Claimed by the Laird

by Nicola Cornick

  Galloway had looked as though he was about to keel over with shock when he heard the news. Gertrude had been appalled, more by the fact that the duke had stooped so low than the news that the housekeeper was a murderer.

  “The housekeeper!” she kept saying. “How could he?”

  “Never mind, Gertrude,” Lucy had said. “It could have been much worse. I hear Alice was trying to persuade Papa into marriage—imagine her as Duchess of Forres!”

  Gertrude had looked even more horrified and had rushed off, perhaps, as Mairi mischievously said, to find Angus in the hope that it was not too late to produce an heir. The news that the duke might yet consider remarriage had also seemed to spur Lachlan into action as he had set off for home and a reconciliation with Dulcibella.

  “We’ll see how long that lasts,” Lucy said darkly.

  Christina had wanted to cancel the ball, but the members of the Highland Ladies Bluestocking Society were already arriving and Lucas had assured her that he wanted the event to go ahead. He had even brought her the flowers he had promised to decorate the Great Hall: great armfuls of scented roses and hollyhocks, jasmine and anemones, acorns and pinecones that smelled sweet and fresh.

  “It’s a triumph, Christina,” Lucy said, patting her sister’s arm. “Of course, Gertrude is taking all the credit, but I think we all know who did the hard work.”

  Mairi eased herself onto a chair with a heartfelt sigh. She might be seven months pregnant but Christina was quick to note that she still looked like a fashion plate from La Belle Assemblée.

  “I feel like a whale,” Mairi complained. “There will be no dancing for me tonight.”

  “I should think not, Mairi.” Gertrude, at her most matronly and disapproving, with a puce turban and pheasant feathers, gave her sister-in-law’s pregnant stomach a look of profound disapproval. “You are not fit to be seen in public! I cannot imagine what you are thinking, parading about in this state!”

  “Thank you, Gertrude,” Mairi said. “I don’t believe in hiding myself away just because I am pregnant. It is a perfectly natural state. Allegra looks very pretty tonight,” she added, nodding to where their niece, celestially fair in a modest spangled cream gown, was talking with her husband and a couple of the bluestocking ladies. “Marriage suits her. She glows. Perhaps,” she added, “she is enceinte, as well.”

  Gertrude made a sound like a horse snorting and sped off across the room to accost the happy couple.

  “Mairi,” Christina said, trying to suppress a smile, “you are very bad.”

  “Well, it could be true,” Mairi said, easing herself more comfortably onto the chair. “It seems they have been wed at least a month and Angus and Gertrude had no notion.”

  “That is not surprising,” Christina said. “They notice nothing beyond themselves.”

  “You didn’t realize, either,” Mairi pointed out.

  “I did wonder if they were lovers,” Christina said, “but for all her sophisticated airs, Allegra is very young. I thought I was imagining things.”

  “At least with Allegra’s marriage to occupy her, Gertrude is not harping on at you about yours, Christina,” Lucy said with a giggle. “I think in time she may take quite well to having a Russian prince as a brother-in-law. I have already heard her boasting to Lady Dorney that he is a relative of the czar.”

  “Lucas will hate that,” Mairi said. “You know how he shuns his aristocratic lineage.” She broke off as Lucas came in. “Oh, my goodness,” she said, fanning herself. “Christina, you are such a lucky girl.”

  Lucas was flanked by Jack on one side and Robert on the other, but he did not look like a man who needed the support. In fact, the three of them looked what they were: shockingly handsome, slightly dangerous and enough to make the Highland Ladies Bluestocking Society members swoon. Christina realized, with a catch of her breath, that she had never seen Lucas in formal evening attire. She had seen him in livery and in his working garb, but now in the stark black-and-white of formal dress he looked magnificent. He was looking around the ballroom. He was looking for her.

