The Ravishing One

by Connie Brockway

  “What happened?”

  “I’ll tell ye what happened.” Jamie Craigg came around the corner of the castle carrying a rolled sheaf of paper in his fist. “Arthur and young Niall decided to save a bit o’ time and dinna lash the scaffolding proper to the castle wall, and whilst they were on it, it tipped over.”

  “Ah, I see.” He began to move past Jamie, his first impulse being to return to Fia. But Jamie caught his arm in his great paw.

  “Easy, Thomas, me lad. There’s a few things need tending to before ye tend to yer lady.” His smile was knowing and pointed, and Thomas flushed.

  “If you’re implying—”

  “I’m implying tha’ yer shirt is ripped down its front seam and half of it hangin’ out of yer breeches and there’s a mark on the base of yer throat that I’ve not worn since me weddin’ night—and a bloody shame I count it, too.”

  Thomas scowled, stuffing his shirt into his trousers. “Mind yer tongue, Jamie.”

  “I mean to,” Jamie said with a long, appraising look at his laird. He began unrolling the long cylinder of papers in his hand. “But before you go back to … wherever it is yer goin’, would ye have a look at some plans I’ve sketched from Lady Fia’s drawings?”

  Thomas froze. No one knew Fia’s Christian name. ’Twas uncommon and too readily associated with her father. “What did you say?”

  Jamie’s glance shifted from side to side. No one else was near them; the men had all gone back to their work. “I only saw her a few times, Tommy, and that was years ago, but a man who’s seen Fia Merrick does not forget her.”

  Thomas gripped the giant’s huge forearm, turning him to face him proper. “Ye’ll no harm her, Jamie. Ye’ll not tell any of the others, either. And I warn ye, my life stands between her and any harm that might come to her.”

  Jamie’s deep blue eyes met and held Thomas’s paler blue ones. He gave a little snort of offense and jerked his arm to free himself from Thomas’s hold. Thomas’s grip did not break, and instead Jamie found himself jerked closer to his laird. “I mean it, Jamie.”

  “Aye, ye young hothead,” Jamie snorted. “I see ye do, but you’ve no need to act the dragon to tha lassie’s maid. I mean the gel no harm, and neither would these others if they knew who she was, which”—he took advantage of Thomas’s amazement to snatch his arm free—“they don’t and won’t lest ye say different.” He rubbed his arm with a slightly aggrieved air. “Though I think ye do them a disservice in keepin’ it from them.”

  “I don’t understand,” Thomas said through stiff lips.

  “Ach!” Jamie’s disgust was patent. “We done much, we McClairens, before ye returned us here. Some of what we did, we did fer vengeance, and it brought us no joy. ’Struth, it nearly cost us our souls.”

  Seeing Thomas’s confusion, he went on, his eyes sliding away from Thomas’s. “Yer own sister, Favor, almost paid the dearest price of all, just so we could say as how we were avenged on the Earl of Carr. We made a plan, ye see, and had her raised in France, groomin’ her fer that plan. We were goin’ to marry her off to Carr, Tommy—”

  At Thomas’s violent start, Jamie grabbed his shoulders. “Please! Listen to me. We couldna tell ye, Tommy! We knew ye would never agree to it but we’d twisted it all up in our minds, what we wanted and what we needed and what we’d do to get it. We’d convinced ourselves that the price of one young girl’s innocence was not too much to pay fer justice.

  “Were it not fer Raine Merrick we would have done it, too, wed her to Carr and then murdered him so she would inherit his lands. But Raine stopped us in time and saved us from injuring ourselves in a way that all of Carr’s plottin’ and schemin’ and treachery could never have achieved.”

  He bit his lip, his gaze moving away from Thomas’s amazed one, shame coloring his ruddy face a darker hue. “I’m not proud of my part in it. I only thank God we never achieved what we set out to do.” He nodded, his lower lip thrust out. “So, don’t be surprised if ye don’t meet the sort of reaction yer clearly expectin’ if ye tell the rest about Lady Fia. We’ve no taste fer vengeance anymore and we’ve no time to waste chasin’ after retribution.” His gaze returned to Maiden’s Blush. “We’ve a castle to build.”

