Improper Wedding: Scandalous Encounters

by Reed, Kristabel

  He continued to rise, as if no time passed, that same look of furious resentment so clear on his face. Rose tried to brace herself, but the disorientation of being back in this study, not in the fields of Scotland—

  “Rose,” Robert sneered, standing now. “You finally decided to show your face. Something you could not be bothered with this last month, could you?”

  Each word echoed like a shot between them. Rose stood straighter and stared him down. She took a deep breath, despite her disorientation, and stepped forward. She knew how to handle Robert Kendrick; she learned at a very young age.

  “What is it, Father? Why are you so angry?”

  He stepped from behind his desk, and she realized his rage was directed solely at her. For the first time in her life, Rose feared her father. Robert looked much taller than before, his eyes dark with anger, his face lined and set in sheer fury. His fists curled at his sides, and a shiver of fear urged her to turn and run.

  She held herself still and stared at him, unflinching. When she blinked, Rose found herself once more not in Robert’s study, but in a cold, dark chamber.

  The walls were darker, of stone instead of wood, with candlelight flickering on the walls and the desk. The desk had been heavily damaged, their clan emblem torn from the scarred wood. When the English commander used this room, this desk, he hadn’t wanted to see it, hadn’t wanted their clan to be remembered.

  Many of their things had been burned, ripped from the castle’s walls, or stolen because the English wanted them. She looked around the dark room to where his ancient tapestries once hung.

  Robert stood before her now. Rose knew the man was her father, though he looked different from the father she remembered. His arms crossed over his chest, and the trousers and shirt he wore carried no clan insignia. The English took that, too.

  “He’s a good man and will care for me in London,” Rose insisted. “We cannae stay here, you know that isn’t possible with all that’s happened.”

  “What is it you say to me?” he demanded, his voice cold and harsh, a heavy anger on every word. “My daughter and a Sassenach bastard? I’ll never allow that!”

  His large hand closed over her wrist, tight enough to nearly break. He shook her even as Rose tried to pull free from his grasp. “How many of our men died at Culloden?”

  He shook her again, his fingers tightening impossibly harder around her wrist. “How many of us were shipped to prison hells? Cleared from our rightful lands?”

  “You,” she spat. “You help them now! You allow them to camp on our lands! You feed them what little food there is for our people!”

  Rose stopped struggling and glared right back at him. Her wrist ached but she ignored the pain. “I tell you I won’t stay here when I know we won’t be accepted, but you, Father, must understand.”

  He loomed over her, his face flushed with fury, eyes black with hatred. Her wrist throbbed, but she glared right back at her father.

  “I understand nothing except my daughter is a traitorous whore. I’ve done what I must to regain control over what is rightfully mine! But that does not mean I’ll allow a child who came from me to willingly open her legs for those scum.”

  “Let me go.” Rose stiffened and snapped her arm back. He didn’t release her, but she hadn’t expected him to. Desperation pounded through her, hot and angry, and she twisted her aching arm, but he held tight. So tight. “I do not know you.”

  “No.” He tugged her closer. “You only know those damned Sassenachs.”

  Disgust curled in her belly at the curse, but she said nothing about that. She feared for her life; she’d never seen her father this angry. He bowed and fawned over the English commander, despite his fury over the man pawning through their heritage. He raged and destroyed what little remained in their home, but never, not once in her life, had he directed his anger toward her.

  “You’re loyal to them, not your blood, not your people. You disgust me,” he spat, spittle flying from his lips. Rage and hatred shone from his eyes—there was no love left for her in that furious stare.

  Shaking, Rose found her fingers curled in her skirts. The soft muslin of her spring day gown, not the coarser material of the plain skirt she wore. Had worn. Blinking rapidly, she tried to steady herself, but the room spun and with it her stomach.

  As if she truly had been there, in the past. In that barren castle room with her past father and the remnants of death and decay falling around them.

  “You betrayed me,” Robert said.

  Rose scrambled for the thread of conversation. This conversation. The one here and now…in the present?

