The rain painted the red sandstone of Ravencroft Keep a deep, melancholy shade. Mena loved it immediately, as the roof was, as her father would have said, rather crowded. She counted fourteen turrets and four towers as the carriage trundled over an ancient stone bridge arching above an emerald loch.
Renaissance architecture from the early seventeenth century overlaid defensive ramparts and the original tower that must have dated all the way back to Robert the Bruce. The windows were large and airy for such an imposing stone structure, she supposed, to optimize the view and the occasional sunlight over the sparkling sea beneath the cliffs below. She’d only begun to count the chimneys when they pulled past the fountain around the circular drive and thereby lost sight of the roof.
She’d known the keep would be large, as it was a castle, after all. But this estate had to boast at least a hundred rooms, perhaps more.
Mena took another moment to close her eyes and silently send a whisper of gratitude to the Blackwells for arranging this new life for her. Here might be that isolated place at the end of a lane where she could exist in quietude and seclusion. Just as she’d imagined at Belle Glen.
She hoped the carriage debacle would be her only unpleasant surprise for the rest of the day. If she avoided anyone like the frightening Highlander she’d met on the road, she’d likely succeed.
His men had been nice enough, one of them even going so far as to drive the carriage to Ravencroft. But his savage visage had unsettled her, so much so, her heart had yet to slow from its frantic pace.
What was it about a ferocious man that terrified her so? To date, it had been so-called civilized men that had caused her harm.
But the power in the Highlander’s body as he’d strained and lifted the carriage with his men had impressed her to a bewildering degree. It had to be his sheer, inconceivable size. And the magnitude wasn’t only pertaining to his towering height, but the breadth of his shoulders and the depth of his chest. Some of that had to be the cloak he wore, didn’t it?
Mena knew Dorian Blackwell as a well-built man, strong and broad. And likewise Christopher Argent filled a doorway with impossibly wide shoulders, his like not often seen in the boroughs of London. But … Mena didn’t think she’d ever witnessed a feat of strength to match what she’d seen today. Never cast her eyes upon a man so large and well hewn. His kilt had revealed more than it covered as he’d used his tree-trunk thighs to lift the carriage. His neck had corded and jaw clenched in a most … captivating manner. The disturbing notion that something even more intriguing was happening beneath the thick cloak still hadn’t abandoned her thoughts.
Lord help her, she hadn’t been able to look away.
Once he’d galloped off into the mist, she’d had a strange feeling, much like she’d done after stumbling upon an uncommon creature in the wild, and watching it leap into the shadows. The sense of disenchantment in the knowledge that such a glimpse was rare and extraordinary, and one was likely not to experience it again.
Which was for the best, she decided. Who knew what a man like that was capable of?
Mena sobered a bit when the carriage passed the entrance with the grand stairway and circumvented the keep toward a wide but decidedly less grand portal in the back.
The servants’ entrance.
Right. Now was the time to remember not who she had been, but who she was meant to become.
She filled her lungs with a bracing breath, though nothing could have prepared her for the streak of color in the form of what she supposed was a footman, who danced down the few stone steps. He opened the door with a flourish, covering the space with an overlarge umbrella.
“Miss Philomena Lockhart?” He swept her one carpetbag right off her lap before she had the chance to reply, and gave her the most graceful bow she’d ever seen. It was much like being accosted by a sunrise. “I am Rajanikan Dayanand, valet to Laird Liam Mackenzie, Marquess Ravencroft, and I have arrived for the purposes of collecting you and conducting you to the keep.”
The word vibrant aptly described both the lean young man’s manners and his wardrobe. A bright orange and gold silk kurta shimmered from beneath his crimson sherwani, what Mena understood to be the name of the long, lushly embroidered coat favored by the Hindu people. His legs were wrapped in bolts of umber silk, the same color as the long scarf draped around his neck.
Mena took his outstretched hand and ducked under the umbrella with him as they trotted up the stairs and into an alcove off the kitchens that served as a cloakroom.
“Thank you, Mr. Dayanand.” She shook a few stray drops of moisture off her wool pelisse as he wrestled the umbrella closed and stowed it in the stand.
“Everyone calls me Jani.” His smile was luminous and his black eyes sparkled. Beneath all the opulent drapery he wore, his true age was indecipherable. He could have been fifteen or twenty-five, though his skin was the color of teak, and just as smooth.
“Jani, then.” She offered her hand. “I am—”
“Miss Philomena Lockhart, yes, I know. We’ve all been very curious to meet you.” He swept his hand to the cluster of staff gathered in the kitchens on various perches all staring at her in peculiar silence.
A collection of maids were gathered around a large table laid with tea, as a kitchen girl paused in the middle of clearing the evening meal to gawk. A handful of footmen, livery, and ground workers sat on rough-hewn stools at the cooking island, their meaty hands wrapped around tankards of ale as they’d been chatting with a portly cook as he turned a large spit adorned with what appeared to be some sort of lake fowl. They were all filthy and exhausted, peering at her from behind bleary eyes and sooty features.