  His gaze dropped to meet Thomas’s. “And ye’ve yer own life to begin. Ye’ve spent all yer adulthood workin’ fer this, fer us. Ye found us and ye brought us here, but now it’s up to us.

  “And while ye’ll always be our laird, ye must let us atone in our own way fer what we nearly allowed ourselves to become, and we’ll no challenge ye on what ye must do, either,” he finished tellingly.

  Thomas stared at him in stunned silence. He’d had no idea. Favor had never told him of this part of her and Raine’s courtship.

  Jamie rerolled his drawings. “I suspect we can look over these plans some other time, eh?” He thumped the roll against his leg, and with a last glance walked toward the front of the castle. At the corner he stopped. “She’s the prettiest thing I’ve ever seen. But her character reminds me powerfully of her brother Raine. A good man, he is.”

  It was as close to a blessing as Jamie could give. Possibility broke and dawned within Thomas’s imagination, shining, brilliant, and attainable.

  Jamie was right. It was long past the time that he allowed Carr to have such power over him. Carr might chase him from Scotland and make him an exile from his home, but he didn’t need to allow Carr to make him an exile from his heart. From Fia.

  He would ask her if she would come with him when he left.

  As his wife.

  Fia stretched as indolently as a cream-fed kitten. Three times Thomas and she had luxuriated in the aftermath of their lovemaking and three times he’d catapulted her toward that summit of sexual desire.… Her face warmed with her thoughts.

  She did not want someone coming in by chance and finding her on a pile of petticoats. For though society claimed her to be both a temptress and a strumpet, Fia was modest and, when circumstances allowed, nearly shy. So, she dressed quickly and then went to the table and sat down.

  Soon, however, the images of what Thomas had done to her on that table chased her from there, and she wandered from the room and along the corridor, marveling at the beauty and serenity Thomas had wrested from the ruins. Drawn inexorably, she found herself back at the central part of the castle, facing the charred, stained remnants of all that was left of Carr’s rule.

  She swallowed, gooseflesh rising on her arms. The ornately carved leg of a table emerged from beneath a pile of plaster. Over there, shards of a Chinese vase were scattered like the missing puzzle pieces of a child’s game. Two sides of an ornate gilt picture frame lay tilted against what was left of a wall.

  She picked her way carefully amidst the debris. This would have been the hall leading off the great entry and this—she stepped over a blackened beam—would have been Carr’s study. Nothing was left. The great desk was gone and if the velvet-covered chairs and rich tapestry were there at all, ’twere ashes.

  Only the fireplace still stood, more or less. One side had fallen and the back was missing. Its costly marble mantelpiece lay cracked on the floor. She approached it warily, as one would a dead snake.

  Within that mantel, Carr had secreted his blackmail papers. She knelt down, brushing off the thick layer of ash. The second … no, the third tile from the right. She slipped her fingernails beneath the flat pane and tried to lift it. It didn’t budge.

  She looked around and spied a thin piece of blackened picture wire. She picked it up and twisted the end into a hook and wedged it firmly beneath the tile, prying it open. She peered into the black hole and reached inside. Her fingers closed on a thick-banded stack of papers, thin slivers of dry material peeling beneath her nails. Carefully she lifted it.

  It was a packet of letters and correspondence, the outermost ones charred by the infernolike heat, but those between still intact.

  Carr’s blackmail material.

  She’d always assumed that he’d retrieved all
of it the night of the fire. Indeed, he’d told her he had, even showing her some of them. Now she understood why; she’d been set up as a witness to their existence.

  But he hadn’t retrieved all the material. Right after the fire, when he’d been told that Wanton’s Blush had burned to the ground, he’d come here and seen the unrecognizable and still-smoldering pile that had been his home. He must have assumed nothing could survive the fire.

  And it shouldn’t have. What chance confluence of factors had allowed this little hidden niche to remain relatively unscathed?

  Gingerly she unfolded the top letter. It was dated nearly twenty years earlier. Her eyes scanned the contents in amazement. She finished and with unseeing eyes refolded the paper and finally, ultimately, the worth of what she held came to her.

