Nicola Cornick - [Scottish Brides 01]

by The Ladyand the Laird

  “No,” she said again. “Apart from anything else, I hardly think that Dulcibella would be persuaded by that sort of letter. She is a very sheltered lady.”

  “Well,” Lachlan said, grinning, “you may need to tone it down just a little.”

  “No,” Lucy said for the sixth time. She was thinking of Robert Methven. “They are betrothed, Lachlan. It would be wrong.”

  “Please, Lucy,” Lachlan repeated, with more pleading in his tone this time. “I really do love Dulcibella.” He threw out a hand. “How can she be happy married to Methven? The man’s a savage! He’s not like me.”

  “No,” Lucy said. “He most certainly is not like you.” Robert Methven had none of Lachlan’s refinement. He had rough edges, a roughness that had been rubbing against Lucy’s senses for the past three months like steel against silk. Once again she felt that shiver of awareness tingle along her nerves.

  “I can’t help you, Lachlan,” she said. “You should leave well enough alone.”

  Lachlan’s face took on the mulish expression Lucy remembered from when he was a small boy who was not getting his own way.

  “I don’t know why you would refuse,” he said. “No one would know.”

  “Because it’s wrong,” Lucy said sharply. A little shiver rippled over her skin. She knew she had to refuse even if Lachlan’s feelings were genuinely engaged. It was not fair in any way to sabotage Robert Methven’s betrothal. Besides, more practically, Methven was not a man to cross. He was hard and dangerous, and she would be foolish to do anything to antagonize him. If he found out, she would be in a very great deal of trouble.

  “You need the money,” Lachlan said suddenly. “I know you do. I heard you telling your maid the other day that your quarterly allowance was already spent.”

  Lucy hesitated. It was true that her allowance was already gone, given away to the Greyfriars Orphanage and the Foundling Hospital as soon as it was paid to her. Lachlan did not know, of course. He thought she was as extravagant as he was and saw no shame in that. He had no notion that her remorse over Alice’s death prompted her to give every penny she had to try to make up for a guilt that could never be assuaged.

  “I’ll buy you the bonnet with the green ribbons you were admiring in Princes Street yesterday,” Lachlan said, leaning forward.

  “I’d rather have the cash, thank you,” Lucy said. For a moment she allowed herself to think of all that she might buy: new clothes and shoes for the children, books and toys, as well.

  There was a sliding sensation of guilt in her stomach as she realized that she was going to do as Lachlan asked. She tried to ignore the feeling. She told herself that there could be no danger of Lord Methven discovering what she had done because Lachlan’s name would be on the letters and as long as he held his tongue, no one would suspect her. She told herself that she would be able to buy more medicines for the children at the hospital, as well. The bronchitis was particularly bad this winter.

  “How much?” Lachlan asked. He uncoiled his long length from the chair and stood up.

  “Ten shillings per letter,” Lucy said briskly.

  Lachlan glared. “I’ll write them myself,” he said.

  “Good luck with that,” Lucy said, smiling at him.

  Lachlan stared at her. She looked directly back and did not waver. She knew Lachlan would cave in. Her will was much stronger than his.

  “You could do it out of love,” he grumbled.

  Lucy turned her face away. Love was not a currency she dealt in. “Hard cash works best for me,” she said.

  “Five shillings, then,” Lachlan said. “And for that they had better be good.”

  “Seven,” Lucy said. “And they will be.”

  While Lachlan went to fetch the money, Lucy opened the desk drawer to extract a new quill, sharpened it expertly and refilled her ink pot. She would tell Lachlan to copy out the letters in green ink, she thought. The writing had to look as romantic as it sounded.

  A shower of sleet pelted the window. The frame rattled. The wind howled down the chimney. Lucy shivered. She could not quite banish the sense of trepidation that had settled like a weight inside her. She could see Lord Methven in her mind’s eye, his face as hard as rock, the dark blue eyes as chill as a mountain stream.

  It was wrong of her to help Lachlan take Dulcibella away from him. She knew that. Not only was it morally wrong, but it would also ratchet up the tension between the two clans, a tension that had never really died. She knew that there was some sort of ongoing lawsuit between the Marquis of Methven and her cousin Wilfred, Earl of Cardross. If Lachlan stole Methven’s bride, that would only throw fuel on the fire.

