She thought for a moment before answering. He had risked everything for her and so had his family. Was she cross?
“Nay!” she assured him, kissing him as soundly as he had kissed her moments before. “I’ve nae ever been so glad to be deceived in my life. I only wish I’d kenned I was getting married. Lasses dream of that moment, ye ken?”
“Do they?” he asked, his surprise quite evident. “Then we will marry again so that this time it will be exactly as ye dreamed it.”
“Ye would marry me again?” She was so touched tears welled in her eyes.
“Bean bhàsail, I would marry ye again every day for the rest of my life if ye wished it. I love ye that much.”
She shook her head in disbelief, a smile curving her lips. “And I love ye, Cameron MacLeod. Now kiss me again, my fierce warrior.”
Epilogue
Sorcha wanted her second time marrying Cameron to be the perfect memory, but as the day arrived, she found herself wishing things had happened differently. Even though she was surrounded by his wonderful family, who had embraced her as one of their own, and her Uncle Brom, who was now living at Dunvegan, she could not shake the sadness that shrouded her that her father and brother were gone. She really had no other family to stand here with her, no one that truly understood what this day, this joining with Cameron, meant.
So when she walked into the gardens and the first two people she saw were her sister Constance and her Aunt Blanche, she knew without a doubt that Cameron was responsible for getting her sister and aunt to Dunvegan for her wedding. She blinked back the tears that suddenly blurred her vision, made her way to her husband, and standing on her tiptoes, kissed him on the lips, not caring about the many eyes upon them.
Cheers arose from his family, her aunt and sister, and even Father Murdock, who waited patiently to begin the short ceremony. It did not take long to be formally married, but knowing what she knew now, knowing how important memories were, she embraced this one for every precious second. Never would she forget the way Cameron took her hand and squeezed it reassuringly in his, or the way he stared at her, his eyes so full of love, or the kiss he gave her at the end of the ceremony that curled her toes and heated her blood.
When the ceremony was complete, she made her way to Brom as Cameron’s brothers beckoned him to them and surrounded him in what appeared to be a private meeting. They all wore smiles and whispered, and she could imagine they may well be teasing him, as the brothers seemed to do to one another. When she reached her uncle, he hugged her so hard it stole her breath.
“Brom’s Sorcha,” he said.
She kissed him on the cheek and was about to say something to him, when Angus—who Brom had decided was his new favorite person—called to Brom and her uncle went running like an excited child to an adult with a sweet treat. And then she saw that Angus did give Brom something, which he popped in his mouth with a happy grin.
Sorcha felt a grin on her own face to see her uncle so welcomed and happy. Suddenly her sister and Aunt Blanche were before her, and all three of them were exclaiming their joy.
“It is so good to see you both!” Sorcha cried, hugging her sister and then her aunt. Though Cameron had explained in his notes to them both all that had happened to her, apparently his explanation had been very brief. She took the time to fill them in on the details of all that had occurred, and glanced to Constance, who looked surprisingly happy for one who had always written to Sorcha of her constant misery in her marriage.
“Constance, it seems yer marriage is agreeing with ye more now,” Sorcha tried to gently probe.
“Nay,” Constance assured her with a shudder, “it nae ever agreed with me at all, but my husband was killed in a hunt and I’m nae married any longer.”
“Ye can come live here,” Sorcha proposed, certain Cameron would nae mind.
Constance grinned. “Actually, yer husband already offered, but Aunt Blanche has offered, as well, and I have a desire to see England. If it’s acceptable, I’d like to go to England for a spell and then come back to Dunvegan, possibly around Hogmanay?”
Sorcha nodded, glad that her sister was no longer tied to a man who treated her terribly. “You may return here anytime, to live or to visit.”
She was about to ask her aunt how her husband was faring when King David strode into the gardens with a dozen men behind him, all armed for battle. Sorcha’s stomach dropped as she watched the king approach Cameron, his brothers, and Alex MacLean, who must have joined them while she wasn’t looking.
