Aye, Fairy, ye’ll have to resign yerself to being a highwayman’s wife.
Sounds like an adventure!
Farah stared mutely at the man looming above her with disbelief while memories stole through her bones like a soul lingering in a graveyard.
Dougan’s earnest dark eyes, alight with love, possession, and tender vulnerability, glowed at her through the obscure veil time cast on all reminiscences. How romantic the prospect had seemed when they were children, without the understanding of reality to temper their exuberant dreams of the future. But an entirely different set of eyes glowed down at her now, these displaying arrogant calculation and the possession of a much more adult variety.
A highwayman’s wife, indeed.
“What makes you think I’d marry the likes of you?” she declared with vehemence when she again found her voice. “That’s easily the most ridiculous proposal I’ve ever heard.”
“Please,” he scoffed, lip curling in distaste. “You forget I was there when Morley proposed to you. Besides, a proposal denotes a question, and I have yet to ask you one.” He pushed away from the tub and turned from her, his shoulders bunched tighter than before. “I informed you that you’ll marry me, and marry me you will.”
Farah squelched the childish impulse to splash him with water. “I most certainly will not!”
“It is foolish to deny the inevitable,” he threw over his shoulder.
That did it. Farah stared daggers at his broad back, knowing they were sharp enough for him to feel them, even though he faced the windows. “Explain to me how becoming the wife of the Blackheart of Ben More improves my circumstances. Other than your ill-gotten money, what else have you to offer me that I could possibly want? You said yourself you have no heart, no soul. A tarnished reputation. You don’t love me. You can’t even stand to touch me. Why would a woman like me ever want a life with a man such as you?”
“Why, indeed?” He turned to face her and Farah’s lips snapped together. She realized now just how he incited fear in the very souls of his enemies. He didn’t scald with a fiery temper. He didn’t intimidate with his superior size and brutal strength, though that couldn’t be ignored. It was the absolute rigid placidity of his arresting features. Bereft of animation, emotion, or acknowledgment, as though he considered the life in front of him as beneath his notice as that of a harmless insect. He’d be as likely to pass you by as he would to crush you beneath the sole of his boot and not even bother to scrape you off into the gutter. He was beyond arrogance. Above condescension. He would watch a cruel child pluck your limbs off, or survey the carnage of a civilization without a crack in his smooth façade.
Was he truly so cold? Had her words not affected him in the slightest? She wished he’d meet her ire with the evidence of a wound, with anger, with passion, with anything to show her he wasn’t as soulless as he claimed.
“I can offer you protection from the man who wants you dead, the safety and stature of my name, and the restoration of your parents’ legacy to you. In return, you can offer me the title of earl and a seat in Parliament.” Though his voice and deportment bespoke ambivalence, Farah had a notion of how much this meant to him. “Along with avenging Dougan Mackenzie’s death, there is quite a lot we can accomplish by joining forces.”
Joining forces? “You speak of marriage like a military commander discusses battle strategy,” Farah accused.
“In this case, that’s not a bad comparison. We’d be two allies with our own set of advantages, strategically aligning against an opponent for a mutual benefit.”
“Your benefit seems to outweigh mine. As I’m certain you’re aware, if I marry you, my parents’ title, wealth, property, and legacy wouldn’t be returned to me, it would legally belong to you.”
He waved a large hand to show how inconsequential her argument was to him. “I have wealth and property enough of my own. What need have I of an estate and a few tenements in Hampshire and a Mayfair mansion? I own more profitable land than the queen. I’ll sign a document giving you full rights to your father’s holdings before we marry. They would be yours to do with as you wish.”
A strange, paralyzing numbness born of shock and disbelief weighed down Farah’s limbs even in the buoyant water. Her sweet Dougan’s memory avenged. Her father’s beloved home restored. Her mother’s jewels and priceless art hers again, to cherish and admire. To pass along to further generations. With such resources, she could uncover the truth behind her parents’ deaths. Could demand justice for the usurper Warrington and his pretender bride.
Oh, Lord. Was she really considering this—this lunacy? She measured the man in front of her, a study in strength and darkness and ruthless control. Just what would agreeing to be the wife of the most infamous man in the empire entail? The very thought chilled the blood.
And yet …
“What do you want with a title and a seat in Parliament?” she queried.