  She knew she should throw the quill down and walk away now, but she desperately wanted more money to help the Foundling Hospital. Picking up the quill, she started to write. Everything would be fine, she told herself. She would not get into trouble. She was quite safe. Robert Methven would never find out what she had done.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Two months later, April 1812

  THE BRIDE WAS LATE.

  Robert, Marquis of Methven, surreptitiously eased his neck cloth. It felt very tight. So did the pristine white shirt that strained across his broad shoulders. The little Highland church was full and hot, and the heavy fragrance of lilies permeated the air. Robert had thought lilies were a flower of funerals.

  Appropriate.

  The wedding guests were growing restive. The time had long passed for Dulcibella to be fashionably tardy. The only excuse for such a delay could be a malfunction in her wardrobe or perhaps the sudden and inconvenient death of a family member. Robert doubted that either of those had occurred.

  Dulcibella. It was a hell of a name. During the two months of his engagement, Robert had not been sure he could live with it. It looked as though he would not get the chance to try.

  He turned. The church was packed with guests, for this was the wedding of the social season. Two hundred members of the Scottish nobility had made the journey northward to this tiny church on the Brodrie Estate to see the daughter of the laird married to the man who had rejoined their ranks as scandalously as he had left them eight years earlier.

  “I think you’ve been jilted, my friend.” His groomsman and cousin Jack Rutherford spoke out of the side of his mouth. Jack was actually grinning, damn him. Robert scowled. He was indifferent to the public humiliation, but he had not wanted to lose Dulcibella. She had been the key to his inheritance.

  A lady sitting near the back of the church caught his eye.

  Lady Lucy MacMorlan.

  He felt his blood heat and quicken as it always did when he looked at Lucy. Just the looking made Robert feel as though he had selected his wedding breeches two sizes too small, a most inappropriate physical reaction in a church, when he was marrying another lady.

  He was not quite sure how this damnably inconvenient attraction to Lady Lucy had happened. He suspected that, lowering as it was to admit it, he had developed some sort of tendre for her when they were both in their teens, and he had never quite grown out of it. When he had kissed her years before at Forres Castle, it had been no more than an impulse. His reaction to the kiss, to her, had been so strong and unexpected that he had immediately backed off, knowing that if he did not, they would both be in deep trouble. Time and tragedy had then intervened to take him a long way from Scotland both in mind and spirit, but when he had returned and seen Lucy at one of the Edinburgh assemblies, it was as though a dormant spark was kindled in him, catching alight, burning into a flame.

  He had changed, but she had changed too, he thought. The artless, open girl he had known had become a great deal more guarded. She was still charming, but with the town bronze of the sophisticate now. Robert had been surprised to feel an urgent curiosity to know what was under that facade.

  He had other equally urgent impulses toward Lady Lucy, as well. They were destined to be unfulfilled.

  Today Lucy was sitting near the back of the church between her elder sister
s and her father, the Duke of Forres, and her cousin, the ghastly Wilfred, Earl of Cardross, whom Robert simply could not stand. She looked tiny, exquisite and voluptuous, all defiant red hair and lavender-blue eyes that were bright and alive. It was the hair that had been Robert’s final undoing. He wanted to know if it felt as sensual between his fingers as it looked. Lady Lucy also had a heart-shaped face and rosy red lips, porcelain skin and endearing freckles. Robert wanted to know how those lips tasted and how far down those freckles went.

  Lucy was perfection. Everyone said so. She was a perfect daughter, a perfect lady and she would one day make a perfect wife. Robert had heard that she had been betrothed straight from the schoolroom to some ancient nobleman who had keeled over before they wed. Since then Lady Lucy had rejected all offers because apparently no one could live up to the perfection of her fiancé. Robert found that odd, but there was no accounting for taste.

  He stole another look at Lady Lucy’s perfect profile. It was a great pity that he could not make her an offer, but he was completely hamstrung by the terms of his inheritance. Dulcibella Brodrie was one of the few women, if not the only woman, who fit his criteria.