She watched Cameron’s face, and though his expression was serious, he did not seem overly concerned. The king spoke for a few moments, waving his hands in the air, and when he departed, Alex and Iain went with him.
“I beg yer leave for a moment,” Sorcha said to her sister and aunt, who both nodded.
She hurried over to Cameron and his brothers, arriving at the same time Lena did. She and Lena exchanged a worried look.
“What did the king say?” Sorcha asked.
Cameron slid his arm around her waist. “He offered his praise for how I handled the matter with March and Ross, and made plain that he considered my debt paid.”
“Why did Alex and Iain go with the king?” Lena demanded.
Cameron shrugged. “I dunnae, Sister. He asked to speak with them in private.”
Lena’s face grew tight, but she did not say more.
Cameron squeezed Sorcha’s waist and pressed his lips to her ear. “Come,” he said, his voice husky.
“Where are ye taking me?” she demanded, laughing as he had already started to turn her away from the group.
“To bed,” he said in a low, teasing voice. “Ye must have a proper joining.” The look of pure desire he gave her made her shiver with anticipation.
“I like getting married,” she replied with a giggle.
“So do I, mo chridhe, so do I.”
As they started away, Sorcha felt a hand come to her arm. She turned to see Lena standing there.
Lena embraced Sorcha and hugged her tightly before letting go. “I’m glad to have a new sister,” she said in a shy voice.
“As am I,” Sorcha promised her.
As Sorcha and Cameron made their way out of the garden, Eolande appeared at the edge of the woods, staring at them. Sorcha paused. “Cameron, do ye see her?”
“Aye,” he replied. “I sent her word of our wedding, and she told me she was coming to whisper a blessing upon our union for many children.”
At that moment, the wind began to swirl, and Sorcha could see Eolande’s lips moving. “How many children do ye suppose she is blessing us with?”
“Many,” he replied with a grin, “so we best get started making them.”
“I kinnae wait to make that memory,” she teased.
He grinned wickedly. “I dunnae doubt it, bean bhàsail.”
Dear Readers,
I hope you enjoyed the book. I invite you to leave a review for it, and to try the first chapter of My Fair Duchess, A Once Upon a Rogue novel, Book 1.
Prologue
The Year of Our Lord 1795
St. Ives, Cambridgeshire, England
The day Colin Sinclair, the Marquess of Nortingham and the future Duke of Aversley, entered the world, he brought nothing but havoc with him.
The Duchess of Aversley’s birthing screams filled Waverly House, accompanied by the relentless pattering of rain that beat against the large glass window of Alexander Sinclair’s study. The current Duke of Aversley gripped the edge of his desk, the wood digging into his palms. He did not know how much more he could take or how much longer he could acquiesce to his wife’s refusal of his request to be present in the birthing room. He knew his wish was unusual and that she feared what he saw would dampen his desire for her, but nothing would ever do that.
Camilla’s hoarse voice sliced through the silence again and fed the festering fear that filled him. She might die from this.
The possibility made him tremble. Why hadn’t he control
led his lust? After six failed attempts to give him a child, Camilla’s body was weak. He’d known the truth but had chosen to ignore it. Moisture dampened his silk shirt, and Camilla screeched once more. He shook his head, trying to ward off the sound.
He reached across his desk, and with a pounding heart and trembling hand, he slid the crystal decanter toward him. If he did not do something to calm his nerves, he would bolt straight out of this room and barge into their bedchamber. The last thing he wanted to do was cause Camilla undue anxiety. The Scotch lapped over the edge of the tumbler as he poured it, dripping small droplets of liquor on the contracts he had been blindly staring at for the last four hours.
He did not make a move to rescue the papers as the ink blurred. He did not give a goddamn about the papers. All he cared about was Camilla. The physician’s previous words of warning that the duchess should not try for an heir again played repeatedly through Alexander’s mind. The words grew in volume as the storm raged outside and his wife’s shrieks tore through the mansion.
