The Reckless One

by Connie Brockway

  “R. Merrick. Raine Merrick.” She swayed slightly.

  “I couldn’t let you marry him, Favor. He would have killed you. This plan, this godforsaken plan of yours, could never have worked.”

  “You stopped it from working. You stopped me from repaying my obligation,” she said, a new horror in her voice. “You ruined it all. Why … Oh God.” Her head shot up and she gazed at him out of terrible, wounded eyes. “You even made love to me this morning to ensure the marriage couldn’t be annulled. Didn’t you?”

  He could not deny the charge. In truth he had entered her room with just such a motive. But that motive hadn’t survived the passion that had ignited as soon as he’d seen her. Then his only consideration had been to make love to her, to find in a life rife with pain and regret and sorrow one short interlude for love. But she was right, that hadn’t been his plan when he’d gone to her. She read the guilt on his face and flinched.

  “Not in the end,” he whispered hoarsely. “Not—”

  “Go!” she panted desperately. “Get out of here! Leave me! Go!”

  “Favor, please, I beg you—”

  “Go! Haven’t you done enough? Stolen my heart, my honor, and my pride and—go!” She crumpled to the floor, sobbing. Her slender back, so vulnerable and pale, shook with a tempest of tears.

  “Heed her,” Gunna insisted, yanking on his arm. “Ye’ll do no good here, Raine, and ye’ll surely do her no good dead!”

  “Won’t I?” Raine asked numbly, staring at the slight figure at his feet, afraid to touch her, unable to leave.

  “Think!” Gunna ground out. “Carr will kill ye and take yer place, Raine. No one knows yet about the marriage. Rankle can be silenced and Carr’s Christian name still begins with an ‘R’.”

  She was right. He couldn’t die. He had to leave.

  “Favor …”

  She huddled closer, refusing to look at him. With an oath, he swung away and strode from the room.

  She heard him leaving with the old hunched woman in the veil. For a long moment she lay where she’d fallen, huddled among the tangled bedsheets still scented with their lovemaking.

  Raine Merrick: Rapist. Her enemy’s son. Her betrayer. Her husband. And soon Carr would come … and he would want to know … and Muira was gone … and she was alone, far more alone than she’d ever been before because even last night she’d had Raf—Raine. She jerked upright, the thought a physical pain.

  She had to get out of there. Leave. But where? All her life she’d been shunted from place to place. The small town of her birth, these fatal shores, the French convent. She had no home. She’d only had her goal and that had been rendered unattainable. She only knew she couldn’t stay here.

  She rose and dressed with trembling haste. Quickly she donned a cloak, then she opened the door to the hallway and peeked outside. No one moved. She crept down the corridor, past the main staircase to the servants’ stairwell, and descended on clattering heels. Downstairs she hastened through the kitchens and larders, the curtseys and bobs of startled servants following her progress.

  She burst through the back door and raced across the small open courtyard for the stables. There she stole inside. A surprised groom harnessing a team of matched grays stumbled to a halt and tugged his forelock submissively.

  “Where is Jamie Craigg?” she asked him.

  “He be—”

  “Right here, Miss Donne.” The giant emerged from a stall, wiping his huge paws on a leather apron.

  “Where’s Muira?”

  Jamie darted a warning glance at the groomsman. What matter? It was all over now.

  “Mrs. Douglas drove herself out early this morning,” he said. “She said she was going to visit relatives up north and would be back by dinner. Beggin’ yer pardon, Miss, but ye don’t look so well. Are ye all right?” His craggy face was riddled with concern.

  “Yes,” she whispered. “Except I have a desire … that is I need to go away.” She prayed he would not ask her where, for she did not have any idea. She only knew she had to leave and Jamie was her only hope.

  “Now, Miss?”

  “Oh yes, please, Jamie.”

  Again he darted an anxious look at the groom, who stood watching with undisguised interest.

  “Please.”

  “Of course, Miss. Right away, Miss. I’ll just hitch the carriage and we’ll be off.” He turned away, his gaze passing scathingly over the eavesdropping groom. “Ye can tell me where once we’re on our way.”

  In the end there was no place to go except her brother’s manor twenty miles inland.