“How do you do?” Mena pleased herself by saying around the heart beating in her throat as she executed a slight curtsy.
She suddenly felt a pang of guilt for not getting to know her servants better. Though in her husband’s household, such familiarity would not have been tolerated. She’d been utterly isolated, even from the kindness of her staff.
The men at the cooking island nodded back to her, their stares oddly concentrated as a few of them mumbled something that she thought was whit like?
Hoping it was a local greeting, she replied. “It’s a pleasure.”
“English.” The cook muttered loudly enough for most to hear in his heavy French accent. “Humph.”
“That’s Jean-Pierre, our ill-tempered chef,” Jani informed her by way of introduction.
In this situation, at least, Mena knew what to do. “Votre canard sent la perfection. Je peux seulement espérer goûter quelque chose de si délicieux pendant mon séjour.”
All eyes shifted to the chef as his chubby face melted into a smile. “Madame’s French is perfection. I shall make for you a special dessert tonight. Please tell me you prefer wine to the Scotch swill these Luddites slurp like water.” He spat on the floor.
“Truth be told, I am rather partial to the wines of Provence above all else.” Mena offered him the most dazzling smile through her veil, painfully aware that the so-called swill sold internationally for more money per volume than gold.
“Then welcome to Ravencroft, mademoiselle!”
“Merci.”
“Come, come, Miss Philomena Lockhart.” Jani seized her hand and pulled her through the impressive kitchens with startling energy. “Dinner is to be served soon and the marquess has requested your presence there. We must hurry if you are to dress in time.”
Mena had barely stepped away from the kitchens before it erupted into chaos. She couldn’t understand a thing they said, as they conversed in Gaelic, secure in the knowledge that a proper Englishwoman would not likely have learned their language.
“They like you,” Jani informed her as he pulled her down a narrow servants’ hall.
“How could you be certain?” Mena wrinkled her brow. But for the good impression she’d left with Jean-Pierre, her welcome had been decidedly cold.
“You must not blame them. There was a fire in the fields earlier today. It was a blessing that the storm came when it did, or this year’s winter crop could have been lost. Everyone is recovering from the fear and the excitement of that.”
“Oh, dear,” Mena exclaimed. “That’s terrible, indeed, was anyone injured?”
“No and we are lucky. But the fire is why no one was able to meet you at the train but the driver. I know that the marquess had planned to drive out to collect you, himself, and now, I think, he will be sorry that he did not.”
“Why do you say that?” Mena queried.
“Because, Miss Philomena Lockhart, we all expected you to be old and fat, not young and pretty.”
“I am not so young.” Certainly not pretty. Mena thought of the many times she’d been told she was too fat. A flatterer, this Jani. She liked him immensely. “You may call me Mena.”
Jani shook his head. “You are a proper English lady. I am to address you appropriately.”
“Miss Mena, then.”
Throwing a brilliant smile over his shoulder as he pulled her along, he nodded. “Miss Mena. It is my feeling that the marquess will like you, as well.”
Mena worried her lip. She certainly hoped so, because the Marquess Ravencroft, the so-called Demon Highlander, was her only chance for refuge.
* * *
Liam couldn’t seem to stop himself from glancing into the shadows beyond the door to the dining room. He was famished and furious. It was now three minutes past the hour and everyone at the table waited in silent anticipation for the final dinner guest to arrive.
Miss Philomena Lockhart. His new English governess. What name could be more particularly British than hers?
Philomena.
It belonged to some starched, beak-nosed spinster with a nasal voice and a perpetual wrinkle of disapproval between her stolid brows.
Not the young, buxom creature with emerald eyes that had so charmed and bedeviled his men this afternoon. The shadowy hint of her features he’d spied from beyond the rain-speckled window and behind the black veil of her hat had insinuated comeliness. And Liam had spent the entire time he’d bathed and dressed peering into his memory of those few maddening moments with her as though they would reveal her mysterious features to his mind’s eye.
He should have been thinking of the disastrous fire today. He should have been contemplating the reasons for the sheared carriage-wheel linchpins, a cut so clean it could only have been done on purpose.
Obviously he had enough to occupy his mind without the addition of Miss Philomena Lockhart and her distracting breasts.
He’d come to the table frustrated, and quickly embarked on the road to a downright foul mood.
Sharp, rapid clips of a woman’s shoes against the stone floor in the hall echoed the staccato strike of his heart against his ribs. Liam rose to his feet with such speed, his chair made an alarming sound on the floor as she rushed into the dining room, in a breathtaking array of curls and cleavage.
“Do pardon my tardiness,” she puffed as the rest of the table stood upon her arrival. “For such a square structure, Ravencroft is surprisingly labyrinthine, and I became hopelessly lost…” Her words died an abrupt death as her eyes alighted upon him at the head of the table.
