Pirates had overtaken him and Callum in Borneo. He’d done time in a foreign prison during his youthful travels. Or, his favorite, he’d made a pilgrimage to a zealous monastery; doing his best to cure himself of his wicked, salacious need for fornication through self-flagellation.
Anything but the truth.
Oh, how their legs would part, their fingers smoothing over the groves and welts, right before their nails scored them.
So why did her single, curious touch evoke such a violent reaction?
Perhaps because … he’d forgotten about them for a precious moment. He’d not been in control of the narrative, and realized suddenly that if he asked a woman to share his life, all the pleasant fictions he’d created for himself would not last for long.
It had also been what he’d sensed behind her touch, what he’d seen in the eyes that’d stared up at him with astonishment, but not fear.
She wanted to pity him.
She needed a reason to think him better than he was. An excuse for his wicked ways.
Well, he had none. His scars were given to him by the same man who’d shot and killed her father, and if he was going to wed and bed her, that was a conversation best left alone.
Forever.
* * *
Samantha had done a few perilous things in her life, but this had to be among the worst. One misstep could mean an absolute, humiliating disaster.
Just what in the nine levels of hell had she gotten herself into?
She made slow progress toward the Earl of Thorne’s window, half hobbling, half hopping with the chamber pot she’d retched into that morning clutched carefully in both hands. She had the bed sheets wrapped around her, and it was as difficult trying not to trip over them as it was not to spill the disgusting contents of the pot. Putting any weight on her leg hurt enough to evoke beads of sweat on her brow and upper lip. Tears stung her eyes, but she gritted her teeth and persevered, because the alternative was unthinkable.
The thought of the Earl of Thorne, her fiancé, catching her thus not only mortified her.
It terrified her.
What if she repulsed him? Or worse, what if he guessed her condition?
Dear God, she’d pulled a few stunts in her day, but this … this beat them all.
Reaching the wall, she leaned heavily upon it, muttering a rare request to heaven in hopes that no one lingered beneath the window. She used her elbow for leverage, and set the chamber pot on the stone ledge as she opened the casement and peeked down to the grounds of Inverthorne to check for any unsuspecting victims below.
What she found was paradise.
Had she not known better, she’d have thought Inverthorne a castle in the clouds. Indeed, dense swirls of silver and white mist as thick as bales of lamb’s wool hovered over both the forest to the north, and the moors to the south below the window. A pale, brilliant sky met the darker blue of the ocean on a distant horizon to the west, beyond which Samantha understood were the Hebrides. The wild green isles were visible from Ravencroft, but not from the long shores of Gairloch and Inverthorne lands.
Winter scented the air with frost and evergreens and juniper. The camphorlike essence mixed with the damp chill, and miraculously stilled her unsettled stomach. Closing her eyes, she inhaled what felt like the first deep breath she’d taken in years.
This. This place. This handsome castle in the clouds. Its towers of gray stone had lorded over the Highland mist for longer than the country in which she was born ever existed. It had withstood epic sea gales, invasions, and brutal sieges.
That had to count for something, didn’t it? Maybe … maybe she could find sanctuary here. What had Alison called it?
Comraich.
What a lovely word. She wondered if it would be extended to someone like her. Not Alison Ross, an orphaned Scottish heiress, but Samantha Masters, an orphaned nobody.
No, worse than that. A thief. A liar.
A murderer.
As she stared, unblinking, down into the vapor, Samantha had never in her life wished harder to be someone else. Not somewhere else, living another life. But here. Now. In this chamber belonging to quite possibly the most arrogant, most beautiful man ever created of the earth and mist and fortified by fire.
But not as Samantha Masters. As someone elegant and graceful, ladylike and seductive with buckets of—what was the word Mena Mackenzie had used?—ah, yes. Accomplishments. What if she were someone who could entice a man such as Gavin St. James to be more than somewhat faithful?