He gave her a droll look. “What does every man want? Prestige. More power. Access to the elite. There are still some investments and schemes almost impossible to achieve without a title behind your name and the blessing of the queen. Even Americans, as dogmatic as they are about their lack of nobility, are more likely to conduct affairs with a titled English gentleman, thus making my ventures overseas a great deal easier.”
“No one would ever mistake you for a gentleman,” Farah quipped.
That produced a dark sound from deep in his throat and a twinkle of amusement from his good eye. The Dorian Blackwell version of a smile and a laugh. “A full minute passed between insults. Does that mean I’ve succeeded in convincing you to reconsider your refusal?”
“Do I have a choice?”
“Do you really need one?”
Perplexed, aroused, insulted, astonished, Farah couldn’t decide which emotion to land on. How could she make such an important decision in the bath of all places? A woman should at least be clothed appropriately upon considering a marriage proposal—command—or whatever this was. Blackwell was as persuasive as the devil, and just as tempting, truth be told. But she prided herself on being practical, didn’t she? Was there no other solution to the danger in which she found herself? She refused to accept that marriage to a criminal was her only option. What about her career? Her life? What about Morley? He’d be looking for her now. He might not have been too worried by her absence for tea on Sunday, as plans often changed, but when she didn’t show for work this morning, he’d already have started the search for her.
Could Morley not also offer her protection against someone who wanted her dead?
Perhaps, but despite her qualms regarding the Blackheart of Ben More, she couldn’t deny his merciless ferocity nor his intelligence or ingenuity. He ruthlessly vanquished his enemies; he could rid her of hers, as well.
But who would protect her from him?
Moreover, could she trust him to keep his word? What did he hold back from her? What angle of his hadn’t she considered? Farah knew Dorian Blackwell had his secrets, ones buried deep enough to be licked by the flames of hell. Could she be tied to them as his wife? Did she dare?
Ye canna marry anyone else, Fairy. Ye belong to me. Only me.
Her heart clenched and dipped, pulling the lids of her eyes down with the weight of an old and heavy burden. “This isn’t what he would have wanted,” she told herself in a wavering voice.
“You’re wrong.” Something about the hard words in a softer tone forced her to look at him, but when she opened her eyes, he’d turned away from her again. “Besides you, I was the only other person Dougan loved and trusted in the entire world. And, in turn, he was the only person who ever meant anything to me … because I had no Fairy to occupy my heart.”
Was that because he had no heart to occupy his chest?
Farah wished he would look at her. That she could see the coldness of his cruel features. That his frightening visage would chill the subtle warmth stealing into her chest, threatening to melt her resolve.
He remained facing the window, a swarthy shadow bathed in pastoral sunlight. For someone who sounded so English, he certainly seemed a part of this wild, sharp, treacherous landscape.
“What are you saying?” she prompted.
“Do you not think that had he lived, he would have wanted us to know each other? To get along, even. His closest friend and his beloved wife?”
His question rendered her speechless. The implications were something she hadn’t considered, something that could alter her entire perspective.
“I told you, he asked me to find you … Isn’t it a possibility that, in the event of his death, he might have granted a marriage between us his blessing? That, perhaps, he might have even wanted us to—care for each other?”
He made a disturbingly compelling point. “Care for each other? Is that possible?” she breathed, immediately wishing she had the presence of mind to keep her thoughts inside her head.
Dorian Blackwell’s silences had begun to be more meaningful than any words, and Farah’s mind whirled as he surveyed the emerald shores kissed by spring, and the clouds gathering in the distance.
Farah felt that with her age and experience came no small bit of self-awareness that the young rarely possessed. Most of her life, she’d considered her capacity for caring and compassion one of her strengths. Could she care for Dorian Blackwell? Of course she could. He was a person, wasn’t he? With needs and ambitions and—feelings. Though that last one might be up for some debate. The danger became, what if Blackwell transformed her ability to care so much from one of her greatest strengths into a profound weakness? If anyone would do something like that, it would be him, most likely without remorse or pity.
“Regardless of how we felt about each other, I would vow to take care of you. Could that not be a place to start?” He finally turned back toward her. In the sunlight, his scar looked whiter, deeper, somehow. Even in the light, a shadow lurked in his wounded eye, a shadow that hinted at a cavernous, abysmal rift that one could stare into and never find the bottom of. A reckless part of her wanted to try, and that had to be the most frightening impulse she’d had in her adult life.
Farah found herself wondering if anyone had ever taken care of him.
