The Reckless One

by Connie Brockway

  “Yes,” she whispered.

  He set his hands beneath her thighs, spreading her legs wider and with one long thrust came up against a barrier. Her maidenhead. He clenched his teeth in a feral snarl, near violent with frustration, desire building to a near explosive pitch in his loins. He trembled. He swore.

  “You’re a bloody virgin! Aren’t you?”

  She was crying.

  “Aren’t you?”

  “Yes!”

  He jerked his swollen member out of her, heedless of his roughness until he heard her gasp of pain. He looked down. Her brilliant eyes were filled with despair. Tears streamed down her face. With a groan he wrapped his hand about the back of her head and dragged her into his arms.

  She’d only wanted to gift him with her maidenhead. He could not rail against her for that. But rail he could against all else.

  He threw back his head and cursed the heavens and his fate with every foul and blasphemous word he knew. He would have howled in fury but for fear of scaring her even more. So he simply stood, cursing in dark and vehement tones while stroking her head with exquisite tenderness.

  Chapter 26

  Muira flung herself down from the carriage and reached back, grabbing hold of Favor’s arm and jerking her out. Favor stumbled and fell to her knees in the mud, staining the bright scarlet skirts of her antique Highland gown.

  “Where are we?” she asked, blinking into the bright morning sun, dazed with anguish and lack of sleep. She’d returned to her room last night to find Muira waiting in the hall. Wordlessly, Muira had seized her arm and dragged her down the corridor, ignoring Favor’s stammered demands for an explanation as well as the speculative gazes that followed them out the back door to the stable yard where Jamie had awaited them atop Thomas’s carriage.

  Favor had resisted then, but Muira had backhanded her across the face, stunning her with the brutal strength of her blow. She’d shoved Favor into the carriage and followed her in, yanking the door shut and slamming her hand against the ceiling, calling out for Jamie to whip up the horses.

  They’d driven most of the night. Muira had settled in the corner and stabbed Favor with a malevolent glare. Favor had been bitterly unsurprised by how quickly she’d gone from Rafe’s passionate embrace and heated words to this cold, silent carriage on a nameless road.

  “Where are we?” Favor repeated now.

  “You don’t know?” Muira seized hold of Favor’s hair and yanked her head up, half hauling her to her feet. “Look around!”

  “Muira, careful. She’s but a girl …” Jamie objected from atop the carriage.

  Muira swung round, bruising Favor’s upper arm. “Girl, is she?” she hissed. “Well, this girl has jeopardized everything we’ve worked and sacrificed for, all so she can rut with some pretty English hound!”

  An expression of shocked betrayal flashed over Jamie’s rough features at Muira’s accusation. “Not quite the little novitiate you’d imagined, is she, Jamie me boy?”

  Jamie turned his head, fixing his gaze on the horizon.

  “It wasn’t like that,” Favor whispered.

  “Wasn’t like what?” Muira turned on her. “Wasn’t he any good then, lassie? Didn’t he spread your legs wide and make you scream with it?”

  Favor bit hard on the inner flesh of her cheeks. She wouldn’t weep. Not in front of this woman. No matter how much she wanted to—and God knew she wanted to break down and cry.

  When she’d agreed to Muira’s plan she hadn’t known what she would be giving up. Now she did. Now she knew just what and just whom she was losing. And that knowledge threatened to swallow her whole.

  “Well?” Muira demanded brightly. “Didna scream, eh?” She pointed behind Favor. “They did.”

  She said it so matter-of-factly, so conversationally, that for a moment Favor did not grasp her meaning.

  With a sense of inevitability, she looked around. Backed by a swollen leaden sky, a tower’s rough shell stood wearily in the misting rain. The roof was gone, the western wall tumbled, exposing the rooms on the second story. Within, black rotted beams leaned against bare interior walls. It was the room where Favor’s mother had birthed her stillborn brother and then, dying in the process, given Favor her fateful charge. The rain’s soft susurration could not conceal her mother’s weak voice.

