Cameron shoved his flask into Juliana's hand. "Get that inside you, lass. It will lessen the blow."
A proper lady did not drink spirits, and Juliana had been raised to be so very proper. But the turn of events made this a highly un-proper occasion.
Juliana tipped back the flask and trickled a bit of burning Scots whiskey into her mouth. She coughed, swallowed, coughed again, and dabbed at her lips as Cameron rescued the flask.
Perhaps she should not have drunk it. What Cameron had told her was starting to seem real.
Two hundred people waited in the church for Juliana St. John and Grant Barclay to wed, two hundred people who would have to be told to go home. Two hundred gifts to be returned, two hundred apologies to be penned. And the newspapers would certainly enjoy themselves.
Juliana pressed her hands to her face. She'd never been in love with Grant, but she'd thought they'd at least formed a friendship, a mutual respect for each other. But even that . . . Grant hadn't given her even that.
"What am I going to do?"
Cameron tucked the flask into his greatcoat. "We'll take you home. I'll have my carriage pull up in the passage at the end of this walk. None need to see you."
They were kind, Ainsley and Cameron--they were being kind. Juliana didn't want kindness. She wanted to kick and rage, not only at Grant, but at herself. She'd been so secure in her engagement, rather smug that she was in no danger of being left on the shelf. Not only that, she'd wanted the stability of a normal life, something she'd fought for all her life.
Her future had just crumbled to dust, her safe choice ripped from beneath her feet. Shock still rendered her numb, but she sensed regret coming hard on its heels.
Juliana rubbed her arms, suddenly chilled. "Not yet. Please, give me a moment. I need to be alone for just a moment."
Ainsley glanced into the courtyard, into which people were now emerging from the church proper.
"Not that way. There's a chapel down here. We'll keep them out."
"Bless you, Ainsley." Juliana could not unclench herself enough to give Ainsley the hug she deserved.
She let Ainsley guide her to the door of the chapel, which Cameron opened. Cameron and Ainsley stepped back, and Juliana went in alone, the door clicking closed.
The chapel was chilly but dim and peaceful. Juliana stood for a moment in front of the bare altar, looking up at the plain cross hanging above it, alone and unadorned.
Grant, married. To Mrs. Mackinnon.
Juliana now realized things she'd seen in the past few months but had paid no mind to at the time--
Grant and Mrs. Mackinnon side by side at Grant's mother's piano, their exchanged smiles, the looks between them. Grant gazing pensively at Juliana as though he wanted to speak to her about something important, and then making some joke or inane remark instead.
She knew now what he meant to say. Miss St. John, I've fallen in love with my piano teacher and wish to marry her, not you.
Scandal. Humiliation.
Juliana balled her fists, wanting to shout at Providence for being so aggravating. But, even in her agitation, blasphemy in a chapel seemed wrong.
She settled for storming into a pew, her ivory skirts billowing around her. "Blast!" she said and slammed herself into the seat.
On top of something that moved. A man with long legs under a woolen kilt, a broad body that heaved up onto strong elbows. A man coming awake to find a hundred and twenty pounds of young woman in wedding garb sitting on his thighs.
"What the devil?" Gray eyes the same color as Ainsley's flashed in a face that was too tanned to have been in Scotland long.
Elliot McBride obviously had no compunction about blaspheming in a church. Or sleeping in one.
Juliana swiftly rose, but she couldn't move out of the pew. She stared down at Elliot as he levered himself partway up and leaned back into the corner of the pew, his booted feet still on the bench.
"Elliot?" Juliana asked, breathless. "What are you doing here?"
"Trying to find some quiet," he said. "Too bloody many people about."
"I mean, here in Scotland. I thought you were in India. Ainsley said you were in India."
Elliot McBride was one of Ainsley's many brothers, a man the girl Juliana had fallen madly in love with about a hundred years ago. He'd disappeared to India to make his fortune, and she hadn't seen him since.
Elliot rubbed a hand over his stubbled face, though he smelled of soap and water, as though he'd recently bathed. "Decided to come home."
Laconic, that was the way to describe Elliot, the untamed McBride. Also large and strong, with a presence that knocked the breath out of her. It had been so when she'd been a child and he'd been the wild brother of Ainsley, and again when she'd been a proud debutante and he'd attended her coming-out ball in his army regimentals.
Juliana sank to the pew again, at the end of it, beyond his feet. High in the tower of the main church, bells rang, striking the hour.
"Aren't you supposed to be in there, lass?" Elliot asked. He removed a flask from his coat and sipped from it, but unlike Cameron, he didn't offer her any. "Getting married to whatever his name is?"
"Grant Barclay. I was to have been Mrs. Grant Barclay."
The flask stopped halfway to his mouth. " Was to have been? Did you jilt the whey-faced bastard, then?"
"No," Juliana said. "Apparently, yesterday, he eloped with his piano teacher."
It was all too much. Strange laughter welled up inside her and came pealing out of her mouth. Not quite hysterics, but a hearty laugh she couldn't stop.
Elliot lay still, like an animal deciding whether to attack or run. Poor Elliot. What must he make of a woman who'd jolted him out of his sleep by plopping down on him and then laughing uncontrollably because her fiancé had abandoned her?
Juliana's laughter eased off, and she wiped her eyes with her fingertips. Her dark red hair was tumbling down, one of the yellow roses Ainsley had tied into it falling to her lap. "Stupid flowers."
Elliot sat frozen, his hand gripping the back of the pew so hard he was surprised the wood didn't splinter. He watched as Juliana laughed, as her glorious hair fell to her bared shoulders. She smiled though her blue eyes were wet, and the hands that plucked the flower from her lap were long fingered and trembling.
