Liam’s dark eyes softened as they regarded him. “Ye know, for brothers with oddly comparable lives, ye’d think we’d understand each other better. That we’d have maintained a more … fraternal relationship over the years.”
Gavin snorted. “Just because we had the same father doesna mean our lives are anything alike.”
Instead of reacting as he would have once done, Liam merely quirked an eyebrow at him. “Just because ye’re not the Demon Highlander, doesna mean ye doona have the Mackenzie temper. Ye’ve just hidden it behind vice and indifference. For example, I ken how angry ye are right now at yer wife.”
“She’s not my wife.” Every muscle in Gavin’s body tensed, and he darkly wondered what she’d done for the Rook to convince him to turn himself in.
“She loves ye.”
“She lied,” he said through clenched teeth. “Unforgivably lied.”
“Yet another way our lives parallel one another. Or did ye forget that Mena also came to the Highlands under the guise of a spinster governess rather than the fugitive viscountess she was?”
“Samantha…” The name sounded foreign and bitter on his tongue. “She was married.”
Liam lifted a shoulder. “As was Mena. If ye remember, she was still married when I uncovered her deception. At least Samantha is already a widow.”
“Because she killed her own husband.”
“She just gets more and more fascinating.” The Rook’s smile only widened when the two brothers lanced him with their warning glares. “Oh come, I think we can all agree that not all deaths are the tragedies other people think they should be.”
Gavin ignored him. “Let’s not forget the child.”
“Aye.” Liam raised a hand to squeeze at the back of his neck. A gesture Gavin found himself doing often out of habit. “Under any other circumstance, her lie would be untenable. And maybe, to ye, it is. But consider this, Thorne. She was a lady who didna want her child to be a Masters. There is another lady I know who didna want her son to be a Mackenzie. If ye ask me … they both had good reason.”
Again, Gavin struggled to swallow. The condition worsened when Liam laid a gentle hand on his shoulder.
“Maybe … we doona have to be our father’s sons anymore. Perhaps we could just be brothers. Mackenzie brothers.”
Gavin had to blink away a strange and foreign blur when he met the dark eyes he’d so often laughed into as a boy. “Ye think there’s redemption, Liam? After that night … After everything we’ve done to each other?”
“I thought ye were safe at Inverthorne all those years ago. I didna ken he’d make ye pay for yer mother’s freedom with yer own flesh.”
“Because ye left, Liam. Ye always left.”
“I didna just leave, I ran. And ken that each time I did, I took something away from ye. Yer brother. Yer name. The woman ye loved.” Reaching into his sporran, he removed several papers with official wax seals. “This time, brother … let me give something back.”
“What’s this?” Gavin ran his thumb over the seal of the Queen’s Records Office.
“She was planning on telling ye the truth the whole time.”
“How do ye know?”
“Because once she gave ye this, all secrets would be revealed.”
Breaking the seal, Gavin opened the document with trembling hands, pertinent words spilling forth in a whisper as his eyes devoured what they could barely process. “Bill of Sale … from Alison Ross to … Samantha Masters … all land and structures of Erradale Estate in perpetuity … in the amount of…” His jaw dropped at the same time his eyes lifted to meet those of his brother. “This is how much we settled on for her annuity, give or take twenty pounds.” And a great deal less than he’d offered Alison Ross for Erradale only months prior.
“Aye.” Liam nodded. “And she would have had to start this process at the time of your marriage, if not before.”
Christ. No. She’d tried to tell him, she’d begged him to listen. And he’d not allowed her to speak.
He’d told her she was nothing.
She was not the only liar.
“There’s a second paper,” Liam said.
Gavin flipped the page and had to put a hand out to prop himself against the wall, lest he drop to his knees in the barren stone hallway. “The deed and transfer of Erradale Estate to Gavin St. James, Earl of Thorne…”
“Of clan Mackenzie.” Liam finished what he could not. “She loves ye, Gavin. Despite anything else she may have said or not said, ye canna dispute the truth of that.”