  “What has happened? I returned to the castle to find Carr beside himself and the two of you missing.” Favor heard Muira’s voice rise stridently from the small entry hall below. She heard Jamie’s low rumble in reply.

  She rose from her chair. She would not hide up here from Muira. Muira no longer mattered. Nothing mattered.

  “What did Carr say?” Jamie asked.

  “I didn’t speak to Carr, you great oaf! I couldn’t very well show up without his doting bride, now could I? Nor tell him she’d fled like a rabbit from a hound. I come straight here to fetch her back and that’s exactly what I’ll do.”

  “The girl is sick, Muira,” Jamie muttered. “As white as new snow and eyes as bleak and deep as a new dug grave.”

  “I don’t care. Where is the silly bitch? I’ll teach her to—”

  “I’m here, Muira.”

  The old woman swung around and looked up at where Favor stood on the landing. “Get your cloak on!” she spat. “Your husband’s waiting for you.”

  “No. He’s not.”

  “Stupid girl, he’s not had you yet. He can still have the marriage annulled. Now get down here!”

  Favor laughed, a hopeless choked sound. In response, Muira stormed up the steps, grabbed her arm in a viselike grip and wrenched her forward.

  “No.” Favor shook her head frantically. “No! Listen to me, Muira! Listen!” Her shout had the desired effect. Muira dropped her arm.

  “I didn’t marry Carr. I married his son, Raine!”

  Muira turned to Jamie. His forehead rippled with a fierce frown of confusion. “And you said I was daft,” she muttered grimly. “Well, mad or no, she’ll lay beneath Carr this day.”

  “I will not. I’ve already lain with his son. My husband.”

  The supreme confidence in Muira’s expression faltered. “She’s mad.”

  Favor looked past her to Jamie. “’Twas Raine Merrick who we finagled from that French prison. He came to Wanton’s Blush without Carr’s knowledge, seeking McClairen’s Trust. He found me instead. But he didn’t tell me who he was, I swear it.”

  “Oh, lassie,” Jamie breathed.

  “Ignore her,” Muira said flatly, but something skittered behind her opaque eyes. “She’s just looking for some way out. And she’ll not find it.”

  “You foolish old woman! ’Twas Raine who danced with me at the masque. ’Twas Raine whom I stayed with that night. ’Twas Raine’s name on that certificate.”

  She could see Muira’s throat working convulsively. “No.”

  “Look at it!” Favor said, and the old woman withdrew the folded sheet from her bodice with trembling fingers. “It says ‘R’ Merrick, ‘R’ for Raine not Ronald. If it were Carr I’d married, the paper would read ‘Merrick, Earl of Carr.’ Look! What date does it give for my groom’s birth?”

  Her answer was a howl of rage that rose from the depths of Muira’s belly. Fearfully, Favor backed away. Muira crumpled the certificate into her fist and tore at the rumpled wad, tearing it to pieces with hands whose bones showed white. When she was done she hurled the pieces to the hall below and swung around.

  “NO! I won’t let this happen. All the years, the planning, the sacrifices and scratching to make … No! McClairen’s Isle will be the McClairens’ once more!”

  Jamie, his face still and wary, moved cautiously up the steep flight of stairs. “It’s over, Muira,” he said.


  “No, it’s not,” she panted, her gaze wild and staring. “It’s not over. There has to be a way …” She swung on Favor. “You vile thing. You wretched curse on our clan!”

  Her words beat at Favor, each word a blow. “For what did you sell out your honor and your debt?” Muira demanded.

  “I didn’t know. God help me, ’tis true I love … loved him but I swear I didn’t know who he was. I didn’t know ’twas Raine Merrick I married. I swear I thought I’d wed Carr! I only learned of his duplicity this morning after he …”

  “Tupped you,” Muira finished in tones so ugly Favor closed her eyes. “Who else knows of your filthy betrayal?”

  Favor flinched before the raw hatred in Muira’s voice. “No one. Only the priest and the valet and Raine.”

  “Raine,” she sneered. “Could you not have waited to lay with him? A few months and I would have made you a widow.”

  She laughed at Favor’s bewildered expression, a dark and hideous sound. “Oh, so innocent! Did you not ken that was part of the plan, dearie? Did you honestly believe I’d trust God to take Carr’s life before yours? God is not to be trusted. I planned to kill Carr within the week.