Liam had expected a sense of smug satisfaction in this moment, and he’d taken special care with his appearance tonight in anticipation of the very expression she now wore. He’d gone so far as to tie his hair back in a queue and shave a second time to rid himself of a shadow beard.
That he would feel like an imposter at the head of his own table was not something he’d considered. But didn’t he just? He was yet unaccustomed to this role. He’d been soldier, he’d been leader. He’d been killer and monster.
But a gentleman? A nobleman?
A noble … man?
He’d planned on eviscerating her publically for questioning his word and nobility in front of his men. For costing him precious time in the fields. For making him wait for dinner.
And for dominating his thoughts all bloody afternoon.
But perhaps she’d provoked his ever-ready ire because she gave voice to the doubts that Liam had about his ability to turn a demon into a laird.
He’d waited for that look of wide-eyed, astonished panic all evening. However, it became apparent to him immediately that any intentions he’d had involving thought or speech would have to be reconsidered. As he was bereft of either at the moment.
The blame for that, too, rested squarely on her shoulders. Her lovely bare shoulders.
Liam gripped the sturdy table for support. Nothing he’d imagined she hid behind that veil and thick wool pelisse could have prepared him for the unadulterated view of Miss Philomena Lockhart he now enjoyed.
Her dinner dress was a simple, modest green silk affair with little adornment but for some black cording about the bodice and a few black lace ruffles at the hem of the skirts. But on a figure like hers, it was nothing less than a stitched scrap of temptation. The cords, through some magic of tailoring, puffed into translucent sleeves below her shoulders, which met with the edges of her long black dinner gloves. A simple onyx satin ribbon about her lovely throat was her only ornamentation.
There was something about that Liam grudgingly admired. She didn’t need any jewels in order to catch the eye.
She was enough all on her own.
Liam knew he’d meet her seamstress in hell for the slew of pure sin racing through his mind and pouring down his body like molten lava. For the wicked fingers that had made this dress knew exactly what they were doing to any man who had to submit to the presence of this woman in that gown. It was crafted to the specifications of propriety, but anyone should know that a woman with breasts like hers should be buttoned to the neck.
The gown had been constructed to make him suffer.
Liam swallowed a rush of profuse hunger flooding his mouth with anticipatory moisture. Philomena Lockhart was, in a word, delectable. Her lips plump and ripe as strawberries. The mounds of her breasts lush and white as Devonshire cream. Her wealth of hair swept back but for a few tantalizing waves spilling down her shoulder like a garnet cabernet.
His eyes snagged on the unrealistically dramatic flare of her hips, at the way her gloves bound to the soft flesh about the upper arm. His hand tightened on the table until the creases of his knuckles turned white. For unlike the oak he gripped to keep his balance, she’d be so soft beneath his hands … Beneath his—
“Not quite the retired older man ye expected, is he, lassie?” A chuckling Russell broke the silence, and Liam glanced to his right, noticing for the first time that his middle-aged steward had also taken more care with his appearance than usual. He’d even trimmed his russet beard, which he rarely did before winter’s end.
It was lucky, Liam realized, that everyone’s focus remained on her, and no one noticed how affected he was.
Except for, perhaps, the lass.
“I—I confess, I don’t know what to say.” Her breasts heaved with breath as she obviously prepared for a lengthy apology regarding the afternoon.
The thought pleased Liam a great deal less than he’d anticipated, and so he didn’t allow her to finish.
“Permit me to present my children, Miss Lockhart, Rhianna and Andrew Mackenzie.” His children, both inherited the Ravencroft ebony hair, had very opposite yet equally inappropriate reactions to the introduction.
“What happened to yer lip?” Rhianna demanded, her chocolate eyes wide as saucers in her angular face. “And are ye wearing cosmetics? Did ye get them from Paris? I heard they’re only worn by actresses and prostitutes.”
“Haud yer Wheesht, Rhianna,” Liam commanded, earning him a glower from his daughter, though she complied. She had no manners and even less respect, Liam was ashamed to admit. In the army, one caned or shot someone for insubordination. With a slip of a daughter, Liam was at a loss for what to do. He dare not raise a hand in anger to his children. There had been enough of that in this house, and Liam refused to be like his father.
“Ye see, Miss Lockhart, how in need we are of your expertise. Rhianna will apologize for her discourtesy.”
Everyone held their breath, wondering if Rhianna was about to throw one of her famous tantrums, but she merely slid out her lower lip in a dramatic pout and muttered, “Apologies,” without looking up.
Miss Lockhart’s glove had gone to her own lip and self-consciously lingered there. After a few surprised blinks, she lowered her hand and gifted his daughter with a kind smile. “I’ve always had a fondness for an inquisitive mind. I suppose now is the right moment to explain to you all that I was … in a carriage accident not a week ago and sustained a few abrasions. The cosmetics were a capitulation to my vanity and maybe a little to my hopes of making a good impression here.”
Her voice was the auditory equivalent of warm honey, sweet and languid, and Liam let it coat his senses for a beat longer than he should have.