Emitting a self-loathing sound, she scowled down at the covered chamber pot, gripping the handles in preparation to empty it, keenly aware of a few calluses on the pads of her palms pressed against the smooth porcelain.
Christ, when had she become so sentimental and foolish? Marriage to Lord Thorne was a very unlikely long-term solution. It was a means to an end, a desperate grasp for survival. She knew next to nothing about him, only that he was an unscrupulous scoundrel, a notorious rake, a relentless rival, and … a man of his word.
She didn’t understand exactly how she knew that. She just did. She felt it in that place unpolluted by desire or distrust. That place that recognized the verisimilitude in his vow to protect her once she belonged to him.
She muttered a low curse every time she was forced to accept that she needed protection at the moment. That her child needed it. Needed him. But only for now. Once she healed. Once the baby arrived. Once she was paid her first and maybe her second annuity.
Once Gavin had tired of her … which he undoubtably would.
She could consider her choices.
The ancient hinges of the chamber door protested movement in the late morning chill. In a thoughtless panic, Samantha shoved the entire chamber pot out the window, simultaneously allowing the sheet to drop from her body.
“Shit,” she cussed. “Goddammit.” She watched the pot disappear into the mist with something akin to fascinated horror, before whirling to face Gavin and groping for a viable reason to be up and about on her screaming leg just as desperately as she groped for the bedclothes.
First, she’d need to gauge just how much he’d seen of—
The figure framed in the stone arch stymied her speechless. A woman. A small, delicately beautiful woman with lush hair the precise color of the sand about eighty miles east of where she’d grown up. The place where the sunbaked Nevada desert met the stretch of salt flats.
A melange of dark gold, laced with striations of white was styled and coiffed to perfection. The woman stood still and straight as a china doll, and she gave Samantha the impression of similar fragility. Her skin had surely never touched the sun, and when she drifted into the chamber, her feet didn’t seem to touch the ground.
“Is everything all right, Miss Ross?” Her accent was a softer version than that of the Highlands men Samantha was used to, laced with touching feminine concern.
No. She couldn’t think of one thing about this situation that even approached the realm of all right.
But she was alive. She’d survived. And that was a place to start.
“I’m just fine, thank you.” Samantha lied carefully.
“That surprises me. I can’t imagine that any woman who’d fought off malefactors almost entirely on her own, was shot in the process, and then proposed to all in the course of one night could resemble anything close to fine.” The lady’s delicate nose twitched a little, and she turned her face to the window. “Are you ill, Miss Ross?”
Two things became very apparent to Samantha the moment the elegant woman turned her face toward the window, revealing stunning eyes the color of dappled oak leaves. First, that the woman was blind.
And second, that she was Gavin St. James’s mother.
They didn’t resemble each other in the least. Gavin was sculpted of steel and sin, and this woman was naught but an ethereal whisper. But those eyes. Those unbelievably green eyes. They were unmistakable.
“No … I … um…” Samantha turned, and then gripped the
ledge with gritted teeth at the stab of pain the movement caused. When she could breathe again, she closed the windows with the hand she wasn’t using to clutch the sheets to her, secured the latch, and contemplated closing the shutters, as well. Immediately she felt foolish, the lighting wouldn’t matter, not to her guest.
And, thankfully, neither would her nudity.
“There was a draft,” she finished lamely, cursing the obvious tension that escaped on the words.
Her visitor’s face remained placid as she took three more steps and reached out for the high back of a chair, one of a handsome set arranged artfully by the fireplace that could have comfortably housed a small family.
“Worry not, dear. It’s always a bit blustery out to the west. ’Tis why all the outbuildings are over on the other side of Inverthorne, so they can be protected by the structure and its high walls from the buffeting of the sea. Nothing but the moors and bogs out this side of the tower all the way down to the beach. Though that makes the view bonnier, does it not?”
There was that word again, “bonny.”
