He gave her a look that said she’d pay in delicious punishment for that remark and she laughed.
A stir at the door brought his head up.
‘Who is it?’ she asked. ‘Surely we are not expecting more company?’
‘A messenger in the Duke of Gordon’s livery.’
‘Your brother never ceases to surprise me with his friends in high places,’ she whispered in his ear.
‘It is probably about Carrick,’ he said grimly. ‘Gordon has insisted he step down as clan chief and retire to the Hebrides where he can cause no more trouble. His oldest son will make a grand chieftain.’
When faced with his crimes, Lord Carrick had confessed the whole to the duke. He had seen the Gilvrys as an impediment to protecting his family and gaining all the land he wanted for his sheep. His first act in his plan had been to rid the family of Drew, who he knew to be Ian’s right-hand man. And once he had started down his path of destruction, he’d had no choice but to continue.
But the stir around the door seemed to contain more excitement than such old news would engender. The babble around at that end of the room grew louder.
‘Quiet,’ Ian said, pushing through into the middle of the room, waving a letter.
Drew helped Rowena to her feet. Not that she wasn’t perfectly capable of rising unassisted, but she adored his tender solicitation. Each little thing he did for her made her heart tumble over with a love that grew stronger day by day.
‘What is it, man?’ Drew said, his voice louder than anyone’s. ‘Have they put yon Carrick in the Tower?’
Ian’s face when he turned to look at his brother held triumph.
‘Better than that,’ Niall said, striding to stand beside Ian.
‘He’s done it,’ Ian said. ‘Gordon has convinced Parliament to pass a new Excise Act. We will soon be a legal business.’
Selina left the pianoforte and came and planted a kiss on his cheek. ‘Well done. You have been working very hard to convince the poor man to speak out.’
‘Ah,’ Ian said. ‘It is not entirely for our sakes. I believe he has more than a couple of illegal stills operating on his land.’
‘No more smuggling,’ Logan said, looking comically dismayed.
Charity wagged a finger. ‘You are sure to find some new adventure.’
Ian looked at his brother. ‘Dinna worry, I’ve plenty for you to be doing.’ He looked down at the note in his hand. ‘There’s a postscript from Sanford. He said Gordon’s speech was a work of art and it carried the lords along with him.’
‘I expect Sanford wrote the speech,’ Logan quipped, to much laughter.
‘Well, I for one am glad my family is about to become legal,’ Niall said with a saintly expression and a twinkle in his eye. ‘I have judicial ambitions, you know.’
His brothers drowned him with jeers and cheers.
Rowena looked up at Drew. He was watching his brothers with an extraordinarily fond expression. He had missed them and was only slowly coming to realise he was with them again.
‘So it’s over,’ she said softly.
He looked down at her with his devilish smile. ‘No, my little beauty, it’s just the beginning.’
* * * * *
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ISBN-13: 9781460331668
RETURN OF THE PRODIGAL GILVRY
Copyright © 2014 by Michèle Ann Young
All rights reserved. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental. This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
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AWAKENING A FORBIDDEN DESIRE
After a lifetime spent hating the cause, loving a Jacobite is out of the question for Henrietta Brody. But with Scotland ready for battle, her only chance for survival is to journey with her enemy, the dangerously handsome Lord Simon Tremain.
His protection awakens a forbidden desire in Henrietta. But torn between her past and her future, the Jacobite and the man, reason and passion, she must fight to resist this traitor’s touch.
“A fun, entertaining read.” —RT Book Reviews on Beauty in Breeches
Henrietta felt those eyes,
felt them as powerful as a physical force, probing deep within her.
“I think it is time we reached a clear understanding about what is happening between us.”
His words confused her. The dangers he posed to her senses and emotions were immense, yet the physical desire she felt for him continued to ache inside her. A small insidious voice whispered a caution, reminding her that any liaison with Simon would bring her nothing but heartbreak, but another voice was whispering something else, telling her not to let the moment pass, to catch it and hold on to it.
Still she hesitated, for what she was contemplating went beyond anything she had ever contemplated before. All she wanted was for him to hold her again and to kiss her into insensibility.