  “All you had to do,” he continued and stalked forward, a predator, “was open your knees for your husband. But you could not accomplish something as simple as that, something any whore on the street could do.”

  For a beat, Rose held steady, refusing to back away, despite the shock of his terrible words. Remembering her vision or memory, Rose didn’t know what, she turned to leave. She didn’t know what happened next, but refused to wait around for the rest of history to play itself out.

  Robert grabbed her wrist, his fingers tight, hard, and unyielding around her bone. She swallowed hard and met his gaze, refusing to show fear despite it curling sickeningly through her. Though she already knew it was useless, Rose tugged her arm, twisting to escape his angry hold.

  “Let me go,” she snapped. “I don’t want to hear another word.

  “No, I expect you don’t,” Robert snarled, hissing like a snake. “You married Hamilton because of me, Rose. You have a grand life because of me. Yet you allow him to ruin me. What did you do? Did you encourage him to ruin me? To take all I have?”

  Shocked, Rose forgot to struggle and stared at him. Robert’s hand tightened around her, digging into her wrist until she couldn’t feel her fingers.

  What was he talking about? What happened in the mere four weeks she’d been gone? It hovered there, just beyond her shock and fear. This man who threatened her was the man James warned her of. Not the father Rose knew but the man James feared since they met.

  When she’d disappeared, James snapped. She’d witnessed the result of that when he walked down the street toward her rented cottage.

  What had he done before he left London? What had he done before he found her?

  “Ruin my business? My prospects? Rid me of every last shilling?” Robert shook her, and Rose was helpless to stop him. “This is what you did! I have nothing left, Rose.” He shook her again, harder, pulling her body with each movement. “It is your fault.”

  Robert hurled her against the wall, and Rose tripped over her feet, slapping painfully into it. Her head throbbing and her left hand useless and screaming with pain, she struggled to make herself move. To stand and leave, to run from the madman before her.

  All she did was pull herself up, try to orient her body to this room. Robert closed in on her. With each step he took, Rose pushed herself along the wall, away from him. She knew what he planned as clearly as if he said it.

  He wanted to kill her.

  “My blood did this to me,” Robert roared. “You want to end me, Rose? Want to see me in the gutter? I’d rather see you dead.”

  Robert closed in on her and her vision closed in on itself until she stood in the musty castle once again. The pain in her wrist returned from where her father, or this father, or her past father Rose didn’t know, continued to dig mercilessly into her bone. She didn’t spare more than that single thought for it.

  She needed to leave, to run back to James and escape. But her father trapped her in a vicious, vicelike grip. She wanted to scream for James, but didn’t want him in this room. This castle with so many who hated him simply because he was English.

  “I’ll never have a child of mine breed with one of them,” her father said, his voice thick with hatred, making his Scottish accent deeper. Somehow more threatening despite having grown up in Scotland, with that own inflection herself.

  She was against
the wall; the cold stone bit into her, harsh and unbending, offering no respite from the fury of the man who was her father. He still held her wrist. Without warning, he snapped it. Rose screamed in pain. Her knees gave out and she sagged against the stone, panting hard.

  With her free hand, Rose steadied herself and tried to move. She forced her legs to hold herself upright and move. But he held her broken wrist, hovering over her with triumphant anger.

  His other hand closed around her throat. Despite the pain in her left arm and the sickening realization of what he planned, it still shocked her. She blinked, sick and scared and struggling for freedom. Escape.

  She never believed her father could do this to her. Rose couldn’t now believe this man was her father.

  His fingers tightened, closing off her air. Black spots danced in her vision, and the stone behind her back turned colder, colder. Or maybe that was her.

  Rose blinked, her eyelids sluggish. In her mind’s eye she saw James, laughing down at her, his lips caressing hers, his hand large and warm around hers as they walked the crag, hiding from her father and her clan, and his regiment. They hid from the world in the rocky outcropping that became theirs.

  Rose tried to call for him, but she couldn’t draw breath.