  Murder? She should have known. She should have realized. But she hadn’t. Yet another thing she was guilty of, but at least in marrying Raine she had been spared a part in murder. “I would never have agreed to let you kill Carr,” she whispered. “No matter how evil he is.”

  “Of course not,” Muira sneered. “You haven’t the guts. You’ve too much blood of your whey-faced mother in you and not enough McClairen. You sold us out to squirm beneath a rapist, to grow a belly full of Merrick demon. May the fires of hell consume you!”

  “Leave off, Muira!” Jamie said, his voice cold with warning. “Merrick never raped that nun and well you know it. Merry confessed her guilt and absolved him.”

  “What?” Favor asked. “All these years you had me think I’d traded my people’s lives for a rapist.”

  “What matter?” Muira sneered. “He’s demon spawn and I’ll see him to his rightful home in hell. There’s time yet to make this work. The valet and priest can be dealt with later. And once I find—”

  “No!” Immediately Favor grasped the black permutations of Muira’s mad thoughts. “No, you—”

  Muira swung, all her rage invested in the blow that caught Favor across the temple and sent her tumbling down the stairs. The world was gone before she reached the bottom.

  Chapter 30

  “Where’s Muira?” Favor asked faintly. Her head throbbed and a burning pain drove through her back to her shoulder blades. Blackness skirted about her consciousness, beckoning her toward oblivion.

  “She’s gone too far,” she heard Jamie mutter. “No piece of land is worth the price of yer soul.”

  The darkness swallowed her. When it released her again she grew slowly aware that someone held her, pressing a cool, moist cloth against her forehead. “Raine,” she whispered.

  “I’m sorry, Favor McClairen,” Jamie said. “I’m sorry fer all we done to ye. The boy was no rapist. Ye saved us from the sin of murdering an innocent lad. And that’s all ye did. Carr would have found another way to rid us from his land. Ye were just convenient.”

  “Please,” she said trying to turn. She had to stop Muira. Raine. Dear God, why hadn’t she stayed with him? Listened? The swirling darkness beckoned her once more; she fought against it, concentrating on Jamie’s soft litany.

  “Ye were convenient for Muira, too. Fer us. I’ll not deny it. We shouldn’t have used ye so. It’s just that we owed Muira. Please, try and understand.

  “We were scattered after the massacre. She found us. She gave us a goal, a purpose, something besides scrabbling from one day to the next without pride or future or past. But she got lost somewhere. I knew it and I didna stop her and that’s somethin’ I’ll have to live with fer the rest of me days.”

  The blackness receded enough for her to struggle upright in Jamie’s great arms. She didn’t care about his guilt. She’d had a bellyful of guilt. She only wanted Raine. “Where is she?”

  “I dunno. Back to the castle I’d guess. She whipped those horses something fierce.” He shook his great shaggy head sadly. “Best rest, Miss Favor. It’s all over now.”

  “No. It’s not.” She pulled away from him, wincing as she rose. A sea of darkness lapped at her vision. She fought and won the battle against drowning in it. “I have to get to Raine, Jamie. You have to take me to Wanton’s Blush.”

  “Now, Miss Favor. What good will that do?” Jamie said mournfully.

  She reached out her hand and braced it on the newel post at the bottom of the stairs. She could not lose him to Muira’s mad obsession. Nor to anything else.

  “Didn’t you hear her, Jamie? And you, who know her so well, didn’t you realize what she plans?”

  He reached up to steady her by the elbow. She shook off his hand. “What’s that, Miss Favor?”

  “She plans to kill all three—the valet, priest, and Raine—and by doing so clear the way for my marriage to Carr.”

  Jamie stared at her, his muteness testifying to his agreement. “But ye’ll never agree to it. She must know that.”

  “It doesn’t matter. She’s mad!” Favor said, seizing Jamie’s hand and tugging. “Now drive me to Wanton’s Blush, Jamie Craigg. Drive like the devil himself is chasing you.”