  They had had no opportunity to talk since that morning, and now her heart turned over at what might happen next. She had told Lucas he could stay at Kilmory until he had solved the mystery of Peter’s death. With Alice arrested, that mystery was solved. She wondered if Lucas would leave. She wondered if she really wanted him to go. She did not know the answer to either question and she felt hopelessly confused.

  Her breath trapped in her chest. What scared her was not the way Lucas could command a room, nor even the spectacular good looks that still had the ranks of the Highland bluestocking ladies buzzing, but the way he could make her forget all reason. There was a dangerously sensual gleam in his black eyes that made her toes curl in her satin slippers. She desired Lucas Black, but she was not sure she could trust herself to love him again, or trust him not to betray her.

  He showed every sign of crossing the room to join her but was waylaid by several ladies clamoring for an introduction.

  “Lucas is most shockingly handsome, isn’t he,” Lucy said. She giggled. “If Lady Dorney gets any closer she will practically be wearing him. She always was a woman who believed that a cause was not lost until the knot was tied.”

  “And not even then in some cases,” Mairi said drily.

  “If he were mine I should not let him out of my sight,” Lucy said.

  “You are missing the material point here,” Christina said sharply. She had spent a part of the afternoon explaining Lucas’s deception to Lucy and Mairi, and it infuriated her that they seemed to have already forgotten everything she had told them.

  “Lucas came here pretending to be a servant—”

  “And I wish I had seen him in livery,” Mairi put in.

  Christina ignored her. “He misled us all,” she said. “I slept with him—”

  Both her sisters sighed enviously in unison.

  “Would you marry a man you cannot trust?” Christina demanded.

  Mairi pursed her lips. “If he looked like Lucas, then, yes, I probably would. I’m shallow like that.”

  Lucy touched her arm. “I understand, Tina. Really, I do. You know that Robert tried to compromise me into marriage because he had to do what was right for his clan. He put the needs of his people first because that was what his honor obliged him to do.”

  “You are saying that Lucas’s honor obliged him to bring his brother’s murderer to justice,” Christina said.

  “Yes,” Lucy said. “I think you already know that. Lucas is a man of honor. He did what he had to do.”

  “Besides,” Mairi said. “You love him. Don’t throw that away.”

  “I loved him before,” Christina admitted. “Now I am not sure I even know him.”

  The thought of handing Lucas her heart a second time made her terrified. It was not like when McGill had refused to fight for her, when he had refused to stand up to her father’s will. That had hurt badly at the time. She had loved McGill with a girlish infatuation and she had had no experience to draw on to soften the blow. Now she had the experience, but the pain was greater because the love she had had for Lucas had been so much more powerful than anything she had felt before. She knew with certainty that she could not survive such a betrayal again.

  “He’s the same man,” Lucy said. “In your heart you know it.”

  Galloway sounded the dinner gong.

  “Oh, my goodness,” Mairi said. “You have placed Lucas next to Gertrude at dinner.” She opened her blue eyes wide. “Perhaps you don’t love him after all. That’s the first time I’ve seen a table plan used as punishment.”

  “Lucas is the highest-ranking male guest,” Christina said. She felt a stab of guilt. Mairi was right; she had thought, if not to punish Lucas, then to test him. “It’s only appropriate that he should escort Gertrude,” she said by way of an excuse. “She is the highest-ranking female guest.”

  “I’m a marchioness, too,” Lucy complained. “You could have given
him to me!”

  Jack came up at that moment to escort her in to dinner. Normally Christina found him an entertaining companion, but tonight her attention was frequently drawn to the other end of the table where Lucas sat. She was slightly chagrined to see that he was handling the situation rather well; he gave Gertrude all his attention so that by the end of the first course she was positively simpering and Christina was feeling quite cross.

  “You can trust Lucas to handle anything you throw at him,” Jack said in her ear.

  Christina watched as Gertrude leaned over and touched Lucas confidentially on the back of his hand to emphasize a point she was making. Lucas smiled and nodded and Gertrude beamed at him.

  “Was I staring?” Christina asked. “I simply cannot believe he has charmed Gertrude,” she added.