* * *
A Traitor’s Touch
Harlequin® Historical #380—May 2014
Author Note
I thoroughly enjoyed writing A Traitor’s Touch, which is set in 1745–6 against the turbulent issues that beset both England and Scotland at that time. The climax of the story is the Battle of Culloden.
Dark family secrets, hidden hurts, desperation and undeniable love—all these and more appear in A Traitor’s Touch.
Beautiful, clever Henrietta Brody flees London to escape a ruthless murderer. With little more than the clothes on her back she sets off on a lonely, friendless road to the wilds of Scotland, determined to find her uncle. She enlists the aid of handsome Lord Simon Tremain—a staunch Jacobite whose values and loyalties to the cause are against everything Henrietta believes in.
While the battle of Culloden and the issues of the time are real, the characters—with the exception of The Bonnie Prince—are entirely fictional.
A Traitor’s Touch
Helen Dickson
Available from Harlequin® Historical and
HELEN DICKSON
The Rainborough Inheritance #24
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racy of Hearts #114
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Highwayman Husband #154
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Rogue’s Widow, Gentleman’s Wife #853
His Rebel Bride #222
Wicked Pleasures #873
A Scoundrel of Consequence #248
The Defiant Debutante #256
Seducing Miss Lockwood #263
Marrying Miss Monkton #271
Traitor or Temptress #274
Scandalous Secret, Defiant Bride #280
Diamonds, Deception and the Debutante #283
Forbidden Lord #290
Destitute On His Doorstep #301
Beauty in Breeches #313
Miss Cameron’s Fall From Grace #331
When Marrying a Duke... #341
The Devil Claims a Wife #355
The Master of Stonegrave Hall #365
Mishap Marriage #376
A Traitor’s Touch #380
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HELEN DICKSON
was born and lives in south Yorkshire, with her retired farm manager husband. Having moved out of the busy farmhouse where she raised their two sons, she has more time to indulge in her favorite pastimes. She enjoys being outdoors, traveling, reading and music. An incurable romantic, she writes for pleasure. It was a love of history that drove her to writing historical fiction.
Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Prologue
1734
On the discovery of a plot for the capture of the royal family and the proclamation of King James across the water, Andrew Brody was arrested with other malcontents and hanged at Carlisle. His body was brought home to Glasgow in a plain wooden box. To spare his wife and young daughter the sight of his blue and grotesque face, its tongue bulging from a rictus mouth, the lid was kept nailed down.
Maria, his wife, went mad with grief. She wept day and night and could not eat. She was terribly ill and there was no consoling her.
After two weeks, their seven-year-old daughter, Henrietta, went outside to look for her mother, thinking she might have taken a turn round the garden. When she failed to locate her she turned to go back to the house, but for some reason she did not fully understand herself, stopped and looked towards the river. Following a moment of indecision, she began to walk towards it. Perhaps it was to satisfy a sense of nostalgia, to recall happier times when the river had been a magical place. Or perhaps it was some other, darker sense that impelled her to get a closer look.
Whatever it was it led her along the bank of the gently swirling river. And that was when she saw a woman’s body floating face down in the water, her hair forming a rippling halo on the surface.
It was her mother.
Henrietta’s stomach lurched and she called her mother’s name and drew closer to the edge, hoping she was not too late, but knowing that she was. She turned and ran back to the garden.
‘Help me!’ she cried to the gardener raking up leaves into a heap. ‘My mother—she’s in the river. I don’t know what to do! Help me! Please help me!’
The gardener threw down the rake and ran towards the river, the girl following close on his heels. On seeing the body, he quickly assessed the situation. Wading into the water, he hauled his mistress onto dry ground and rolled her on to her back. He stared down at the lifeless form, at the woman’s face that was so white, but still beautiful in death.
The gardener looked up at the child. She stood like a small frozen statue, her eyes wide and filled with horror, and he could feel the agony coming off her, sense the torment twisting her soul like a weighted rope. Slowly she got down on her knees, staring into her mother’s bloodless face, her small hand smoothing her dark brown hair back from her forehead over and over again, whispering words the gardener could not hear.
