“One, two, three. One, two, three. Ouch!” Mena hopped back on one foot after rescuing her other from beneath the heel of Rhianna’s boot.
Again.
“Oh, Miss Lockhart, I’m so sorry!” the girl cried, following her as Mena hobbled away and collapsed onto a plump couch by the window in the solarium. “I’m hopeless at the waltz. I doona think I’ll ever become comfortable with dancing backward.”
“It’s all right.” Mena soothed both the girl and her own smarting toes. “The waltz isn’t easy to master.” She’d picked this room for dancing as its windows and French doors opened onto the balcony overlooking the sea, and a lovely piano hunkered on a plush carpet. The nursery-turned-classroom was a dreary place, and Mena had formulated a plan to relocate to a more cheerful set of rooms.
She’d begun the day with some classic literature and rudimentary French. After she’d found Andrew tucking a penny dreadful behind his Jonathan Swift, and listening to both the children reduce the language of love to the equivalent of a verbal assault, Mena decided that music and a dance lesson would provide a welcome diversion. Often she’d found the mind operated more usefully after dancing. Almost as though the music and rhythmic exercise opened pathways of thought not established on one’s own.
Evidently in the case of the Mackenzie children, she’d been mistaken.
Rhianna proved a willing and eager pupil, if not particularly accomplished. Though Andrew treated Mena with a solemnity bordering on contempt. He was, however, a brilliant musician, and played the pianoforte with effortless style and technique.
Mena was able to ascertain that they’d suffered a slew of tutors and governesses intermittently over the years. They’d been taught the basics of reading, writing, arithmetic, and history. But as they grew, their governesses had all deserted them in short order. Their knowledge of economics, refinement, conversation, etiquette, French, music theory, and the social arts was all but nonexistent.
Well, she was a viscountess, by Jove, and a gentleman’s daughter before that. She had mastered every British social policy, written and otherwise. There was no one more qualified to guide them than her. She was determined to succeed, not just because she needed this position to guard her secrets, but because the Mackenzie children desperately needed to learn what she could teach them.
And their father knew it.
“Come, Andrew,” she prompted. “Why don’t you dance with your sister, and let me play the piano? I need a rest.”
“I doona dance,” he informed her, studying his fingers curled against the piano keys.
“That doesn’t matter,” she said encouragingly. “I’ll teach you, then, while Rhianna practices her piano. We can go slowly.”
“Nay, I didna say I doona know how. I said I doona dance.” He thrust his jaw forward; his eyes alight with stubborn rebellion.
“But how are you going to impress the young ladies unless you perfect your waltz?” she tempted him.
“I have no desire to impress anyone,” he spat.
Mena glanced to the window, longing to bask in the rare autumn sunlight instead of Andrew’s dark mood. Clouds loomed in the distance, but right now the sun sparkled off the sea and illuminated the peaks of Skye. After so long in Belle Glen, she yearned to feel the warmth on her face, to wander unimpeded through the forest.
But for now, she must teach.
Gathering as much kindness as she could from behind her frayed nerves, she approached the piano and reached for the boy. “Please, dear,” she cajoled. “I confess that I’m not the best at leading, and so it’s not fair to your sister. I’m not used to dancing the gentleman’s part.”
“Ye should be,” Andrew muttered, flinching away from her. “Ye’ve the stature of one.”
Mena snatched her hand back as Andrew lunged from the bench and stalked toward the west door of the solarium.
“Andrew, doona be an arse!” Rhianna called after him.
Jani crossed the threshold carrying a tray laden with their afternoon tea. The two nearly collided, ruining Andrew’s chance for a dramatic exit and allowing Mena to recover from her astonishment at his hurtful outburst. Andrew made a rude noise at a startled Jani before attempting to circumnavigate him.
“Andrew Mackenzie.” Mena enunciated the syllables in his name as she’d heard her father do when she’d been in trouble as a girl. The enunciation, when applied with a low register, always brought her to heel. “If you don’t want me to have a lengthy discussion with your father this afternoon, you will apologize to Jani for your haste, relieve him of his tray, and bring it here.”