  The note in her voice betrayed her and Jack laughed. “I see,” he said. “You wanted him to fail.”

  Christina bit her lip. “I suppose I still feel angry with him,” she admitted.

  “Of course you do,” Jack said easily, “but Lucas won’t oblige you by falling flat on his face in polite company, so perhaps you had better change your ambitions.”

  Christina glanced back at Lucas. He was watching her. There was something in his eyes that was hot and possessive.

  “He’s doing all this for you,” Jack added. “Lucas hates his titles, he never uses them. Did you not wonder why you hadn’t heard of him? It is because he never took up his place in society until now. When he first came to Scotland, the trustees of his father’s estate refused to grant it to him. They threw him out. He had to fight for his lands.” Then, as she stared at him, “Did he not tell you?”

  “No,” Christina said. She cleared her throat. “That is, he told me that he doesn’t care for the aristocracy, but I had not thought—” She stopped. She should have realized, she thought. She had known that Lucas was illegitimate, that society had shunned him. He would not want to be a part of a culture that had condemned his mother and turned its back on him because of his bastardy.

  Suddenly she felt swamped by emotion. She picked up her knife and fork again and made a pretense of eating, but she was not even sure what the food was. She felt too confused, too disturbed.

  Dinner was long and elaborate. Lucas had Lady Bellingham on the other side of him and courteously turned his attention to her during the second course. Gertrude sulked but brightened up when the dessert was served and she had Lucas’s attention once again. When dinner was over and the dancing started, though, Lucas came straight across to claim Christina’s hand.

  “At last,” he said.

  “You are supposed to open the dancing with the Countess of Cromarty,” Christina said.

  “I shall beg her pardon later,” Lucas said. “I want to dance with you.”

  Gertrude was dancing with Richard Bryson and actually looked as though she was enjoying herself. Christina was so shocked that she almost missed her step.

  “Your doing, I think.” She looked up. Lucas was watching them, too, a faint smile playing about his mouth. “What on earth could you have said to Gertrude that would have persuaded her even to give Richard the slightest chance?”

  “Merely that he seemed like a resourceful fellow who was wasted on the revenue service,” Lucas said. “I suggested that I might have a place for him managing some of my business interests.”

  “I would not have thought that Gertrude wanted a son-in-law who worked at all,” Christina said.

  Lucas smiled. “Well, of course, it is not ideal. But I implied that Bryson was also related to the Sutherlands, my father’s family. Since my aunt is the Duchess of Strathspey, that put a different complexion on matters.”

  “Is he?” Christina asked. “Related to you, I mean?”

  Lucas shrugged. “I would not be surprised. My father’s family is related to almost everyone in Scotland if one goes back far enough.”

  There was some element of reserve in his voice that reminded Christina forcibly of what Jack had said.

  “It was kind of you to draw on that connection to help Richard,” she said impulsively. “It must hurt to have to speak of your father and—” she hesitated “—have people pick over your birth and your mother’s reputation and your history.”

  Lucas’s jaw was rigid. “No one would dare to mention my illegitimacy directly to me now,” he said, and there was a thread of dry humor in his voice. “It is not the same as when I was a child.”

  And yet, Christina thought, in some ways that child was still there. The child who had lost everything and been reviled was still there, and her heart suddenly ached for him. She looked around the ballroom and understood for the first time. Jack had been right. Lucas really was doing this for her, stepping into a world he had rejected fifteen years before so that he could be with her. He was doing it because he loved her, and the only question was whether she dared to love him back.

  The music changed, swept into a waltz. Lucas carried on dancing with her.

  “You have this dance with Lady Dorney,” Christina said.

  “Who?” Lucas said. His hold on her tightened. “Christina,” he said. “I have something to ask you.” Then, as she tilted her head back to look at him, he said, “Will you marry me?” He looked formal, a little severe. “No secrets,” he said, “no deception, no convenient betrothal just to save your reputation.” His lips brushed her ear, sending a wicked little shiver down her spine. “Always, Christina. Forever.”