“A carriage accident?” he repeated, grasping at the vestiges of stoicism. “Ye seem to be rather prone to those of late.”
The comment took her more aback than he’d thought it would. “Yes, well…” She blinked at him, at an apparent loss for words.
“We’re just glad ye’re not hurt,” Russell said, gifting the lass with his most charming smile.
“Thank you, Mr. Mackenzie.” The appearance of dimples on the edges of her smile was enough to distract Liam from what he was about to say next.
Luckily, Miss Lockhart didn’t await a prompting. “It’s lovely to make the acquaintance of you both, Rhianna and Andrew. I’m very much looking forward to our time together.”
True to form, Andrew muttered a “likewise” and said not another word, but stood when he should stand, and bowed when he should bow, doing just enough to not draw Liam’s ire. Which, of course, was beyond irritating.
“Ye dress better than any governess I’ve ever had,” Rhianna remarked artlessly. “Is that the latest in London couture?”
“It is.” Miss Lockhart’s bosom turned an intriguing pink. “But you’ll have a much prettier trousseau once you’re of age.”
“I am of age in most circles,” Rhianna huffed. “Father is making me wait another year, and I’m certain to be an old maid by then.”
Miss Lockhart only smiled again, but Liam thought he observed a rueful tightening in her eyes. “Don’t be in too much of a rush to marry, dear,” she said, and then seemed to remember herself. “Give me enough of your time, and you’ll be the jewel of next season, I swear it.”
Rhianna assessed her new governess with skepticism, but finally nodded.
“Kindly take yer seat, Miss Lockhart, the soup is getting cold.” Liam gestured to the seat next to Rhianna, and tried not to notice the sway of the governess’s generous hips when she walked. She didn’t glide like so many ladies were wont to do. She swayed, each lift of her foot telegraphed by a corresponding movement of her body. A swivel of the hip, a swing of her arm, and a slight, jiggling ripple in the soft skin of her décolletage.
Gritting his teeth, Liam sat. “We’re a regimented household, Miss Lockhart, and in the future will start dinner at the stroke of eight.”
“Yes, my lord.” Soft russet lashes swept down beneath his disapproving look, properly chastised.
Liam winced beneath a ripple of regret that slithered through him.
Jani held her chair out for her, and the governess took it with perfect grace. Liam became absorbed with his soup the moment it was served as it gave him a reason not to look at her.
Dinner was generally a purposeful meal, and they ate in silence save for a few terse items of business discussed with Russell, if any words were spoken at all. So when Miss Lockhart broke the silence, everyone passed uneasiness around the table like a breadbasket.
“Since comportment and conduct are part of my duties, Rhianna, would you permit me to show you the way the ladies eat soup in London?”
Rhianna paused mid-slurp and slid a mutinous look to her new governess. Liam could tell that his daughter absolutely wanted to know, but didn’t want to be taught. She was a difficult girl that way. Eschewing authority, but frustrated at not knowing her boundaries and constantly overstepping.
“I suppose,” she replied carefully.
They all observed Miss Lockhart as she held her soup spoon delicately, and dipped it into the potato and leek soup. “You scoop it away, rather than toward, and bring it slowly to your mouth, instead of bending over the bowl. The important part is that you sip instead of slurp.”
Liam’s eyes remained affixed to her lips as she took a delicate sip from her spoon, and returned it to the bowl. She ate like she did everything else. With elegance and poise. Could it be that she was as unaware of her innate sensuality as she pretended?
“Now you try,” she encouraged.
Rhianna echoed her movements perfectly until the grating sound of a slurp filled the expectant silence.
“Tip the spoon to your lips rather than breathing in,” Miss Lockhart corrected. “Just thus.” She lifted another perfect spoonful, though before it reached her mouth, a tremor in her hand sent half of it spilling onto the bared skin of her chest.
Everyone froze, and that pink color appeared from beneath her gown once more.
An undignified snort of laughter escaped Rhianna and she clapped her hands over her mouth, unable to control the shaking of her shoulders. Even Andrew bit his lips to stop their quivering.
But it was the governess, herself, who broke into a brilliant smile before a merry laugh bubbled up from her throat. Now that her amusement was allowed, Rhianna joined in, as did Andrew, and finally Russell. The tension of the evening dissipated like an unpleasant odor.
It occurred to Liam that laughter was something long missing not just from his table, but from his life. From his keep. But he couldn’t possibly join in. Not because he didn’t want to, or because he wasn’t amused.
It was the perfectly creamy texture of the soup that arrested him. White and slick. It dripped over the curve of her breast, threatening to slide into the valley between as she fished the linen from her lap.
She caught it in time, still enjoying the joviality of the moment.
Salacious, wicked images seized Liam and held him in thrall. He could barely believe he was having such thoughts in the company of his own children, but Liam could only think of that warm, smooth liquid running between her magnificent breasts, and fight the violent lust sizzling through his body.
