TO KISS A WILD SCOT
“Maoth-chridheach,” he murmured. “Tenderhearted, just as Dougal said.”
She seemed not to know what to say to that, but her gaze met his. Both of them were quiet, the tension building between them as they stared at each other without speaking. The silence grew heavy with expectation until Logan, almost without knowing he did it, leaned toward her.
As he drew closer her green eyes darkened, and her lips parted…
He didn’t leap upon her, or take her mouth hard, as if he had every right to it. No, he took his time, his mouth drawing closer to hers so gradually he was made achingly aware of how badly he wanted her kiss long before his lips touched hers.
But when they did…when they did…
A sigh unlike any he’d ever heard before left Juliana’s lips. Her mouth was so warm, her lips softer than he ever could have imagined. He kissed her carefully, his lips gentle and teasing until she opened her mouth under his…
Books by Anna Bradley
LADY ELEANOR’S SEVENTH SUITOR
LADY CHARLOTTE’S FIRST LOVE
TWELFTH NIGHT WITH THE EARL
MORE OR LESS A MARCHIONESS
MORE OR LESS A COUNTESS
MORE OR LESS A TEMPTRESS
THE WAYWARD BRIDE
TO WED A WILD SCOT
Published by Kensington Publishing Corporation
To Wed a Wild Scot
Anna Bradley
LYRICAL PRESS
Kensington Publishing Corp.
www.kensingtonbooks.com
Contents
Books by Anna Bradley
To Wed a Wild Scot
Contents
Copyright
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Epilogue
Gaelic Glossary
Author’s Notes
Sources
Teaser Chapter
Copyright
To the extent that the image or images on the cover of this book depict a person or persons, such person or persons are merely models, and are not intended to portray any character or characters featured in the book.
LYRICAL PRESS BOOKS are published by
Kensington Publishing Corp.
119 West 40th Street
New York, NY 10018
Copyright © 2019 by Anna Bradley
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.
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Lyrical Press and Lyrical Press logo Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.
First Electronic Edition: September 2019
ISBN-13: 978-1-5161-0947-0 (ebook)
ISBN-10: 1-5161-0947-3 (ebook)
First Print Edition: September 2019
ISBN-13: 978-1-5161-0949-4
ISBN-10: 1-5161-0949-X
Printed in the United States of America
Prologue
Strathnaver, Scotland, 1814
The sun has not yet illuminated the morning sky, but the fires are already burning. The timbered roofs groan and hiss under the assault, but hours pass before the heavy beams succumb to the flames and collapse, still smoking, into the small farmhouse kitchens. It’s not a place for women or children, but they’re there, weeping quietly as they watch their homes reduced to cinders on the ground.
The men aren’t quiet. This is the Scottish Highlands, where men wear the dirt of the land under their fingernails, just as their fathers did, and before them their grandfathers, digging a living from the soil. They’ve earned their fury, their hatred.
Greed, one farmer mutters as charred black fragments of his roof float upward in the hazy predawn sky. Patrick Sellar lit Will Chisholm’s house up with his mother-in-law still inside. Murderers.
Murderers, another farmer echoes, his voice hoarse from the smoke. Robert MacKay’s roof set afire, with his two sick little girls still lying in their beds.
There are no landlords here to witness the destruction. The Countess of Sutherland has sent her factor, Patrick Sellar, to clear the land for the sheepherders who will take possession as soon as the farmers have been driven away. Aside from a barn here and there, Sellar burns every building in his path, so the Cheviot sheep will be free to roam and graze at will.
The men who come to burn the houses, like Sellar, are Scots themselves—sheriff’s officers, constables, and Sellar’s own sheepherders. Their faces are hard, uncompromising as they set their fires in service to Sellar, to the Countess of Sutherland. They came from the south—from England, or the Scottish Borders—on horseback. These men here today with their blazing torches weren’t the first to come, nor will they be the last.
Sometimes they wait until the families leave the farmhouses before they set them alight.
Sometimes they don’t.
Every house in Rosal Township is set ablaze, one after the other. They all burn at once. A gray cloud envelops all of northern Scotland. People as far away as Thurso can taste smoke and ash on their tongues.
Margaret MacKay, Chisholm’s mother-in-law, dies of her burns five days later. A day after her death, the last of the Rosal fires burn themselves out.
In 1814, Logan Blair is twenty-four years old. His father has been dead for a year now. Logan’s clansmen now consider him Laird of Clan Kinross, and so he would be, if a lairdship were determined only by a man’s love for his clan.
Logan has traveled north from County Ross to Kildare, and then further north to Strathnaver, to see for himself if the tales of the devastation of Clan MacKay are true. Before he arrives, he tells himself it can’t be as terrible as he’s been told.