“I could allay a few of your fears,” he continued, obviously interpreting her silence as contemplative. “It would be a marriage in name and title, only. I would spare you the more—intimate duties of a wife.” He didn’t meet her eyes when he said this, and rushed on rather quickly. “Also, after we’d taken care of the threat to your life, I’d only require you to live with me here at Ben More Castle a month out of the year, and in London a month of the season. For appearances and what-not. Other than that, your time and fortune would be yours to do with as you wish. You could occupy one of your father’s residences, or any number of my own.”
“How … many are there?” she asked curiously.
It took him a moment to tally, which meant his holdings were vast. “I assume you’re wanting me to include my international residences. So counting the Mediterranean villas and the vineyard in the Champagne region of France—”
“Villas?” She gasped. “As in plural?”
The ghost of a smirk haunted his lips.
Farah pressed her hands to her overheated cheeks. The wife of a highwayman. A disgustingly wealthy highwayman, granted, but a criminal all the same. Had she and Dougan truly been so prophetic as children? Was she actually considering this? Considering … him?
Seized by the sudden need to reconcile, she wanted to smooth out the bunching of constant tension at his shoulders. To warm the patina of frost from his stare. To produce a crack in the smooth, armored mask of his features. If she were to give this any further thought, she needed to find something human about the Blackheart of Ben More.
She skimmed wrinkled fingertips across the surface of the water. “Before I say anything else, I feel it’s right to say that I didn’t mean to be so insulting to you earlier. I’ll admit to being rather out of my depth here. Being so ordered about doesn’t bring out the best in me, I’m afraid.”
Blackwell made a dry noise. “Don’t be ridiculous. I’m the last man alive who would condemn bad behavior. In spite of that, I concede you have every reason to doubt, despise, and fear me.”
“I don’t despise you…” Though she couldn’t honestly deny the doubt or fear part.
“Give it some time,” he muttered wryly.
That coaxed a smile from her, and she studied him from beneath her lashes, noting with some pleasure that she’d been effective. Blackwell had unclenched his fists and his unsettling eyes conveyed, if not warmth, an acceptable amount of equability.
Her heart began to pound with such strength that her whole body vibrated with it. The beat could be heard in her noisy exhales as they stared at each other. The entire island, the ocean beyond, the Highland air, itself, seemed to catch on her inhale and hold, waiting for the word hovering at the tip of her tongue to escape the prison of her lips.
Once this particular convict was set free, it could never again be reclaimed.
Yes. Not usually such a terrifying word, but at this moment it seemed to equally represent either salvation or damnation.
Of course, she could always say no.
Though the way Blackwell was staring at her now, she had a feeling that word meant very little to him. Not many people denied Dorian Blackwell and lived to tell about it.
Oh, Dougan, why send me this dark horse? Farah inwardly railed. Why ask the devil in the flesh to find and protect me?
Young Dougan couldn’t have known how the man in front of her would affect her. How dangerous he truly was, because of the reckless impulses pouring through her veins and settling in the most secret of places.
He couldn’t have known how much Dorian Blackwell secretly thrilled her. How his eyes on her made her feel helpless and powerful at the same time.
She would never tell Blackwell that it was his words about Dougan’s wishes that had persuaded her in the end. Had he lived, would this all have turned out differently? Would Dorian Blackwell still be the lesser half of the so-called Blackheart Brothers? Dougan would, even now, be a mere three years from his release from that hellish place. Would the three of them have made some kind of life together?
She’d never know.
Either way, it seemed her destiny to end up the wife of a highwayman.
The devil in question stood silent and motionless as she argued with herself, but the need to breathe overtook both sides of the debate and Farah realized it was now or never.
“I have one condition.” The words rushed out on a gusty exhale.
“This ought to be interesting.” Blackwell impatiently crossed his heavy arms against a heavier chest, but his eyes lit with a victorious spark. “Let’s hear it.”
“I will not reclaim the Northwalk fortunes just to lose them again to some distant relative when I die. So, if I am to marry you and give you the title of earl, then you will provide me with something else I want.”
“The Townsend wealth, the title of countess, and relative autonomy.” He ticked these off on his fingers. “What else could you possibly want of me?”
“Other than Dougan, I’ve been without a family for over twenty years.” Farah pushed herself up until she stood before the Blackheart of Ben More completely nude. “What I want from you is a child.”