This had nothing to do with her, personally. It was the Mackenzie appetite to blame for his crass and demeaning fantasies. It was the demon who whispered dark and unbidden things in his ear.
* * *
Mena didn’t know if it was the warm meal, the French wine, or the soft glow of the candelabra, but the band of suffocating iron clamped about her chest suddenly released. She filled her lungs for what seemed like the first time in months, and savored the scent of crisp summer apples in the sweet Vouvray Jean-Pierre had sent up to accompany the dessert soufflé.
Taking another sip of the wine, she regarded the marquess over the glass as he discussed the suspicious fire in the barley fields with Russell Mackenzie.
He hadn’t so much as acknowledged her presence since the soup course.
Mena still couldn’t believe it. The savage Highlander from the road had transformed into a militant marquess. He’d been telling her the truth, after all. Though he’d donned his white-tie finery, bathed, shaved, and slicked his hair back into a neat queue, Mena still expected the barbarian to somehow rip free of the refined nobleman any moment and threaten to hack her to pieces with a claymore.
Troubled, she set down her wine. Lord, he must think her a fool for how she’d acted this afternoon. But he hadn’t mentioned it, and she hoped he wouldn’t. Or maybe she needed him to say something, to allow her to explain, to perhaps absolve her, somehow.
Mena watched the muscles of his jaw work ponderously on a bite as he listened to his steward’s reports intently. Only a fool would expect absolution from such a man. He was the sort that granted favor sparingly and forgiveness never.
She’d do well to remember that.
He was the Demon Highlander, elder brother to the Blackheart of Ben More. These monikers, they were not granted by the happenstance of birth or marriage, like marquess or earl, they were earned by means of ruthless violence and bloodshed. It was easy to forget that fact beneath the grand chandelier of this lofty keep. That was, until the fire in the hearth ignited the amber in his eyes, lending him a ferocity that even his expensive attire couldn’t tame.
Suddenly feeling as though she’d taken refuge in a sleeping bear’s den, Mena drained the last of her wine much faster than was strictly proper.
When dinner adjourned, she bade the children a fond good night and curtsied to Russell and the marquess.
Rhianna attempted a curtsy, as well, and Mena put that on the list of things to practice with the girl. Andrew merely nodded at her and mumbled an excuse before hurrying away, not once lifting his eyes from the carpet. He was on the tall side of thirteen, and very slim, but his hands and feet were large and ungainly on his frame, hinting that he had the propensity for his father’s build.
His aloofness distressed her, and Mena decided, as she made to slip away, that she’d use the next few restless hours in her bed thinking of ways to ingratiate herself to the boy.
“Remain a moment, Miss Lockhart, I would have words with ye.”
The vise winched around her lungs once again at Ravencroft’s command, squeezing them until her limbs weakened for want of breath. Turning toward him, Mena kept the length of the grand table between them. “Yes, my lord?” she answered, as she watched Russell Mackenzie’s retreating back until it disappeared around the entry, abandoning her to the terrifying presence of the so-called Demon Highlander.
“Forgive me, as I’m not the expert, but is it considered good manners to call a conversation across a room?” His expression revealed nothing. Not an eyebrow lift, a half-smile, or even a scowl. Just an unsettling stoic watchfulness that set every hair of her body on its end with absolute awareness.
He’d not-so-subtly requested for her to approach him, but it sounded like a dare.
Like a temptation.
“No, my lord, it is not.” Remembering Millie LeCour’s advice, Mena lifted her chin and forced her eyes to remain on his, summoning every iota of British superiority that had been beaten into her since she’d come to London as the Viscountess Benchley.
The flames that reflected in his unblinking eyes licked his gaze with heat and, for a moment, Mena could truly believe that a demon stared out at her from those abysmal depths. He regarded her approach with the same sulfurous glare she imagined the devil used to survey his unholy realm.
To compensate for her apprehension, Mena rolled her shoulders back, as though stowing angel wings, and traversed the length of the table with the deportment of a benevolent royal. Though she kept the corner of the table and one of the high-backed chairs in between them.
She was being brave, not idiotic.
Mena regretted eating quite so much at dinner, as the meal now rolled and tossed inside her stomach, and threatened acid that she had to desperately swallow. Despite that, she didn’t allow her gaze to waver, though it cost her more strength than she’d ever credited herself with.
His eyes touched her everywhere, and Mena had to fight the impulse to cover herself, lest he know how exposed she felt in his presence.
“We’ve not had the opportunity to formally meet,” the marquess remarked. “I must say, Miss Lockhart, ye’re not what I expected.”
Mena attempted a polite smile and fished in her blank mind for something witty and charming to say. “It seems, my lord, that the circumstance is mutual.” Indeed, she hadn’t expected him to be so young. So devastatingly virile. So wickedly dark and—dare she think it?—attractive.
She’d meant to be witty, to diffuse some of the intensity between them, but she could tell that her answer hadn’t pleased him.