  “They’re killing my sons!” She’d grasped Favor’s hand, but her clasp was weak and her skin hot and dry. “You must stop them, Favor. There’s no one else.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know!” her mother’s voice had risen frantically. “But you must. If they kill Carr’s son, the king will never have mercy on mine. They’ll be gutted and hanged by month’s end and not all your father’s pleading will stop it. Go, Favor. Stop them!”

  And she had.

  “Do you know where you are now?” Muira’s voice had lost its savagery, becoming nearly gentle. She released Favor’s arm and moved about the muddy ground with a dazed look of wonder, like a Muslim in Mecca.

  “There is where Cam McClairen died,” she said, pointing. “That great rock there, that split his head as he fell from a soldier’s blow.”

  She turned, her skirts belling out as lightly as a girl on a dance floor. “And here is where my Bobbie was killed. He was my youngest, ever falling over his own feet.”

  She smiled at Favor in bizarre camaraderie, as though they were two women chatting about their family’s foibles. “He took a lead ball in his brain.” She pursed her lip and nodded. “Quick at least, not like his father, whose gut was split open and took three days to die.”

  Favor’s stomach rose, sickened by the light voice reciting the horrendous memories she shared: screaming men, horses impaled, blood licked by torchlight, and the pure snow glistening on the mountainside far away.

  Muira returned and wrapped her arm about Favor’s waist. Pulling lightly, she began walking her toward the tower’s arched gate. “Did you see who fell and who didn’t? Who gave as good as he got? I would have stayed and fought, but as soon as we saw the redcoats the men shoved us down into the moat to hide.”

  She cocked her head. “I didn’t see much. But you … you were right in the thick of it the whole time, clinging to that Merrick boy like a limpet. I always wanted to know if my men acquitted themselves well. Did they?”

  “I couldn’t say,” Favor whispered, images of horrors piling up in her mind’s eye.

  Muira nodded understandingly. “Aye. It was dark and over so quick and you didn’t know any of those men now, did you?”

  She stopped just short of the gate. Favor began to tremble. Muira didn’t appear to notice; she was scowling. “Jamie? Was it Russell who was cut down here? ‘Faith, I be growing old for I canna remember whether it was Russell or Gavin Fraser. ’Twas Russell, was it not?”

  “Aye,” Jamie called back. “Russell.”

  Muira brightened, sighing with pleasure. “I dinna forget then,” she said, and tugged Favor back into motion. “Jamie was here, too, did you know? Being so big, they made him hold the cattle. But when the redcoats came down the horses panicked and bolted and just plain ran over Jamie Craigg. He came to his senses a few days later. In my house.”

  Her knees felt liquid and weak. The mud sucked at her shoes as she stumbled forth. The mist soaked her uncovered head, condensed on her frozen flesh, and leaked down her cheeks.

  “I have it all in here,” Muira confided, touching her free hand to her temple. “Each moment. Each cry. Like acid it burned its way into my brain so that everything I see, I see overlaid with the images from that night. Like a shadow play on my every thought …” Her voice trailed off.

  The shivering in Favor’s body had become shaking. She could hear her teeth clattering against each other. They stopped at the gate.

  “Right here is where you stood.” She gave Favor a little shove and then backed up. “I stood … yes. Right there. Imagine that, Favor. For a few minutes nine years ago I was within reach of you … and him. And after, when the
y’d taken him away and left you standing here, barefoot and cold, your night rail soaked with blood, I could have taken my wounded and gone, leaving you here.”

  The smile twisted, became ugly. “I would have, too, if I’d known you would betray us twice.”

  She was going to be sick. Her head spun and her knees knocked together. She didn’t want to be here. She’d never wanted to come back here. All that was here was terror, terror and a boy’s filthy, blood-slick torso, the shouts of men, the stench of gunpowder, and … and the gentle, pitying brush of a rapist’s lips against the top of her head—the only bit of comfort in that night, given by her enemy and yet one she’d gladly accepted, one she’d never forgive herself for accepting.

  She wrapped her arms around her waist and hugged tightly, afraid that if she let go she would burst into a million fragments and be lost in a black, all-consuming abyss.

  “You see it again now, don’t you, Favor?” Muira asked gently. “You’d forgotten, hadn’t you? Aye, I thought it was so. I didn’t think anyone who remembered could fail us.”