Alexander could have lived a thousand lifetimes without an heir, but he was a weak fool. He craved Camilla, body and soul. His desire, along with his pompous certainty that everything would eventually turn out all right for them because he was the duke, had caused him to ignore the physician and eagerly yield to his wife’s fervent wish to have a child.
As Camilla’s high, keening wails vibrated the air around him, he gripped his glass a fraction harder. The crystal cracked, cutting his hand with razor-like precision. He yanked off his cravat and wrapped it around his bleeding hand. Lightning split the shadows in the room with bright, blinding light, followed by his study door crashing open and Camilla’s sister, Jane, flying through the entrance. Her red hair streamed out behind her, tears running down her face.
“The physician says come now. Camilla’s―” Jane’s voice cracked. She dashed a hand across her wet cheeks and moved across the room and around the desk to stand behind his chair. She placed a hand on his shoulder. “Camilla is dying. The doctor needs you to tell him whether to try to save her or the baby.”
Pain, the likes of which the duke had never experienced, sliced through his chest and curled in his belly. A fierce cramp immediately seized him. “What sort of choice is that?” he cried as he stood.
Jane nodded sympathetically, then simply turned and motioned him to follow her. With effort, he forced his numb legs to move up the stairs toward his wife’s moans. With every step, his heartbeat increased until he was certain it would pound out of his chest. He could not live without her, yet he knew she would not want to live without the babe. If he told the doctor to save her over their child, she would hate him, and misery would continue to plague her and chafe as it had done every time she had lost a babe these past six years.
He could not cause her such pain, but he could not pick the child over her. Outside the bedchamber door, Jane paused and turned to him, her face splotchy. “What are you going to do? I must know to prepare myself.”
Alexander had never been a praying man, despite the fact that his mother had been a devout believer and had tried to get him to be one, as well. His father and grandfather had always said Aversley dukes made their own fates and only weak men looked to a higher power to grant them favors and exceptions. Alexander stiffened. He was a stupid fool who had thought himself more powerful than God. The day his mother had died, she had told him that one day, he would have to pay for this sin.
Was today the day? Alexander drew in a long, shuddering breath, mind racing. What could he do? He would renounce every conviction he held dear to keep his wife and child.
Squeezing his eyes shut, he made a vow to God. If He would save Camilla and the babe, he would pray every day and seek God’s wisdom in all things. Surely, this penance would suffice.
A blood-curdling scream split the silence. Alexander’s heart exploded as he shoved past Jane and threw the door open. The cream-colored sheets of their bed, now soaked crimson, lay scattered on the dark hardwood floor. Camilla, appearing incredibly small, twisted and whimpered in the center of the gigantic four-poster. Her once-white lacy gown was bunched at her waist to expose her slender legs, and Alexander winced at the blood smeared across her normally olive skin.
Moving toward her, his world tilted. His wife, his Camilla, stared at him with glazed eyes and cracked lips. A deathly pallor had replaced the healthy flush her face usually held. Blue veins pulsed along the base of her neck, giving her skin a thin, papery appearance. The sour stench of death filled the heavy air.
Only seconds had passed, yet it seemed like much longer. The physician swung toward Alexander. He appeared aged since coming through the door hours before; deep lines marked his forehead, the sides of his eyes, and around his mouth. Normally an impeccably kept man, his hair dangled over his right eye, and his shirt, stained dark red, hung out from his trousers. Shoving his hair out of his eye, the physician asked, “Who do you want me to try to save, Your Grace?”
Alexander curled his hands into fists by his sides, hissing at the throbbing pain the movement caused his cut palm. His mother’s last words echoed in his head: Great sins require great penance.
The duke glanced at his wife’s face, then slowly slid his gaze to her swollen belly. “Both of them,” he responded. Fresh sweat broke out across his forehead as the doctor shook his head.
“The babe is twisted the wrong way. Even if I can get it out, Her Grace will be ripped beyond repair. She’ll likely bleed out.”
