by Paula Quinn
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2018 by Paula Quinn
Excerpt from A Highlander’s Christmas Kiss copyright © 2016 by Paula Quinn
Cover design by Claire Brown
Cover illustration by Alan Ayers
Cover copyright © 2018 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.
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ISBN: 978-1-4555-3538-5 (mass market), 978-1-4555-3539-2 (ebook)
E3-20181030-DANF
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Acknowledgments
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Epilogue
An Excerpt From A Highlander’s Christmas Kiss.
Also by Paula Quinn
Acclaim for Paula Quinn’s Novels Featuring the MacGregor Clan
Newsletters
Acknowledgments
My MacGregor writing journey would have been less of a glorious adventure without the people who have celebrated the journey with me and supported me from the very beginning, loving the MacGregors as much as I do. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. Here’s to the next one!
Christy Allred, Terree Lyman, Sharon Frizzel, Donna Killian, Ellen Ziegler, Cario Lamb, Leigh Hilson, Kay Duddie, Dana Constance, Debra Allen, Barb Batlan-Massabrook
Chapter One
Camlochlin Castle
The Isle of Skye
Summer 1714
Melusina de Arenburg ground her jaw, closed her eyes, and prayed. She hoped that since she was in a chapel, God would hear her request and grant it, even if she was a bastard. A royal bastard, but a bastard nonetheless.
She prayed this wasn’t truly happening. That she hadn’t been taken from her bed in Kensington Palace and brought to the Highlands. And oh, Lord, please that she wasn’t about to be forced into a marriage with an outlaw.
Where was her father when the queen’s men had carted her off to marry Adam MacGregor, son of a proscribed chief?
She opened her eyes and looked around the chapel at the faces of people she didn’t know. People she didn’t want to know. Barbaric in appearance. Nothing like the men at court, who dressed appropriately, tied back their hair, and covered their knees.
She knew she didn’t look much better with her long blond tresses messily plaited over her shoulder, her ears and neck unadorned, and her body covered in a wrinkled gown.
“I wish to speak to my father!” she demanded, though it sounded more like a plea echoing throughout the chapel. “He is the prince elector, George of Hanover, heir to the throne. He would not agree to this! ’Tis a mistake,” she called out, hoping, praying someone would listen. “I cannot wed this man. I am already betrothed to Lord Standish.”
Someone behind her gave her a gentle shove to get her moving along. Her throat closed up. Her heart rang in her chest like an alarm, dire and urgent. Run! her head screamed. Run the other way! Where would she go? She didn’t know where she was. She wiped her tears but they continued.
Why? Why her? She thought the queen loved her. Why would Anne wed her to a Highlander? They were savages who frightened the blazes out of her. Why had she been sent so far away from everything she knew?
She heard the sounds of women weeping and men swearing under their breath. Everything sounded louder. Everyone seemed bigger, including several enormous, deadly-looking hounds at the feet of their masters. She crossed herself and wondered if it was too late to pray because she was already in hell. She stopped and was shoved again, a bit more forcibly this time. She couldn’t move. She refused to move. “I…I will not wed this man.”
Her eyes swept to the man to whom she had to promise her life on the whim of a queen.
“’Tis the queen’s order,” a man behind her, the one who’d prodded her onward, whispered. “MacGregors are loyal to the queen.”
The queen’s order. Sina’s eyes filled with more tears, blurring her vision of the groom. When she reached the end of the aisle, she was supposed to kneel beside him, but her knees locked together.
A deep, low growl drew her eyes to a black hellhound bent at his side, twice the size of the others, its lips curled over its white fangs, its dark eyes fixed on her.
Sina gathered every last ounce of courage she possessed not to faint at the sight of the beast. Oh! How could Anne have done this to her? Her anger at the betrayal kept her on her feet.
“No.” Its master’s command was low and deep, resonating through her. He said something else, and the hellhound lifted its haunches and moved to the other side of him.
He commanded devils. She closed her eyes and bit her lip to keep from crying. When the man behind her rested his hand on her shoulder, gently urging her to her knees, she went, dipping her head to weep into her hands.