Gavin seized Liam’s shirt, suddenly desperate to see her. “Is she at Ravencroft?”
Soberly, Liam shook his head. “She’s gone to the Continent. Mena and I tried to convince her to stay, but she is worried about the extradition laws to America. She’s still a woman wanted for murder, after all.”
Gavin’s mind raced faster than his heart, if that was possible. “Tell me, is Dorian at Ben More Castle?”
“Dorian?” An austere metal sound echoed down the hallway as both the Rook’s hands landed against the door. “Do you mean Dorian Blackwell?”
“Aye.”
“You have dealings with him?” This was the first bit of intensity Gavin had sensed from the Rook, and he had to admit he found it even more unsettling than the characteristic nonchalance. He shared a look with Liam. Neither of them had business dealings with the Blackheart of Ben More. They knew better.
He was, however, their bastard half brother.
“It doesna surprise me that ye’re acquaintances,” Gavin said carefully.
“On the contrary, we’re not at all acquainted.” The Rook seemed to have gathered some of his previous composure. “But Dorian Blackwell is a name that haunts me, and I’m taking this free ride to Newgate because that’s where I know my past with him began.”
Liam stepped forward. “I warn ye, Rook, he’s our kin. We’d not see him harmed.”
“Your kin?” The black gaze sharpened, and Gavin was struck not for the first time, at how much the Rook also resembled Dorian.
“Our brother.” He scrutinized the pirate with new suspicion.
“Well,” the villain marveled. “Say what you will about your father, he was rather indiscriminately prolific in creating notoriously dangerous men.”
“Aye,” Gavin said. “And Dorian will be looking for ye, Rook. We’ll warn him ye’re coming.”
“Warn him all you like.” The Rook’s eyes glinted like obsidian glass as he melted away from the port. “He’ll never see this coming.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Samantha had decided the sea was her favorite place to grieve. To weep. What were a few more drops of salty moisture into incalculable measurements of it?
Nothing.
It was nothing.
Just like she had become nothing to the only man she’d ever loved.
For she realized now that she’d never truly loved Bennett. She’d needed him at the time. She’d loved the way he’d made her feel, at first. But the grief she’d experienced at his loss didn’t touch this hopeless sort of despair that threatened to drown her now.
It had proved impossible to properly nurse a broken heart while pitching the contents of her stomach over the side of yet another ship, as she crossed the choppy English Channel. She’d distracted herself from seasickness by studying maps and manuals of Europe to settle on where she would like to raise her child. She’d decided upon the Netherlands, and boarded a train toward Amsterdam the day after she’d landed on the Continent. She’d needed the extra time to recover her land legs, even after such a short trip.
She tried to shove her pain aside. To focus on the child inside her, on the future ahead of her. She was a fool to allow a man so much control over her happiness. To let him dictate her feelings with such a deft and cruel hand.
Especially that man.
She could add her heart to the legions of those he’d broken.
The difference was, she’d deserved it.
&nbs
p; She didn’t believe it arrogant to assume she’d left a sizable wound on his heart, as well.
And would do anything to take it back.
She was glad, in a way, that she’d never see him again. It would kill her to confront the accusation in his eyes, or worse, indifference. To occupy the same space with his beauty and be treated as a stranger. As an enemy.
She could survive so much, but not that.
It occurred to Samantha as the steam engine crawled over the wintry border of Gelderland to Brabant that she ought to consider avoiding trains in the foreseeable future. They made her anxious, unsettled, and with good reason.
A private compartment had been an extravagance, but grieving in a car packed with people was more than she could bear at the moment.
She was glad she’d decided against settling in another hot, arid climate. The Mediterranean seemed like the loveliest place, but Samantha realized she’d grown fond of green land and crisp, cool sea air.
If she couldn’t stay in the Scottish Highlands, she could at least find a comparable climate on the Continent.