Anger coursed through Alexander’s veins. “Both of them,” he repeated, his voice shaking.
“If she lives, I’m certain she’ll be barren. You are sure?”
“Positive,” he snapped, seized by a wave of nausea and a certainty that he had failed to give up enough to save them both. Rushing to Camilla’s side, he kneeled and gripped her hand as her back formed a perfect arch and another cry broke past her lips―the loudest scream yet.
Alexander closed his eyes and fervently vowed to God never to touch his wife again if only she and his babe would be allowed to live. He would do this and would keep his sacrifice between God and himself for as long as he drew breath and never tell a living soul of his penance. This time he would heed his mother’s warnings. Her threadbare voice filled his head as he murmured her words. “True atonement is between the sinner and God or else it is not true, and the day of reckoning will come more terrible and shattering than imaginable.”
Alexander repeated the oath, coldness gripping him and burrowing into his bones.
Moments later, his throat burned, and he could not stop the tears of happiness and relief that rolled down his face as he cradled his healthy son in his arms.
Then in a faint but happy voice Camilla called out to him. “Alex, come to me,” Camilla murmured, gazing at him with shining eyes and raising a willowy arm to beckon him. He froze where he stood and curled his fingers tighter around his swaddled son, desperate to hold on to the joy of seconds ago, and yet the elation slipped away when realizing the promise he had made to God.
That vow had saved his wife and child. As much as he wanted to tell Camilla of it now, as her forehead wrinkled and uncertainty filled her eyes, fear stilled his tongue. What if he told her, and then she died? Or the babe died?
“You’ve done well, Camilla,” he said in a cool tone. The words felt ripped from his gut. Inside, he throbbed, raw and broken.
He handed the babe to Jane and then turned on his heel and quit the room. At the stairs, he gripped the banister for support as he summoned the butler and gave the orders to remove his belongings from the bedchamber he had shared with Camilla since the day they had married.
As he feared, as soon as Camilla was able to, she came to him, desperate and pleading for explanations. Her words seared his heart and branded him with misery. He trembled every time he sent her away from him, and her broken-hearted sobs rang through the halls. The pain that stole her smile and the gleam that had once filled her eyes made him fear for her and for them,
but the dreams that dogged him of her death or their son’s death should the vow be broken frightened him more. Sleeplessness plagued him, and he took to creeping into his son’s nursery, where he would send the nanny away and rock his boy until the wee hours of the morning, pouring all his love into his child.
Days slid into months that turned to the first year and then the second. As his bond with Camilla weakened, his tie to his heir strengthened. Laughter filled Waverly House, but it was only the child’s laughter and Alexander’s. It seemed to him, the closer he became to his child and the more attention he lavished on him, the larger the wall became between him and Camilla until she reminded him of an angry queen reigning in her mountainous tower of ice. Yet, it was his fault she was there with no hope of rescue.
The night she quit coming to his bedchamber, Alexander thanked God and prayed she would now turn the love he knew was in her to their son, whom she seemed to blame for Alexander’s abandonment. He awoke in the morning, and when the nanny brought Colin to Alexander, he decided to carry his son with him to break his fast, in hopes that Camilla would want to hold him. As he entered the room with Colin, she did not smile. Her lips thinned with obvious anger as she excused herself, and he was caught between the wish to cry and the urge to rage at her.
Still, his fingers burned to hold her hand and itched to caress the gentle slope of her cheekbone. Eventually, his skin became cold. His fingers curiously numb. Then one day, sitting across from him at dinner in the silent dining room, Camilla looked at him and he recoiled at the sharp thorns of revenge shining in her eyes.
The following week the Season began, and he dutifully escorted her to the first ball. Knots of tension made his shoulders ache as they walked down the staircase, side by side, so close yet a thousand ballrooms apart. After they were announced, she turned to him and he prepared himself to decline her request to dance.
How a Scot Surrenders to a Lady Page 33