  She blinked again. And knew no more.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  COLD. ICE TRICKLED through her veins and numbed her lips. It permeated every inch of her skin and seeped into her bones. Rose blinked sluggishly and gasped for breath. Gasped for breath—she could breathe! Her throat wasn’t crushed by her father’s hand, and she eagerly gulped in air.

  Where was he? Where was her father? Rose stumbled and clawed her way along the wall, her fingers scrabbling for a hold to steady herself enough to run from this room. From her father. From the man who, she knew without a doubt, planned to kill her.

  All James feared, all he’d ever said to her about his fears, was true. He knew and tried to warn her of this. Was this a warning from the past? Or her inevitable fate?

  Robert continued to cross the room, each menacing step a thudding echo in the empty study. Rose stumbled and caught herself on the wall—the wooden wall, not the stone wall of the castle. Her tender wrist bent and she cried out, no longer caring if she showed fear or not.

  He seemed oblivious to it, anyway, intent only on her. On his own anger, his own slights, his own revenge.

  Rose blinked and saw not Robert but James. For a moment she thought he was there, in the study. That somehow Wilson or Mrs. Shelley found him and directed him to Robert Kendrick’s house. But then she felt the cold, fresh wind on her face, smelled the scent of decaying fields, of death and destruction, and experienced screaming hopelessness.

  She was in Scotland.

  Rose tried to turn, but had no control over her body. She looked down and realized she…hovered. Her body drifted several feet above the ground by the crag, the one she promised to meet James at, their crag, their special place.

  James made his way down the rocky incline, haggard and worried and looking so much older, wearier than when she last saw him. She tried to call out, tell him what happened. Promise her love, that she didn’t forget him. No words emerged, no matter how she tried.

  His redcoat was stained and torn, and his beard thick, as if it’d been days rather than mere hours since she last saw him.

  Rose tried to follow, but it seemed her body obeyed an instinct or force beyond her. Then again, she was dead, was she not? Best not think on that, because she felt alive. And knew she was. Yes, she was, maybe not here, but she still lived.

  James stilled, halfway down the incline. His fingers bled from the rocks and branches, but he didn’t seem to notice.

  “No!” The ragged cry tore from his chest, a horrible, desperate sound that shook Rose to her core.

  “James!” she tried to say. To shout, to gain his attention and assure him she was safe.

  But then she saw what he did. That coldness seeped into her bones again, brittle and frail. Her chest tightened, as if a hand closed around her lungs. That was her. Her body down there. She couldn’t see her face, not clearly, the dark, matted hair covered once-delicate skin.

  Rose knew. As surely as she knew the English soldier she saw was her husband James and the man who tried to kill her—had killed her—was her father Robert, Rose knew that broken body in the pit of the ravine was her own.

  James said more and brushed the tangled hair off her face—no, not her. She was not dead in that ravine.

  Rose swallowed, unable to tear her gaze from the sight below her. Of James so tenderly rocking her dead body. Pressing soft kisses to her bloody forehead. Gathering her into his arms and holding her tight.

  “I shouldn’t have left you,” he said, the words drifting over the crag to where she hovered.

  He moved, hugged her body closer. His fingers still brushed her hair so tenderly it broke Rose’s heart. “I should never have let you go alone, or at all. He wouldn’t have been able to find you.”

  James pressed his face into the crook of her neck and cried. Even hovering so far from him, Rose knew he cried. “I promise I shan’t leave you again. I promise. I’ll keep you safe.”

  She knew, without needing to see it, Rose knew James had never left that crag.

  Tears clogged her throat and stung her eyes. Oh, James. She tried to breathe deeply, to swipe at the tears, but hadn’t a physical body.

  Rose gasped.

  And the room spun again. Robert continued to advance, furiously angry, murder in every step. His gaze locked on her, followed her as Rose inched along the wall. She needed to escape, to run no matter how her stomach rebelled or how the room spun dizzily.