Elliot wanted to put his arms around her and cradle her close. There now, he'd say. You're better off without the idiot. An even stronger instinct made him want to go find Grant Barclay and shoot him for hurting her.
But Elliot knew that if he made the mistake of touching Juliana, he wouldn't stop at comfort. He'd tilt her head back and kiss her lips, as he'd done at her debut ball, the night she'd permitted the one kiss.
They'd both been eighteen. Before Elliot had gone to hell and back, that chaste kiss would have been enough for him. This time, it would not be enough, not by a long way.
He'd kiss down her pretty throat to her bosom, nuzzle her gown's neckline with its points of lace, and feather kisses to her shoulders. Then he'd lick his way back up to her ripe lips, seam them with his tongue, coax her to let him inside.
He'd kiss her with long, careful kisses, tasting the goodness of her mouth while he held her and did not let her go.
Elliot would want to take everything, because Lord only knew when he'd have the chance again. A broken man learned to savor what he could when he had the opportunity.
"It will stay with me forever," Juliana was saying. "Poor Juliana St. John. Don't you remember?
She'd already put on her wedding clothes and gone to the church, poor darling."
What did a man say to a woman in this state? Elliot wished for the eloquence of his barrister brother, who stood up in court and made elegant speeches for a living. Elliot could only ever speak the truth.
"Let them say it, and to the devil with them."
Juliana gave him a sad smile. "The world is very much about what they say, my dear Elliot. Perhaps it's different in India."
Dear God, how could anyo
ne think that? "The rules there are damn strict. You can die--or get someone else killed--by not knowing them."
Juliana blinked. "Oh. Very well, I concede that such a thing sounds worse than people expecting me to hide in shame and knit socks for the rest of my life."
"Why the devil should you knit socks? Do what you like."
"Very optimistic of you. Not fair to me, but I'm afraid I will be talked about for a long while now. And I am now on the shelf. Thirty years old, and no longer an ingénue. I know that women do all sorts of things these days besides marry, but I am too old to attend university, and even if I did, my father would die of shame that I was such a bluestocking. I was raised to pour tea, organize fêtes, and say correct things to the vicar's wife."
Her words slid over Elliot without him registering them, her musical voice soothing. He lay back and let her talk, realizing he'd not felt so at ease in a long while.
If I could listen to her forever, if I could drift into the night hearing her voice, I might get well again.
No, nothing would be well, never again, not after the things he'd seen and done, and what had been done to him. He'd thought that once he took refuge in Scotland again, it would stop. The dreams, the waking terrors, the utter darkness when time passed and he knew nothing of it. But it hadn't, and he'd known he had to put the next part in his plan to work.
Juliana was studying him, her blue eyes clear like a summer lake. The beauty of her, the memory of those eyes, had sustained him for a long time in the dark.
Sometimes he'd dreamed she was with him, trying to wake him, her dulcet voice filling his ears. Come on, now, Elliot. You must wake up. My kite's tangled in tree, and you're the only one tall enough to get it down.
He remembered the day when he'd first realized what he felt for her--they must both have been about sixteen. She'd been flying a kite for children of her father's friends, and Elliot had come to watch. He'd retrieved the kite from a tree for her and earned a red-lipped smile, a soft kiss on his cheek. From that day forward, he'd been lost.
"Elliot, are you awake?"
His eyes had drifted closed on memories, and now Juliana's voice blended with the remembered dream. He pried his eyes open. "I think so."
"You did not hear me, did you?" Her face was pink in the dim light.
"Sorry, lass. I'm a bit drunk."
"Good. Not that you're drunk, but that you didn't hear me. Never mind. It was a foolish idea."
He opened his eyes wider, his brain coming alert. What the hell had he missed?
The darkness did that to him sometimes. Elliot could slide past large portions of conversation without noticing he had done so. He'd come back to himself realizing people were waiting for his response and wondering what was the matter with him. Elliot had decided that avoiding people and conversation was the best solution.
With Juliana, he wanted to know. "Tell me again."
"I don't think I ought. If it were a cracking-good idea, you'd have leapt on it at once. As it is . . ."
"Juliana, I swear to you . . . I drift in and out. I want to hear your cracking-good idea."
"No, you don't."
Females. Even ones he'd been secretly in love with for years could drive him insane.
Elliot sat up and moved closer to her, his feet on the floor. He stretched his arm along the back of the pew, not touching her but close enough to feel her warmth. "Juliana, tell me, or I'll tickle you."
"I'm not eight years old anymore, Elliot McBride."
He wanted to laugh at her haughty tone. "Neither am I. When I say tickle, I no longer mean what I did then." He touched her bare shoulder with one finger.
A mistake. The contact shot heat up his arm and straight into his heart.
Her lips were close to his, lush and ripe. She had faint freckles across her nose, ten of them. She'd always had them, had always tried to rid herself of them, but to Elliot, every one was kissable.
Her eyes went still, and her voice was a whisper of breath. "What I asked, Elliot, was whether you would marry me."
* * * * *
About the Author
New York Times bestselling and award-winning author Jennifer Ashley has written more than 45 published novels and novellas in romance, urban fantasy, and mystery under the names Jennifer Ashley, Allyson James, and Ashley Gardner. Her books have been nominated for and won Romance Writers of America's RITA (given for the best romance novels and novellas of the year), several RT BookReviews Reviewers Choice awards (including Best Urban Fantasy, Best Historical Mystery, and Career Achievement in Historical Romance), and Prism awards for her paranormal romances. Jennifer's books have been translated into more than a dozen languages and have earned starred reviews in Booklist.
More about the Mackenzies series can be found at www.jennifersromances.com Or email Jennifer at [email protected]
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Mackenzie Family Christmas: The Perfect Gift (highland pleasures) Page 15