  Power.

  The power to control and compel and force others to her will. Carr to her will. Power she could broker for whatever she wanted: jewels, gowns, castles, and land. She shuddered with the potential she held in her hand. She could have anything she wanted. She could have …

  Bramble House.

  “Fia?” She heard Thomas’s voice distantly, and turned like a sleepwalker toward the sound. He stood in the doorway, a shaft of light falling on his dark-auburn head, a quizzical expression on his handsome face.

  “Do you know what these are?” she asked, holding out the letters.

  “No.” He shook his head. “What are they?”

  “Letters. Records. Deeds. Promissory notes. Titles. Mortages. Depositions. The source of Carr’s power, the basis on which he has built his world. The lifeblood”—her voice dropped—“of his victims.”

  He did not reply but she barely noticed, her mind was unraveling skein after skein of possibilities, what she could do, what would happen. With what she held she could be free of Carr, completely and absolutely and forever. Her eyes closed, she swayed, nearly swooning with the possibility, the always before inconceivable here, now, suddenly attainable.

  Or … she could turn the papers over to Carr in exchange for the house and a small sum of money with which to flee. With Thomas. No one would know.

  “Fia?”

  What did it matter to those others who’d so long labored under Carr’s yoke? It would make no difference to their lives whether she held the proof against them or Carr did. They wouldn’t even have to know. Only Carr would know that if he tried to take Bramble House she would release the papers back to their original owners and his empire would crumble.

  She would just send word to him, perhaps one of the less damning papers, and everything she wanted would be at her disposal. Everything.

  The sense of power surged through her, black and thrilling. She would have her freedom and more.

  And she would purchase it with others’ enslavement.

  She swallowed, her exaltation ebbing. Angrily, she told herself that those fools Carr held in subjugation had placed themselves in his power, that they deserved their fates. They were adulterers and gamblers, cheats and frauds and charlatans. They were desperate.

  As was she.

  “I could have Bramble House,” she whispered. She sighed, releasing the tantalizing possibility that had danced before her like St. Elmo’s fire, and just as St. Elmo’s fire was not a fire at all, her possibility was no possibility. It was a chimera. A trick. She’d nearly been seduced by the same drives her father served. She opened her eyes.

  Thomas had come farther into the room. “Don’t, Fia.” His voice was urgent and low, his expression guarded.

  “Don’t?” she repeated uncertainly.

  “You don’t need them, Fia. Destroy them.”

  “I can’t!” she exclaimed. Nothing would change if she destroyed them. Carr would still be able to—

  “Fia, I beg you. You don’t need to use these things to gain you Bramble House. You can’t be so desperate for it that you would take your father’s place in subjugating these poor fools. It’s vile to even consider it! And it’s not necessary!”

  She stared at him, saw his horror and felt its echo within herself. He was right to be horrified, she had been close to doing what her father had done. Never mind her motives.

  “Don’t. Please don’t,” she whispered.

  “I’ll give you Bramble House, Fia,” he said.

  “You will give me Bramble House,” she repeated numbly. He came and took her hand. She hadn’t the strength to resist. She felt as though every last bit of her vitality had drained away and that all that was left was a shell.

  “Yes,” he said, his eyes somber. “When your father came to me, he threatened to expose me unless I do what he demanded. He also told me about Bramble House and how he’d cheated MacFarlane of it and how you’d hoped to get it through James Barton. He laughed about it, Fia, and then he told me about Kay.”

  “Kay. Yes,” she said tonelessly.

  “I couldn’t stand the thought of Carr stealing yet another boy’s birthright, so I told him I would agree to his proposition only on the condition that he sign Bramble House over to me. He didn’t want the house. It only meant something to him because you wanted it and Carr thought—he was certain—it would never come to your hands through me.”

  “You didn’t tell me,” she said. But of course he didn’t. He didn’t trust her. And with good cause.

  “I wanted it to go to the boy. But if you will just burn those papers, I swear it is yours.”