Through her sobs she heard her soon-to-be groom mutter something angrily. Her heart skipped. Was he ill-tempered? She wiped her eyes and dared a glance at him up close. The first thing level with her eyes was his mouth. She caught her breath at the full, relaxed decadence of it. He was draped in darkness and light, with lightning in his storm-filled eyes. His coal-black hair fell to his shoulders and was swept away from high, chiseled cheekbones and a strong jaw shadowed by
a dusting of dark hair. His ivory complexion was almost flawless—a strong contrast against his raven hair. His beauty was captivating, bewitching.
She followed his angry stare to an older man standing to her left.
Sina turned to look at him. She knew who the man was—the chief of these people. He was as huge and deadly looking as the rest of them. The one who’d read the letter she’d delivered from the queen. The groom’s father.
She offered him her angriest glare. How did a man like him even know the queen? And who was he to give her to his son? She was already promised to Lord Standish, son of the Earl of Chesterfield.
The priest began speaking. God help her. A woman she loved and trusted had ordered this. Sina had no choice but to obey.
After a long benediction that gave her time to consider how horrible her life was going to be from here on in, here in this wilderness with these mountain men rumored to be so savage that they had to be proscribed. Her heart hammered in her chest, her throat. There was nowhere to run. What would poor William do without her? Would she ever see her dear friend Poppy again?
The benediction stopped, and silence descended for what seemed an eternity before the man beside her finally spoke. He looked as miserable as she while he promised to be her husband.
Would her father dissolve this marriage when he became king? Did he even give a damn? William did. Hadn’t he told her every day since they were eight and eleven that he needed her? Hadn’t he just told her what she meant to him when he returned from the grand tour? But what could he do when the queen had ordered this?
The priest set his stern gaze on her next.
She glared at him, refusing to wipe her eyes again. “I would like to know—”
“Just yer consent will do,” the priest said, cutting her off.
“Well, you don’t have it!” She swallowed and looked around at the brooding faces watching her. “I don’t love him.” It was all she could manage.
“Adam’s being forced into this too,” a woman called out.
“She defies the queen,” a man grumbled.
Did she? Would she defy the queen for the life she’d always dreamed of? One with a family of her own, to a man she loved?
“Your consent,” the priest prodded.
“Yes,” she managed, hating herself for it.
A few more words and a blessing, and it was over.
Her husband pushed off his knees with an angry growl—or the sound could have come from his hound. Sina couldn’t be sure. He rose to his feet, at least two heads taller than her when she rose. She tilted her neck to take in the full sight of him. She crossed herself.
Tightly leashed muscles stretched his léine across his chest. His large hands were balled into fists at his sides. Her gaze traveled upward to his face, dark and angry, beautiful.
She wouldn’t consummate this marriage. She’d find a way to hold him off until someone came to help. Her father would come…or William…someone. The marriage could be annulled.
If any of these Highlanders thought her meek and mild, they would soon discover that they had misjudged.
She pulled a bit of her fortitude up now and girded it around her.
“I demand to know why this terrible thing has happened to me,” she said in a soft voice on the verge of shattering.
Refusing to tremble, she raised her brow at her husband when anger flashed across his silvery-blue eyes. She was angry too! She met his gaze head-on, waiting for his reply.
“It has happened to me as well, woman.” His voice burned across her ears. “I’ll leave it to my faither to explain why.”
She thought she was prepared to meet his anger straight on, but his deep, growling baritone and the bite of reply made it hard to stand.
She did, however, and turned to the chief, who was a tad less daunting than his son, and waited for an answer.
Adam MacGregor leaned back in a chair in Camlochlin’s great hall. He ignored the servers scurrying about to prepare for the last-minute celebration.
He thought of the life he’d left behind a few moments ago. He’d stepped into the chapel a free man and came out bound to a woman he didn’t know, for reasons for which he didn’t want to be responsible.
He thought of his bride—rather than the implications of this marriage. She was quite lovely with her enormous, sparkling green eyes and small, pert nose swollen and red from crying. And hell, she could cry! He understood her misery, for he felt it too.
“Och, Adam, it canna be true!”
He turned to a group of at least a half dozen maids, and nodded. “Alas, fair ladies, ’tis.”
Neither of them had a choice, he thought somberly, even as the lasses gathered around him. He shooed them away. “I am no adulterer,” he muttered as they scattered. Hell, but he was giving up much for duty.
According to his father, whom he’d argued with moments before the ceremony, this union between the MacGregors and the House of Hanover meant much for his kin. The queen had wanted it done as soon as the lass arrived, which meant either her poor health had deteriorated further or there were some against the union. Most likely Sina’s betrothed, Lord Standish.