Now, he watches as the haze of smoke from the fires billows against the horizon, turning the sun blood red. Rage coils inside him, hot and ugly, a serpent writhing in his chest. The confusion, the terror, the grief of the people defies description.
The smoke lingers much longer than the people do. The homes, their valued possessions—in some cases even their kin—are left behind in the ashes. Families, entire clans are disbanded. Some board ships to try their luck in North America. Others are relocated to coastal Scotland to scrabble out a hard living as kelp farmers, fishermen, or coal miners.
All of them are devastated.
Greed. Lan
dlords, squeezing Scotland until English pounds fall out.
Highland chiefs, turning on their own people, their own kin.
Logan was raised on Kinross soil, like his father before him, and before his father his grandfather, reaching back for generations. But these lairds are nothing like his grandfather, who fought and died at Culloden. The chiefs today are more English than Scottish, and the laird of Clan Kinross is no different.
All of Logan’s clan claim him as their laird. Not because they don’t know better, but because in every way that matters to them, he is laird. But the Duke of Blackmore owns the castle, and all the land surrounding it. As far as the law is concerned the duke is the true laird, leader of a clan he’s never seen, and doesn’t understand.
A clan he has no love for, and feels no loyalty to.
The Duke of Blackmore is Logan’s maternal uncle. Logan’s twin brother is the duke’s heir. Logan has never spoken to his brother, and he’s never seen him. Years ago, the clan midwife told Logan he and his brother were indistinguishable from each other as newborns—that from the day they emerged from the womb until the day the Duke of Blackmore took his brother away to England, they slept with their tiny hands clasped together.
His brother is half English, half Scot, just as Logan is, but his brother has never set foot on Scottish soil. He’s never worn the Kinross tartan, or chased a Scottish lass through the heather. He was raised as an Englishman, by an Englishman, with an Englishman’s sensibilities. He and Logan share their parents’ blood, but there is no history between them. There are no memories.
His brother has an Englishman’s name.
He was christened Gavin Blair, but now he goes by the name Fitzwilliam Vaughan. When their uncle dies, Fitzwilliam Vaughn will become the sixth Duke of Blackmore.
That’s when he’ll come to Scotland.
It won’t be today, or even tomorrow, but someday he’ll inherit the land, and he’ll come to assess his new properties. Measuring, calculating profits and losses with his every step over Kinross land.
No good ever came of an English aristocrat on Scottish soil. Logan isn’t fool enough to believe Fitzwilliam Vaughan will prove an exception to this rule. Soon enough he’ll discover Cheviot sheep are more profitable than people, and then the evictions will begin. If the future Duke of Blackmore chooses to be merciful, the people might lose only their homes. If he chooses not to be, the more vulnerable among them could lose their lives.
Logan sucks in a breath of air, coughing as smoke fills his lungs. Sellar’s burning party moves on to the next farmhouse, then the next, until the air becomes so heavy with thick black smoke that Logan can’t draw a clean breath.
By the end of it, all of Rosal Township will fall victim to the flames. The fire will devour more than two hundred fifty farmhouses, and scatter their inhabitants to every corner of Scotland and beyond. Later, long after the smoke has cleared, 1814 will be known as an bhliain ar an dó.
The Year of the Burning.
Logan doesn’t stay to watch it happen. He turns his horse’s head and leaves the scene of destruction behind him, but it’s not the last time he’ll see Patrick Sellar.
In 1816, he’ll make the short journey to Inverness, to watch Sellar go on trial for the murder of ninety-year-old Margaret MacKay, burned to death in Rosal Township two years earlier. Despite the evidence against him, Sellar will be found not guilty of the charge.
There are other factors, after Sellar. Other greedy landlords eager to trade their history, their heritage, their kinsman’s lives for a profit. The people will try to fight them, and they’ll lose. The clansmen have no rights. Neither their landlords nor the law will protect them.
When Fitzwilliam Vaughan arrives in Scotland, there will be nothing to stop him from setting fire to every farm on Kinross land.
Nothing, that is, but Logan.
He won’t let it happen. The duke owns the land, but he doesn’t own the people. Whatever Logan has to do—lie, steal, fight—he’ll do it. Laird or not, he’s been raised to protect his clan at all costs.
He won’t let an Englishman destroy Clan Kinross.
Not even if that Englishman is his brother.
Chapter One
Gretna Green, Scotland
Late June, 1818
By the time Lady Juliana Bernard realized something was amiss, her boots and the hem of her riding habit were already splattered with vomit.
Miss Findlay, who’d been looking a trifle green over the past few miles, slapped a hand over her mouth. “Oh, my lady! I’m so dreadfully—”
Sorry.
The word was lost in a faint gurgle, and poor Findlay once again cast up her accounts all over the floor of the carriage. Juliana jerked her feet back to save her boots from another dousing, but it was already too late.