The Dutch seemed like lovely people, and were famous equestrians. It shouldn’t at all be hard for her to find work among them.
Looking down, she poised her quill and ink over the vellum paper and applied herself to the letter she promised to Mena.
She could think of nothing to say that wouldn’t completely dishonor her. She wanted to ask how Gavin fared now that he’d been released from prison. She wanted to follow the post back to the shores of the only place that had ever truly felt like home. Wester Ross. Inverthorne. The happiest days of her life had been spent in a gray stone castle lording over a Highland forest that crawled down to a tempestuous sea. She’d lost her identity there.
And then she’d lost her heart.
A mist of tears stung her eyes, and blurred the plush golden felt of the seat opposite her. Would this ever stop hurting? Would she ever not be haunted by a gorgeous ghost with green eyes and a devastating smile?
The unmistakable clicks of a pistol’s cylinder drove her to her feet, upsetting her lap desk and inkwell. She blinked the gather of tears from her lashes, and they coalesced into enough moisture to spill down her cheek.
“Ye forgot something important, bonny.”
Her knees buckled and little spots of darkness gathered at her periphery as she half gasped, half sobbed his name.
Gavin.
He filled the doorway of her compartment with his beautiful broad shoulders, bedecked in a fine wool traveling suit that matched the darker tones in his thick, perfect hair.
For an absurd moment, she feared the pistol.
But then he’d dumped it, along with the wooden box containing the other, onto the empty seat, and went to her in three long strides.
There was nowhere for Samantha to retreat, so she just whimpered when he pulled her against him, effectively helping her to avoid an uncharacteristic swoon.
He smelled glorious, like a cedar forest and soap. She tried not to notice. Tried not to process the bliss coursing through her at being in the circle of his arms once more.
Was this happening? Or had she fallen asleep, only to wake later from this dream, her grief fresh and crushing.
“Why?” she managed through a chest and throat flooded with too many emotions to safely allow the passage of air. “What are you doing here?
He cupped her face with gentle hands and pulled her back enough to look into his eyes. What she saw glimmering in the green irises, branching into the laugh lines, and furrowed in the brow, caused more tears to chase the others down her cheeks. That wasn’t what forgiveness looked like, was it?
“I lied to ye, as well.” The tender earnestness in his voice threatened to unstitch her, and Samantha held on to his wrists, ready for anything. “I kept from ye the fact that I was a smuggler.”
“Your sin doesn’t touch mine,” she interjected quickly. “I kept from you the fact I was married, and a murderer. Also, my name and my—”
“Dammit, woman, let me apologize.” His hands tightened on her face, but not painfully.
She swept her lashes down. Could they not even make up without fighting? she wondered through a budding smile.
“I’m sorry, do go on.”
“I told ye that ye were nothing to me, and that was my biggest lie of all, bonny, because ye’ve become my reason for everything.”
Behind her ribs, her heart thudded and swelled. And still, she couldn’t trust this moment. This declaration. This reason to hope.
“But I—”
“I’ve come to take ye home.” His hands slid from her jaw, down the high neck of her gown, to clutch at her shoulders.
“But what about—”
“It’s been decided, lass. By all of us. Mother, Eammon, Callum, Liam, Mena … even Locryn and Calybrid, who somehow now reside in my castle. Ye belong at Inverthorne. Ye belong to me, and I’m here to fetch what’s mine.”
Her eyebrows dropped into a scowl. “A Highland proposal, is it? One half conceit, and one half brute force?”
“If that’s what it takes.” He quirked that arrogant smile down at her, the one she used to despise. And then had come to crave. To love. “Ye know once I set my cap at something, I’m rather relentless. Ye might as well surrender now, bonny, and agree to marry me.”
“Have you thought this through?” She wrenched out of his grip and turned to the window so as to gather her wits without his beauty and his brogue stealing them from her. “I’m still a wanted woman. I’m not safe in the Highlands anymore.” Her hand went to her stomach. “And then there’s the child I carry. The one that doesn’t belong to you. I know what I did was wrong, but I’d still not have my child raised a bastard.”