“Sure.” Samantha had the idea that the woman was babbling, though why the fine lady had reason to be nervous was beyond comprehension. She breathed a sigh of relief, confident her erstwhile chamber pot had a good chance of remaining hidden in the bogs. Thus encouraged, she began the painful journey back over the cold stones toward the bed. “Are you—are you looking for Lord Thorne?” she asked through teeth clenched with pain. “I’m not sure where he’s gone off to.”
God, she was ridiculous. Caught out half naked in her fiancé’s room by his sweet, blind mother while trying to rid herself of the evidence of a most terrible deceit.
Dear Christ, what if the woman thought they were in love?
“I didn’t come to see my son. I came to meet the woman he’s about to make his wife.” The lady smiled at where Samantha had been three hobbles ago.
“Oh! My God—I mean gosh—goodness. Of course. He must have told you before he left.” Shit, had she just cussed in front of a marchioness? “I’m … Alison Ross, but my friends call me Sam.” She felt like she should do something. Curtsy?
No, not to a blind woman! Christ. What was the matter with her? She should probably go shake her hand or … kiss it or something, but walking the span of the grand master suite might as well have been paddling across the Atlantic. Her leg was going to give out any moment now. And all she needed to do was reach that damn bed. Suddenly she changed her mind about the laudanum. She’d give her right arm for a healthy dose right about now.
“And I am Lady Eleanor Megan Mackenzie.” Running her hand along the chair, Lady Eleanor drifted forward, reaching out for the next chair, finding it, and letting it guide her toward the bed, as well. “But you can call me Mother, if you’d like. That is, if your mother wouldn’t object.”
Samantha suddenly ached to aid the poor woman, but as close as she was to collapse, she’d rather make it to safety.
Mother. She’d never called anyone that before.
“My mother passed,” Samantha explained simply, knowing it was true of Alison, as well.
“I knew her,” Lady Eleanor said, her lashes sweeping down. “I was always so sorry…” She let that thought trail away, before picking up another thread of their previous conversation. “Gavin didn’t tell me he was considering a match between the two of you, but there’s little in this castle that a blind woman doesn’t hear.”
Reaching the bed, Samantha collapsed onto it with a sigh that quickly became a moan as she scooted toward the headboard with only the strength of her arms. The bedclothes were in complete disarray, but she was covered and warm enough, so she couldn’t summon the strength to care as she lay there, panting and hurting, wishing the kind woman would leave and alternately not wanting to be alone.
“You’re … a Mackenzie, not a St. James?” she queried, plucking the first question out of the nebulous of them drifting just beyond her pain and mortification.
Samantha had the impression that Lady Eleanor was counting as she took measured steps toward the bed, her silvery, diaphanous gown magically insinuating that she was some sort of floating angel.
Once she reached the bed, she perched on the edge ever so delicately before answering. “St. James was my maiden name. I’m unable to extract myself from the Mackenzie as Gavin has done. I am the dowager Marchioness of Ravencroft, after all. A distinction I cannot escape, I’m afraid.”
“I’m sorry.” It was all Samantha could think to say.
“I feel as though I rather earned the title.” Lady Eleanor smothered a bleak expression with another of her soft, polite smiles.
“Oh.”
They were both silent an uncomfortable moment.
“It is no secret why Gavin should like to so suddenly marry you, Miss Ross,” Lady Eleanor began. “You are from an old and respected family, and we both understand how desperately he desires Erradale.”
Good, so she knew it was a marriage of convenience. That uncomplicated things a great deal.
“The question is, why would you agree to marry my son? Has he … gotten you into trouble?” she asked meaningfully. “Does it have anything to do with what you tossed out the window?”
“Well … er…” Dammit. Was this some kind of a nightmare?
“Are you in love with him?” The dowager hurried on, blessedly saving her from the previous question.
Samantha agonized over what to tell her. Ultimately, she chose the truth, as she could really only stand so many lies at once.
“No. I do not love him.” Hell, she barely liked him. “But I … but we need each other.”
“I believe that’s for the best.”
Samantha gaped at the woman, thinking she couldn’t be more shocked if God reached down and miraculously restored her sight.