  He realized that he was still staring at Lucy. He was not much of a gentleman, but he did know that it was bad form on his wedding day to stare at a lady who was not his bride.

  “Eyes front, Methven,” barked his grandmother in the tones of a parade ground sergeant major. The Dowager Marchioness of Methven sat alone in the front pew, a small stately figure in red silk and diamonds. When his grandfather had cut him off with no word, she had been the only member of Robert’s family to keep the faith with him during his time abroad. She had done it in defiance of her husband and she had sent his cousin Jack to him in Canada when the young man had wanted to see something of the world. Robert adored her, though he would never tell her as much. The two of them, Jack and his grandmother, were all the family he had left.

  The door of the church crashed open. The organ swelled into “The Arrival of the Queen of Sheba.” Robert could sense the minister’s relief. There was an anticipatory creak and shuffle as the congregation craned their necks for their first glimpse of the bride.

  The music stuttered to a halt. Lord Brodrie, Dulcibella’s father, was striding down the aisle. Alone. There was no bride on his arm.

  Robert had previously observed that Lord Brodrie was a man in an almost constant state of anger, and his rage was quite apparent now. His face was bright red with fury, his white hair stood up in livid spikes and his blue eyes flashed with ire. In his hand he was brandishing several sheets of paper. One of them fluttered to the floor at Robert’s feet.

  “She’s run off!” Brodrie announced.

  “Congratulations on your perspicacity, Jack,” Robert murmured.

  The shock that had held the congregation mute splintered into a riot of sound. Everyone seemed to be talking at once, gesticulating, turning to his or her neighbor to dissect the scandalous news.

  Robert bent to retrieve the page. It was not, as he had first imagined, a letter of explanation or even an apology. It was part of a love letter.

  “I can bear it no longer. I am tormented night and day. I cannot speak. I cannot eat. The thought of you in another man’s arms, in another man’s bed, is intolerable to me. The thought of Methven making love to you when you are mine... You are the very breath of life to me! Come away with me before it is too late....”

  There was a great deal more in the same vein, but Robert skipped over it. He had read quite enough for it to turn his stomach. It seemed, however, that Dulcibella had liked that sort of thing given that the letter writer had persuaded her to elope.

  “Who wrote this stuff?” Jack asked. He was trying to read over Robert’s shoulder.

  “It’s signed Lachlan,” Robert said.

  “That must be Lachlan MacMorlan,” Jack said, squinting at the signature. “He was completely besotted with Miss Brodrie. I didn’t think he would do anything about it, though. Thought he was too lazy.”

  “I’ll string his guts from the castle battlements,” Brodrie said violently. His face was a mottled red and white now. He looked as though he was about to burst a blood vessel. He was shaking his fist, in which he clutched several more handwritten sheets. “Debauching my daughter with romantic poetry!” he roared. “The craven coward! If he wanted her, why could he not fight for her like a man?”

  Robert crumpled the letter in his hand. “Presumably because this approach worked better,” he said. “I was not aware that Miss Brodrie was of a romantic disposition.”

  He had not, he realized, known much about Dulcibella at all. It was a little late to realize that now, but he had not been interested in her except as a way to unlock his inheritance. He needed a wife—and an heir—urgently. He had proposed to Dulcibella for that reason alone. He had noticed that she was pretty. He had found her laughter grating and her helplessness irritating. That was the sum total of their relationship.

  “Daft girl was always reading,” Brodrie said. “Took after her mother that way. I never paid it much attention. She liked those soppy novels, Pamela and the like.”

  It was all starting to make a great deal more sense to Robert. He tapped the crumpled letter impatiently against the palm of his hand.

  “I don’t believe MacMorlan wrote that,” Jack said suddenly. “I was at school with him. He’s no scholar.”

  “Perhaps he was too shy to share his poetry with you all,” Robert said sarcastically. He scanned a few more lines. “He has quite a talent.”

  “If Lachlan MacMorlan is shy,” Jack said, “I’m the pope.”

  “Gentlemen...” The minister was hovering, anxiety writ large on his plump face. “Is the service to go ahead?”