The room was as silent as a mausoleum as they waited for Andrew to move. The youth muttered something that must have been an apology to a wide-eyed Jani, and then took the tea tray from his hands. The threat of his father was an effective one, but not one Mena had wanted to use. This was no way to establish trust, or a genial relationship, but she couldn’t allow such behavior. Left unchecked, a boy with such terrible angst could grow into a cruel man.
And the world had enough of those already.
Andrew set the tea tray none too gently on the solarium table and stood before her as rigid as a gallows post.
“When you quit a room with ladies present, you will bow and excuse yourself first.” Though confrontation of any kind had always made her feel shaky and ill, Mena narrowed her eyes to meet his discourteous glare with one of authority. “I won’t ask for an apology, because I won’t accept a disingenuous one, but your father hired me to teach you how to behave in polite society. I intend to do my job, whether you wish me to or not.”
Repugnance gathered in his stormy eyes and his thin frame shook with rage, but after a tense moment, wherein Mena didn’t allow herself to breathe, he bowed to her. “If ye ladies will excuse me.” His voice could have dried the Nile, but Mena gave him a tight nod, and watched him march away with a sadness clenched in her heart. What made the boy so angry?
She read abundant approval in Jani’s meaningful look, but it did nothing to lift her spirits. She would rather ingratiate herself to Andrew, or at the very least have a civil interaction. Her unsteady legs gave way, and she plunked onto the piano bench without a modicum of poise or grace.
“Some tea, Miss Rhianna.” Jani’s voice was smooth as the crimson silk he wore while he poured Rhianna her tea and handed her the dainty china cup. His eyes were pools of liquid bronze as he waited on his mistress.
Intrigued, Mena watched their interaction.
Rhianna barely glanced up at Jani, though she thanked him politely.
He bowed to Mena, and then back to Rhianna, his head dipped in a way that, Mena suspected, hid the worship shining in his eyes. “Do you require anything of me?” he asked, and the hopeful deference in his voice nearly broke Mena’s heart.
Oblivious to his reverence, Rhianna shook her head, her dark curls bouncing against her shoulders. “No, thank ye, Jani.”
“Summon me, ladies, if there is need.” He made no noise as he gracefully strode away.
“Doona listen to a word my brother says, Miss Lockhart,” Rhianna pleaded, rushing to her side the moment they were left alone. “I’d murder someone to be as tall and elegant as ye. Ye willna let Andrew drive ye away?”
Mena looked into the girl’s dark eyes and softened at the desperation she saw there. A girl on the cusp of womanhood, bereft of a mother or any steady governesses to bring her up. To teach her how to be a woman. Mena ran a fond hand over Rhianna’s obsidian curls, and then patted her on the hand.
“I’m made of sterner stuff than that, I’m afraid.” She smiled. “It’ll take more than a few jibes to be rid of me.”
Rhianna immediately brightened. “I suppose ye’ll have to tell Father,” she goaded with an exaggerated sigh.
Mena chewed at her lip while she considered it. “Well, Andrew did excuse himself,” she said. “I see no reason to bring your father into it.”
As she regarded her from behind long black lashes, the lively girl’s mouth curved mischievously. “What do ye think of my father, Miss Lockhart? Think ye he is handsome?”
Taken aback, Mena put a hand to her fluttering stomach, willing the sudden upset to quiet. “What a question!” she remarked.
“It’s all right to admit it. I willna say a thing.” Rhianna wiggled her dark brows. “There are many women in the clan who think my father is quite handsome. I only wanted to know if an Englishwoman would agree.”
“Well…” Mena floundered, unsure of how to proceed. Ambiguity, she decided, was the most diplomatic route. “I don’t believe male aesthetics differ so much between England and Scotland.” Though she was beginning to think that female aesthetics did. “It doesn’t at all surprise me that your father, being a marquess and a hero of the crown, is an attractive prospect for some women.”
“That’s not what I asked,” Rhianna said cheekily, smoothing the skirt of her lovely yellow frock. “I asked if ye find him handsome.”