“Don’t misunderstand me, Sam—I hope I may call you Sam, as I dearly wish that we will be friends—but while my son is an unfailingly good man, he’ll make a terrible husband if you expect love, devotion, or forgive me, fidelity from him.”
“I don’t,” Samantha whispered.
Lady Eleanor nodded her approval. “It isn’t his fault, you know.” She invoked the chorus of many a mother with a roguish son. “It’s not that he has his father in him. I don’t believe that he’ll ever harm you physically. But … he was—is—such a sweet boy. And his tender heart has been broken simply too many times, you see, there are too many pieces for him to give away.”
The expression on Lady Eleanor’s face was so painfully earnest, Samantha forgot herself for a moment and reached for the woman’s hand. “I understand, Lady Eleanor—Mother—Gavin and I have an arrangement, nothing more. In truth, if he gave me his heart I—I don’t know if I’d have anything to give back.”
“For that I am both sorry and grateful.” Lady Eleanor smiled forlornly.
Samantha couldn’t remember ever having such a candid discussion with a friend, let alone a veritable stranger. It was both unsettling and wondrous and unspeakably sad.
“I’ll admit to some excitement when Alice told me we were welcoming a gunslinger into the family,” the dowager continued. “What an ordeal you’ve suffered. I’d be nigh catatonic in your place.”
“I was lucky your son found me when he did.” Samantha was glad Lady Eleanor couldn’t see her flush of pleasure at the rare compliment. “Who is Alice?” she asked, never truly comfortable at being the subject of a conversation.
“She’s my companion and maid. For a woman with my particular ailment, she’s no less than invaluable. She’s my eyes and sometimes my ears, and she’s heard a great deal about you.”
“Like what?” Samantha asked nervously.
“Like that you’re clever and capable and brave. That you’re an unparalleled horsewoman and—apparently—a crack shot. That my son finds you infuriating, but that he calls you bonny.”
“Oh…” Samantha brought a hand to her burning cheeks, wishing she could be just a tiny bit more verbose and erud
ite than one of the gutted fish Callum was in the habit of leaving for her.
“I wish we’d met back when…” Lady Eleanor’s eyes closed and remained that way, as though hiding a secret pain. “As a girl I was considered the best horsewoman from Cape Wrath to Argyll. But that was before … before I married Laird Ravencroft. I’d have showed you the very best riding paths along the moors, and taken you to the highest point of Gresham Peak, where it seems that you could almost see across the whole of the Highlands, all the way to Inverness.”
So Lady Eleanor hadn’t always been blind. Samantha burned to ask her what happened, but something told her she would regret the answer the moment she learned it.
A door bounded against the stone, announcing an interloper, and Samantha jumped just as violently as Lady Eleanor did.
“It has been always said the women of Wester Ross are the most beautiful outside of Tyr na Nog, and here be the evidence right in front of me, not that I doubted it.” The years Eammon Monahan had spent in Scotland did next to nothing to change his Irish brogue, and Sam was very glad. For he was as lyrically jovial as his son, Callum, was enigmatic. It was obvious that the lines at his eyes had been grooved by smiles rather than scowls. Unlike Callum, his beard was more gray than red, and matched his darker hair not at all. He was like his voice, big, merry, and approachably handsome.
“Beauty i-is not a-always a blessing, Mr. Monahan.” Eleanor’s grip tightened to crushing around Samantha’s fingers, though she kept her features and voice schooled into the very picture of passivity.
Strange, the woman hadn’t struggled with a stutter before.
“And beauty is not always encompassed by the scope of what the eye can perceive, is it, my lady?” He addressed the dowager marchioness, but winked at Samantha, who pulled the counterpane up to cover her bare shoulders.
Lady Eleanor fell silent, her shoulders curling forward, and her sternum doing its best to kiss her spine as she seemed to deflate. It was a protective gesture. A way of making herself seem smaller, unthreatening.
The Scot Beds His Wife Page 18