“Aye.” He didn’t return her smile, and Mena fought the urge to fidget like a child set in the corner.
She’d met precious few people in her lifetime who’d made her feel small. She looked most men straight in the eye, if she didn’t tower over them. But Ravencroft dwarfed her so entirely, she had to tilt her head back to meet his stern regard. He stood before her every inch the regimented soldier, posture erect and unyielding with his arms clasped behind him, neither a hair nor stitch out of place. At this close vantage, Mena could identify the familial resemblance between Liam Mackenzie and Dorian Blackwell. The same thick ebony hair, similar dark, haunted eyes, and a raw, almost barbaric bone structure. All hard angles and broad planes and no quarter given to weakness. But where a cruel, sardonic twist adorned Blackwell’s lips, Ravencroft’s were instead drawn into a perpetual hard line. Unreadable and forbidding. Dorian had the look of a prowling lone beast, hungry and predatory. Ravencroft, however, had never seen a cage that would dare hold him. Nations fell before him. Kings had bowed and tyrants had groveled at his feet.
Mena found herself wondering if those hard lips ever softened. If those heated, merciless, assessing eyes ever became languid and tender.
“I asked Lady Northwalk to send me a capable, experienced, and educated governess and she sent ye, Miss Lockhart, what do ye make of that?” His words pierced her with panic, though his tone remained neutral.
“D-did you not receive my references? My letters of recommendation? I assure you, sir, I am beyond qualified to teach your children comportment. Lady Northwalk informed me that after reading the Whitehalls’—”
“Yer references were impeccable. However, the expectations of my children differ greatly from the Whitehalls’, ye ken? They were merchants, I’m a marquess, if ye’ll believe it now.”
“A marquess who dresses like a Jacobite rebel,” she reminded him. “Forgive me for not believing you earlier, but you were covered in mud and ash from the fields, and I’d never met a marquess who assisted in such—physical labor.”
Ravencroft stepped forward, and Mena retreated, her hands covering the flutters in her stomach as though holding back a swarm of butterflies. “I only meant—”
“There are some, Miss Lockhart, who would argue ’tis the responsibility of a noble to oversee every aspect of work on the land he owns. And there are others who would find it mighty strange that a proper London governess kens so much about linchpins and carriage wheels.”
Mena recalled Miss LeCour’s sage advice, that a lie was best told peppered with truth. “My father was a landed gentleman and avid agriculturist, as well as a scholar. I learned quite a few things at his feet as a child which included—”
“And are ye aware of how far behind schedule my men and I are because we spent all bloody afternoon saving yer stubborn hide? If ye’d allowed me to take ye on my horse, we’d not have lost the daylight.”
“I do regret my part in that,” Mena said, and meant it. “But as I was a woman traveling alone you can’t expect—”
“Ye’ll need to ken more than farm maintenance and how to distract a man with a pretty dress in order to teach my children what they’ll need to know to survive in society,” he clipped.
“Well, their first lesson will be on how rude and socially unacceptable it is to consistently interrupt people in the middle of their sentences,” Mena snapped.
Oh, sweet Lord. She could hardly believe her own behavior. Here she stood, alone and defenseless before perhaps the deadliest warrior in the history of the British Isles, and she’d just called him to answer for his bad manners.
Had she escaped the asylum only to go mad outside its walls?
“Go on then,” he commanded, his voice intensifying and a dark, frightening storm gathering in his countenance. “I believe ye were about to apologize for wasting my time.”
Mena actually felt her nostrils flare and a galling pit form in her belly. What was this? Temper? She’d quite thought she’d been born without one. Affection and tenderness had made up her idyllic childhood, and acrimony and terror had dominated her adult life. She’d never really had the chance to wrestle with a temper.
And wrestle it she must, or risk losing her means of escape into relative anonymity. Closing her eyes, she summoned her innate gentility along with the submissive humility she’d cultivated over half a decade with a cruel and violent husband. Opening her mouth, she prepared to deliver a finely crafted and masterful apology.
“Why aren’t ye married?” the marquess demanded, again effectively cutting her off.
“I—I beg your pardon?”
“Wouldna ye rather have a husband and bairns of yer own than school other people’s ill-behaved children?” His glittering eyes roamed her once again, leaving trails of quivering awareness in their wake. “Ye’re rather young to wield much authority over my daughter, as ye’ve not more than a decade on her.”
“I have exactly a decade on her.”
He ignored her reply, as the corners of his mouth whitened with some sort of strain that Mena couldn’t fathom. “Were ye a Highland lass, ye’d barely seen Rhianna’s age before some lad or other had dragged ye to church to claim ye. Whether ye’d consented or not. In fact, they’d likely just take ye to wife in the biblical sense and toss yer father his thirty coin.”
Flummoxed, Mena stared at him, her mouth agape. He still seemed irate, in fact his voice continued to rise in volume and intensity. But it sounded as though he’d paid her a compliment.
