used, and something earthier. Sharper, like iron and stone. Like he’d been underground.
“How did it go with your brother this morning?” she asked, partly trying to divert the conversation, and mostly because she worried about the shadows she’d earlier seen in his eyes.
“Ye’re afraid that whatever ye’re running from will find ye in London,” he surmised correctly, not allowing himself to be misdirected. “And, though I doona ken what it is, who it is, I want ye to know that I willna let harm come to ye.” His words sounded exaggerated in the ear she had pressed against his chest. The resonance of the sound calmed her a little, though she reluctantly pulled back, stepping out of the circle of his arms.
“Why?” she asked, searching his face. “Why would you promise me such things when you don’t know anything about it? What if … what if I’ve done something unforgivable?”
* * *
Liam stared down into Mena’s angelic face, pinched with worry, and couldn’t imagine her ever committing an unforgivable sin. She was gentle to the point of demure. Dangerous as a wounded bird and as ladylike as he’d ever seen, even in bed. Though he planned to thoroughly debauch her just as soon as she’d allow. Hell, she’d only ever cursed the once.
She’d make a rather splendid marchioness.
Filled with a foreign tenderness, he traced the brackets of anxiety next to her lips. He wished she’d confide in him, but maybe it was for the best that she left her secrets where they were for now. He had his brother to deal with, and this relationship was all rather new. He was, after all, still her employer.
Trust came neither easily nor quickly to either of them, and the thread they’d woven thus far felt young and tenuous and exceedingly fine. He didn’t want to pull the string before it became a cord, lest it snap. Yet, he wanted her to feel safe, to know that if she must fight any sort of battle, the Demon Highlander was on her side. He was her champion, and would ever be.
“Have ye committed murder?” he asked, wondering if they had more in common than he initially thought. “Is Scotland Yard searching the streets of London for ye?” Had she been eager to forgive his own sin on that account because she’d committed one of her own?
“I’ve never taken a life.” He saw truth in her answer, though caution lurked in her eyes.
“Have ye done anything to personally anger the monarchy or any particular member of the royal family?” he queried, feeling his lips curl in an unfamiliar direction.
“No,” she denied again, her pale gaze latching onto his mouth as she gave a few distracted blinks.
“Have ye done aught to incur the wrath of Her Majesty’s Royal Navy or any branch of the esteemed military?”
“I have not.” Her own lips quirked in a reluctant feminine smirk.
“Then, lass, I am confident in my ability to protect ye, and we can save revelations for another time, when all of this is over.”
As he pulled her close, she tilted her head back, her careful gaze searching his features for God only knew what. “Truly?” she whispered.
“Aye. Truly,” he assured her. “And I give ye my vow as Laird of the Mackenzie clan that if I happen to encounter the man who hurt ye, I’ll put my dagger through his eye.” He’d done his best to keep his voice light, but he meant every word.
She stepped back into his embrace with an ironic noise. “And they say Highlanders aren’t romantic.”
“Who needs poetry or diamonds and gems?” He flashed his teeth in a fierce smile. “I find the most precious stones a man can offer are the ones cut from yer enemy while he’s on his knees screaming for death.”
She groaned, burying her wry laugh in the groove between his pectorals as she furrowed her face against his chest. “What a ferocious barbarian I’ve fallen for.”
They both froze at her flippant admission and her hands tightened in his shirt.
Liam’s heart stilled with reverence as he reached in between them and cupped her jaw in his gentle hand, holding it like he would a delicate bauble as he lifted her face to look at him.
She hadn’t said love. She hadn’t needed to.
Unable to speak around a strange tightness in his throat, he bent to run his lips against her forehead, her fluttering eyelids, her velvet cheek.
She was precious to him.
How fiercely he loved her. How afraid he was that she’d be yet another casualty of his accursed blood. And yet, selfish bastard that he was, he couldn’t consider letting her go.
“We should get back to the children,” she whispered, gently disentangling herself from his grasp. “They’ll wonder where we’ve gone.”
“After,” he said.
“After what?”
He kissed her swiftly, making his answer abundantly clear. He pressed his hard mouth against the softness of hers again and again, coaxing, enticing, until her moan of response drove him wild with need.
Their tongues tangled, and he tasted desperation on her as she gripped at the solid muscles of his back with a fervency he’d not felt from her even last night.