  Numbly she nodded.

  “Seventeen men and boys of clan McClairen died that night. Those that didn’t die, I patched together. Two died later. That’s what saving that rapist did, Favor.”

  “Muira!” Jamie suddenly called out, his voice worried.

  The gentleness bled from Muira’s eyes. “Quiet you, Jamie! She saved the life of a rapist and nineteen died because of it.”

  Muira turned back to Favor, her expression fierce and commanding.

  “The nine men that lived have worked as hard as I for restitution. They’re smugglers and thieves, hard laborers and servants now, struggling to earn enough not only for the families of them that died, but also for you. So that you could become Lady Carr and return the land and the castle to us.

  “That’s where the money for your convent and your clothes and your jewels came from, Favor. That’s who you’ve betrayed.”

  “No!” Favor cried weakly. How could she have forgotten? How could she have for a minute risked what they’d worked so hard to achieve?

  “Are you ready to be Carr’s bride?”

  Numbly, Favor nodded.

  Raine prowled through the shrouded empty rooms and dark echoing corridors, an animal set loose in a graveyard. Favor had not come to him yesterday, nor had she come today. Last night, he’d waited high above the ballroom for her to appear, suffused with a feeling such as he’d never known. His heart thumped thickly in his chest; his breath lodged in his throat.

  He was, he realized, afraid. Afraid she’d regretted it. All of it. Her words, her passion … her love. But then she’d entered at Carr’s side, clinging to his arm like an invalid. Her face was white, her gait unsteady.

  A new fear swelled, eclipsing the other. Was she ill? The thought tormented him until finally, late last night, he’d gone to her room. She wasn’t there and a word with a scurrying maid informed him that she slept in her chaperone’s room.

  All day he’d watched, trying to catch sight of her. At noon he’d seen her being hustled from the orangery by her aunt. Again her gait had been unsteady.

  Now it was late afternoon. If he did not speak to her and discover if she was, indeed, unwell and if so, with what and to what extent, he would go mad. He was going mad. And he’d never been one to wait.

  Without another thought, he strode to the room where he slept and snatched his coat from the table where he’d thrown it. He shrugged into it, heading down the empty hallway to the tower door. From there he followed the spiraling staircase to the main floor and opened the door leading to the north wing.

  Few people were about in the great salon. A cluster of aged roués played hazard at a green baize-covered table while a single footman kept watch on the decanter sitting on the floor beside them. A woman attended by a phalanx of gentlemen stood at the great leaded window looking out over the terrace below. She turned and caught sight of him.

  It was his sister, Fia. He wished that he’d known her better as a child. But Carr had always kept the little princess far away from her brothers and when they had seen her, she’d seldom spoken, only watched them with the same considering expression she now wore. Or had that expression been wistfulness?

  A little frown turned her lips; she glanced outside and then came toward him. The men at her side began to follow, but she bade them stay. Raine watched her approach.

  “Ah, Mister …?” She waited. He regarded her evenly. “Mr. Mystery.” She smiled. “But not Miss Donne’s Mr. Mystery anymore, eh?”

  “I do not take your meaning,” he replied. “Do you know where Miss Donne is?”

  “Oh, yes. I do, indeed,” she said, snapping open the pearl-handled fan that hung from her wrist. “But first, aren’t you curious about why I say you are no longer Miss Donne’s … well, anything, I should imagine.”

  “Not particularly. I dislike word games.”

  “Oh, yes. I recall.” At his startled look her dimples deepened. “From our previous encounter. The thing is, sir, I do like games. They hone one’s intellect.”

  “Miss Fia, I am sure your gamesmanship is unsurpassed. Now, please—”

  “You aren’t Miss Donne’s anything anymore because,” Fia cut in, leaning close and raising her fan to conceal what she was about to say, “she’s somebody else’s something now. Somebody who would dislike very much finding out that she’d had a somebody before him.” Her smile was buttery soft and innocent.

  He stared at her, frozen. “Who?”

  “That’s the amazing part. If I hadn’t heard him all but propose myself, I wouldn’t have believed it!”

  “Who?” he demanded.

  “Why, my father.” Abruptly her voice went flat. “Lord Carr.”