  Wanton’s Blush stood preternaturally dark in the deepening dusk. Few lights brightened the narrow embrasures of her central façade; and her two ells, completely dark, seemed to fold in toward the gloomy courtyard like the wings of some huge, sentient night bird. Jamie drew the lathered horses up before the enormous front doors. Favor jumped from the carriage before the poor beasts had stopped.

  “Miss Favor!” Jamie called. “I’ll wait without for ye!”

  She didn’t reply. She wrenched one massive door open, darting past the flummoxed footman and up the central stairs, heading for the abandoned east rooms.

  At the top she turned and flew down the corridor to a small passageway leading to the sea-facing rooms. Raine’s lair was near the north tower. If he was here that was the place she’d most likely find him. If he was, indeed, still here. The thought that he’d left eased a small part of Favor’s panic.

  Still, Muira would be hunting—a mad, obsessed woman thwarted in her designs—and as knowledgeable about Wanton’s Blush as Muira was, she would soon figure out Raine’s whereabouts.

  Favor slowed her pace, adjusting her eyes to the gloom. Near the center of the hallway she saw a sliver of light from under a door. It was the chapel where most of Janet McClairen’s things had been abandoned.

  The thought invoked an image of Raine looking at the detritus that had once been his mother’s treasured items. She hadn’t understood his pensive mood when she’d come upon him there. He’d accepted her intrusion with relief. Raine, too, had dealt with his share of ghosts.

  She opened the door and stepped inside, looking about. An ornate silver candelabra stood on the floor, the lights from a dozen tapers glinting from its polished surface. Otherwise, the room looked empty. She frowned, moved forward, and heard the door bang shut behind her.

  She swung around. Ronald Merrick, Earl of Carr, stood behind her. He was dressed like a prince, gleaming from head to foot. At his side he wore a sword in a jewel-encrusted scabbard, on his head a snowy bagwig secured with a diamond clasp. The deep cuffs and buttons of his coat shimmered with crystals and metallic threads. Even the buckles of his shoes glittered.

  “You’ve done something to your hair,” he said mildly. “Begad, I rather like it. Pretty.”

  She didn’t know what to say, how to respond. His eyes were odd though his face was composed.

  “I knew you’d come, Janet. You always liked your pretty things, though”—he cast a sad look around—“they’re not very pretty anymore.”

  “I’m not Janet, sir.”

  “Of course you’re not. You’re Favor Donne, or should I say Mc
Clairen? Did you think I didn’t know? Of course I knew. Although, I will admit, I only recently found out. Rankle told me, just before he succumbed. Chicken bone, I believe.”

  Dear God, he’d killed that little valet.

  “Don’t worry, m’dear, though I will probably have to have a little talk with your brother when … if he returns. But that has naught to do with you and me. I don’t care if you are a McClairen. It doesn’t matter who you are because …”—he moved toward her—“… because I also know that you carry the spirit of my dear Janet.”

  She released her breath slowly, holding very still as he picked up a strand of her hair and coiled it nonchalantly around his finger. “Really quite lovely. I declare myself utterly taken with the hue.”

  Her smile was tremulous.

  “It really is too bad you have to die.”

  She jerked back, unprepared for the sudden death sentence and he smiled, clucking softly as one would to a frightened mare. “There now, Janet. You are somewhere in there listening, aren’t you, Janet? Because everything I have to say would, I’m afraid, simply be wasted on Miss Donne.”

  He was going to kill her anyway. It made no sense. “Why?” she pleaded in a hoarse little voice.

  “Because I can’t have you hounding me through London. You’re a Scottish nobody, both in this body and in your last. You aren’t”—he twirled his hand, searching for the right words—“rich enough, or well-connected enough, or special enough to be my wife. And Janet, you were ever too proud to be anything less.

  “Perhaps Miss Donne, too, suffers from this elevated sense of herself because I certainly gave her—you?—every chance to become my mistress, but she—you?—tiresomely insisted on matrimony.”

  “I’m not Janet,” she protested weakly, uncertain whether she should reveal Muira’s plot, fearful that doing so would incite him to a murderous rage.

  “Of course not.” He patted her cheek as one would a child, his gaze slowly warming as he studied her features. “Do you know, Janet, I actually considered for a moment acquiescing to your wishes? I’d almost decided to marry you with—of course—the caveat that I could rid myself of you when I found it expedient to do so.