  Using her good hand, she grasped for anything to throw at him. Her fingers closed over an inkpot and she threw it at him.

  Robert lunged and Rose dodged him. She refused to make the same mistake again and ducked, falling to the floor. Rose didn’t stop; she ignored the white-hot throbbing in her wrist and the sickening twist in her belly and crawled along the floor.

  She grabbed onto the bookcase and used it to lift herself, keeping an eye on the steadily walking man, who she thought was her father, a man who was supposed to protect her and care for her.

  “Stop this!” she shouted and stood, tangling her skirts. She ripped the beautiful green material and somehow made it to her feet. “I had no idea what James planned! Father!” she shouted, trying to snap him from this rage, even though she didn’t truly wish to have his attention on her. “How could you want to hurt me?!”

  “You were the burden I carried,” he snarled and lunged again. “And now you’ve taken everything.”

  She wasn’t fast enough. Robert moved with inhuman speed and rage that eclipsed all else. He pinned her to the wall by the door. She was so close to freedom, she almost tasted it. Rose thought about screaming for Sally, but knew the maid wouldn’t help her. She always cowed to Robert, she’d not help now.

  Robert’s hands closed around her throat. She fought, pushed at him, scratched his face, kicked him, but he didn’t move, didn’t so much as budge.

  “Rose!” James roared.

  He stormed in like a whirlwind, rage and panic in his wake. Rose looked to him, or tried. James snarled, his face a twisted mask of fear and anger. He said something else, her name again, she thought, and physically pulled Robert from her.

  He clamped his hands on the man’s shoulders and tore him away, tossing him across the room as if he were nothing. Rose gasped, her hands going to her throat, struggling for air. She sank to her knees, shaking, struggling for that air. For sanity.

  “Never touch her again!” James ordered.

  She blinked and thought she saw him in uniform—the bright red, the polished boots, the crisp, clean regalia of a soldier, not of a desperate man searching for his lost love. Rose blinked again and it was her James, her lover, standing between her and Robert.

  Dressed in trousers and a dark coat, he did look like a soldier, his stance
sharp and straight, his fisted hands at his side.

  “James,” she whispered the word through a throat on fire.

  He immediately turned to her, his face softening. She stumbled to a stand and he caught her, pulling her close. His fingers brushed her sweaty hair off her face, and his lips touched her forehead, her temple, her cheek.

  “Rose,” he whispered. “Rose. You’re alive.”

  She only nodded, unable to say anything, and hugged him. Safe. She was safe in his arms now, safe from her father.

  Rose stepped back and looked at the man who was her father. His face twisted into animalistic rage, so terrible she didn’t recognize him. The sunlight glinted off a knife, and she jerked back. She didn’t scream, but James knew. He whirled and faced Robert, pushing her safely behind him.

  Cradling her sprained left wrist, Rose stumbled back. Robert held a knife, ready to attack.

  The intricate silverwork on the handle, the sharpness of the blade, she knew that knife; he’d had it forever. It was his favorite, he often said.

  With steady hands, he swiped the knife at James. Her husband stiffened and bounced just slightly on the balls of his feet and waited. Rose once more felt for something to use, a book to throw or a candlestick. Robert lunged, startling her. He let loose a wordless howl and leaped at James.

  Rose watched it, as if everything moved underwater or through treacle. Slowly, every movement played out before her. Robert lunged, the knife straight as he aimed for James. But James pivoted and easily caught Robert’s wrist with both hands and used Robert’s own momentum to twist the knife.

  James stepped forward, still holding her father’s wrist. The knife plunged into Robert instead.

  Suddenly it was over. Robert dropped to the floor, the knife he loved so much protruding from his chest. He gurgled and gasped for air. Rose tried to move, to go to him, but her limbs refused to obey.

  He tried to kill her. Her own father tried to murder her. Had, she remembered, in the past. In that other life she and James lived.

  Robert twitched, his legs jerking as blood pooled over his shirt, around the once beautiful silver-handled knife. She watched him, unable to go to him yet unable to look away.