  “Evidently not,” Robert said. “If only Miss Brodrie had confided her feelings in me, she and Lord Lachlan could have had the booking instead.”

  Both Lord Brodrie and the minister were looking at him in perplexity. Robert realized that they were wondering if he could possibly be as cold and indifferent as he sounded. He had not cared a jot about Dulcibella, but he did care very much about losing his inheritance. The congregation was shifting and shuffling now as everyone tried to overhear what was going on and pass word to his or her neighbor. Their expressions were shocked, scandalized, amused, depending on the guests and their disposition. Wilfred of Cardross was making no attempt to hide his glee. He, more than anyone, would welcome the ruin of Robert’s plans and the opportunity it gave him to claim back Methven land.

  Robert clenched his fists. He was not going to give Cardross the chance to take Golden Isle and his northern estates. They were the most ancient part of his patrimony, and he would hold them by force if he had to do so.

  His eyes met those of Lucy MacMorlan. She was looking directly at him. She did not look shocked or scandalized or amused.

  Lucy looked guilty.

  Robert felt a leap of interest. He knew that Lady Lucy was close to her brother. He had observed them together at various social events and knew they had an easy friendship. It seemed Lachlan might have confided in Lucy about the elopement. Certainly she knew something.

  For a long moment Robert held her gaze. Faint pink color came into her cheeks. He saw her bite her lip. Then she broke the contact with him very deliberately, turned to pick up the little green-beaded reticule that matched the ribbon on her bonnet and touched her father gently on the arm to indicate that she wanted to leave. The guests were spilling out of the pews now, milling around uncertainly in the aisles while they waited for someone to tell them what was happening.

  “Well?” Brodrie demanded. “What’s to do? Aren’t you going after them, my lord?”

  “Sir,” Robert drawled, “your daughter has gone to a great deal of trouble to avoid marrying me. It would be churlish of me to go after her and bring her back.” He pushed the letter into Jack’s hands. “Tell everyone that they are welcome at the wedding breakfast, Jack,” he said. “A pity to waste a good party.�
� It was he who had paid for the celebrations, Brodrie being too strapped for cash.

  “Party?” Brodrie was boggling. “You would celebrate my daughter running off with another man, sir?”

  “We have already given the gossips more than enough cause for conjecture,” Robert said. “I refuse to play the heartbroken jilt.” He laughed. “Besides, the wedding is bought and paid for. And you have a daughter married and off your hands. One hopes. Celebrate it.” He sketched Lord Brodrie a bow. “Excuse me. I will join you shortly, but first there is something I must do.”

  “By God, sir, he is a coldhearted bastard,” he heard Brodrie say to Jack as he walked away. The man sounded torn between admiration and disbelief.

  He did not hear Jack’s reply. But he did not disagree with Brodrie’s assessment.

  * * *

  LACHLAN HAD RUN off with Dulcibella Brodrie.

  The gossip rippled down the pews like the incoming tide. Lucy, sitting at the back of the church between her father and her two sisters, was almost the last to hear it.

  “Run away to Gretna Green... Gone this morning... Eloped with Lachlan MacMorlan...”

  Lucy felt apprehension tiptoe along her spine. Damn Lachlan. Could he not have sorted this out sooner? It had taken two months and almost twenty love letters to persuade Dulcibella to jilt Robert Methven, and she had to do it now, leaving the man standing alone in front of all his wedding guests.

  Lucy felt horribly guilty. She had not really expected to feel so bad. Up until this very moment, she had in fact felt rather pleased with herself. Dulcibella’s surprisingly staunch refusal to succumb to Lachlan’s wooing had meant a big profit on the letters. Lucy had been able to give so much to her charities: warm blankets and medicines and new clothes for the children. But of course there was always a price to pay. And Lord Methven was paying it now. Lucy felt as though she had let him down in some obscure way, as though she had owed him her loyalty and had betrayed him. Perhaps it was because all those years ago he had kept his word and never revealed that he had seen her on the terrace at Forres that night. She had not thought about that in eight years. Yet now she thought that he had kept faith with her while she had repaid him in deceit.