Mena pressed her lips together, an image of the marquess rearing in her mind’s eye. His forbidding presence last night at dinner, his abundant black hair caught up in a sleek queue, and his eyes smoldering with dark flames. His massive body contained by the trappings of a gentleman crowding her so close, she could still smell the sweetness of the soufflé on his breath.
Though it was the memory of him as he’d been at their first meeting that often leaped unbidden into her errant thoughts. Rain streaming from his loose hair, his thick legs burnished a tawny hue, as though he often bared them to the sunlight. Eyes that flashed with wrath and temper and masculine potency.
Was he handsome? Not in the traditional sense of the word. Not like Gordon, her husband, was handsome. Lean and elegant with haughty, aristocratic features.
Laird Mackenzie was much too large, his features too fierce and barbaric to be considered elegant. But, she supposed, he held a particular masculine allure. Especially when he spoke. The gravel in his voice lent his brogue an extraordinary depth that delighted her senses like the deep roar of the ocean cresting against stone.
“There’s no polite way to tell a sweet girl that her father is brutish, old, and unsightly, is there, Miss Lockhart?” As though he’d been evoked by her improper thoughts of him, the marquess’s resonant voice drifted to her from the doorway behind them. “Therefore, Rhianna, it’s an impolite question to ask.”
Mena leaped to her feet, almost upsetting the piano bench, and whirled to face him.
He stood with his wide shoulder resting against the arched entry. There was a Sisyphean quality to his stature that suggested it was the laird who supported the weight of the castle stones, rather than the other way around.
Lord, but he was handsome. There was no denying it, not to herself or anyone. He’d again donned the garb of the clannish rebel warrior. The cotton of his thin shirt molded against the swells of his chest. The rolled cuffs exposed tanned forearms that flexed beneath her stupefied gaze. He’d left his hair loose, and a few strands of silver gleamed in the rays of sun piercing the solarium with warmth. This was a laird she hadn’t yet encountered. His expression as casual as the low sling of the Mackenzie kilt on his hips, he sauntered toward them.
Mena fought with a heavy, dry tongue to form a proper greeting as she inched away from Rhianna, trying to put space between her and the approaching marquess. Why, oh why, did he insist on saying things to which there was no proper response?
And why did every nerve in her body seem to stand at attention at his nearness?
“Ye are such a brute, Father,” Rhianna teased, rising on her tiptoes to plant a kiss on his stubbled cheek. “But that doesna mean ye arena the most handsomest man in Wester Ross. Or perhaps all of Scotland. Every lass says so.”
“Most handsome,” Mena corrected instinctively over the piano she’d placed in between them.
Ravencroft’s eyes sharpened, his features tightened, and Mena met a look so searing, she thought her clothing might catch flame if he did not glance away.
Realizing what her correction had insinuated, she hurried to cover the mistake. “Not most handsomest,” she elaborated. “But handsomest is also correct.”
Rhianna’s giggle did little to help the situation.
“That is, most handsomest is incorrect … in that sentence, not that you’re not … most…” Burning with mortification, Mena puffed out a beleaguered breath.
Though he didn’t smile, a dangerous heat lurked beneath the amusement dancing in the laird’s eyes.
The longer he stared at her, the tighter her corset became. Mena’s hands flew to the lace cravat at her bodice. She thought it had given her an air of professional respectability, but now it just seemed to strangle her over the high neck of her russet gown.
“Andrew refused to dance with Miss Lockhart, Father,” Rhianna tattled, ignoring the sharp look from Mena. “He was unaccountably rude.”
The merriment in his eyes died. “What? How?” the laird demanded.
Mena took a step forward. “It really wasn’t as bad as all that.”
“He said that Miss Lockhart was built like a man.”
Ravencroft’s eyes touched on all the abundant curves that distinctly established Mena as a woman.
“My. Son. Said. What?” The careful enunciation of each low word as darkness gathered on the laird’s features filled Mena with no small sense of alarm for Andrew.