  The music spun onward, a whirling spiral of sound that echoed the whirling spiral of her thoughts. Christina felt the tears close her throat because it only made her feel worse, more afraid, standing on the edge of danger, not ready to take the leap. She realized that this was all about her, not about Lucas. It was about whether she could trust herself to love him again. It was whether she was prepared to take that risk.

  Lucas’s mouth hovered over hers. “I love you,” he murmured. His eyes were full of tenderness and desire. “I’ll never stop loving you. I cannot promise not to die, but I have no intention of leaving you for a very long time.”

  Christina almost lost herself then, trapped by the fierce black gaze that held hers, her heartbeat racing and the rest of the world forgotten as he held her close. Then someone bumped against them and apologized and she realized that the waltz still went on and that people were staring. Her hand came to rest on his chest. “We are scandalizing the ballroom,” she whispered.

  “Now, that,” Lucas said, “is where I do not give a fig for society’s opinion.”

  Before Christina was aware of what he was about, he had whisked her out of the doorway into the hall. It was quiet here, with the noise and chatter of the ballroom muted. Lucas drew her behind a group of statuary and kissed her. There was no gentleness in it, no hesitation, nothing but raw, explosive passion, so fierce and dangerous that her head reeled. Still kissing her, he started to pull her toward the stairs. They stumbled in their haste and she heard him give a mutter of impatience against her mouth, and then he had scooped her up in his arms and was taking the stairs two at a time. He put her down outside her chamber door and they kissed again, hungry, desperate, then crashed through the door with Lucas slamming it shut behind them.

  “I gave you a chamber in the east wing,” Christina said as his mouth finally lifted from hers.

  “At this precise moment, I can’t remember where that is,” Lucas said, “and I don’t care.”

  He tumbled her down onto the bed and Christina reached for him. Everything she had been feeling in the past few days, the hurt, the anger, the confusion and the longing, fused into one huge burst of need. She had felt it that morning when they had kissed. Now she ripped his jacket and shirt off, the beautiful formal evening clothes she had admired him in only hours earlier, and then she realized that they did not even belong to him.

  “I’ve just ruined the evening clothes Jack loaned you,” she gasped as she smoothed her hands over his shoulders and chest, exulting in the warm slide of skin
on skin.

  “It was only his second-best suit,” Lucas murmured. His lips brushed the hollow at the base of her throat. “I’ll buy him a new one.” His hands were busy on the fastenings of her gown, tugging, struggling with the buttons and bows. “Damn it, why must you wear so many clothes?”

  With a growl of frustration he pulled them off haphazardly and threw them to the floor, leaving her naked.

  Then everything changed and became slow and languorous. Lucas ran a hand down her body with lazy pleasure and she tilted her head up so that her lips found his. She opened to him without holding back, and they kissed gently, yet there was a feverish edge of need to it as though any moment they might fall beyond control. Lucas bent his head to her breast and Christina arched against him, feeling her breath fracture and the desire inside her wind ever tighter. His tongue flicked her nipple and she groaned aloud.

  “Trust me,” he whispered against her hot skin. “Give yourself up to me.”

  Again his tongue flicked over the sensitive tips of her breasts and she squirmed helplessly. Pleasure was a deep, dark tide inside her now, washing through her, demanding release. Lucas pressed his lips to the hollow of her stomach and she gasped, reaching for him, but he held her hands fast so that she had no choice other than to lie still.

  She closed her eyes. Light danced across the backs of her eyelids, fantasy and pleasure merging as she focused on the sensations he was arousing in her body. His lips and tongue trailed a path across from one of her hip bones to the other. Tingles chased across her skin and her hips lifted in desperate appeal. At once he slid a hand between her legs, his fingers seeking and finding, stroking with such knowing skill that she cried out. Her body rippled and clenched, but he felt the response and drew back, leaving her hanging tantalizingly on the edge.