The girl was remembering all the days spent with her mother, how they would sing and gossip. How nothing could touch them then. But now she was gone. The vivacious, spirited and delightful woman was gone. The girl told herself over and over again she would not see her mother again in life. But now she must not think of it, else she would lose her mind like her mother.
Eventually the gardener rose on stiff legs. ‘It would seem your mother has had an accident, Miss Henrietta,’ he said by way of explanation, while knowing otherwise. ‘I will carry her to the house,’ he said gently. The child did not look up, did not break the rhythm of her hand stroking her mother’s hair as she whispered tenderly, as though they two were the only people left on God’s earth. ‘I will be gentle with her, I promise, but I think we should take her home now.’
The gardener waited a while longer, watching a swan with three cygnets in her wake sail stately by. Then the child got to her feet. Her face glistened with tears and bewilderment filled her green eyes as though she was desperate to understand why her mother had left her.
‘Please don’t hurt her.’
Swallowing hard with a resolute nod, for one heartbreaking moment, the gardener looked down into the young face. ‘I won’t.’ And so, carefully, more carefully than he had ever done anything in his life, he bent and took the dead woman into his arms, trying not to look at her face as he carried her to the house.
* * *
The funeral coming so soon after her father’s interment was too much for the child. She drew in a breath of panic. She did not want to be there. She did not want to be afraid all the time—afraid of death. Her father’s brother, Uncle Matthew, came and took her in his arms.
Matthew shook his head in despair. Tears lit his eyes. He tried to explain. All this had happened because her father was a Jacobite. Matthew was of the opinion that men should be free to worship God as they chose, as long as they obeyed their king and did no harm by it. Tragically his brother had supported the wrong kind. The Jacobite cause had been his life. Even when he was condemned he saw his last journey to the scaffold as a veritable moment of glory, as though he were raised suddenly to celebrate for his good deeds, instead of hanged for his seditious acts against the Crown.
The girl could not get beyond the Jacobite word. This new knowledge of the circumstances surrounding her father’s execution, followed so quickly by her mother’s suicide, haunted her day and night. The anger and hate directed at the Jacobites entwined, swelling and blooming inside her, threatening to consume her body and soul. It was anger and hatred more acute and darker than anything she had ever known.
And then Uncle Matthew took her away—to London—putting as much distance between her and the event as was possible.
Chapter One
1745
Baron Charles Lucas and his wife Dorothy had embraced Henrietta in her hour of need and taken her into their lives and their home with the kind of easy, unconscious goodness that was born of good breeding and a happy life.
And now they were both dead. Along with their coachman, they had sustained fatal injuries in a carriage accident when they were travelling home from the theatre. Within the space of twenty-four hours, Henrietta was for
ced to grow up quickly and keep herself in control for the sake of the grieving servants. But beneath her calm exterior she endured a sickening and inevitable turmoil over the loss of the two people who had given her a sense of worth and for whom she had borne a real and unselfish love.
She closed her eyes as the enormity of their loss made her realise how alone she was and she knew she would have to consider wisely how to make the best of her circumstances and to think about her future. After considering the advantages his niece would reap in London, including learning everything a young lady should be cognizant of, Uncle Matthew had placed her in the hands of Baron Lucas and his wife Dorothy, her mother’s dearest friend. They had been delighted to become Henrietta’s legal guardians. She was the apple of their eye, the child they had never had.
Uncle Matthew was the only family Henrietta had. As a youth and being a scholar with much intelligence and curiosity, he had sought to quench his thirst for knowledge and had gone abroad to enrich his education. He had been gone some time. When he came home, expecting to be welcomed by his brother, he had found unexpected tragedy. Never having married and seeming to have a dislike for all society following the terrible circumstances of his adored brother’s brutal death, he’d acquired a crofter’s cottage close to Inverness and, surrounded by his precious books, become something of a recluse. Henrietta knew she could be sure of a warm welcome there.
But maybe she wouldn’t have to leave London. Dorothy had assured her that she would be well provided for. Henrietta remembered how the dear lady, who’d insisted she call her aunt, had smiled and said that Henrietta’s mother had been a good friend to her—as close as sisters they had been—and that she honoured her memory in the best way she knew by honouring and taking care of her daughter to the best of her ability.
Remembering this, Henrietta swallowed and set her jaw.
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