Her need heightened his, and a rush of desire directed every last drop of blood into his cock. He pressed her against him tightly, rolling his hips to show her what her beauty did to him.
He captured one of her wrists and brought her fingers to his mouth. Gently gripping the tip of her soft satin gloves with his teeth, he pulled each sheath from her fingers until it slid from her hand completely.
With his other hand, he undid his trousers as he distracted her by sliding two of her fingers in his mouth. Her lips parted, glimmering with the leavings of his kiss. Her eyes became stormy and hooded and he watched her relish the memories of how his tongue had slid through the folds of her sex the very same way it now slid in between her fingers.
Leaving her fingers good and wet, he drew them from his mouth. “Touch me, lass,” he murmured, lowering both of their hands to where he’d freed himself from his trousers.
He wanted her to know him, to feel what she did to him. To consider his manhood not as a weapon he could use against her, but as an extension of his desire. She could hold him, wield him, drive their pleasure, and use his body to sate her own needs.
They both gasped when her hand closed around him, though his was the sharper inhale. Her lithe fingers encircled his turgid shaft, testing the girth. Her eyes flicked up to his in surprise, but quickly darted away as she used her moist fingers to explore the hot skin.
Liam shuddered as she slid her fingers to the round tip, treading the ridge before sliding all the way to the root. He groaned and shook, lowering his head to her throat, wishing her damned gown weren’t high-necked. That they were naked and alone.
But their only bare skin was his cock and her hand, her soft, curious, magical hand that not only held his sex in her delicate grip, but his heart, his black soul.
His salvation.
Lifting up on her toes, she pressed a soft kiss to his panting lips, and when he would have captured her mouth, she pulled away and shocked him by dropping to her knees.
* * *
Mena’s hand remained gently locked around his cock as her skirts flared around her, creating a puddle of dark silk and muslin. She wanted this. Wanted to give him the pleasure that he’d so lovingly shown her. Wanted to use her mouth to convey the things she could not yet bring herself to say.
She needed to reclaim this act as one between lovers, not as a memory of domination and humiliation.
“Please,” she whispered, arching her neck to look up at him. “Don’t pull my hair.”
“Mena,” he groaned, his massive chest sawing beneath his gray vest with wolfish panting breaths. “Ye doona have to—och, Christ,” he bit out as she closed her lips over his thick shaft.
Every muscle in his body shuddered and locked in a splendid, animalistic movement. He tossed his head back, baring his thick neck and blindly reached down for her.
Stopping himself just in time, he groped behind him, gripping the molding on the train wall, his fingers turning white with strain.
A victorious thrill shocked Mena as she drew him deeper into the warm cavern of her mouth. Even through the haze of his passion, he’d heeded her request, and she’d reward him for it.
She kept her hand around the base of him, gripping what her mouth could not fit. Slowly, she ran her tongue around the engorged ridge of the blunt head, reveling in the coarse sound he made. He fascinated and tantalized her, such unyielding hardness covered in pure silk.
The rhythm of his furiously pumping heart beat rampantly in the flesh contained by her mouth. She felt giddy, powerful, and astounded by her own body’s wet and throbbing response to her bold action.
He tasted sumptuous and salty and completely masculine. Her mouth watered and she used the rampant moisture to ease his cock as deep as she could take him before drawing him out again.
The responding catches and clenches in his abdomen were visible even beneath his shirt and waistcoat.
Her tongue made an expedition of him, finding the curious veins beneath his thin, smooth skin. Stroking him rhythmically with her hand, she allowed her mouth more leeway, pressing kisses to the weeping tip and teasing him with little licks and nibbles using only her lips.
He growled down at her, baring his teeth in wordless demand. Some of the molding gave way beneath his hands, splintering beneath the pressure of his grip.
Foreign guttural words escaped him, though whether blessings or curses, she couldn’t begin to speculate.
With a mischievous smile, she pulled away just a little, enjoying the mindless thrust of his hips as he followed. The pleading tilt of his brow. The unbidden sound of protest.
She gave him what he wanted, taking him so deep her jaw ached with the effort of it. Covering her teeth with her lips, she used her hand and mouth to simulate what their bodies had done. Her tongue glided on the underside of his shaft, finding the large, tender vein there and exerting extra pressure.