  She pulled her hand from his. He let it go easily. So easily. She turned, seeking that flawless serene mask. Her eyes closed, she bit hard on her lip to keep from sobbing. Where was her bloody, bloody mask?

  “We can’t burn the papers,” she finally managed to say. She’d dared to dream that it would end like some fairy tale, that she and her tall, dark captain would sail away and live happily forever after.

  “Oh, Fia.” Two such simple syllables invested with such disappointment. A death toll.

  “I never wanted Bramble House for myself,” she said. “It was always our intention to have James sign the house over to Kay.”

  “It was?”

  “Yes,” she said, turning back to him.

  He regarded her closely, surprise and then hope and finally joy reflected in his expression. “Oh, Fia!” He started eagerly toward her.

  She stepped back. “You can, of course, verify this with James Barton.”

  “James?” He stopped, puzzled. “I don’t need—”

  “I’d rather you would. I want you to know that I never began this for my own profit or comfort. That I would not submit James to something so dangerous lest I could think of no other way to obtain Bramble House for Kay.”

  “Of course not.”

  She could not contain a bitter smile in response.

  He saw then, understood. “Fia, please, just because I did not guess what your plans were does not mean I do not …” He stared at her, feeling her withdrawal, and reacted with shaken alarm. “Please, Fia. I love you.”

  She flinched, but there was no return of warmth to her lovely, cool features.

  The ground seemed to open beneath Thomas. A black abyss yawned at his feet and he was teetering, off balance with no handholds in sight. “Fia, please. You can’t condemn me for misjudging you. You can’t throw away what we have, what we are together, because I doubted your motives.” Fear brought anger to his voice. “You said you wanted the house. You never implied you wanted it for anyone other than yourself. Don’t condemn me for ignorance, Fia, I beg you!”

  “I don’t condemn you at all,” she said, vanishing inside herself.

  “The hell you don’t! I am being tried and convicted for thinking what any man in my place would think. How could I not? You are Carr’s daughter, for the love of God!”

  Her eyelids fluttered, as if his words dealt a final, fatal blow to something essential inside of her, something fragile that she had thought to protect and discovered too late was still exposed. “You are right,” she murmured. “How could you think otherwise?”


  He grabbed her shoulders and there was no reluctance in his touch, only desperation. He would have told her again he loved her but she’d dismissed the same avowal moments before. He would not bleat piteously, begging for an emotion she might not own.

  He shook her lightly but she’d left as surely as if she’d walked from the room. She was gone and he’d done this thing. “For what reason are you punishing me? What have I said, what have I done that is so unforgivable?”

  Her sorrow matched his pain. She touched his cheek gently.

  “I am not punishing you, I am saving us both a great deal more pain.”

  “What could be more painful than this?” he shouted.

  “You’ve done nothing that is unforgivable. It is I who am unforgivable. Not because of anything I’ve done.” Her smile was rueful. “At least not yet. But because of what I am. You yourself said it. I am Carr’s daughter. How can you ever trust me?”

  “Dear God, Fia!” Desperately he sought the right words. “I don’t give a damn if you are Carr’s daughter.”

  “But you do,” she avowed with such conviction that her certainty shook him. “You always will. You might forget for a while, you might pretend I am someone else, but every time a doubt shadows your thoughts you will wonder.”

  “No.” He shook his head. “No.”

  “Yes,” she answered. “And you are right to say that, because I say it myself. I’ve wondered and waited since childhood for the taint of his blood to show up in me, for his black murderer’s spirit to reveal itself in me. Because I am Carr’s daughter, Thomas. I always will be, and you will never be able to forget it. Nor should you. I can’t. I won’t.

  “Even here. Even this afternoon. You were right to wonder what I would do with those letters. My first thoughts were not to destroy them, as yours were, but to keep them, to use them to set myself free from him. So you see, I can’t …” At last her voice broke, just a small crack immediately mastered. “I can’t sentence you to a life of watching and waiting, too. Because I can tell you with absolute assuredness that I am not a good woman, Thomas.

  “I hunted down an elderly widower and connived for him to marry me, all for his house and land and money, and when I found out he had children, heirs, I hated them for inconveniencing me with their existence.”