“Oh, dear. I’m excessively mortified.” Miss Findlay sagged back against the squabs, her forehead sheened with sweat. “Oh, and I’ve ruined your boots, and your favorite blue habit!” she wailed, looking as if she were about to burst into tears.
“Now, Findlay, you mustn’t think on it. I have other riding habits. There’s no real harm done.” Juliana reached for her companion’s hand and patted it soothingly. “Indeed, I blame myself. I thought you looked a bit off color. I should have realized you were ill.”
“No, no. I’ll be perfectly well in a moment,” Miss Findlay protested weakly, but her face had gone from green to white, and she was obliged to swallow several times before she dared open her mouth again. “A brief rest, and I’ll be as fit as ever.”
Juliana didn’t argue, but as soon as Miss Findlay’s eyes drifted closed, she leaned out the window and told her manservant, Stokes to stop at the next inn. Miss Findlay had borne up well over the six days of travel between London and Gretna Green, but it was clear the poor thing was exhausted. As anxious as Juliana was to settle her business, she wasn’t quite so wicked as to drag her poor companion another twenty-five miles to Dumfries.
Wicked enough, though.
Miss Crampton, her old governess—a woman of stern propriety and rigid ethical principles—had warned Juliana time and again that every lie was like another bar in a sinner’s prison. Once a lie was told, one never escaped it. It might take years, even decades, but your lies would haunt you in the end.
Juliana shuddered. Miss Crampton had been a terrifying woman to be sure, but she hadn’t been wrong. Juliana had told dozens of lies over the past few weeks—to her father, to her friends, and even to her six-year-old niece, Grace—and now she was being punished for it.
None of this was Findlay’s fault. It was hers. Her toes were now resting in a puddle of vomit because she deserved it.
She dredged up a handkerchief, pressed it to her nose, and fell back against the squabs with a sigh. She must be mad to be chasing Fitzwilliam all the way to Scotland. When he’d left five months earlier he’d promised to write, and so he had—for the first month or so.
Since then he hadn’t replied to any of the dozens of letters she’d sent him.
Not even the most urgent ones.
But Fitzwilliam was her dearest friend, and they’d been promised to each since birth. If a lady in desperate straits couldn’t rely on her betrothed, whom could she rely on?
If she could only find him, all would be well.
But if I can’t…if I can’t…
The trouble was, she wasn’t quite sure where he was. That is, she knew he was somewhere in the vicinity of the Sassy Lassie Inn in Inverness, because he’d told her to send his letters there. He’d answered the first few, so she knew he’d received them. Surely Castle Kinross wasn’t so very far away from the inn? Surely, someone in Inverness would be able to direct her to the castle?
But if they couldn’t, or wouldn’t…
An image of Grace’s face the day Juliana had left her in Buckinghamshire rose in her mind. Grace
’s dark eyes—so like Juliana’s brother Jonathan’s—had filled with tears. Since her niece was born, they’d never spent a single day apart. Juliana had done her best to explain to Grace why she had to go, but at six years old Grace understood only that her beloved Aunt Juliana was leaving her behind. She’d clung to Juliana’s skirts, wailing, until her nurse had been obliged to drag her away.
Juliana squeezed her eyes closed and tried to hold off the familiar wave of grief and panic, but it was no use. Her chest tightened, her stomach heaved, and she might well have cast up her own accounts right then and there if Stokes hadn’t signaled the post boys to stop the coach.
She stuck her head out the window to survey the inn, and her stomach gave another threatening lurch. The King’s Head Inn was an indifferent looking place. Not dirty, precisely, but not clean, either, and cramped looking, with only a tiny inn yard and small stables. Juliana opened her mouth to instruct Stokes to go on, but Miss Findlay roused herself, and opened her eyes.
“Are we stopping, my lady?”
Juliana took one look at Findlay’s pallid, clammy face and decided the King’s Head Inn would have to do. “Yes, for a night. It’s another half day to Dumfries. We’re better off staying here and continuing our journey tomorrow.”
Miss Findlay looked so relieved, Juliana’s stomach knotted with guilt. She never should have involved poor Findlay in her mad scheme. “Stokes,” she called. “Secure rooms for tonight, if you would, and order a light supper and bath for Miss Findlay. There.” She gave Findlay a reassuring smile. “You’ll feel much better after you’ve rested a night.”
Stokes grumbled as he dismounted. He was a surly one, but he’d known Juliana since her birth, and was more like one of the family than a servant. Stokes wasn’t at all pleased about their highland adventure, but of all the servants at Graystone Court, he was the least likely to reveal the truth about it to her father. Lord Graystone hadn’t the faintest idea she was in Scotland. He thought she was in Buckinghamshire with Grace, and Juliana was determined to keep it that way. Stokes might grumble and scold a bit, but he’d keep her secret.
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