Gorging on the drama of it all, Rhianna became even more animated, though Mena had previously thought it impossible. “Yes! And Miss Lockhart made him apologize to Jani and excuse himself before he left. Ye should have seen how angry he was.”
“Rhianna!” Mena reproached.
“Did she, indeed?” The laird’s brows lifted and some of his wrath seemed to flicker and melt away.
“Please.” Mena inched around the piano toward the towering Scot and his daughter. “I was going to let this incident pass quietly. Andrew and I have yet to bond … and sometimes, I think, boys at that age have difficulty adjusting to such situations…” She paused, her guilt at her lack of true experience with such things making it difficult to meet the sardonic eyes of her employer. “It—it really is quite normal,” she lied as she ran a restless hand over the gleaming polished wood of the instrument, following the delicate grain with the sensitive pads of her fingertips in rhythmic strokes.
When she gathered the courage to glance up, she found Ravencroft’s eyes also focused on her stroking fingers with an alarming intensity. Curling her fingers, she quickly hid her hand behind her back.
“All right, Miss Lockhart. Ye’re the expert.” He didn’t look entirely convinced. “But I’ll not have my son behaving like a barbarian.”
“I understand,” Mena murmured, thinking that the distinction was strange coming from such a man as him.
Kissing his daughter on the forehead, he finally allowed his hard mouth to curve slightly. “There is only room for one at a time in this keep, eh, nighean?”
“Aye, Father,” Rhianna replied warmly.
Something tight and fearful unfurled from inside Mena and dissipated as she observed a tender moment bloom between father and daughter. Liam Mackenzie might be the Demon Highlander, but he loved his children. So why, she wondered, had he spent so much time away from them? Surely he could have retired his commission any time over the last several years and returned to Ravencroft Keep to raise his family. Their mother had been gone for nearly a decade, so why pick now to come home?
With one last fond pat of his daughter’s arm, he strode to the doorway. “I’ll be in the distillery this week,” he said, and disappeared around the stone arch.
Mena had barely remembered to breathe again when he reappeared, a devilish gleam in his eye. “Excuse me, ladies.” He executed a perfect bow, his eyes never leaving Mena’s, holding her captive with his indefinable intensity.
“There is no excuse for ye, Father.” Rhianna giggled again, shooing him away.
“But ye ken, even a barbarian can learn the ways of a gentleman if he has the right tutor.” With a lingering look that weakened Mena’s knees, and a quick wink at his daughter, he quit their company.
To Mena it seemed that every time she chanced to meet the marquess, she was introduced to someone new. The Demon Highlander, the barbaric clan chieftain, the regimented nobleman, and now, the fond and affectionate father. Each incarnation of Ravencroft, however, stared at her in the most disquieting manner. As if she were a mystery he planned to solve, or a secret he intended to uncover.
She’d rather be anything to him than that, for her secrets were too dangerous.
Heaving a deep sigh, Mena turned to Rhianna, who slid a knowing look in her direction.
“What did he call you just then … nighean?” Mena queried.
“It’s a Gaelic endearment for daughter.”
“Oh.” It had been lovely. Mena decided whilst she lived among the Highland people, she’d do well to learn some of their language.
“Well, let’s do see where your brother has run off to.” What she needed was a diversion from the unwelcome intrusion of the laird Mackenzie into almost every waking thought.
“Must we?” Rhianna whined. “He’s so dreary all the time.”
Mena slid her arm through the girl’s and they strolled over the lush carpets of the solarium. “You were very wicked today, tattling on him so,” she scolded gently.
“I know.” Rhianna shrugged and smirked. “I must get it from my father. He’s a brollachan, ye know.”
“A what?”
“A demon. Hadn’t ye heard?”
“You don’t really believe that, do you?” Mena scoffed, though a little thrill of anxiety touched the base of her neck. “That your father is a demon?”
“I doona ken whether he is or no, but I do hear what everyone whispers about him. If he’s not a demon, then he is a very wicked man, indeed.”
“Indeed,” Mena murmured. Considering, not for the first time, if she believed in such things as demons.