  No. She couldn’t. He couldn’t. No.

  The word rolled through his mind, his thoughts, his heart. His entire being hummed denial. No. No. No.

  “Fascinating creature, Miss Donne,” Fia continued. “Why right this minute she’s keeping company with a quart of gin, either celebrating her imminent engagement … or consoling herself.”

  “Where is she?”

  “She’s down below, on the terrace—” He’d left so there was no reason to give further direction. The brittle smile faded from Fia’s face. “—brother.”

  “You can pack a trunk of my clothes for London tonight, Gunna. I shall be leaving on the morrow.”

  Gunna paused in helping Fia off with her day gown. “I didn’t ken that yer father’s plans had come so quick to profit,” she said in amazement. “Still and all, how can he leave so sudden? There’s so much to do.”

  “Carr knows nothing about my leaving,” Fia said uninterestedly. “I shall be staying with Lady and Lord Wente. They have been kind enough to extend to me an open-ended invitation to be their guest.”

  She untied the ribbons around her waist. Her hoops collapsed to the floor. Gracefully, she stepped out of them. “Of course,” she said, “Lord Wente’s well-documented indebtedness to Tunbridge has, I fear, more to do with their gracious invitation than my own, ineluctable charm. Be that as it may, I intend to take them up on the offer. At least until I can secure my own establishment. Then I’ll send for you, Gunna.”

  The chill left her expression and a degree of human warmth softened the hard brilliance of her eyes. “I promise, it won’t be long.”

  “I don’t understand,” Gunna said, untying Fia’s corset with trembling fingers. “Yer own establishment? Yer a girl, Fia, not a woman.”

  “Oh, Gunna,” Fia said, “I’ve never been a ‘girl’ and well you know it.”

  “But it isn’t done! Ye can’t have yer own establishment. Carr will insist ye live with him. He’d never allow anything different. I …” She hesitated, her half-exposed face lined with worry. “I don’t even know if he’ll allow me to come to London.”

  The glimpse of vulnerability disappeared from Fia’s face, leaving it coolly serene. “I will handle Carr, Gunna. I will handle everything:
the house, the funds, and your arrival.”

  Gunna had no choice but to believe her. Fia had never made an idle promise in her life. “But why? Why now? Why not wait?”

  Once more a shadow of the young girl that might have been crept into Fia’s expression, looking out through the smooth, artificial, and ravishing visage with infinite sadness. “Because I am tired unto death of tragedies and I don’t wish to stay and witness the one unfolding now.”

  Chapter 27

  Favor tucked the heavy wool blanket around her legs and gazed with sullen satisfaction at the storm swelling above the castle turrets. She did not think she could quite endure a bright, clear day.

  Morosely she motioned a servant to her side and indicated the empty glass on the wrought-iron table before her. He filled it from the bottle standing beside it again, bowed, and left. Favor lifted the glass in both hands and took a long draught before returning it unsteadily to its place.

  The courtyard, which had been set up for a late-afternoon repast when the day had promised better, held only a few people. Indeed, it seemed to Favor that the castle was quickly emptying of its population. Everywhere, people were in the process of leaving this place. Godspeed to them.

  Those left sat in little groups at tables, warming their palms on china cups filled with tea or coffee while Favor attempted to warm a deeper chill with a more potent distillation. She sat alone, her table somewhat removed from the others, the expression on her face dissuading any approach.

  That’s the way she wanted it. Getting drunk, Favor had decided, was a solitary occupation. She swept the glass up once more, tipped its contents into her mouth and grimaced as she swallowed.

  “Does it help?”

  Favor closed her eyes, despair sweeping over her. Of course he would come. Why should he stay away? Why would she think for a moment that common sense would have any influence at all over him and that he might realize the risk of discovery he ran?

  “Go away,” she muttered, refusing to look at him.

  “I asked you if it helped.” His voice was low and quite savage, as enraged as he’d sounded when he’d discovered her virginity two days before. But then he’d held her as though she were the most precious thing he’d ever known. He’d made love to her. She must cling to that sole benefit in this vile stew. Longings struggled to rise from deep in the cold, dark place she’d buried them.