“So that causes a man to wonder,” he continued. “What is a wee bonny English lass like ye doing all the way up here? Why are ye not warming the bed of a wealthy husband and whiling yer hours away on tea and society and the begetting of heirs?”
Had he just called her “wee”? Was she mistaken or didn’t that word mean little?
And bonny? Her?
A spear of pain pricked her with such force, it stole her ire and her courage along with it. Was he being deliberately cruel? Had she left one household that delighted in her humiliation and sought refuge in another?
“I don’t see how that’s any of your concern.” She hated the weakness in her voice, the fear she’d never quite learned how to hide.
“Everything that happens within the stones of this keep, nay, on Mackenzie lands, are of concern to me. That now includes ye. Especially since ye’ll be influencing my children.” He took another step forward, and before Mena could retreat, his hand snaked out and cupped her chin.
The small, frightened sound Mena made startled them both.
Ravencroft’s gaze sharpened, but he didn’t release her.
Her jaw felt as substantive as glass in his hand. Mena knew it would take nothing at all for him to crush her, a simple tightening of his strong, rough fingers. His dark eyes locked on her lips, and they seemed to part of their own volition, exuding the soft rasps of her panicked breath.
He leaned down toward her, crowding her with the proximity of his forceful presence.
She saw him clearly now, as so many must have at the violent ends of their lives. Inhumanely stark features weathered by decades of discipline and brutality frowned down at her now, as though measuring her coffin.
Suddenly the fire and candles cast more shadows in the grand room than light.
Mena knew men like the laird of Ravencroft Keep rarely existed, and when they did, history made gods of them.
Or demons.
The rough pad of his thumb dragged across the split on her lip as light as a whisper. She felt his caress in her bones. And elsewhere. It raised tingling prickles of awareness on her skin and washed all the way to her core, and lower, where something soft and warm bloomed within her.
Was he going to kiss her? Mena’s heart sputtered in her chest, then stalled before taking a galloping leap forward.
His own mouth parted, his lids narrowing with something that looked like heat, but also like … suspicion. His grip on her chin gentled as he turned her face slowly toward the illumination of the candelabra and lifted an unused linen from the table to gently wipe away the powder she’d applied to hide the bruise beneath her eye.
“Tell me, Miss Lockhart.” His voice gentled to a rumble. “Tell me the truth of what happened to ye.”
Mena stood stock-still, but for the little trembles seizing her limbs. She was his captive. Though he only held her jaw, she might as well have been bound at every joint.
“I a-already did.” She forced herself not to whimper as he revealed more and more of her wounds to him.
“A carriage accident,” he repeated evenly.
“Yes.” That had sounded like more of a question than an answer, and Mena closed her eyes, fully expecting him to declare his knowledge of her falsehood, to uncover the entire farce.
And what would a man like him do to someone who’d lied as completely as she had?
“My lord?” Mena winced at the breathless panic creeping into her voice.
“Aye?” he rumbled, distracted by his examination of her wounds, particularly that of her lips.
Brittle as she was, in his presence Mena felt enormously fragile and frighteningly transparent. He could do what he would with her and no one would question him. Something about the way he regarded her told her that he knew it as well as she did. She was at his absolute mercy. And she was deceiving him.
“Permit me to … that is … it isn’t seemly for us to…” Her hand lifted of its own volition, and rested on his forearm as she attempted to lift her chin from his grip.
He stared at her hand resting on his suit coat for a protracted moment as though it were an insect he feared would sting him.
Then, just as abruptly as he’d seized her, the marquess let her go.
Turning away from her, he curled his hands into tight fists at his sides. “Ye’ll find, Miss Lockhart, that I lack many of yer gentle English ways,” he said gruffly.
Mena couldn’t think of a single reply to that, so she silently regarded the way his dinner coat strained over the uncommon width of his back.
“Ye’re here for my children, and I’ll thank ye to leave by the wayside any notions of turning me into something I’m not.” The firelight gleamed off a few hidden strands of silver in his dark hair as he glanced over his shoulder. “I may be a nobleman by birth, but I’m far from noble. I think it’s best we stay out of each other’s path. We’ll not need to interact but for dinner, or if I have a concern over the children’s progress.”
Mena knew he was offering her a gift, a chance to live at her discretion, so long as the objective of her employment here was accomplished.
She wanted nothing so much in all the world.
“Yes, my lord.”
“Laird,” he corrected. “In yer land, I’m the Marquess Ravencroft. In my land, I am the laird. The Mackenzie.”
He’d neglected to mention the Demon Highlander, but that was impossible to forget, especially now that she saw that demon looking out of his eyes.
“Of course.” Mena dipped in a curtsy, mostly so she no longer had to look at him. “Laird Mackenzie.”
He nodded, the firelight playing with the silhouettes and shadows of his bold features. “Ye may go.”