Adam sure as hell didn’t want to wed someone else’s betrothed. He didn’t give a damn about the throne either. He’d never been to England, nor did he want to go. He cared about the queen but not the power she brought with her during her visits to Camlochlin to see her sister Davina, Adam’s mother. He felt the heavy weight his aunt bore that finally crippled her.
He didn’t want to carry that kind of burden. He did his best to forget that side of his heritage, which made him, a Catholic, a direct heir to the throne. He was determined to stay in Skye, free from England and the danger of its power. He was even willing to give up his birthright as next clan chief to his sister to remain free.
But the arrival of Miss Melusina de Arenburg and the sealed letter she carried changed everything.
The burden of marriage fell to him as eldest son of the chief. He agreed to it—not because of loyalty to the future throne—but because it would ensure the continued utmost leniency where MacGregors and the laws against them were concerned once the queen was gone.
Adam had never wanted to be forced to make choices like the one tonight. Choices for the good of others and not himself. Even more, he hated being pushed around by power. It made him want to defy it, take it to the field, and battle it to the death.
He wasn’t ready for a wife. She wasn’t even Scottish. He liked his life, with nothing on his mind but a bit of mayhem and mischief. He was a raider of cattle and a master of deception. It had taken him years to convince his clan that he was a careless rogue, unfit to be chief.
And now this.
He wasn’t ready for his life to change—and his father agreeing to this marriage meant that he had made his decision about who would be chief.
Adam guzzled his ale, then looked up for the server. He saw his bride entering the hall with some of the women of Camlochlin at her sides, trying to soothe her. He rolled his gaze heavenward when she looked at him and made the sign of the cross.
A man with auburn hair and a short beard to match stepped in front of him and blocked Adam’s view. He grimaced and cast a brooding glance at the cup.
“I’ll admit that was painful,” said Daniel Marlow, retired general of the queen’s army, straddling a chair beside him. “But she isn’t hideous.”
Adam hadn’t time to grow especially close to any of his cousins when they were all younger. By the time some of them had gone off to stop the union with England act, Adam had already established himself as the pampered heir who couldn’t be bothered with the affairs of England. In truth, he couldn’t.
He attached himself to few, those without tails anyway. Daniel was one of the few.
“Ye had to physically push her, Daniel. She wept the entire time as if I were some beast and she’d rather God strike her dead than marry me.”
“So prove her wrong,” Daniel challenged, rising from
his seat to greet the women.
“Who says she is?” Adam muttered, staying in his seat.
“I do,” Marlow said, taking him by the arm and pulling him to his feet. “Show her the thoughtful, intelligent man behind your roguish smiles. Make her happy. ’Tis your duty now.”
Aye, that’s what he was afraid of. How tiring it must be to constantly try to make someone else happy. He wasn’t looking forward to it.
His gaze fell to his reluctant bride. Her frame, in a gown that matched the emerald of her eyes, seemed too small to hold such a courageous heart. She’d done her best to refuse—or stall their marriage. Though it made him feel like hell, he liked her determination not to go down so easily—despite the fear that radiated off her.
Her hair fell like a golden flame over her milky cleavage. A slight smile, coaxed by something his sister said, brought a delicate dimple to light in her left cheek. She lifted her gaze and set it on him. His breath stalled a wee bit. Hell, she was beautiful, like a sparrow, small and shaking—
“Is it true?” she asked, reaching him. “Are you terrified?”
He narrowed his eyes at his sister and then returned them to the wide, waiting eyes of his bride. “I—”
“Because you are home, no? You reign over me now, no? Why should you be terrified?”
“I’m home but—”
“But?” She spoke on a whispered breath, yet the word came down on him like a hammer. She wasn’t finished. His sister and the others stepped away.
A sparrow with the heart of a lion. Adam liked it.
“How has your life changed today save that there will be a woman in your bed tonight—though by the number of women crying over you in that chapel, I must assume that the end of this day will be no different. So please, tell me, what do you have to be terrified about?”
Did she not understand the weight of who she was? Aye, he was home, surrounded by people who loved him—and she wasn’t. He understood. But his kin were the ones who would expect the most from him. Already, Daniel had reminded him how important it was to make her happy. He knew perfectly well how wives were treated in Camlochlin. He didn’t have the time or the inclination to devote so much to one.