Even at her back, his charisma, height, and strength were undeniable. He moved closer, reaching around her stiff shoulders to place a document in her line of sight.
“Bonny Mackenzie?” she whispered, the official documents of birth and citizenship blurred as new tears threatened her vision. “You’ve given me a new identity?”
“My brother Dorian has a few men in his employ that are a deft hand at forgeries,” he said against her ear. “I realized I never quite accepted ye as Alison Ross, and I doona know ye as Samantha Masters. But ye’ve always been Bonny to me. It’s Bonny I fought and laughed with, and convinced to marry me, and bedded every night…”
He dropped his head to place a kiss in that vulnerable place behind her ear. The one that lifted all the hairs on her body, and created shivers of bliss that traveled all the way down to the apex of her thighs.
“It’s Bonny I couldna get enough of. It’s Bonny that I love.”
The word she’d craved to hear landed like a lead weight in her gut. Turning back she pressed the point that he’d not yet addressed. “But this child—”
A long finger pressed against her mouth, quieting her words, but not quite her fears. “My father made at least as many bastards as he had legitimate children. I witnessed the agony of his unwanted children, and I swear by all the gods of my home and people, that I’ll never see a child of yours, of ours, feel that kind of shame. If I love ye, I will love yer baby, and claim it as my own. And I vow this wee one will never know it isna of my body as much as it is of yours.”
Processing his declaration, she stared at him mutely, waiting for the hammer to fall. Waiting for the next words that would crush the hope and love surging to the surface.
People didn’t actually get happy endings, did they? Especially not people like her. The orphaned. The unwanted. The untruthful.
He took her mouth with his own, slanting his lips over hers, licking the salt of her tears from the seam with his velvety tongue.
She opened for him, accepted his possession, his love, and all the emotion he poured from his lips into hers. No longer was he the leisurely lover, the infamous rake. This time, his kiss conveyed a desperation she’d never felt from him before. A passion she’d not known him to be afflicted with.
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br /> Her response to it was instant and fierce. She threaded her fingers into his lush hair and turned her hands into fists, imprisoning him to the onslaught of her answering ardor. A lifetime of loneliness flared between them, fusing them to each other, offering what neither of them had ever been able to claim.
Belonging. He was hers. She was his. And neither of them would be alone again.
He groaned, then growled, crushing her to him, his hands everywhere, clutching and grabbing at the weight of her skirts.
She was so lost in his mouth, that she hadn’t realized he’d pushed her onto the seat and pulled up her skirts until he was moving against her. Thrusting inside of her.
Her body was ready for his intrusion, wet and warm, open and needy.
His possession brought her to life, warming the blood from ice in her veins. Lifting the weight of guilt and sorrow, turning it into a taut and frantic lust.
Their mouths remained fused, as their bodies found a rhythm that matched the frenzy of their need. He filled her completely, gliding against her thighs in slick, graceful motions that increased in frenetic speed until he was pounding into her.
Raw sounds of animal pleasure crawled up her throat as her climax found her almost instantly.
Breaking the kiss, he pressed his palm over her mouth, muffling her screams as her body clenched tightly around his shaft in pulses of excruciating bliss.
The sounds of his own passion he stifled against her bodice as he jerked and kicked within her, filling her with the warmth of his release. Her name exploded from him, buried against her chest, against her heart. Bonny. Her new self. The woman he loved. The woman who loved him back.
After, they fought for their breath as the haze of lust became a glow of pleasure.
His wicked smile had returned when he lifted his head to look at her. “Ye know, Bonny, ye still havena accepted my proposal of marriage.”
She met his wicked smile, and raised him one teasing crook of an eyebrow. “I thought my answer didn’t matter. I was under the impression that you’d decided it was happening and no matter what I say, you’ll still drag me home by the hair like a big dumb brute.”
The Scot Beds His Wife Page 33