The moment he dismissed her, Mena made her escape, though she didn’t break into a run until she’d reached the hallway. Rich brocaded tapestries blurred into a mélange of blues, greens, and golds as she rushed by them. She’d catch sight of a majestic stag, or a frolicking faerie creature, and she’d want to stop and study it, but didn’t dare.
She felt the cold kiss of something on the back of her neck. Like she’d left the Highlander behind, but his demon might be following her. In fact, when she glanced behind her, the shadows seemed to merge with the suggestion of movement. She’d catch a glimpse of something—someone—before it was gone.
Weaving through the halls of the keep, she didn’t slow until she’d found the familiar door of her room. To her surprise, she’d been stationed on the second floor of the west wing, where the family’s quarters were located, rather than below stairs with the servants. She supposed, so she’d have more access to the children and they to her.
Bursting into the chamber, she pushed the door closed and turned the key, effectively locking herself inside. Collapsing against the sturdy oak, she pressed her cheek against the wood, warmed by the crackling fire someone had laid in the hearth.
She willed her galloping heart to slow and her lungs to find their rhythm as she stood against the door frame and trembled. Unbidden, her fingers found her cheek, still tingling from the strong grip of a battle-worn hand. For a man so large, with the capability of such extraordinary strength, he’d handled her gently.
She’d quite forgotten what that was like.
Turning from the door, she ventured on unsteady legs into the bedroom. Before, she’d been in too much of a rush to dress for dinner to truly take account of it. She ran her fingers across the smooth, polished wood of the dressing table and writing desk that seemed to be crafted by the same loving artisan as the mahogany poster bed.
Drifting toward the bed, she pressed on the mattress, relishing the downy softness. Greens and gold and chocolate hues added warmth to the cold stone of the walls. This keep was obviously bereft of a woman’s hand, done in masculine tones and clannish draperies. But Mena found that she rather liked the gothic feel of the place. It had housed centuries of Mackenzies of Wester Ross. Its stones had seen the births of heirs, the deaths of rebels, and more than its share of monarchies. Some would claim ’twas an English castle now, with an English titled lord.
And they’d be fools.
Laird Liam Mackenzie was a Highlander to the very marrow of his bones. His people claimed these lands before England, even before the Scots. His blood belonged to Pictish barbarians fortified with that of Viking raiders.
A thoughtful maid had turned down the bed, draped in a quilt made of the Mackenzie plaid, and fluffed the green and gold pillows for her.
Maybe dear Jani was right. Maybe there was hope that they would accept her … that she was welcome here.
By those in employ here at the keep, if not its master.
Mena pushed the laird from her mind, thinking instead of how small and simple the room was compared to her suites at Benchley Court. She’d been the lady of the house for five eternal years, and had hated every miserable second. Her husband had insisted she allow his mother, Esther St. Vincent, to decorate the home. Mena’s entire suites had been done in wicker and lavender draped in gaudy pink lace.
How she’d hated it.
But even Benchley Court was preferable to the infernal whitewashed walls of Belle Glen Asylum. Pure, cold, and sterile. Full of misery and helplessness. Even through the desperately unhappy years with her husband, she’d never suspected that a pure desolation existed until Belle Glen. She’d never known that inside every soul was a void so dark and lonely that it could take months of falling to find the true end.
And contained in the depths therein was only madness.
She hadn’t thought about Belle Glen since she’d left. Hadn’t allowed herself a moment to process the fact that she’d truly been rescued from the brink of utter despair. That if Dorian Blackwell had been seconds later, she might have been raped.
No. Mena ripped the ribbon from her neck, as it suddenly felt too confining. She didn’t allow herself to consider it. She needn’t mourn. Needn’t dwell on what was before, or might have been.
She’d stay busy, stay distracted, it was the only way to cope and thereby forget.
Mena remembered that she’d seen a wardrobe tucked in a small round turret just past the fireplace. Perhaps she should unpack. Though it would be better to prepare a plan for the children tomorrow and leave unpacking unnecessary things for later. Thinking of the wardrobe, she swept into the little round turret room.
And froze.
Something inside her shriveled as she spied what sat in the center of the room, awaiting none but her. Her heart kicked over again, and she could feel her features crumpling. Though she didn’t want to, she took small, plodding steps forward, forcing herself to approach what might become a nightmare.
What if she’d been dreaming this all along? The dashing and piratical Blackheart of Ben More. Farah and Millie. Her new clothes, her new identity.
Her second chance.
What if awaiting inside that large, gleaming, pristine white bathtub … was nothing but ice?
Mena gritted her teeth and ignored the sting of a lone tear as it slipped from eyes blurred with emotion. She pulled the glove from her arm, revealing fingers white and leached of blood. Reaching out trembling fingertips, she forced herself to dip them below the surface of the water.
A sob escaped her. Then another.
Finally her legs could handle her weight no longer, and she crumpled to the floor. But as the strength and courage she’d learned the last few days ripped from her throat in raw, ragged sobs, so did the grief, the rage, and the terror.
The bath, it had been real.
And it had been very, very warm.