Now she knew his words to be ferocious blasphemies, as he growled them harshly to the ceiling. When her hand dipped into his trousers, discovering the nest of dark hair and palming the pendulous weight of his potency, his language dissolved into little more than grunts and her name on helpless catches of breath.
Though she knew he fought it, his hips bucked forward, driving himself farther into her mouth. She opened her throat to accept him, held her breath when he reached too deep. He ravished her mouth with desperate thrusts, pulsing, throbbing, growing larger until her fingers could no longer contain him.
Mena prepared to receive his release, to let his seed slide down her throat in glorious pulses and lap like a kitten at what she could not initially take. But she suddenly found herself seized by the arms and hauled to her feet.
His mouth crushed hers in a predatory kiss filled with a paradoxical, worshipful sentiment. He gathered her skirts in desperate, bunching handfuls and she found herself falling, though he caught her before she landed and gently pressed her into the edge of the seat.
Features taut and eyes burning with abysmal flames, he swept her undergarments down and roughly pushed her knees upward and apart, exposing her utterly.
He filled the space between her legs with his wide, hard body, and before she could catch her breath there was a blunt, heavy pressure against the wet cove of her secret flesh. He slid inside her with a long, lithe thrust and, though Mena felt a twinge of soreness from their night of passion, she accepted the massive intrusion with a purr of welcome.
Her flesh felt swollen and soft around his hardness. Eyes glazed with dark need, he withdrew, repositioned, and took her again, this time penetrating so deep that she felt a strange and heady sensation thrill against her spine.
Lids shuttered low with passion, he pleasured her in grinding, circular motions rather than long thrusts. It was as though he couldn’t bear to withdraw, to leave her warmth for even a moment.
Feeling just as needy, just as desperate for closeness, Mena reached for his hard shoulders, wanting to pull him against her. But he resisted, pressing a gentle palm to her chest until she relaxed against the cushion of the bench.
Mena might have been wounded had he not instantly brought his thumb to her mouth and dipped it inside with a wicked sound. Drawing it against her tongue, he gathered some of the moisture there and then left her to apply it to the bud nestled in the auburn curls between her split legs.
Mena jerked as he slid the rough skin turned slick against the aching cluster of sensation. She bit down hard on her lip to keep from screaming as he circled it in time to the strong and sinuous movements of his hips.
She was stretched as wide as her legs allowed, helplessly pinned beneath his big, undulating body. She could not press back against him, or meet his rhythm. Her only option was to receive him and submit to his hedonistic onslaught.
He drove her pleasure with his teasing, torturing thumb as he surged inside of her, watching her with alert and restless eyes. He learned what pleased her and lingered there, until she clamped her own hand over her mouth and her thighs began to clench around him as the whispers of pulsating release began to threaten to overwhelm her.
His fingers left her sex, digging into the flesh of her thighs and pressing them wider as he angled deep, deeper, until a flood of bliss clenched her feminine muscles around him. Her climax found her in great, cresting waves, each one more powerful than the last until she writhed and squirmed to try to escape their unexpected intensity.
His dark sound of triumph was lost in the rush of sound through her ears, as though the universe had finally opened to her, and she could hear whatever curious song the cosmos sang as the earth hurled its way through the darkness.
The spasms of her body pulled the release Liam had been trying to hold back. He caught a raw sound in his throat, and buried his face in the front of her dress, bearing down on the fabric with his teeth. He sank into her with a few final and powerful thrusts, his large body racked with great, violent shudders.
They didn’t move for a few countless moments after, neither of them certain their body truly still belonged to them.
With an incredible sigh, Liam dropped his forehead on her shoulder and allowed himself to go lax, though he propped most of his weight with his elbows on either side of her.
Mena stroked the stubble of his two-day beard and cradled him with her body, wrapping her legs around his waist as though she could hold him inside forever. He didn’t seem to mind in the least, nuzzling her breast with his jaw through her layers of clothing. A sheen of mist blurred her vision as she realized that this was the kind of closeness she’d craved her entire life. True intimacy. Mutual regard. Give and take, instead of her merely giving until she was utterly empty. A shell of a woman.
“After this is over, I’m going to marry ye,” he announced softly, pressing a kiss to her jaw.
Mena said nothing as she pressed his head tenderly to her, resting her cheek against his forehead as a tear ran into her hair.
